Australian prime Minister Kevin Rudd swore on TV.
My Aussie correspondent, Sydney-based communication consultant Rodney Gray, sent me the item. He says lots of his countrymen think Rudd did it purposely "to show he was one with retrenched factory workers." *
Have a look here. What do you think?
* And what would be the matter with this tactic? A professional seminar leader once told me she threw in precisely one obscenity, early in the session, to indicate the talk was no-holds-barred, grownups talking to grownups like grownups.
I’m not familiar with Mr. Rudd’s past interviews, but it appeared to me to be an unplanned thing. Of course that doesn’t mean it was spontaneous – he is a politician, after all.
On the other question, does simply swearing occasionally make you de facto “one with the…factory workers”? When you’re the Prime Minister of a country, I would say no, and why does he need to be?
Don’t we expect our government leaders to have something more than we have in order to be qualified to run our countries? Otherwise, WE would be in charge and we wouldn’t need them at all.
He needs to UNDERSTAND the issues facing the factory workers, certainly. He also, hopefully, has some plans and actions in the works which may help them out, but does he need to be “one” with them. Not in my opinion.
As to throwing “in precisely one obsenity” I can see how that might accomplish the stated objective with some audiences, but Ialso think there are other ways to encourage and enable “straight talk”. That tactic seems, oddly, MORE disingenous and irksome to me when used automatically as a matter of course, than Rudd’s swear (assuming it was intentional)came across.
It could have been worse; he could have said “clusterfuck.”