The Paris Hilton of Politics?

Penguin's phallic toadstool started the day in a hilarious way.

Then I read PM dines with porn king via news.com.au after reading something about the Santo Santoro shares thing and had to laugh some more. All of this stuff about who had dinner with who and how naughty they are is getting ridiculous, because most politicians would have come in contact with many, many undesirables in their career (themselves included perhaps?). Pointing the finger about din-dins with a Burke ends up meaning there are fingers pointing back at you with a porn-king or two and perhaps some non-declared interested shares.

Scott Phillips, who's currently in jail serving a five-year term for doing some rather horrible things, was a late inclusion for din-dins with the PM a couple of years ago (at a fund-raiser for Andrew Laming, whose offices were recently raided by the federal police).

I believe there was some kind of mention back when the Burke thing came out of whether it was a nice cosy meeting to lobby for K-Rudd's promotion a couple years later to leader of the ALP. This has made me wonder whether John Howard had any personal cosy chit-chats with Phillips for any variety of lobbying and hoping that there won't be a home video coming out any time soon, Paris Hilton style.

Oh how I wish politics would get back to the policies and off of the mud-slinging personal attacks.

The one that disgusted me the most being Tony Abbott's column in the Sydney Morning Herald attacking K-Rudd's memories as an 11-year-old following his father's death - VERY poor form from there from the Health Minister who never seems to write about health in his columns. It came across as truly insensitive and disrespectful of a family's grief rather than an inspired commentary on how big a liar-liar-pants-on-fire Abbott believes Kevin Rudd to be.

My grandpa died when I was 16 and that was traumatic enough. I can't imagine what it would be like to lose a parent at such a young age. For Vocational and Technical Education Minister Andrew Robb to defend the attacks as a legitimate way of "testing" K-Rudd's fitness to be PM is totally hard-hearted, as well as quite bonkers.

Regardless, the SMH reports: PM refuses to concede Rudd attacks have backfired *le sigh* Frankly, I'd rather see the PM collaborate with Phillips on a home video, gaining him the title of the Paris Hilton of Politics, than more of the same-old-same-old mud-slinging stuff.