Miranda Devine, David Campbell redux, the wretched Peter Meakin and memories of Don Dunstan revived ...

Seeing as how we're interested in typographical standards, we thought we'd preserve Miranda the Devine's opening line "Door David Campbell" in digital aspic. Well it's one way to start off A family man beyond our ken.

What on earth might it mean? That the phlegmatic David Campbell is a trifle wooden, akin to a door? No, not really, in all likelihood, it's an attempt at sympathy, a tad feigned of course, since only a few lines later she delivers up another description of poor David Campbell:

He seemed the most unlikely candidate to be a Friend of Dorothy in all of Macquarie Street. Yet he told Premier Kristina Keneally as he tendered his resignation from the cabinet that ''he has been living with a secret about his sexuality for over two decades''.

Well it has to be said that Campbell is no friend of this Dorothy, nor is it true as suggested in the Urban Dictionary that the term arose from closeted queers who were friends of Dorothy Parker. As usual, the wiki is more accurate, noting that this is one claim, but that the more common source is claimed to be The Wizard of Oz, though once again, in the usual way of slang, there's no definitive proof.

It is however fair to say that unless used within the community, by gays about other gays, in much the same way that blacks can use the word "nigger", but whites never can, the phrase is a loaded, vaguely dismissive term, like other favourite Australian colloquial terms like "pillow biter".

And Campbell, while he might qualify for the term for being in the closet, the two decades he allegedly spent in the closet suggest he lacked the flamboyance usually associated with the term. If you're going to be a FOD, you'd expect a nickname a little more Carmen Miranda than Mr. Slow.

Even the Devine decides that she can swing the axe of dullness at Campbell:

If Campbell had been going to heterosexual swingers' parties, the incongruity with his seemingly boorish, unsexy persona would have been just as novel.

Boorish?

Which is to say resembling or characteristic of a boor: rude and clumsy in behaviour, ill-manned, clumsy or insensitive? Door David Campbell.

Well at least the Devine finds the time to rule out the Seven network's talk of Campbell's use of his family in politics as a worthy defence. The Devine is always in favour of the family:

... why can't Campbell have a picture of his wife and children on his Christmas cards, like any other father?

... surely he is a better family man for having stayed with his wife and sons and been the best father and husband he could be despite being perhaps unfulfilled in a sexual sense. While honesty and fidelity in marriage is obviously the ideal, no one is perfect. No one can look into another person's marriage and judge. In fact, as Campbell himself said yesterday, messages of support to his office have been so numerous he feels ''humbled''.

Seven was still trotting this humbuggery out yesterday, while admitting that all the talk of the use of a ministerial car was not an act of impropriety.

The Devine seems vaguely perplexed that the story has caused some controversy in the media and a whiff of grape shot.

... the tables have turned on the media, with a savagery that comes these days at the slightest whiff of homophobia, imagined or otherwise.

The messengers are being shot, with Adam Walters smeared yesterday in the Crikey blog by unnamed Seven colleagues as a pants man.

The character of the Seven news chief Peter Meakin likewise has come into question, with this newspaper's Andrew West pointing out his convictions for drunk driving.

It's an extraordinary turnaround for a usually insular media, loathe to cast stones at colleagues lest they be returned in buckets.

Indeed, because it's hard to defend the indefensible, and so we happily link to the Crikey story The Minister, the gay sauna and a reporter with scores to settle. Come on down icky Adam Walters. And if you didn't cop an agitated Andrew West having a go at the lush ways of Peter Meakin, head off to Manufactured scandal leaves another political career in tatters.

But the funniest, if it wasn't so sad, angle that Seven have used to justify their whole sordid idea of reporting, is the notion of blackmail:

Of most concern, he (Meakin) maintained, was the fact that Mr Campbell had served as police minister for 18 months up until September 2008.

''If the guy is a minister for police and is frequenting brothels and sex clubs, heterosexual or homosexual, I think that's a matter of some interest because he is exposed and he is potentially compromised,'' he said.

While there has been no suggestion of attempted blackmail, Mr Meakin said the potential existed and that was sufficient grounds to run the story.

''If it's someone's private life and it does not impact on his job or potentially impact on his job, it's a private life, but if it impacts on his portfolio or potentially on the execution of his duties, I think it's a matter of public interest.''

Um, he was currently the Minister for Transport in a state with a broken Transport system. Suddenly there's a risk of blackmail from a job he held eighteen months ago, where he served with a complete lack of distinction, and where the scandals were never related to his sexuality?

So what kind of blackmail were the baddies going to employ when it came to Transport? Do what we say or we're going to tell on you for running a broken transport system and for being gay? Well I guess that explains all the nice perks and corruption in the State Rail system.

Dear lord, I haven't heard that kind of nonsense since the good old days when Don Dunstan got into an argument with Harold Salisbury, a pukka kind of chap from the UK who as Police Commissioner wanted to maintain the Special Branch and its "pink files". (wiki it here, but there's also more details in the pdf available here, Human Rights and Human Freedoms: Exploring the Political Leadership of Don Dunstan).

While he was married to Adele Koh, Dunstan was notoriously rumoured to be bisexual, and involved with a drug addict, and of course the usual sanctimonious claptrap of him being at risk of blackmail was trotted out as a defence for Salisbury, the files, and the smear-mongering going the rounds, when truth to tell, the only blackmail Dunstan faced was from his political enemies and the gossip that did the rounds on North Terrace.

Nonetheless, Dunstan suspected that Salisbury's files had some dirt on him, as well as many others, and he got into a face down which saw Salisbury depart the job, but which also saw Dunstan seriously wounded as a politician. (You can possibly find a tattered abused copy of Des Ryan's storm in a teacup It's Grossly Improper lying in a bookstore in a back street in Adelaide to this day).

The upshot of a perfect storm - sparked by unhappy Adele Koh's death at a way too early stage - was a trembling Dunstan's pyjama-clad resignation. It was a pitiful end to one of the most pleasing and radical turns as a state premier this country has ever seen, but fortunately Dunstan recovered to litter the homes of latte sippers with a recipe book.

Meanwhile, Seven will have trouble selling their latest version of this kind of innuendo-laden smear, since even the Devine realises there's a little timing problem with their defence:

... if the story had broken while Campbell had been the Police Minister, it would have been far more easily justified.

She then goes on to drink the Channel Seven kool aid about how a gay might be subject to blackmail, cheerfully ignoring the notion that heterosexuals of a wayward kind also might be subject to blackmail. It's amazingly nineteen fifties to be trotting out the special vulnerability of gay folk to blackmail, even if some prefer to stay in the closet rather than endure the kind of frothing foaming frenzy whipped up by Seven.

Still, when the Devine can wrap up a column thusly, Seven is in deep trouble:

No doubt there are other politicians in the closet in Australia, but gay liberation also means they have the right to stay in the closet if they wish. Sadly, Campbell now has no choice.

In the end, while it's often forgotten in our sex-saturated culture, there is more to a person than sex. Campbell's identity is not encapsulated in a two-hour session at Ken's of Kensington on Tuesday night. He is still a family man.

If you want to read the rest of Meakin's defence for taking a trawl through a private life, you can read it here, under Seven defends outing, despite false claim. It's always interesting to read a defence of the indefensible.

And it will be interesting what Seven gets up to, in its ongoing attempts to justify its story. As David Marr notes in Outdated Seven fails on public interest:

No doubt Seven is scrambling to find any dirt it can on the former minister for transport. Usually you'd wait until you had your evidence before attacking your target. Not this time. As of now, Campbell has been destroyed for one reason alone: being gay.

Marr also evokes the time when alleged pictures of Pauline Hanson got trotted out, allegedly in the public interest.

Well the only cheering thing is the way Seven has been roundly mocked and pilloried. If only I watched the channel so I could stop watching it.

Lord help us if Australia ends up like the United States, where absurd standards of private moral behaviour are used to skewer opponents, with the resulting hypocrisy usually resulting in sundry Republicans and conservatives being outed for their wayward sexual antics.

It's the job at hand that counts, and don't expect Seven's little number to help Sydney or the state's actual problem: a totally stuffed transport system.

(Below: Don Dunstan resigning).