Deciding to remember, and what to remember, is how we describe who we are
-Robert Pinsky
Know ye not why We created you all from the same dust? That no one should exalt himself over the other. ..
As Baha'u'llah knows this MEdia Dragons is nothing more and nothing less except a blog dedicated to the daily dust consisting of news and links. Antony Loewenstein of Counterspin Fame links today to the Age article frontish page about Dusty Bloggers .
I don't consider myself very left-wing at all,says Christopher Shiel. But if you write anything half normal online, you'll be immediately tagged left-wing. The web's swarming with extreme right-wingers waiting to kick the shit out of you.
Eye on Politics & Leadership: Back to the Future, 1997 AD ... Nick Greiner: Dry and Warm
Feeling childhood and leadership nostalgia today so I retyped that 7 years and 7 months old conversation with an Antipodean leader whose roots are Bohemian. When I asked Nick Greiner about his leadership branches and style this is what he shared with me all those years ago when I still walked the corridors of power at the NSW Parliament:
Well, my leadership style was in many ways what the academics call heroic. It was based on intellectual and personal strength. It was not what is now so fashionable: leading from behind and talking to everyone. It really was leading from the front. In many ways I think that to achieve significant systemic change in the public sector in particular, it is almost the only leadership style that works. This is so if you consider leaders who have produced what you might call radical change. The only way to do that is by heroic leadership. Without not intending the word heroic to sound grandiose, I think that this is what leading from the front means.
JI: Is the opposite of heroic sometimes viewed as suicidal?
NG. No. I do not know about the opposite, but some might say it is the same, or perhaps some might say the other side of the same coin. There are other people, for example Mr Howard at the moment, Mr Carr and Mr Fahey, when he was here, who have more of a consultative style, a team style, a ‘do not run ahead of public opinion style’ than I had.
All of that is politically much more successful. However, it is also much less successful at achieving results.
• The constituency for change that is you and me and everybody else who wants a car, it is not on our radar screen. It is not an issue for us. And that is the problem repeated many times [she’ll be right on the night’ Nick Greiner ]
• · Mark Latham Unless We Change Now Launch Digesting Golden Medicare Miracle Boy and the spontaneous: Love you, Babe
• · · Laurie Oakes There is no question about it. John Howard is going ; [Dorothy Dixers Jon Faine has a simple but effective method for dispatching talkback callers he suspects of being political stooges: he'll pull the plug on a switchboard full of calls and take the next lot]
• · · · Newcomers struggle to close wage gap Imrichation and the fears of an underclass
• · · · · US Electoral Vote Predictor Pulse taken Seriously
• · · · · · The Progress Of Counterrevolution: Alienation, Culture, and Labor; [On the Radical Middle: They're pragmatic. They're idealistic. And they're reshaping the future of American politic]