Tuesday, September 20, 2005
“I HAD MORE SUCCESS WITH WOMEN THAN HER”
After becoming Labor leader, Mark Latham complained—almost to the point of tears—about media examination of his sexual history (the poor baby). In this week’s Bulletin cover story, Bernard Lagan reveals Mark Latham’s vicious hypocrisy:
Latham alleged that in 1997, his former wife informed him that she wanted to pursue relationships with other women.
“Well root my boot,” said Latham’s email to me. “I wished I had known she was bisexual when I married her. She said that this little fact went back to her days in nursing but she was too embarrassed to tell me. A very weird person, I can tell you.
“And my attitude once the surprise had abated? If she could chase other women, then so could I. Effectively our marriage ended at that point. When I had more success with women than her, she went savage and psycho on me and the rest, as they say, is political history. Not really an event I could talk about as leader of the opposition, but happy now for the full story to be known.”
Latham was unhappy that he’d married an attractive bisexual? How ... old fashioned of him. Also in The Bulletin:
* Tony Wright probes Latham’s idea of “political poison”:
Latham presents his diaries as an open, honest account of his political career – more honest than the scribblings of journalists using off-the-record briefings. A refreshing approach, perhaps, though he notes early in the book his disdain for Beazley’s speechwriter and author Bob Ellis for taking his audience “down the American way, where all that is private is ultimately made public”. Ellis, he declares is “a dangerous lard of political poison”. Which leaves Latham and his recital of private conversations where, precisely?
* Laurie Oakes imagines a Latham-led Australia:
The weird and ugly mind that penned The Latham Diaries would be running the country. The anger, viciousness and near-paranoia evident in the attacks on just about everyone who matters in the Labor Party would have been let loose upon the land. The responsibility for dealing with a terrorist attack or other emergency would be in the hands of a man whose temperament, it now transpires, could not stand up to an election loss or even a bit of intra-party argy-bargy. Our most important alliance, that with the United States, would be in jeopardy under an Australian leader holding the private belief – one which he kept from the electorate – that it is a form of neo-colonialism and should be ditched. It does not bear thinking about.
* And this week’s Continuing Crisis column quotes Latham, Tex, Tony Abbott, Margo Kingston, Maxine McKew, Matt Price, Bob Carr, Michael Duffy, Paul Keating, Michael Gordon, Craig McGregor, Alan Ramsey, Superman, Andrew Bolt, Bill Clinton, Dick Morris, Peter Costello, Louise Dodson, John Hartigan, John Howard, Alan Ramsey, Dr. Peter McMahon, Robert Bosler, Paddy McGuinness, Phillip Adams, Michael Moore, Paul Kelly, Peter Beattie, Bob Hogg, Antony Green, Phillip Hudson, Dr. Paul Norton, Geoffrey Barker, Peter Garrett, Louise Dodson, Ken Parish, Elaine M. Mclennan, Michelle Grattan, and David Burchell.