RACHEL'S COLUMNS

These articles appeared in Rachel's column every Friday in the A3 section of The Age

Newsflash - it's time for campaign balderdash
10th September 2004

A few days ago in a desperate attempt to escape the endless flapdoodle of the federal election, I found myself in the Bourke Street Mall shopping for socks and pantyhose.  Yes, I was ready to shove a hand full of blisters into a bowl of boiling Bonox rather than listen to one more tax policy, Medicare revamp or gibberish about honesty in politics.  Thus, I left my cave like a crazy hyena, mouth agape, hungry for distraction.

My mood slipped speedily downhill from desperate, to dazed and crashing into walls – not just because I loathe shopping and especially for trivia like socks and pantyhose – but because suddenly I felt like Parsifal searching for the Holy Grail.  In the huge emporiums that boast everything that opens, shuts, stretches and snaps, I sniffed and snorted past row after row of hosiery dreck like a feral pig and found nothing!  Yes, nothing, that I would slip over my trotters.

There are socks with appliquéd flowers and tiny pom-poms attached at the back of the ankle, knee-high socks and over the knee socks.  There are socks conceived and designed to cater for every possible Rubik's cube life-puzzle configuration.  All I wanted was a pair of regular socks.  But there in front of me was a vista of sock options that left no doubt in my mind that like the Dodo we are well on our way to extinction.  How can any thinking person spend their precious life making choices about sockettes, footlets, low-cut massage anklets, cotton toe covers and peep toes – and that's just for your feet.  What's next?  Crutchless Explorer socks when you're ready for a bit of adventure?  I reckon the people who design these items are the P.T Barnums of the hosiery world, dedicated to the premise that there's a sucker born every minute.

The pantyhose section is a whole other bunch of voodoo.  There's so many varieties, shapes and colours that no professional thief would have the time to decide which stocking would best cover his face-opaque, semi opaque, shiny, matte or velvet-touch?  I came here to forget the election but I swear I could see the face of George Brandis in the 'uplifting' brief of the latest body-sculpting panty hose.  They're designed to "sculpt your body to a perfect profile.  With clever toning mechanisms to reduce bulges, contour the hips and 'lift' the bottom."  But the truth, just like hosiery, can only be stretched so far before it loses its shape.

We've spawned this humungous mollusk of power that clings to every rock in our lives.  And presently the Government and the Opposition are clinging on firmly, trying to seduce us with their equivalent of wine and roses till we get giddy and leg-less and tick the right box.  Right now from where I'm standing (with no socks on) it would appear that pantyhose and politics are offering the same impossible promises of tummy tightening and bottom lifting.  John Howard offers a $1.8 billion Medicare package aimed at firming the hips and thighs of the cost of a visit to the doctor.  And Mark Latham delivers his razzle-dazzle Tax policy that promises to provide the specially graduated support to reduce bulges.  But the only issue we can be certain both these guys genuinely believe in, is that they want to get elected.

Forget a debate and the speeches, I've got a better idea to sniff out the better man.  When two hyenas meet, they don't do so face to face, but rear to face, like a pair of shoes in a box.  The subordinate hyena lifts a leg to expose its genitals to the mouth of the superior hyena – a gesture of trust and vulnerability.  Only then, does the dominant hyena raise its hind leg to allow the lesser hyena to take a sniff.  Why not bite the bullet gentlemen; after all we know all this posturing and clever marketing is fundamentally a disguised flashing of genitalia.  Let's get the drama back on stage where it belongs and put on a proper show.  Hire a band, get a chorus-line of dancers to do a big opening number, a couple of fair dinkum clowns and for the finale, flick on the spotlight, ta-dah and show us your balls!