To Misplaced Moral Outrage

Six weeks out from the federal election, Kevin Rudd has had ample time to recover from the mini-scandal of his strip-club visit. Indeed, he'd recovered by the following day. If this recovery and now electable stainlessness demonstrates clever handling of the media on his part, it also demonstrates the shallowness of public morality. Far from reflecting deeply held values, this kind of morality is flexible, inflammatory, and easily exhausted in one front page. It's also profoundly hypocritical: if there's something wrong about visiting a strip-club, why do we tolerate them? Why not get rid of them all? If there's nothing wrong with it, why all the fuss?