Who woulda thunk it?

Who would have thought Miranda Devine's daddy, Frank Devine (who once famously alleged that the ABC deliberately refuses to have its TV news transcribed to avoid `evidence' of its big fat lefty bias, 1984-style), would suggest in today's Australian (don't get the impression I'm a regular reader - a copy fell on my desk and I read it) that Mark Latham might make a bonzer career for himself as a writer, or in talkback radio (possibly for the `fading' 2UE)?

Interestingly, the rumour about getting Latham behind the mike has been doing the rounds for some time. Theoretically, it could be an intriguing gig for him - a sort of neverending Town Hall meeting - but frankly, if formal politics disillusioned him about the true nature of pluralism, talkback radio would shit him to tears. Listeners would find it near impossible to divide Latham the former leader from Latham the disembodied deus ex machina on the radio. Radio requires a certain sort of anonymoty - get John Laws from behind that golden microphone (as on Andrew Denton's `Enough Rope'), and he's a pussycat.

This could also be a problem should he become a columnist. How many people mention Bill Clinton and think of his attempts to reform the US health system, rather than Monica Lewinsky? Very, very few, and it's a terrible shame. I sung in choirs as a child, and the conductor always told us that the crowd only ever goes away remembering the first song you sung and the last one. Such is life, too.

Time, of course, will tell. It would be great to see Latham back in any form.