Defending Kevin

Kevin Rudd does have a huge burden of well known examples of past poor treatment of his minions to overcome.  For years, I noted he had a fake public persona, according to many, many accounts.

And it is entirely possible that anyone who saw how he interacted with the TV make up woman the other night might have thought "that's a bit much Kevin, you *%#@."

But honestly, should the press really run with an uncorroborated complaint of  being "treated badly" which contains no details at all?

She didn't say at all how he was rude.  It could have been anything from heated swearing to ignoring an attempt at polite chit chat to saying "hurry up, and don't talk to me while I prepare mentally."  Yet it was run all day by not only the Murdoch press, but Fairfax and on the ABC too.

On the Drum, they wondered why he didn't just apologise.  Apologise for what?  We have no idea what he actually did.

OK, so perhaps its Kevin just reaping the consequences of past bad behaviour.   It still seems to me to be disreputable of the media to spend so much time on it during a campaign without knowing how he allegedly "treated her badly".

Update:  I see that Andrew Bolt, who ran with the Rudd rudeness story at great, great length yesterday, is now complaining that the story was not covered enough by Fairfax!    Apart from the fact that it did run on Fairfax websites all day, he apparently can't see that his comparison with the story of Abbott and an incident from his university days is just a little different in this way- we knew exactly what Abbott was alleged to have done.  (And, incidentally, Bolt's own employer recently had to apologise in Court for running Kroger's claim that the complainant had a history of lying and was a nutter.  Did Bolt ever note that at his blog?  He certainly hasn't updated his original post giving publicity to Kroger's claim.   Just like he has never updated corrections to Anthony Watt's wrong claim about how his project would show the temperature record was wrongly attributed to CO2.  Bolt is a propagandist who hardly ever bothers noting corrections to his past errors - and when a court confirms they are errors, he whines bitterly about that too.)

Update 2:  what a sleazy, sleazy gossip monger Bolt has become.   Running a post today about a band aid on a the hand of Rudd, and parsing Rudd's comment about it as if there is a scandal being hidden (the suggestion obviously being that he hurt himself hitting something in a rage.)

Even a two faced politician doesn't deserve groundless crap like that.

Update 3:  the first account I have heard that gives any detail of what is supposed to have happened in the make up room:

Whether Rudd deserved the critique is another question. Accounts of those who were in the room are consistent with Rudd's - that he said ''hello'' and ''goodbye'' to Fontana and virtually nothing in between as he prepared for the most important 60 minutes of the campaign to that point, reading intently from last-minute briefing notes before taking the stage. ''I was in the zone,'' is how he put it.