Tools of your manipulation: dead cats and dog-whistles

Some (many) weeks in Australian politics are so repulsively stupid that resisting the urge to mentally check out before Monday lunchtime is a struggle of biblical proportions. From the moment the group chat shared the news this week’s Discourse™ would centre how “shaggable” the Prime Minister finds Kylie Minogue, his suspiciously electorally friendly aphrodisiacs (local sports team winning, goooooo teammmmmm!!!), and his “unequivocal” apology for sharing this shit with all of us, to the moment you are reading this column, I have daydreamed of living in an underground colony of mole people – not Coober Pedy, somewhere deeper, somewhere darker – with no connection whatsoever to mainstream Australia, its accursed newscycle, and its fucked up sense of priorities.

In the wake of ShagMarryKissGate, Murdoch’s soiled New York rag the Post spoke of the PM’s “wild podcast”, upon which they claim he said “he’d have sex with Kylie Minogue”. Locally, Channel 9 headlined the notoriously radical feminists in the Liberal Party and their claims Albanese’s comments were “disrespectful to all women”. While in the Herald Scum, Andrew Bolt described the incident as “unforgivable”, asking us to question “what is going on inside the Prime Minister’s dirty mind?” (Could We Fucking Not!?! )

Australian indie media took a more laudable, measured approach. Michael West explained on Twitter that he had opted not to cover the “issue” at all. Cheek Media did cover it, but tied it to important matters of consequence, such as the atrocious gendered violence statistics in Australia; it is only July and 36 women have been murdered by their male partners this year, yet another national crisis lacking any real leadership. 

I am only choosing to wade into this mire to illustrate why, in politics, just as in life, some debates are lost simply by having them. 

This is not a gaffe. I don’t buy that for a minute. This is a deliberate dogwhistle to the dickhead demographic, a demographic Albanese is terrified of losing to One Nation. 

The people upset by this on the right of politics will never vote for the ALP anyway. The people upset on the left are already voting for independents, socialists and Greens. They have watched this man gaslight his way through a genocide he is helping to arm, gift our resources to untaxed foreign corporations, and grovel for selfies through an AUKUS deal that has – alongside his capitulation to Zionist infiltrators – all but destroyed Australian sovereignty. Albanese exists in “never again” territory for leftists; the Rusted Off. And the more centrist Labor voters who are upset by this will, ultimately, still send their preferences his way, knowing that the apparent other options for government are dire. By design, we are trapped in capitalist patriarchal rot by this capitalist patriarchal electoral system. 

So Albanese doesn’t care about our votes. He cares about theirs. The 30-odd percent of Australians – the same statistical size as MAGA’s base in the USA – willing to flirt with Pauline Hanson and her unchained bigotry. Albanese is not worried about losing progressive votes because he already has. And the ALP knows this. They will never acknowledge it publicly – they can’t – but they do know this. 

So, although it might seem on the surface like the Prime Minister is suffering a heated grilling, ultimately there are no policy costs to this alleged “gaffe”, no economic costs, no serious diplomatic costs, and, tragically, no real electoral costs. This is perfect veiled bait for the “war on woke”, too. Too perfect. 

More than having the best argument, politics is about how you make people feel. Now, Albanese certainly has form with misogynism. He does deserve to be called out for being a creepy weirdo and, dare I say it, un-priministerial. He has attended professional dickhead Kyle Sandiland’s wedding. And his comments about Grace Tame being “difficult” speak to a psyche seeking pliant, obedient women who don’t effortlessly tear shreds off bullshit rather than fully realised, sovereign souls. But, understand this too: many, many, many people will not see the inherent misogyny of a nation’s leader blabbering his fuckability index on a podcast; they will instead see a man being shamed for playing a game they have most likely played themselves, for being attracted to a woman many of them also find attractive. They will relate to this, and it will soften their stance on Albanese. They will resent the “woke scolds” for making them feel shame, and they will see in “Albo” a kindred soul signaling their way.  

This moment is what political and media theorists refer to as a “dead cat”. That is: something curious to hurl into a room by the tail that will hold attention and generate discussion, but, ultimately, is self-contained and will lead to nowhere important. The best dead cats even generate quiet sympathy for the villain of the story. I believe that is what’s at play here.

Dead cats are the safe venting of pressure valves for the very real anger that builds when ordinary people are being squeezed and sold out. They sit in the broader ruling class toolbox used for herding a large population into a desired, pacified shape. We, the consumers of this absurd media, briefly ask what does the dead cat mean? Who killed it? What’s that smell? And then we all move on, nothing fundamentally changed. Most importantly, the stench stops us noticing other things. 

Meanwhile, elsewhere….

Former British PM and ruling class prat Boris Johnson was a genuine master of this particular dark art. He employed it repeatedly, all the while the people taking his bait the hardest would laugh at his “stupidity”. In 2013, he explained how the tactic works as a tool of public manipulation:

“Let us suppose you are losing an argument. The facts are overwhelmingly against you, and the more people focus on the reality the worse it is for you and your case. Your best bet in these circumstances is to perform a manoeuvre that a great campaigner [Lynton Crosby is acknowledged as the originator of the phrase – Ronni Salt, ed.] describes as ‘throwing a dead cat on the table, mate’… They will be talking about the dead cat, the thing you want them to talk about, and they will not be talking about the issue that has been causing you so much grief.”

Now think of all the heinous shit Anthony Albanese hasn’t even acknowledged the reality of, yet alone apologised for. 

This man is encouraging the continued plundering of our national resources, dismissing overwhelmingly popular calls for a 25% tax on natural gas exports as a “social media campaign”, which will undoubtedly lead to the further immiseration of our workers by foreign vulture corporations. This man is the Prime Minister of a nation selling explosives and F-35 components to a mass racist slaughter of women, children and men. I want him to apologise for helping to blow up Palestinian children. For appointing a Special Envoy to punish people who oppose genocide. For the very real and growing sense of misogynistic violence this country is experiencing in our homes. 

Ordinary people actually do get it. Polling on all these issues shows the government way out of alignment with the population. A staggering 87% of young Australians are appalled at Israel’s evil bullshit and our government’s ongoing material, diplomatic and narrative-obfuscation support of it. Ordinary people do see through the nonsense despite a gaslit culture forced upon us from above, from oligarchs and born-to-rule, lame, uncreative dipshits with phat mainstream media paycheques that bring this pure unmitigated nonsense into our lives. 

Reality has collided hard with this government. It is faced with the unenviable task of managing late-capitalist decline, climate catastrophe, a fascist takeover of the Western world, the oligarchical sprint to erect AI datacentres across our suburbs before resistance gets violent, all the while needing to maintain some PR veneer of representing ordinary workers while the boot stomps on our throats ever harder. I’d expect to chow down on some serious bread and circuses from here on out. It’s raining rain dead cats and dog-whistles.