The politics of humiliation

The different cases of Dutton and Joyce

I think I can reliably be described as the sort of person who doesn’t like Peter Dutton much, his politics, or his values, at least to the extent that any of those things about him are knowable from his public persona. And yet, I couldn’t help but feel a twinge of—was it empathy? —for him when he was interviewed by Sarah Ferguson on 730 last week.

Her first question was this: “Was it humiliating for you to have to stand up and support Labor’s changes to the tax cuts?”

I presume this was meant to be one of those tough, unexpected, put-them-on-the-spot questions designed to catch the leader of the opposition off guard and perhaps make him uncomfortable enough that he might flub other answers later in the interview or be more vulnerable than he otherwise might be, but it felt off to me.

It was ill-judged.

To even ask the question is itself to engage in a form of humiliation, and I don’t think it was appropriate in this situation for a journalist to be doing that. Politics can be a horrible, …