Richard Farmer’s chunky bits

The political power of children. It was no accident that President Barack Obama invited a group of kids to the White House earlier this year to watch him sign a series of executive orders on gun control. For politicians, in Australia just as much as in the US, children are in. As a US political consultant put it to NPR, kids are synonymous with innocence. And that innocence can also be a useful tool, says Pippa Seichrist, president and founder of the Miami Ad School. “Anything bad that happens is worse if it happens to a child because they’re fragile and they don’t have control over anything,” she says. “They’re at the world’s mercy. So we have this feeling to protect them and to want to make something better.”

If there are any regular readers of this column they will have noted the attention I have been paying to this phenomenon of children as political props. Both Australia’s major parties are making it a regular feature of their campaigning. And the reason? Republican political consultant Steve Green says kids also make an issue less abstract. Children make any controversy become real and relatable:

“Once you get to know someone’s kids, all of a sudden now there’s a personalization that takes place. In gay rights and in immigration, I think so many Americans didn’t know anyone personally. All of a sudden, now — Oh, there’s the gay family. But they have a kid. And the kid plays with my kid. And, hmm, there’s really nothing wrong with them. And, in fact, I kind of like them.”

That’s a message Finance Minister Penny Wong (pictured with her daughter below) clearly understands.

My animal story. If Rupert Murdoch keeps telling his editors to feature more animal stories because readers like them then that’s good enough advice for me. So, courtesy of Mother Jones, I bring you this question: Why have a goldfish when you can have a GloFish?

These zebrafish, genetically engineered with a glow-in-the-dark jellyfish gene and going by descriptions such as Electric Green, Starfire Red and Sunburst Orange, will brighten up any home aquarium. And while on the subject of tinkering with animal bodies, little silicon balls known as neuticles are used as a cosmetic device to replace the ones snipped out in neutering. Mother Jones added to that news the observation that a study of Australian dog owners found that men are twice as likely as women to believe neutering alters a dog’s “maleness”.

When you are hot and when you are not. In Friday’s paper Wayne Swan was delivering the golden egg — funds to air-condition the Townsville Convention and Entertainment Centre that would enable the Townsville Crocs NBL basketball team “to fire on all cylinders”.

And this morning’s Townsville Bulletin?

News and views noted along the way.

• “I liked it,” Putin says of protest by topless women
• When the earth moved — What happened to the environmental movement? — “Today’s environmental movement is vastly bigger, richer, and better connected than it was in 1970. It’s also vastly less successful. What went wrong?”
• The Commission on Portugal: Is this for real? “Can anybody not blinded by ideological faith in expansionary fiscal contractions, believe that austerity today is not self-defeating?”
• Tax policy should consider new business, not small business — “Being small, in and of itself, does not confer a special advantage to businesses in job creation or innovation. Rather it is young firms, which by definition start as small businesses, that serve these critical roles. Policies that aim to stimulate young and innovative firms may be very different than those that subsidize small businesses.”
• The backroom battle delaying reform of China’s one-child policy
• Hamas “force men to cut long hair” — “A human rights group in Gaza has accused Hamas police of forcing men to shave their heads after saying their hairstyles were indecent.”
• Abenomics and Asia — “The question now is whether Abenomics can achieve its goals without destabilizing the world economy, especially neighboring Asian economies. Doing so requires Japanese policymakers to focus on more sustainable growth while averting a vicious cycle of competitive devaluation and protectionism with Japan’s trade partners.”
• Digging deep: the reopened Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam — “… there’s something crazily admirable about a civic cultural building that you can walk or cycle right through and otherwise ignore completely if you wish. Welcome back with all your faults, the uniquely eccentric Rijksmuseum.”
• Opus Dei MP probes police over sister act — “Many Spaniards are questioning the motives of Interior Minister Jorge Fernández Díaz after his office called up police officers who had asked a nun to remove her headgear during an ID check.”