The Chronicles of Lidia

[David]

[stui magpie]

Apparently her Dad was on Sky News during the week, I read an extract of the interview somewhere.

Her Dad is white, English and Irish Convict ancestry, he's dissapointed that she refuses to acknowledge that part of her heritage and outright called her a racist against white people.

he also debunked any notion of mental health issues and said she was just a strong person. She may be sharper than I/we give her credit for and is working on the theory that any publicity is good publicity, but personally I think she's an attention seeking idiot.

[David]

Yeah, we shouldn't be so quick to pathologise difference of opinion. Plenty of opinionated and self-important people exist across the political spectrum, but we don't necessarily diagnose them with mental illness as a result.

The difficulty is when doing things that most people would consider antisocial (including getting into screaming matches with random strangers) is considered justifiable on ideological grounds – indeed, not only justifiable, but something that needs to be done, because civility is seen as compliance with an oppressive system.

Unfortunately I think there's also a conflation Thorpe is making between people being rude to her personally and people seeking to undermine her cause. I remember a similar attitude from Clementine Ford when I said something (admittedly) mean to her on Facebook: my issue was solely with her and what she represents as a newspaper columnist / internet persona (as basically the feminist Andrew Bolt, preaching to the choir and whipping up outrage against small targets), but in her view I was just another misogynistic man who "can't handle strong women" or whatever. In her world, those two things seem to be indistinguishable.

[watt price tully]

Most of what Thorpe says is on the money. However, her judgement needs to be queried. Placing herself in situations where she does draw negative attention to herself as she seems to do a fair bit doesn’t instill confidence.

Enough with the shouty persona.

On the other hand if the extremist nutters on Sky News and other Murdoch rags are “outraged” then she’s likely doing something right.

[think positive]

[stui magpie]

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2023-06-15/peter-dutton-dumps-senator-david-van-from-liberal-party-room/102481814

She's back. Makes allegations against a Senator Van under Parliamentary Privilege, then withdraws them, then makes generalised accusations against unnamed men in the corridors of power.

My impression of her is that she's more likely to physically rip the balls off any bloke who made unwanted advances to her than cower in a corner, but I don't know her personally.

Interesting timing. Is it legit? Is it bandwagon jumping? She's a hard book to read.

[David]

Hard to know what's going on here, but all I can say is I doubt that Peter Dutton would have removed this guy from the party room if he had reason to think that Thorpe was making completely baseless allegations.

The ABC article also suggests that she only withdrew the comments because of rules around casting aspersions on other senators' character.

[watt price tully]

Larissa Waters of the Greens has disclosed to the Senate that Lidia Thorpe told her 2 years ago that the Liberal Senator did what Lidia said he did. Thorpe chose then not to go public with it because it would have detracted in her view from Brittany Higgins.

The Liberal Van is a “dead man walking” .

[David]

Even more so now that a former Liberal Party senator has come out with testimony about him doing something similar to her:

https://www.smh.com.au/politics/federal/former-liberal-senator-amanda-stoker-accuses-david-van-of-sexual-harassment-20230615-p5dgz6.html

[watt price tully]