When it comes to attire and marital status and hairstyle, no one needs a PhD or feminist allegiance to know that the spotlight’s on women. But sexist media preoccupations don’t explain the lobe business. Neither do patriarchy or conservatism. Nope, the lobe business is about sheer and utter boredom. Interest in the PM’s earlobes simply reflects a campaign that is so sterile, so mediocre, so thoroughly banal that lobes suddenly seem fascinating.

A visit to Facebook only minutes into the debate on Sunday night and an update mentioned the lobes. Days on, and after scrolling through dozens of photos and reading dozens of posts, I truly don’t see what the fuss is all about. I’d throw out a suggestion of it all being rather Emperor’s New Clothes, but in fact, that’s probably the very point.

We’re talking about one of the least interesting parts of the body because we are so revoltingly uninspired. Because we’re slap bang in the middle of a campaign and the single highlight has been the Abbott family trip to Osaka Seafood Concern.

Elections are infrequent. Candidates wait years for the opportunity to take their wares to market. So why did they leave the good product at home? The tiptoeing, the tentativeness, the nausea-inducing niceness. August 21: are we there yet?

Years ago I was in a taxi in the US. The driver asked what I did for a living. I told him that I was an academic. He was delightfully excited and launched into a spiel about how important we are. How we taught him English when he arrived in America. He then asked whether I’d been in any films he might have seen. He thought I said actor. No one’s ever very interested in academics. And aside from that one (admittedly great) Ryan Adams song, they’re even less interested in political scientists. Elections are our opportunity to seem interesting but I’m going to need a whole lot more to work with than earlobes.  

Dr Lauren Rosewarne
School of Social and Political Sciences, 28 July, 2010