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Political Lives edited by Judith Brett

by
November 1997, no. 196

Political Lives edited by Judith Brett

Allen & Unwin, $19.95 pb, 181 pp

Political Lives edited by Judith Brett

by
November 1997, no. 196

The photo is opposite page eighty. I suspect from the faint fluff in the hair that it’s late 1972. It was taken in the office by a photographer from the Australian News and Information Bureau, a group who were not your art-portrait photographers. The sitting would have been over in a minute; the subject didn’t spend time posing. The caption reads:

Many pictures of Gough Whitlam recall Eric Fromm’s observation that in the expression of narcissists we often find a kind of glow or smile, which gives the impression of smugness to some, of beatific trusting childishness to others.

Clever Gough playing the beatific, trusting childlike card all these years. If only Eric Fromm had been around to tell us.

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