Ah come on. Yes, she had some pretty snarky and personal things said about her and some of the commentary crossed the line but if you are a public figure that comes with the paycheque.
John Howard was sniped at over his his personal appearance. The "Little Johnny" tag, for instance - even though, at 5'10" he is an inch taller than me. Kevin Rudd banged on endlessly about his age. Abbot cops flack over his Catholic religion and some other guy whose name escapes me is getting grief for swearing his oath on a Koran instead of a bible.
Don't mistake the rantings of shock jocks like Alan Jones and Howard Sattler as representative of the general feeling of the people of this country or the parliament.
The Government we elected in 2007 turned out to be a failure. He blew John Howard's surplus at the opening of the financial crisis, lined the pockets of shonks and shysters through the pink batts and school building programmes while swanning around the world telling other leaders how to run their countries. When the people finally woke up to Rudd and he started slipping in the polls Julia was enthroned. She did pretty well in the election but only got in because of the treachery of Oakenshott and Windsor who betrayed their mainly conservative electors by siding with her. Ever since then her every move has had to be approved by a bunch of rabid left-wing lunatics in the Senate, hence the broken promise on the carbon tax.
I think she handled herself with dignity through it all but I can't drag up a lot of empathy for her. She earned her reputation as a liar in the most convincing manner by her actions. The shabby Craig Thomson affair, wooing Peter Slipper into the speaker's chair and letting the Greens dictate policy showed that she was willing to compromise her own and her party's principles to keep her fingernail grip on power.
