Exceptionally Uncaught

Yesterday afternoon I logged onto the ABC News site and spotted this article (the "Unity" section wasn't there at that point). Wow, I thought, first Bob Carr, now John Brogdon. Then I noticed the "former leader" bit. Things were pretty confusing, and I only had this paragraph to explain what was going on:

The former Liberal leader was forced to resign as opposition leader late last month over several public indiscretions, including a racial slur he made against the wife of the former premier Bob Carr.

He then made his attempted suicide bid.
http://www.abc.net.au/news/newsitems/200509/s1470388.htm

Huh?

So I emailed a mate of mine:

Hey, did you hear John Brodgon has resigned? I just spotted the article on the ABC website. I didn't even know he'd stepped down as opposition leader, let alone sexual harassment and an attempted suicide! When did that all happen?

And his reply was:

You are kidding aren't you? How did you not know this, it happened weeks ago.

Oh, unless it happened while you were away. [...]

There then proceeded to be several explanations from various people about what had happen, several articles (including this media watch transcript, that just goes to show the Daily Telegraph is the most evil main stream Australian news paper) and an afternoon of me playing catch up. The general comment has been "how did you miss that? It was all over the papers...".

Despite being away, I am surprised I missed all this. I was checking the news while I was away, but I guess things slide off news sites pretty quickly. What's even more interesting is that I didn't hear anything about it since I've been back. Or maybe I did, but because I had no context it just didn't register.

I never liked Brogdon - he seemed to sum up the slimy politician archetype better then almost anyone at his level in state politics (and I guess his behaviour kind of confirmed that) - but I feel really bad for the guy. The next NSW election is certainly going to look a bit different