All the world's a stage...

Strike a pose!
What a dashing figure does our fave MP cut! Great pic! As if a Bolero at fever pitch or a bull-taunting Matador. The SST verifies Rodney Hide to dazzle adoring droves on Dancing with the Stars. Our deft-footed ACT leader should ignore the embarassed naysayers on the right, trapped in their accounting ledgers, intellectual abstractions & tightly repressed personalities. They are nerdy bookworms, puritans & committee junkies, emotionally dessicated automatons who've probably never bought their sweety a Valentine's rose.

But for the great kiwi cultural heartland - from cardiganed aunts to steel-capped labourers - dance (the most ancient of art forms), with it's drama, passion & romance, is universally accessible, its non-verbal messages intuitively understood. Part of the show's appeal is the willingness to risk humiliation, a public ritual of willing self-abnegation. The ego is sacrificed on an altar of mass scrutiny, the dancer emerges sanctified anew. Few other poli's have the charisma to pull it off. Naturally theatrical with a vivacious personality, Rodders was born for the role.

I'm with those who say ACT could perhaps do with some humanising to dispel its image of bloodless corporate mafia types who want to shoot solo-mums & send their kids up chimney stacks. Like it or not, our nation IS sliding inexorably towards illiteracy; dominated by and informed through images. Our politics will become increasingly won on TV screens. So I applaud Rodney for widely casting his voting-net, and snaring hearts (if not minds) where he may.

You go, Rodders! Shake that booty & "play that funky music, white boy!"