The outpouring following Sam Loxton's death after a great innings did a lot to confirm my long held belief that big-P Politics has lost any relevance that it ever had to ordinary life. The tweets from cricket followers who may or may not have heard of him previously had him trending on Twitter very quickly after the news came out. As well as his brief and also widely acknowledged stint as St Kilda full forward, Sam's contribution to cricket was greater as an administrator than as a player and at local and state level than national level, all of which got their share of mentions on Twitter. But he also spent 24 years as the Liberal member for Prahran, a seat which Labor held before and after Sam's reign, including 18 years as party whip. But there was not a single tweet from anybody remembering his role in Politics. Maybe they were all preoccupied with same sex non-proliferation, and it was the weekend, but really. It's no wonder dying media is so well correlated with wasted front pages and lead items trying to beat up interest in the Political charade. Sam was the VCA-appointed president of the Cricket Union of Victoria when I first got involved at that level. In acknowledging that, I made the Twitter faux pas of not triple checking before tweeting and confounding my ancient memories of Sam with the late Mac Holten's role in sending a succession of promising Wangaratta juniors to try out for the Union-organised University Dowling Shield team while I was its manager. |