As Australia's unofficial election campaign grinds dispiritedly towards a distant polling day, the plans of Wikileaks founder Julian Assange to seek a Victorian Senate seat are providing a diverting sideshow.
Last week those plans took a small step closer to fulfillment when the Australian Electoral Commission placed Assange's name, as a citizen residing abroad, on the electoral roll for the House of Representatives seat of Isaacs, held by Attorney-General Mark Dreyfus.
To write about Assange is to risk immediately being classed either among his tormentors or among those for whom he long ago transcended mere hero status, becoming instead a sort of messiah who will save this fallen world from treacherous politicians and their minions.
In some eyes, by having described the cult of Assange in this way I will have declared myself to be one of the tormentors.
And unfortunately, so enmeshed in whispers of conspiracy has the debate about Assange become, they may not be dissuaded if I protest that I think it risible to label him a dangerous security threat; that I think Wikileaks' publication of US diplomatic cables usefully served the peoples of the world by opening a window on to the dealings between their governments; and that I think the Swedish prosecutor should travel to London to question Assange about the sexual-assault allegations against him, rather than insisting on his extradition.
And for the record, I think the US military justice system's treatment of Bradley Manning, who is accused of providing Wikileaks with the diplomatic cables, has been brutal and appalling. So there.
My concern is not with Assange's activities as editor-in-chief of Wikileaks. Nor is it with the related debate about whether Wikileaks and similar websites are a democratic means of wresting control of the dissemination of information from traditional news media (which, to Assange cultists, are as untrusworthy as the governments they purport to cover).
It is not the Assange who aspired to strut the global stage, whether as messiah or as a naughty boy, who bothers me. It is the Assange of recently diminished ambition, who now apparently aspires only to strut the corridors of Parliament House.
I am not suggesting, of course, that he should be barred from nominating as a candidate. He possesses the same right to