Praying To The Digital Gods

By @DarrylMason

The Australian takes its column inches hogging obsession with the iPad to hilarious extremes:



How obsessed with the iPad is The Australian?

Utterly.

It's almost as if the newspaper's entire existence hangs on trying to convince 50,000 or more Australians to buy, and keep buying, its $4.99 per month (for now) iPad application. Which, of course, it does. Particularly considering owner Rupert Murdoch is planning to phase out the print edition within the next two or three years and shut down the printing presses forever, a Death To Newspapers move Murdoch described in September 2009 as "great" :

“I do certainly see the day when more people will be buying their newspapers on portable reading panels than on crushed trees.

“Then we’re going to have no paper, no printing plants, no unions. It’s going to be great.”

Mumbrella noticed how obsessed The Australian has been with the iPad, and did some Googling. Since the start of February 2010, The Australian has run more than three dozen stories about the iPad, how absolutely brill it is, why it will save newspapers and how and why you should buy The Australian iPad app.

In just two days (April 12-13) The Australian ran at least six stories on the subject, most shamelessly hawking the digital tablet to readers in pure advertorial speak. On May 24, The Australian broke its own record by running four stories on the iPad.

Good luck to them. If their launch product is anything to go by - thin on content, visually bland - they're going to need it.

More From Mumbrella Here

Stories I've Been Reading :

"The 'Body-Swapping' Effect Was So Convincing That The Men's Sense Of Self Was Transferred Into The Virtual Woman

Man Infects Himself With Computer Virus To Show Vulnerability Of ID Chips & Implants : "If Someone Can Get Online Access To Your Implant, It Could Be Serious"

New British Government Promise To Wind Back DNA Storage, Control CCTV, Cancel Mandatory ID Cards As Budgets Fail Police State Implementation

Why All Politicians Should Have A Twitter Account, And Why They Should Use It

Australian Politician Confirms Australian Intelligence Agencies Use Fake Passports In Interview, Then Retracts Her Claims

9/11 Rescue Workers Were Valuable Political Props For Republicans, But Now Republicans Don't Want To Pay Health Care Costs Of 70,000 Sick & Dying Victims

Australian Prime Minister Unleashes His Infamous Temper On Murdoch Editors & Journos During A Dinner, No Murdoch Newspaper Reports The Incident, 'War On Rudd' Soon Begins At Murdoch Newspapers

Obama Wanted America To "Step Past The Cultural Chasm Of An Earlier Era", But Americans Still Obsessed With Debates On Issues Dating Back To The 1960s

Massive Increase In Number Of Miscarriages In US In The Weeks After 9/11, "Communal Bereavement" Blamed"

Taliban In Kabul Kill NATO Military Elite In Attack, Two Colonels & Two Lieutenant Colonels

Some Secrets Of Pentagon's New Shuttle Mission Exposed By Amateur Sky Watchers - Vehicle Can Launch And Catch Satellites, Stay Aloft For Nine Months

In 1992, Thais Fought Together For Democracy, Now They Fight Each Other

Pakistan : "When Water Stops Running From The Taps, People Blame America"

London Museum Changes Name Of New Permanent Exhibit From 'Climate Change Gallery' To 'Climate Science Gallery' As Skepticism Over AGW Rises

Most Web Users Have No Idea Extent Of Routine Monitoring Of Their Online Behaviour, Scanning E-Mails For Key Words, Crawling Computer's Memory, Remembering Where They've Been, Who They Communicate With The Most

Rush Limbaugh, Self-Styled Hero Of Working Class America, Drinks $4000 Bottles Of Wine, Sleeps In Exact Replica Of Presidential Suite From Paris' Hotel George V

For Hollywood's 10,000 Working Movie Producers, The Glory Days Are Just About Over As Major And Small Studios Slash Production

Cross-Posted From Your New Reality

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RoboPessimism : First Use Of The Word Robot Involved Robots Wiping Out Humanity

A simple but visually compelling, fact-rich example of a modern graphic educational tool. You are more likely to remember distinct facts from this, than from wadding through a 1200 word text book entry.

From OnlineSchools via @rod3000.


Via: Online Schools

Let the historians of the future take note, former police commissioner Mick Keelty tried to warn us of the coming robotic criminal underground when we still had time to do something about it. Did we listen? No, we did not :

Technology such as cloned part-robot humans used by organised crime gangs pose the greatest future challenge to police....

Mr Keelty said the police force would have to use experts from the private sector to fight tech-savvy organised criminals, because it lacked the necessary skills.

...he identified the use of robotics and cloning as future challenges.

"Our environmental scanning tells us that even with some of the cloning of human beings - not necessarily in Australia but in those countries that are going to allow it - you could have potentially a cloned part-person, part-robot," he said.

"You could (also) have technology acting at the direction of a human being, but the human being being distanced considerably from the actual crime scene."

It's only a matter of time before a bank robber gets shot and bleeds blood and battery acid.

Fortunately, Australians are already being trained in how to deal with hordes of RoboBarbarians On Segways :

And the Baby Boomers thought they were the rock n roll generation. Check out some of their mums and dads going off to the Bay City Rollers (with Ann-Margaret) in the mid-1970s.

BAY CITY ROLLERS & ANN MARGERET SATURDAY NIGHT @ Yahoo! Video

Just because she was knitting, doesn't mean she wasn't rocking out.

(via Dangerous Minds and @chaslicc)

"Yeah, I Was Trapped In The Beaconsfield Mine For A Few Weeks"

Brant Webb is running for the seat of Bass in Northern Tasmania and is making his own ads :



Kevin Rudd and Tony Abbott can learn plenty from Webb's ad. If you don't see ads during the Federal Election 2010 campaign where Rudd and/or Abbott are bashing in sign posts, you know they don't really want it enough.

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Majority 33% Of People Prefer To Read Awesomely Distorted Polls

Bad news for the Gillard Gushers. A new Daily Telegraph polls reveals only 1/3 of Australians favour Julia Gillard as prime minister, while 2/3 prefer Kevin Rudd.

Whoops, how did I get that so wrong? What I meant to say was :


The Daily Telegraph

An infamous Rupert Murdoch memo must have hit the vacuum tubes a few weeks ago : Get Rudd The Fuck Out Of There, or words forming a similar directive.

It seems like only yesterday the young journos of News Limited's head office were laughing it up over games of pool with Kev's Krazee Krew at a Surry Hills pub, having dealt with Howard through a very effective campaign of near daily photos of him looking all old and bent over and alone. Finished.

You'll know it's really on when the photos begin appearing of Kevin Rudd furtively licking his lips, a habit, a temptation, he is unable to resist even when he knows he's being interviewed on TV and his head will appear two metres high in pubs and bars, while jocular drinkers shout "Fuck me, we've got a lizard running the country!" to much laughter.

Bad enough to see on TV, devastating to have staring up at you from the pages of a newspaper.


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The Chaser on Kevin Rudd, three years ago :



Maybe Kevin needs a theme song? It worked for Gough Whitlam (he was a pre-internet, pre-colour TV Australian prime minister who, by the rapturous, near religious-like, frenzy of dancing, chanting and clapping on display below was seen to be God-like by some of his followers) :



Baby Boomers were so much funnier when they were young.


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The Drum reader Koesonya explains how to be The Opposition :

- Australia didn't sink in the GFC : Thanks to the Howard years.
- Govt carbon trading suggestion : Great Big New Tax
- Govt pointing out that it used to be Oppn policy : that was different!
- Govt being repeatedly defeated in the senate on above : Turncoats, gutless liars
- Oppn suggesting an extra tax on *non polluters* instead of emission trading:
economically sensible solution
- Govt introducing maternity leave : Mickey Mouse solution
- Oppn suggesting a new tax for the same : sensible option
- Govt not taking over hospitals : breaking promises
- Govt taking over hospitals : power grab
- Govt claiming GST for above : money grab
- Govt taxing cigarettes : Great Big ... ummm ... silence
- Govt taxing extraordinary mining profits : Great Big New Tax!
- Govt decreasing corporate tax : ... silence
- Govt presenting the budget: Won't work! Liars! Great Big New Tax! Debt crisis! Armageddon!

That about covers it.

Murdoch's Pot Of News Gold

By Darryl Mason

Front page from the only newspaper in Australia I would pay to read online, The Northern Territory News :



Yesterday's front page was even better :



The story :

Territory victims in large-scale accidents or catastrophes will soon be barcoded at the scene before being sent to hospital.

Experts say it is only a matter of months before Territory emergency services adapt the revolutionary barcode card technology

Card?

The technology is designed for major catastrophes which involve more than 10 victims.

Royal Darwin Hospital director of disaster preparedness Dr Ian Norton said it would put the Territory at the forefront of major emergency responses in Australia.

"It's the holy grail of disaster management," he said.

Disaster or large scale accident victims will be given cards, with barcodes on them.

But I read the whole story. So it worked. The few moments of 'Wait, nobody's going to be forced to get barcodes tattooed on their arms and/or foreheads?' disappointment faded because it turned out to be an interesting story anyway.

Pretty soon the Northern Territory News is going to find a way to combine two of their most popular front page subjects - UFOs and crocodiles. At least I hope they do. I know they can.

UFO and crocodile (sighting, attack, wrestling, death roll, walking upright) stories bring the NTN the kind of international traffic that makes jaws drop across the rest of the 'serious' News Limited newspapers, like The Australian and the Daily Telegraph. Why the rest of Murdoch papers don't raid the NTN mercilessly for stories and headlines is a mystery. Why Fox News, for example, doesn't have a chunk of a show devoted to rounding up a week's worth of NTN's WTF? news and outback wisdom and madness is just bad business.

Anyway, soon the Northern Territory News will run a front page claiming that crocodiles are being abducted by UFOs, or better yet, that crocodiles leaped up and grabbed a low-flying UFO and caused it to crash, and I'll be ordering a copy of that front page, laminated.

No, framed.

To add to the collection :






Crocodiles + Bikini Girl :



I love that a g-string eating dog takes news priority over some guy getting smashed in the head with a television set. As it should :




Still one of my favourite news stories of 2009 :



That's how you sell newspapers.

And by the way, that cat can talk, and if yours doesn't, well, that's probably because you don't love it enough.


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The Late Show, in the early 90s, saw the future :



The state of Australian wogomedy, 2010, international distribution and a chunky location budget



It will be one of the highest grossing Australian movies of the year. Sweeet mate.

(via @ClubWah)

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The Deepwater Horizon drilling rig was longer and wider than a football field. It sits at the bottom of the Gulf of Mexico, after explosions shattered the platform and killed 11 people on April 20.

Then the oil and natural gas began to flow. BP doesn't know how to stop this :

,,,,one intense kick of natural gas caused the Deepwater Horizon drilling rig to be shut down because of the fear of an explosion just weeks before a similar release succeeded in destroying and sinking the platform and sent millions of gallons of oil on a collision course with Louisiana and the rest of the northern coast of the Gulf of Mexico.

The hole from which tens of thousands of barrels of oil now geysers reaches 30,000 feet down into the Earth's crust. They can only make educated guesses about what's down there, or what's coming up the pipe.



From NOLA :

Shortly before the accident, engineers argued about whether to remove heavy drilling mud that acted as a last defense against such catastrophic kicks, and the decision to replace the mud with much lighter seawater won out.

...(frozen natural gas) slush forced its way to the rig, shot 240 feet in the air and heated into a gas that quickly ignited into fireballs....Among those tossed asunder by the explosions were BP officials who were on the rig to celebrate a seven-year spotless safety record.

This Is A Must Read

Stephen Colbert : "No One Knows What The Fuck They're Doing"

Federal Election 2010 : Free Buckets Of Fear & Paranoia For All

The Liberal Party may have John Singleton about to start churning out 'Tony Abbott : The Real Choice' ads, but Family First has got Groupthink :



UPDATE : I was shocked to learn the above is not a real ad for Family First's election campaign. They should purchase it immediately.

Unfortunately, that fake ad is exactly of the style and theme that we are going to be inundated with all the way up to the election.

It will be a repulsive campaign of negativity and fear.

And millions of Australians will fall for it, willingly, because they love to think they've got something other people want, and will do anything to get.


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A very, very effective first Federal Election 2010 campaign ad from opposition leader Tony Abbott :



But there's something about one part of that ad that reminds me of something else....

Rodent Rogered

By Darryl Mason



Miranda Devine, September 3, 2009 :

"A surfeit of self-love is almost a prerequisite for success now, and the proliferation of egomaniac sites, from Twitter and MySpace to Facebook and YouTube, make the peer pressure to be grandiose and irrationally self-confident almost irresistible."

On Sunday, Miranda Devine, columnist for the Sydney Morning Herald, 2003 recipient of the federal government's Centenary Medal and former board member of the Catholic Weekly, engaged with 20 year old university student Justin Barbour on Twitter. Barbour didn't like one of Devine's recent columns about gay marriage :




Miranda Devine, "born in the early 60s", replied :




Devine responded to the 20 year old student's demands for an apology for publicly associating him with the raping of mostly harmless rodents, with this message :



No doubt she will get a column or six out of the Twitter frenzy and journos-on-journos column inches that followed, and no doubt it will be all to her great delight.

In at least one of the columns she will write, she will portray herself as a hapless victim of online hate speech.

As for Devine's previous views on homosexuality, she wrote this in August 2002 (excerpts) :

Gays kiss on prime-time TV shows without protest. The Sydney Gay and Lesbian Mardi Gras has become so mainstream that it's unfashionable. Society's attitude is basically that what consenting adults do in the privacy of their own bedrooms is nobody else's business.

...modern society....is already benignly tolerant of homosexuality. There is no longer any stigma attached to homosexuality, no discrimination, not even a raised eyebrow.

But that is not enough, it seems. Activists will not rest until homosexuality is treated as just another sexual preference in life's infinite smorgasbord, just as desirable as heterosexuality, if not more so. Failure to go along with the equivalence argument will result in heavy penalty...

The US Library of Congress is now archiving every public post that appears on Twitter.

From now until the day the sun explodes, there will be a permanent digital archive at the Library of tens of thousands of Twitter messages filed under the subject Miranda Devine and #RogeringGerbils.

At its peak last night, the number of Twitter messages posted under #RogeringGerbils soaked up an astounding 1 in every 100 tweets.

The Herald Sun decided to go with the headline : You've Been Rogering Gerbils.

How could they not?




Here's a piece I wrote for ABC's Unleashed back on April 16, warning all of the permanency of everything posted on Twitter. Miranda Devine tried to delete her comments, but it didn't work.

Nothing disappears.

Roger The Gerbil : Bulwark Of A Civilisation In Devine Decline

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How Australia's 5th Richest Man Is Trying To Fuck With Your Mind

By Darryl Mason

It's like watching Jabba The Hut channeling Glenn Beck, with a script written by Rupert Murdoch's chief propagandist Andrew Bolt :




Clive Palmer has had some exceptional training in psychological manipulation.

You can break down most of the key Palmer responses into three categories - Emotional Triggers, Fear Triggers and The Brighter Future theme, to inspire hope of better things to come. All of it done purposefully.

The Emotional trigger phrase is "Mums and Dads".

The Fear trigger word is "Destroy".

'The Brighter Future' theme can be seen in variants on what will happen "when" (not if) opposition leader Tony Abbott wins the 2010 Federal Election.


Emotion :

"....when mums and dads and ordinary Australians have seen the treasurer destroy their future and the future retirement."

"Everyone knows this is true. And this is bad for our workforce. It's bad for the mums and dads that work in the mines."

"But don't destroy the economy and don't destroy the industries that are employing thousands of Australians - ordinary mums and dads around Australia."

Fear :

"....ordinary Australians have seen the treasurer destroy their future and the future retirement."

"...that's what the Labor party and Mr Rudd's about - destroying the wealth of Australians."

"But don't destroy the economy and don't destroy the industries that are employing thousands of Australians..."

"(Treasurer Wayne Swan is) suggesting 'Let's take our best industry and destroy it and bring it down to the level of the rest of our economy'."

"...give them the ability to invest in projects that will provide real jobs and create real wealth, not destroy wealth. "

"And that's why we don't like to see it being destroyed by these guys."

"...he's the first person that I'd sack for bringing a tax like this, trying to destroy our resources industry."

"If it ain't broken, leave it alone. Don't try to tinker with it. Don't try to destroy it."

The Brighter Future :

"....let's make a firm stand against the ALP and send them into the Opposition where they belong. And that's what Tony Abbott's going to do in the next election..."

"...this tax is thrown out once and for all as it should be and the Treasurer is thrown out of office as he will be in the next election."

"...the Treasurer should get the boot as well and as the Prime Minister will get the boot at the next election..."

"...that's why Tony Abbott's the last sentry at the gate and he'll throw the Government out at the next election."

Here Palmer manages to cram all three into less than 15 seconds :

"....when mums and dads and ordinary Australians have seen the treasurer destroy their future and the future retirement.

And this is what's really wrong - it goes at the whole viability of our nation and that's why it's got to be stopped and that's why Tony Abbott's the last sentry at the gate and he'll throw the Government out at the next election."

And, for the smirking amusement of his mega-rich pals and his allies in the conservative media elite, he remembers to label his enemies as Communists and Socialists :

"Just because you happen to be a socialist or a communist like we know Mr Swan is, as he wants equal distribution....But comrade Rudd and his team are going to bring them back to Australia."

Communist China is, of course, one of Clive Palmer's biggest investors.


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Yes, I am recycling posts & links from my Twitter feed and trying to pass it off as fresh blog content, but only for your weekend light-reading pleasure. The best from the past week or so :

If that dog taking the lead in the Greek riots looks familiar, he's been out front of Greek protests for TWO YEARS. http://bit.ly/c2yd8e

Poor Elvis. Death by constipation. http://tinyurl.com/2cdknax Too many opiates, not enough olive oil.

lStory claims 'Fat Elvis' would shit himself onstage and had 5 month old turds in double-width, double length colon. No wonder he shuffled.

Reading #ge2010 (UK election tweets) for an hour is like having the front pages, op-eds & editors' letters of a thousand UK newspapers poured into your head.

Seriously, a typo is the cause of the biggest intraday points plunge in the history of the US stock markets? I cough **bullshit**

Why can't we taste food over the internet yet? WHY? Even scratch & sniff would be a step in the right direction.

WTF? NYTimes, 1864 : Woman has snake living in her stomach. Sometimes rises up her throat causing strangulation http://tinyurl.com/3x22gyo

Every Magazine Your Girlfriend Ever Read, In One Issue http://tinyurl.com/2awcwss

Scotch is for unpacking, beer is for moving in. Bourbon is for rental home hunting. Lots of bourbon.

Americans don't deserve Barack Obama. Considering the fuckarama he inherited, his 1st year record of achievements is utterly astounding.

Australian needs a new political party. The Barbarian Party. Pro-drugs, pro-binge drinking, pro-street fighting, pro-tasteless comedy.

....pro-smokes on the PBS, pro-violent video games, pro-porn, pro-public executions for major corporate fraudsters

Thanks Monsanto! Mutant superweeds that grow 3 inches a day invading American farms. http://tinyurl.com/27bmosz

New York Times reporters return to sifting through "maggot covered garbage" for a story. But they got it http://tinyurl.com/2e87x4d

Celery salt is a main ingredient of KFC's 'secret herbs & spices'. Once you start adding it to food, it's hard to stop. Addicted.

Newsreaders breathe a sigh of relief that next major volcano predicted to erupt isn't named something unpronounceable http://j.mp/d6w0F0

"nuclear blasts were used 169 times in Soviet Union (to create) underground storage spaces (&) building canals." http://tinyurl.com/267x3bj

In 1967, United States had 31,255 nuclear warheads. they now have 5133. How many were detonated below ground for mining/tunneling?

Miners are whiners. Man up.

Dear @NASA . If the Earth was about to smashed by a fat meteor, would the ISS crew have to bail out to make way for the First Family?

Conservative media try to float campaign to have Rudd replaced by Gillard. Rudd has "only" 63% approval ratings. "Only." Hilarious.

Washington DC medical cannabis freedom law will have to pass House & Senate. Commercial potshops with 95 plants.http://tinyurl.com/28bq5ee

If Obama develops glaucoma, he will soon be able to legally score 4 ounces of prime cannabis a month, and smoke it on his West Wing balcony.

So the only time in recent memory The Age gets national media coverage is not for breaking a huge story, but for sacking a writer.

Murdoch's assemblage of right wing loudmouths keeping their jobs thanks to endless flow of Avatar profits. Greenie propaganda saves jobs?

"He begins to think of the sound (of citylife) as something almost alive, the rumbling exhale of a great creature" http://tinyurl.com/2c3m96q

If someone gets good video of PMRudd in a rage, hurling abuse at his staff and calling them cunts, this election is over.

Remember how Al Qaeda was going to "destroy our way of life"? Turns out it was psychotic capitalist greed instead http://tinyurl.com/3xb3dcm

If the states are abolished, does that make my mum's States of Australia tea-towel collection more or less valuable?

Blue Whales Hold Press Conference : "U really screwed up this time. Stop the oceans filling with oil or we're becoming land mammals. Again."

President @barackobama praises The 99, "comic book superheroes who embody the teachings & tolerance of Islam" http://tinyurl.com/3473ok3

Rarely seen 2003 Chris Morris short film http://tinyurl.com/36nrhqq

BP admits there are few resources "left in the world" to fight Mexico Gulf oil spill. Where are The Thunderbirds? http://tinyurl.com/36nc659

The Benjamin Button effect in Osama Bin Laden photographs http://tinyurl.com/2g86fkt

If men didn't have sports in which to show off to women, and each other, would we start growing plumage?

You Can Read My Pre-Recycled Twitter Posts Here

If enough of you regular readers join Twitter, I'll do a piece on the most interesting people to follow on Twitter, and why. Be sure to say howdy after you've signed up.

On April 30, Deputy Prime Minister, Julia Gillard, published the transcript of a short debate she had with Opposition Leader Tony Abbott on Channel 9's Today Show. The transcript included every stutter from Abbott, every repeated word, every uh and um.

Was this done for purposes of accuracy, or mockery?

Excerpts :

TONY ABBOTT: There’s no, there’s no, there’s no confusion.

...But let me say this, but let me say this, let me say this....

...I, I, I don’t see why, ah, if they want to make a donation, ah, we, we shouldn’t accept it.

The Full Transcript Is Here

Why Australians Say "I'll Kick Your Arse" Instead Of "I'll Kick Your Ass"

Piers explains all why in Crikey :

For me it’s all about the ‘r’. It leaps off the page with a meaty trill, evoking at once the hairy bum of a commando-kilted highlander and the war cry of a Cornish pirate. By contrast, ‘ass’ packs virtually no punch. To my mind it bleats in a plaintive falsetto, conjuring nothing more than a pair of sculpted ’tocks in spandex hot pants, waiting to be drop-kicked by a muddy boot.

The issue is probably more about spelling than language and I would wager that it’s a uniquely Australian dilemma. I very much doubt that ‘ass’ will be introduced into Britain any more than Americans are likely to adopt ‘arse’. Why? Linguistic jingoism aside, perhaps it has something to do with pronunciation. To the extent that written English words have at least some relationship to the way they sound, an Australian English ‘ass’ will probably sound pretty close to an Australian English ‘arse’. This is because Australians typically don’t make use of the so-called post-vocalic (or after-vowel) ‘r’, which means that for us the words ‘balmy’ and ‘barmy’ are pronounced identically. Contrast this with an American pronouncing ‘car’ as ‘carrgh’ (known as the rhotic ‘r’) or a Scot rolling the ‘r’ in ‘person’ (known as a trill or tap, depending on its length).

Kelly Gets Into The (Historical & Cultural) Detail Here

RuddRagers thought they had found and noted and ranted and whined about every last fault they could or would ever possibly think of when it came to the prime minister. They were wrong.

The photo :



The comment :

....who else holds a hot dog like that?

There is the brink of petty, and then there is the abyss.

Charlie Brooker on why the contestants for Britain's Next Prime Minister seem so hollow :

Two-faced contempt is the basic mode of operation for many newspapers: mindwarping shitsheets filled with selective reporting and audacious bias. The popular press is a shrill, idiotic, bullying echo chamber; a hopelessly poisoned Petri dish in which our politicians seem resigned to grow. Little wonder they develop glaringly artificial public guises. Picking a modern leader boils down to a question of which false persona you prefer.

Luckily we don't have that problem in Australia. Our politicians would never develop false personas designed to please the media, before the people. That would be UnAustralian.