Australia Blog

Shush for Bush

The other week I was watching CNNNN, a comedy program that makes fun of news networks that are slaves to the corporate sponsors that employ them. It sounds lame and I always tell myself that I won't watch it, but if I'm there and it's on, I'll watch it and usually get a few laughs from it.

Had a good chuckle at the segment about George W. Bush coming to Australia. He's only going to be here for 24 hours or so, and the show was urging citizens of Australia to "Shush for Bush" since the only thing he'd be doing on his visit to Oz was sleeping.

All potential noisemakers would be quarantined - Jimmy Barnes, Jeannie Little and someone else were the ones singled out.

While this was comedy, and worth a laugh, real life is often more weird. Take for example the discussion in Federal Parliament today over how the politicians should react when Dubya is presented to the House to give his speech.

Obviously, the government will be under orders to kiss arse. The Opposition leadership urged its members to rise and applaud - a standing ovation. But some members of the Opposition and the Green party aren't so keen. The anti-war sentiment is high and some may not even show up. Then there are statements being bandied about like "respect the office, if not the man".

You can just bet Little Johnnie is sweating it out. He's desparate to make a good impression (not that Dubya will ever be out this way again).

I think in general, the Aussie public leans towards the "couldn't care less" category and it would be useful for the pollies to actually talk about something that matters.