Never lost for the appropriate barb or acerbic comment, Mike Carlton's column in the SMH follows up on John Howard in that TV debate last Sunday night with Kevin Rudd and the week that has been:
"The Prime Minister's curious facial twitch during the not-so-great debate on Sunday evening set the radio talkback phone lines ringing on Monday. Some people called it a spasm. Others thought he'd been about to drop from a heart attack.
If you missed it, you can catch a replay on YouTube. Type in "John Howard spasm" and up it comes. His face contorts in a weird grimace, eyelids batting, lips chomping furiously. His hands grip the lectern for support. One contributor has unkindly added some rap music.
To me, it looked as if he'd swallowed a blowfly, although it might have been a nervous reaction to a prickly question he was being asked about al-Qaeda and Iraq. Or perhaps it was the sudden realisation that the Channel Nine Worm, manipulated by the treacherous Ray Martin's hand-picked studio audience of trade union thugs, was almost certainly nose-diving towards the carpet in lounge rooms around the nation. It was not a good look.
Wednesday should have been better. In Adelaide, Howard paraded before the audience he loves above all, a platoon of deferential military brass in khaki and slouch hats. They were there to hear an announcement on defence spending, normally a picnic for this Prime Minister, but now the mojo wasn't working. "And we are committed through to 1916," he assured the puzzled diggers.
This is something Kevin Rudd cannot match: the Liberals are offering the defence force a chance to re-do the Battle of Fromelles for, hopefully, a better result than last time. Fix bayonets and follow Johnny over the top for a crack at the Kaiser. No me-too from the Ruddster on that.
With another disastrous opinion poll last Monday and the near certainty of an interest rate rise next month, the sixth since the last election, the Government's campaign is not so much stalemate on the Somme, though. It is more the fall of Saigon.
Another few weeks like this for the Coalition parties and there will be piles of documents burning in the courtyard, looters breaking into the liquor cabinets, complete strangers copulating on office desks, a baying herd stampeding for the helicopters on the roof."
"The Prime Minister's curious facial twitch during the not-so-great debate on Sunday evening set the radio talkback phone lines ringing on Monday. Some people called it a spasm. Others thought he'd been about to drop from a heart attack.
If you missed it, you can catch a replay on YouTube. Type in "John Howard spasm" and up it comes. His face contorts in a weird grimace, eyelids batting, lips chomping furiously. His hands grip the lectern for support. One contributor has unkindly added some rap music.
To me, it looked as if he'd swallowed a blowfly, although it might have been a nervous reaction to a prickly question he was being asked about al-Qaeda and Iraq. Or perhaps it was the sudden realisation that the Channel Nine Worm, manipulated by the treacherous Ray Martin's hand-picked studio audience of trade union thugs, was almost certainly nose-diving towards the carpet in lounge rooms around the nation. It was not a good look.
Wednesday should have been better. In Adelaide, Howard paraded before the audience he loves above all, a platoon of deferential military brass in khaki and slouch hats. They were there to hear an announcement on defence spending, normally a picnic for this Prime Minister, but now the mojo wasn't working. "And we are committed through to 1916," he assured the puzzled diggers.
This is something Kevin Rudd cannot match: the Liberals are offering the defence force a chance to re-do the Battle of Fromelles for, hopefully, a better result than last time. Fix bayonets and follow Johnny over the top for a crack at the Kaiser. No me-too from the Ruddster on that.
With another disastrous opinion poll last Monday and the near certainty of an interest rate rise next month, the sixth since the last election, the Government's campaign is not so much stalemate on the Somme, though. It is more the fall of Saigon.
Another few weeks like this for the Coalition parties and there will be piles of documents burning in the courtyard, looters breaking into the liquor cabinets, complete strangers copulating on office desks, a baying herd stampeding for the helicopters on the roof."
Comments