Why don't people think things that were funny a hundred years ago are funny now?

The fact that they have let Daryl Somers back on TV is bad enough for our country’s apparent intelligence levels, but the incredibly dated-looking Hey Hey It’s Saturday reunion specials (played on Wednesday nights, obviously) are even worse.

On Last night’s show, nobody thought to stop a ‘red faces’ act going to air where the participants were dressed in blackface and taking the piss out of the Jackson family – a reprise of their appearance on the show more than 20 years ago.

Somers even apologised saying he “didn’t think” the sketch would be offensive to anyone. Where as he’s usually known for his brilliant mind and razor-sharp insights (see Dancing with the Stars, for examples).

Well, apparently not a lot has changed in Australia in the last 20 years. In today’s news forums, public opinion has been mainly concerned with “political correctness gone mad” and people being able to have a laugh at this sort of thing even though our “national identity” is all about “larrikinism”.

If you ask the UN, who tend to reprimand us pretty regularly over our treatment of the indigenous population (not to mention their standard of life) as well as the fact that we like to lock up children who risk their lives coming to our country seeking asylum, they probably don’t think its all that funny.

So, international tourists – Where the Bloody Hell are you?

Here’s a few links that highlight our “she’ll be white” attitude and the way the international community see us:
http://www.mail-archive.com/recoznet2@paradigm4.com.au/msg00396.html
http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2009/08/28/2669997.htm
http://www.nswccl.org.au/issues/hr_violations.php

Talk about Larrikins!

A jockey blowing his horses brains out to win a race - its not cruel, he's just doing it so we can win money by betting on him...

Australian Jockeys are upset that people want to stop them from blowing out their horses’ brains in order to win races. For people so tiny, they sure love the animal cruelty!

New rules being bandied around the Aussie Horse Racing industry (see problem gambling for more info) would make it not as acceptable for the little tackers to use handguns on their horses in order to make them run faster.

“I don’t see the problem,” one Jockey told us in his high-pitched voice (he was too small to identify), “All we want to be allowed to do is blow out our horses’ brains in the crucial last few hundred metres of a race. But the Animal Rights people – who don’t understand that problem-gambling on horse races is part of our national culture – think its in some way cruel or something…”

Since institutionalised sports-gambling addiction is part of our Australian identity, the animal lovers will surely have to come around.
I mean, we breed these animals so we can be cruel to them (not that it’s cruel). If we didn’t breed them for having their brains blown out, they’d just be wasting their time living happily in their natural environment or something.

And you can’t gamble on that!

Xenophobia & the Balance of Power in the senate...

If you are afraid of Nick Xenophon, you are a xenophobe.
If you are afraid of Christopher Pyne, then you’re a homophobe.

Just because he made a few million dollars out of Bird Flu doesn't mean he's not an honest, ethical person...

This is a real and serious disease, just ask Rummy.

And just in case you thought that was an “ethical faux pas”, check out Rummy’s real estate.

K.Rudd meets B.Obama in his own pants. Obama seems to think Kev is a pretty cute little fella...

In the TOTALLY UNPREDICTABLE and in-no-way-forseeable financial crisis that has struck our western world down like a black plague epidemic, there are few heroes.

Luckily (for all of us), one of those heroes is the Honourable K. Rudd P.M Esquire.

By simply meeting with the new arse to kiss in Washington the President of the United States of Texas, Kev was able to avert the current financial crisis and garantee that it will never happen again.

In order to stop himself using too many acronyms during their meeting, our over-generous and glorious leader took full responsibility for the financial crisis… blending all of his acronyms nicely into one easy-to-remember version.

KFC: Kevin's Financial Crisis acronym cuts through all the politico-speak...

Baz Luhrmann uses the next 10 years of Australian film finance to create a display platform for Nicole Kidman's forehead...

Finally a film has been made that tells the real story of our wide, brown land.
Not many people really know about the Australian cowboys who all carried Winchester rifles and said “crikey” all day whilst being “mates” with the local Aborigines; or about the invasion of Darwin by 16 million Japanese fighter-planes (which were also bombers); or the fact that our REAL national anthem was “Somewhere Over the Rainbow” until 1988.

Thankfully, Australia’s most prolific, creative and talented cocaine snorter director has been given $140 million to set the story straight on our fair nation once and for all, by making a “romantic epic” aimed squarely at American audiences who are staying away from it in droves.

Along with the $140 million for the BRILLIANT financial black-hole film, the Australian Government (in it’s infinite cinematic wisdom) has thrown Baz an extra $40 million to make a few ads for Tourism Australia.

Surprisingly, they’re exactly as crap as all of his films have been, selling a ridiculous, stereotypical version of Australia to people who don’t want to sit on a plane for 20 hours.

16 million Mitsubishi Zeros invading Darwin Harbour during Warld War II. All of this really happened...

Sorry, we meant to say they “invested” in our countries future with a “blue chip” stock named Baz Luhrmann, whose 3 films have grossed about $360 million worldwide… Now if that’s not justification for giving him nearly $200 million, we don’t know what is.

Oh wait, yes we do… Nicole Kidman’s in the film as well.
For those of you who don’t remember Our Nicole, she was married to Tom Cruise for a while and her films used to make money (when she was still a freckly redhead). Thankfully, though, over the last 10 years she has become the LEAST BANKABLE STAR in Hollywood, adding to the massive financial risk that this steaming pile of crap has become.

But then, Australians certainly love to gamble.

After all his other excellent management decisions, economic experts were suprised to find that Bush's bail-out package actually made things worse...

Everything that George Walker Bush has done in his 8 years in office has been brilliant.

He has expertly managed the US economy, he’s got the Health Care system working flawlessly for every American, he’s declared a “War on Terror” that has made ever human on Earth safer and more secure from extremists, he’s invaded liberated 2 separate countries with perfectly planned and executed battle-plans, and generally expressed himself eloquently and articulately whenever making a public address.

So with all these achievements under his belt, when he announced a couple of weeks ago that he knew how to fix the growing economic crisis and all it would take was a trillion dollars, it’s not surprising that nearly every economic expert in the media started lining up to back his “rescue plan”.

Even our own Treasurer and Prime Minister were quick to say publicly that if the US congress didn’t pass the bail-out package, everything could go pear-shaped, which should give evry Australian the utmost confidence in the financial management of our fair nation.

The media was singing much the same tune, with self proclaimed “experts” like Channel 7’s David Koch (it’s pronounced how it’s read) telling the world that they knew what was best and what was best was George Walker Bush’s financial advice.

Our most consistently re-elected "financial expert" certainly had all the answers. That's why the economy's so good...

The shock of such “experts” when the market fell to pieces after the package was approved should be an indicator as to their level of expertise, wouldn’t you say?

It will also pay for Australians to note that in Europe and the UK at the moment, they’re re-publicising many of their financial institutions because the privatisation that occurred during the 90s is actually largely responsibly for the current market-collapse.

So, Australia, the next time somebody tells you that they’re a “financial expert” or (hypothetically) the “best financial manager Australia’s ever had”, it might actually be worth our while to ignore them.

Expert Australian and Coalition troops are having a bit of trouble with the primitive stone-throwers in Afghanistan...

NATO commander in Afghanistan, General David McKiernan, has made a plea to the “Coalition of the Willing” to massively bolster troops numbers in the war-torn country because we’re ’struggling to win’ against the Taliban forces.

Australia is actually contemplating sending in it’s ground infantry – a section of the Army not deployed since Vietnam, another brilliant ADF success.

The Taliban are those nice Shiite chaps who we initially supported because we didn’t really want the commies taking over our friends’ potential oil supplies. They were “ousted” back in 2001 after the US gave them a completely un-hypocritical ultimatum.
It went like this:

1. Deliver to the US all of the leaders of Al Qaeda immediately;
2. Release all imprisoned foreign nationals immediately;
3. Close immediately every terrorist training camp immediately;
4. Hand over every terrorist and their supporters to appropriate authorities immediately;
5. Give the United States full access to terrorist training camps for inspection immediately;

Or

1. we blow you up… immediately.

One of our expert soldiers catches a plane before it hits the runway...

As you would all know, America does and always has complied with all of it’s own demands (and the UN’s). Not to mention Australia… Just visit some of our beautiful “asylum-seeker holiday resorts” or the Americans’ 5-star beach destination in Cuba for special foreign guests.

The table below shows three different countries’ military spending for the last year.

As you can see, we should probably be getting a bunch of Taliban insurgents over here to train our troops in economically successful warfare.

You’d think that the USSR would have “softened them up” a bit for us by spending 10 years trying to do what we’re now trying to.

But then, we’re the GOOD GUYS.