Last Wednesday it was, and I was going about my own business when I received an e-mail from an Australian friend of the Reporter, Kevin Rahm, warning us of some shenanigans taking place down his way.
"Hi," he wrote. "I just wanted to call your attention to the fact that your reporter, Mike Hudson, is being made fun of by an Australian blowhard, Tim Blair."
Simple and succinct was our man Kevin.
Having never heard of this Tim Blair fellow, I did a quick Google search. Blair's a humorless right-winger who would like to be his country's answer to Rush Limbaugh. He could probably even pull it off if anyone actually cared about what Australians think.
Turned out he attacked me in his blog over a column I did a couple of weeks ago describing President George W. Bush's Thanksgiving Day visit to Baghdad in 2003. I described the big turkey our chickenhawk president used in a photo-op that day as "plastic," and Blair pounced, accusing me of deliberately lying and mischaracterizing what even he called the "display turkey."
It was the stupidest thing I'd ever heard of. With the blood of 25,000 American dead and wounded soaking the sands of Iraq, here was Crocodile Dundee riding to Bush's rescue over whether or not a prop turkey appearing in a 2003 propaganda photo was a real prop turkey or a plastic one.
Why would an Australian even be interested? I wondered. I've always thought of Australia as a country that produces dumb, talentless blondes like Kylie Minogue, Kiki Dee, Olivia Newton-John and Paul Hogan. The few talented ones -- Mel Gibson and Rolf Harris and the late Steve Irwin spring to mind -- tend to be crazier than outhouse rats. The only political Australian I ever remember was Helen Reddy, who was always going on about how she was woman and we ought to hear her roar.
Who knew they had a right wing in Australia? Do they have a left wing? I wrote this Blair fellow at his Web site and posted a reply to his poorly written column to set things straight.
"Tim ... I don't know how they do things in the land down under, but I'm an American, and if I want to make fun of an American president I'll do so without any interference from some wallaby-eating sheepherder. Now go back and play with your didgeridoo before I have to come over there and smack you upside the head," I wrote.
Well, they must get all sentimental about their wallabies or something down there, because the reaction was as though I'd placed a redback spider on the collective toilet seat of a nation. A third-rate nation, yes, but a nation all the same.
As sure as Foster's is Australian for a viscous, greenish-yellow liquid that a dingo wouldn't drink from a wagon rut, Blair lined up about 200 of his girl scout pack to take aim.
I was a coward and an appeaser. A lying liar who dealt in lies in order to belittle our great president. They meant the American president, of course. You get extra points if you or any member of your family knows who the president of Australia is. (Hint: They don't have a president, they have a prime minister. John Howard, he's called.)
Blair's assistant banned me electronically from ever posting on the Web site again, and I was threatened not only with physical harm but with prosecution under Australia's "vilification laws," which make it illegal to "vilify" people, even if they are douchebags. What kind of a pansy country has a crazy law like that? You guessed it, one that doesn't trust its citizenry with the God-given right to keep and bear arms.
Australia, in other words.
Apparently, there is actually an Australian force in Iraq. Calling them a "fighting" force, however, would be a stretch. While America has lost 2,940 brave soldiers since the "Shock and Awe" campaign of March 2003, the Aussies have lost two, which goes a long way in explaining the bluster and bravado demonstrated by Blair and his followers. It's pretty easy to talk tough when you've only lost two guys.
The last time they got involved in a meaningless battle against an Islamic army -- in 1915 at a place called Gallipoli -- the Australians counted 8,709 dead and another 19,441 maimed. Then they simply walked away, much as America will do at some future date in Iraq.
I can only think that President Bush must be heartened by the support he's receiving from Tim Blair and his Aussie brigade. He must feel a bond with these gutless wonders who'd rather sit around in their bathrobes attacking an American newspaperman on the Internet than joining their countrymen somewhere behind the front lines in Baghdad. Bush likewise shirked his duty with a no-show job in the Alabama National Guard during Vietnam, so he can relate.
And with 70 percent of the American public now opposing his war policy, the media turning on him and the newly elected Democratic Congress set to begin hearings as early as next month concerning the lies and deception that led us into this unmitigated military disaster, Bush obviously needs all the support he can get.
| Niagara Falls Reporter | www.niagarafallsreporter.com | December 19 2006 |