In theory, Howard’s latest YouTube clip ticks all the right boxes. Sick/disabled child? Check. Aussie sport? Yep. Hairy orangutans? You betcha – and all presented on that Intertubes thing that the young people love so much.
Naturally, the segment actually manages to distill everything that’s currently failing for the Liberals into a few minutes of concentrated wrongness.
YouTube inevitably takes Howard about a zillion miles from his comfort zone: as soon as his head appears in that little box, you can’t help contrasting him with the other presenters on the screen, most of whom could be his grandchildren. How would Chris Crocker go down in a suburban RSL? Well, reverse the situation, and you can see why the PM should leave the internet alone.
Worse, the clip simply reeks of desperation. You don’t have to be a political sophisticate to think there’s something a little odd about handing out money to baboons on the recommendation of an 11-year-old boy you met at a rugby match. The PM no longer comes across as mean and tricky. He’s just another YouTube desperado, willing to undergo any humiliation in return for a little bit of attention.
If anything, Howard’s clench-jawed enthusiasm for the monkeys (“They are unusual creatures, aren’t they?”) simply highlights how little the Liberals get the environment.
On the weekend, hundreds of thousands of Australians marched against climate change. The Liberals chose not to send Environment Minister Malcolm Turnbull to join them. Instead, they released a clip of the Prime Minister cavorting with gibbons.
Yet the mainstreaming of sentiment about global warming involves a sense of the problem as systemic. That’s why the attacks on Peter Garrett as some kind of extremist were always so misplaced. Most people – even economic conservatives – recognise the need for a new approach to the environment, and, by painting Garrett as an unreconstructed zealot, the Liberals probably did Rudd a favour.
By contrast, Howard’s orangutan intervention as a personal favour to a sick child comes across as fundamentally patronising. It’s a model of conservation from the 1950s. You tear down the forests as a matter of principle – but you occasionally make a big fuss about a particular animal that looks kind of cute.
The PM’s an old political gunfighter and, once upon a time, the comparison with Clint Eastwood might have been a compliment. But this mash-up of A Fistful of Dollars and Every Way Which Way But Loose is a stinker.
Actually, I think this ad is great – it combines all the things we hold dear : invalid child, hugs & kisses at home, cuddly animals (even if they do come from a Muslim country).
What else can you expect from the leader of a political party whose treasurer tells a child that cactus comes from god. Religion is the enemy of reason and Peter Costello is the victim of the religious right.
..but why not have lurking in the bushes a Muslim terrorist, a union thug & perhaps a Beagle Boy all wearing Kevin07 shirts & holding black spheres with smoking fuses with “bomb” written on them to highlight the Rudd threat to all that we hold dear
Come on guys,
the orangutan largesse should surely be seen as the moment when Howard “jumped the shark”, aka Fonzie’s desperate attempt to improve Happy Days’ terminal ratings with a contrived, crappy stunt.
Only difference being that Fonzie made it…
Clint’s comments whilst driving, to the movie Orang; Mostly “Right Turn Clyde” except I think for the one at the end which was “Left Turn Clyde”. Prophetic? btw, they’re Apes, not Monkeys, the name “Orang Hutan” is literal Bahasa for Man of the Jungle.