Everything has returned to normal; Australia is demolishing third world nations at a sporting event only we care about, the Victorian Police are sending each other racist emails and the Australian political media has been sidetracked for a week by an ultimately bullshit story.
The Gillard-baited-Abbott-Afghanistan-jetlag-Defence-refuses-action-man-embedding 'scandal' is a classic case of a nothing story taking up a week of our time because…well because everything else that's going on is boring. And the end result was Abbott grabbing an assault rifle and screaming "FOR WARRINGAH, AYAYAYAYAYAYAYAYAY", so yeah, job done.
In any case it's a petty, meaningless argument in which it does not matter who is wrong and who is right, it's just something to talk about for a while. Gillard was cheeky in saying she invited Abbott to Afghanistan, Abbott was stupid for saying he didn't want to be jetlagged, Gillard went for the cheap point about caring for troops blah blah, someone was self righteous about safety, Abbott goes all action-man, Defence says 'No Mr. Abbott, you can not lead a patrol in the dead of night with the help of a plucky Afghan child and take down the evil Soviet General keeping a proud people imprisoned in a communist hell hole'. You know, the standard back and forth bullshit.
When this story finally dies and something else takes over, it will take less than a week for it to be completely forgotten. It will not even rate a mention in the inevitable moody 7.30 Report political montage at the end of the year. Seriously, sometimes I struggle to be interested in this shit. How do journalists do it?
Really, I want to know. It must be soul destroying, because everyone knows it’s just a game. The result is a complete forgone conclusion. No wonder people just flip the paper over to the back page.
And yes I realise the hypocrisy of bitching about journalists writing about this at the same time as writing about it myself, but in other news: Fuck you.
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