Blogging politics, culture, sociology and life from Brisvegas
Open “Man of Steel” thread: the medal, the hype, the other recipients, the legacy etc.
The former British prime minister, Tony Blair, and the Colombian President Alvaro Uribe, were also honoured at the ceremony.
So, whaddaya reckon?
*back to holiday lurking mode*
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If you watch the video from The Australian, the difference in body language between Howard and Blair is striking. I don’t think that my four year old was as excited on Christmas morning as Howard was receiving his medal.
I’m still peeved that the media never picked up on the Stalin link. FFS, historical iggnarence can only go so far. I mean, if Bush had said “he has the final solution to the refugee problem” or “he’s got the new national socialism” they’d have been up in arms, but calling him stalin… not a murmur.
Howard seems to roll over and beg every time it looks as though Bush will pat him on the head again. It’s not news.
I’d love to have seen the camera pointed at Hyacinth. She must have been having kittens.
Malcolm Turnbull, by contrast, would have been throwing things at the TV.
Good thing the odds of George W being charged with anything due to his incompetance is slim to nothing. Otherwise John W would really really regret seeing that photo in tomorrow’s history texts.
In a few years, as the Bush legacy becomes widely accepted as toxic, watch for Howard distancing himself from Bush. Over time he’ll realise that being so closely linked to Bush is damaging to his career, and will claim that their relationship was a lot more formal and less personal “than it was portrayed in the media”.
I still want to know why Jose Maria Aznar wasn’t included.
Oh what a beautiful site, Bush placing the medal round his neck with the other arm firmly in his arse.
Howard’s eyes light up as he thinks, “oh yeah this was well worth shafting Obama”.
I think that although the legacy of Bush may become toxic, it will not effect Howard one iota. He won’t care, his career is now “a former PM”, and that just means popping up now and then with a comment or two.
Looking forward to this day recollected in the memoirs.
My bet is that they’ll outsell Costello’s two to one.
I just like the timing. This is traditionally when crooks get their Presidential pardon, persons under suspicion of being crooks get amnestie – and oh look, Howard gets a freedom medal.
Now, George W, do the world a favour. If you just stick a pen under that damn ribbon and twist, twist, twist real hard…….
Wolfie, Rummy, Tony, Johnnie, and George all in the same room together for one last time.
Imagine that…
I bet there wasn’t a single dry eye in Teheran.
“the video from The Australian”
Right wing porn at its finest. There are a few regular commentators to this site who are going to need a box of tissues handy if they watch it.
May the blasted medal hang heavy on his neck – to the last a lapdog to a president who can describe the failure to find WMD in Iraq as a ‘disappointment’. Let’s hope when his turn comes, Obama has a different kind of recipient in mind for the freedom medal, and that Rudd might deserve one for finally seeing the light on climate change. Time’s running out, however, for that possibility.
I showed the piccy to our visitors and they said that Bush’s expression is the same one I have when I am patting hannah.
Spiros, would they be sad tissues or happy tissues?
That picture is the most disgusting thing I have seen in years. The fact that Howard was so excited proves once and for all that the guy is just a pathetic poodle. Perhaps that’s unfair to poodles. Now I understand there is a small crustacean that lives in the anus of a rat that would be a better fit with Howard . Probably unfair to crustaceans as well, oh and rats too.
Huggy
Oh look, dubbya can make the dummy laugh and snort without even moving his lips.
So that’s what Ratty looks like when he’s having an orgasm. Wonder he doesn’t bite Mrs. ratty’s nose off.
On a more serious level, its quite clear GWB had no idea what was going on in Australian domestic politics if he can describe Howard as being honest and truthful. Bet Howard put him up to it. One way of proving in his own mind that the majority of Australians who knew he was a liar are wrong. we’re not, of course.
As for Howard as Man of Steel = Stalin. I have know doubt if Howard had ever really been put to the test, he would have curled up like a paranoid ball in the corner the same way Stalin did as the German Army approached Moscow.
I’ll stop now, because if I don’t my language will become really foul, the likes of which none of you have ever seen me post on LP.
Suffice to say I’m disgusted, angry and embarrassed for my country.
Viewers react to The Australian’s footage
YETI … I had a look very funny but NOT ONE AUSTRALIAN amongst them. Funny how you can tell isn’t it??
Wolfie, Rummy, Tony, Johnnie, and George all in the same room together for one last time.
.
.
Yeah. Where’s Usama bin Laden when you need him?
Well good on him, I say. He’s a decent man and a loyal Australian who did his best for his country.
Hope this helps.
Just love the image of our old leader John, smiling, as JB gives it to him from behind again.
Actually it kind of reminds me of some movie featuring the bourgeois couple thing where the husband buys the wife and expensive necklace and puts it on her.
.
Lovely couple aren’t they? Not!
@22: Oh yeah, I can’t stand that “bourgeois couple thing”.
#9 Katz – where is von Stauffenberg when he’s needed?
Jesus! That photo looks like George and John really want some private time together to renew their special friendship.
I can think of a thousand really nasty captions.
So, whaddaya reckon?
Well, tigtog, I reckon copping a Freedom Medal from The Imbecile is akin to being bequeathed an award for intellectual rigour by Keith Winschuttle.
Err…there’s a “d” in there.
Nothing I could say that I haven’t said already.
This thing around Howards neck, because of who put it there and why it was put there, diminishes every thing that went before it. The medal is now reduced in stature and the effort of those who went to Iraq is now reduced to that of pawns in the greater game of obtaining “honour” for Howard. When leaders of such poor performance and with such poor respect start self congratulating each other, they slide rapidly towards the level of African leaders such as Idi Amin and Mugabe. And we are all diminished, that little bit, each one of us.
And that’s all I have to say about that!
From Lord warden of the Cinque Ports to Master of the Reichs (antenna) forests, it just doesn’t get any better than this. Let fredom reign!
Wow, Dr Parsons was right after all.
Tony D,
Sending me to Amazon Books can derail my whole day (and my bank balance.) :0
But, yes, Dr. Parsons was right.
Bilb 2 29 couldn’t have put it any better. Just another indication of how lacking in self-awareness both men are. Bush has some excuse, because of his alcohol/cocaine raddled brain, but Howard … well, I guess he got his American history wrong,(had no real idea of what the American medal means) the same way he always got his Australian history wrong. After all, he is an under-achieving suburban lawyer, when it all comes down to it.
Oh, I got that comment about Howard wrong. I was assuming he might have had the decency to refuse the medal.
there is an hilarious piece by the mad monk over at ABC unleashed.
When the Iraq invasion began to blow up in the faces of the ‘Coalition of the Willing’ we witnessed John Howard back peddling on his total commitment to Bush: “It wasn’t me, it was their faulty intelligence”.
Fortunately, John and George are again besotted with each other and this sickening award will make Honest John’s future attempts to rewrite history even more difficult.
“And watch this folks.
When I put the medal on the dummy, he wets himself.”
@30″And that’s all I have to say about that!”
Don’t be modest. It was quite a moving little piece of rhetoric. Besides everyone here agrees with you, so you know it’s going to go over. Encore!
I can’t exactly vouch for the accuracy of this story, though the person who told me it is very truthful. I just don’t know where they got it from.
John Howard and Mrs. Ratty and are going to buy a house at Crawford, Texas, next to George’s Ranch.And move to the USA. Permanently.
I hope your reliable friend is right, Paul. It’d be wonderful if he moved out of Australia.
My usually unembarrassable and Commie-hating 82-year-old father, this afternoon: ‘Did you see that disgraceful bloody Freedom Medal business? Wasn’t it pathetic? I was embarrassed.’
Guess there’s a first time for everything.
Wow Pavlov, I guess there is. Great story!
The Imbecile has not yet dragged his knuckles for the last time across the Oval Office Axminster and already his erstwhile enablers are backing away from him and his legacy as if they were the Marburg virus.
David Milliband, British Foreign Minister:
Of course, sensible folks were saying the same thing years ago. Trouble is, The Imbecile’s enablers refused to listen and now the world’s in a pretty mess.
For Tony Blair, one of the recipients of this debased gong, Milliband’s critique represents a repudiation by his government of the reason why that vulgar trinket dangles beneath Blair’s wattles.
Kevin Rudd and/or Stephen Smith owe the Australian people a similar repudiation of the “War on Terror”. Or is that expecting too much courage and honesty from our present government?
Howard’s medal deserves to be identified as a mark of shame.
Maybe we could lobby Obama to take it off him?
Let the puppy have his bone – Sir David Smith wouldn’t be nearly as amusing if he were just plain old David Smith.
“Let the puppy have his bone – Sir David Smith wouldn’t be nearly as amusing if he were just plain old David Smith.”
Right. Nor if he wasn’t an expert on the Australian constitution, the blighter.
If only Howard had been awarded one of the medals struck by `Plain old’ David Smith!
(scroll down the page to the third & subsequent images)
Living with a comics fan, I’ve often wondered if the “Man of Steel” thing doesn’t refer more to that refugee from another planet, Kal El (aka Clark Kent).
Good obsevation Faral Abacus, but the medal would need to be very big, an struck from depleted uranium.
“BilB: Good obsevation Faral Abacus, but the medal would need to be very big, an struck from depleted uranium.”
I always say that a blog discussion isn’t happening until someone makes a none too subtle reference to shooting a politician. Well done, BilB!
“Subtle”,indeed, A.C.
So much so that BilB has made no such reference. You are actually the one who has cheerily made it “happen” with a failed little piece of projection.
Well joe2, clearly the inference depends on you knowing what DPU is used for. But in this case, I don’t think you’re being very honest.
Maybe the real reason Ratty is in the USA is so he doesn’t have to watch the UK drama being aired tonight on ABC1 that is based on the hypothetical than Tony Blair is prosecuted as a war criminal (or for that matter answer uncomfortable questions about it.) Could it be Auntie is getting her spine back?
Cheers The Feral Abacus @47 – Seems plain old David Smiths are more interesting.
boo – my pleasure, & hat-tip to you & AC for jogging my memory.
As it happens, Smith was working in an arms factory as a tank armour welder around the time he produced his Medals for Dishonour.
As Dr Cat attests at #41, a good many conservative voters would be agnostic WRT claims of JWH’s contributions to the advancement of global democratic ideals. In any case, aren’t Prime Ministers elected to – amongst other things – “support liberty, and free institutions, and the rule of law”? And in what other job could one expect to receive an internationally-prestigious award simply for fulfilling the Position Description?
Rather than accepting the terms of Bush’s award, or contesting them from any particular political perspective, I figure a more democratic course would be to determine those attributes of JWH’s Prime Minister-ship that we think should not be forgotten.
I hereby nominate JWH for a Medal for the Dishonour of the Non-core Promise. To give it an Australian flavour, something modelled on the Holey Dollar, where the central fiscal undertaking has been punched out.
And rather than being struck in silver, made from a base metal.