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Australian Politics
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Melbourne Victoria
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RIGHTO
So let me explain something to our American friends, because I think there's been a bit of a cultural misunderstanding about what's running the Pentagon right now.
In Australia, we have a word. It's one of our most important words. It's a word that carries the weight of a thousand disappointed fathers, a million eye rolls from every tradie, brickie, sparkie and truckie who ever had to deal with a bloke who was all hat and no cattle.
The word is wanker.
Now for the uninitiated, a wanker is not just an insult. It's a diagnosis. A wanker is a bloke who is so profoundly, catastrophically up himself that he has lost all contact with the observable universe. A wanker looks in the mirror and sees a god. Everyone else looks at him and sees a bloke who'd cry if his coffee order was wrong. A wanker is the guy who revs his rented Lambo at the lights. The guy who name drops at barbecues nobody invited him to. The guy who calls himself an alpha while needing three people to help him pick a shirt.
A wanker is, in the most medically precise Australian sense, a man who is furiously pleasuring his own ego in public and expecting the rest of us to clap.
Which brings us to Pete Hegseth. Secretary of Defense. The most powerful military position on the planet outside the Oval Office. The bloke with his finger near the button. Mister Warrior Ethos. Mister we're bringing back the fighting spirit. Mister no more woke bullshit, we're here to kill.
Big tough guy.
This bloke looked at photos of himself giving a press conference and went, nah, take those down, I look weird in that one, my chin's doing a thing, ban the cameras.
BAN. THE. CAMERAS.
Not because of a national security leak. Not because somebody photographed classified documents on the podium. Because his feelings got hurt. By a photo. Of his own face. That his parents made. A face that apparently is fine for Fox News hits from his taxpayer funded makeup studio complete with a director's chair and vanity mirror and professional lighting, but is far too precious and delicate to be captured by the Associated bloody Press doing their job at a press briefing about a war.
Let me say that again for the cheap seats. This man is running a war. American service members are dead. Six killed in a drone strike in Kuwait. More than 30 hospitalised with burns and shrapnel wounds and brain trauma, some so badly hurt they had to airlift 25 of them to Germany on a C-17 with injuries classified as urgent. A girls school in Iran got hit by two Tomahawk missiles and 175 people were killed, most of them children, and the Pentagon's own preliminary investigation found that it was the United States that did it.
And this bloke's priority? His photo angle.
That's not a Defense Secretary. That's a wanker.
In any RSL in Australia, in any pub from Cairns to Kalgoorlie, if a bloke walked in and said yeah I'm a big tough war hero, I talk about warrior culture all day, but I had to ban the cameras because the pictures made my neck look fat, he would be laughed out of the building. He would not be able to buy a beer in this country. Blokes who actually served, blokes who actually went to places where people were trying to kill them, would look at this precious little petal and just shake their heads.
Because that's the thing about wankers. Real tough blokes don't care what they look like. Real tough blokes are too busy doing the job to worry about whether the lighting is flattering. You know who worries about their angles? Influencers. Instagram models. Reality TV contestants.
And former Fox News morning show hosts who had a makeup studio installed in the Pentagon.
This bloke talks about restoring warrior ethos while getting his foundation right before a Fox hit. He talks about lethality while banning the AP because a photo made him look like he was mid sneeze. He talks about no more woke bullshit while having his wife, a former Fox producer, approve the renovations to his vanity room.
There are families in America right now who just got a knock on the door telling them their kid isn't coming home from Kuwait. There are parents in Iran pulling their children out of rubble. And this bloke is worried about looking ugly in a Reuters photo.
In Australia we'd tell him to harden up. Actually no. In Australia we wouldn't even bother. We'd just call him what he is.
A weapons grade, industrial strength, fair dinkum, ocean going wanker.
And then we'd move on. Because unlike Pete, we don't have time to stand in front of a mirror all day.
LOVE IT!!!!!!!!!!
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