LIKE many, I find great inspiration from the world of international politics.
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No, really.
In what other avenue of human activity would you find an Abbott and Costello in the same administration? Or, and I’ll bet you’ve forgotten this one: a Mr Blunt being eventually replaced by Mr Sharp?
But these great tag-team efforts have been blown away by history, and now we have only a Mr Abbott, and if it wasn’t for the mischievous use by newsreaders of the American “R” at the end of the word “Mister” there’d be a sad dearth of mirth.
We’d have to look overseas for inspiration.
To Britain, for example, where a conservative MP named Mr Reckless, got drunk and missed an important Budget vote.
In Alabama, there’s a state leader named Mr Young Boozer.
Americans love mucking about with their kids’ names and leaving them to endure a lifetime.
Some older Bendigo folk might remember the Los Altos community leaders who worked hard to maintain a Sister City deal with us. There was King … Lear. And his delightful sister Shanda.
Recently I stumbled across an article about a US politician wannabe. Ms Ball may well have spent much of her life wondering why Ma and Pa named her Krystal.
One should never underestimate the power of a strong and unusual name. It is still said to be one of the reasons Barak Hussein Obama became the US president over Willard Mitt Romney.
The leaders of 20 nations will gather in Brisbane in November for the G20 leaders’ summit. Here’s the attendees list: (Best to read out loud and pretend you’re on SBS).
Axel Kicillof, Tony Abbott, Dilma Rousseff, Stephen Harper, Xi Jinping, Herman Van Rompuy, Jose Manuel Barroso, Francois Hollande, Angela Merkel, Narendra Modi, Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono, Matteo Renzi, Enrique Pena Nieto, Vladimir Putin, King Abdullah, Jacob Zuma, Park Guen-hye, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, David Cameron, Barak Obama.
If it wasn’t for Britain’s blandly named David Cameron and Canada’s Stephen Harper, our poor Tony Abbott could feel like a cheese sandwich at an international food fair.
It could be worse. I recall some years back when the then Japanese Prime Minister Yasuhiro Nakasone was visiting Australia and he had a fairly hefty Australian security contingent around him.
Journos covering the visit kept hearing the security blokes talking into their cuff microphones whenever Mr Nakasone was about to move. Their “code name” for the Japanese leader was err, different: “Nakas One is about to leave.”
Sometimes these things are not intentional.
One incident which caught my eye this past week was the visit to India of the Chinese president Xi Jinping.
It was important. These mighty nuclear nations have not been the best of mates, and this could have hinted at a new alliance.
But the importance became secondary to its entertainment value after reading that a news-reader on Indian TV network Doordashan News was sacked for saying the Indian visit had been by Chinese president “Eleven Jinping”.
Station management later said at least it showed the newsreader understood Roman numerals.
And now, dear reader, you will never forget his name.