Read my hilarious T-shirt and weep

Despite what their owners might think, there’s nothing funny about slogans on clothing.

I refrain from passing judgment on other people’s clothing choices. Unless, of course, they have writing on them.

It won’t surprise anyone who’s seen me in the street, but I’ve never been accused, much less convicted, of being a snappy dresser.

Here in the office, only a couple of rows of desks (and a ridiculous number of years) separate me from the editorial staff of Vogue, yet despite this proximity to the nation’s couture experts I remain so blind to fashion that I refrain from passing judgment on other people’s clothing choices. Unless, of course, they have writing on them.

Items of apparel that simply tell everyone which egomaniacal designer’s third-world sweatshop you’re financing are repellent enough, but truly depressing are the T-shirts with witty slogans on them – “I’m with stupid”, “Coffee is for mugs”, “I’m not as think as you drunk I am”, and so on and on until tears of misery stain your cheeks.

They might be amusing for a moment, then you’re just repeating the same boring joke all day long until you come home and get into your “I don’t do mornings” pyjamas. Almost as sad as the 20-year-old Corollas with “My other car is a Ferrari” stickers in the back window.

The only really enjoyable one I’ve encountered was some years ago in New Orleans, when a fabulously large woman (even by America’s generous standards) headed my way along the Mississippi boardwalk. As I too have what Charles Laughton in Spartacus described as “a tendency to corpulence”, I didn’t stare, until she was close enough to read the words on her multi-XL shirt, which spoke of self-awareness and a jolly sense of humour:
“I can hide, but I can’t run”.

While saucy double entendres have long been popular, what we never used to see was outright profanity. I was put in mind of those less tolerant (but better mannered) times last month, when former Australian of the Year Grace Tame attended a morning tea with the Prime Minister, sporting a T-shirt that read “F... Murdoch”, expressing what I took to be her disapproval of this newspaper’s founder.

Out of respect for the traditional hand feeding and biting rules, obviously I’d be one of the last people on Earth to wear that particular top, as the boss has for years kept me alive and prosperous while permitting me to rant in print, at least until the government reintroduces its renamed Death to Free Speech (Everyone Shut Up About Us) legislation.

But substitute any other surname and I’d still have trouble marching around with that banner across my chest. It’s the sartorial equivalent of screaming obscenities at the top of your voice as you walk through your local shopping centre, an activity you should reserve for special occasions.

It would be fun, I reckon, to have a look at our celebrity activist’s wardrobe. I picture a rack of shirts hanging up, each featuring a different name, and half an hour twirling in front of the mirror to choose the right outfit for a prime ministerial photo shoot: “Righto, who needs to be f…ed today? Peter Dutton? King Charles? The Wiggles? Oh, decisions, decisions.”

What disappointed me more than the juvenile, attention-seeking stunt, however, was the grinning acquiescence of the PM as he allowed himself to be photographed in his official home alongside such a vulgar display.

Is it really the case that the dress code for The Lodge is less strict than that for a low-rent nightclub, or have we here another example of the dignity of high office being eroded by the spineless mediocrity of its holders?

I whinge in vain, though, for as we know, courtesy is disappearing from the public square, and our elected officials have led the etiquette cleansing. The celebration of PM Paul Keating’s sneering as the apotheosis of wit was an early pointer to this decline in civility, and the slope has steepened vertiginously ever since. Politicians, eh? If I hadn’t been so nicely brought up, I’d wear a smart cardigan saying what we should do with the lot of them.