Carr's US tour

BOB Carr's obsession with all things American is well known, but now the former NSW premier has combined his love of US history with a penchant for colourful prose, emerging in the Spectator Australia as a history-obsessed flaneur roaming the length and breadth of the land of the free.

BOB Carr's obsession with all things American is well known, but now the former NSW premier has combined his love of US history with a penchant for colourful prose, emerging in the Spectator Australia as a history-obsessed flaneur roaming the length and breadth of the land of the free.

In a "Diary from America", Carr writes of his sojourn through the Dallas boarding house to which Lee Harvey Oswald scuttled after he shot JFK, his tour through the Civil Rights Institute in Birmingham, Alabama, and his adventures reading William Faulkner's Light In August in Selma. In New York City, Carr meets up with his old friend Henry Kissinger, who sought the Aussie wanderer's opinions on US presidents. "Sitting in Bravo Gianna on East 63rd, he asked me: `What do you think of Woodrow Wilson?' Carr reports his reply: "The worst president in US history." "You may be right," Kissinger replies. And the former secretary of state offers up some insights to his Aussie mate on the allegation that he engineered the 1973 coup in Chile (a claim Carr blasts as "weak"). "Apart from everything else, we were too busy with other things," Kissinger tells Carr. "Historians sometimes think you only have one thing to deal with at a time." The column will be digested with fascination by the many America enthusiasts in the NSW Labor Right.

Make it a date

A FEW months after hiring agent extraordinaire Max Markson to re-energise her lagging career, Naomi Robson has gone public with her dubious new claim to celebrity. The former Today Tonight host will launch the web-based Naomi Show - Lovelife this month, billed as a one-stop resource for web-based dating, sex and relationship advice. Announcing his 46-year-old, singleton client's new venture, Markson appeared to be offering services beyond simply a website forum. "HOW ABOUT LOVE, DATING, RELATIONSHIPS AND SEX WITH NAOMI ROBSON?" Markson loudly headed his press release. The Naomi experience promises to be "highly interactive, dynamic and engaging", according to Markson. But Naomi's well-documented track record with men makes her a strange dating oracle. The last time the former TV host's romantic adventures hit the headlines, it was because she had been revealed to be dating a con man and drug dealer. Naomi said at the time that she had been duped and had met the man under one of his many identities. "I had absolutely no idea of who or what he really was," Robson said.

Bob the Bilious

OLD grump Bob Ellis has turned his juggernaut on another politician, this time Labor darling Julia Gillard. In a bilious attack on the deputy PM on the ABC's The Drum website yesterday, the writer and political commentator accused Gillard of a string of acts of political bastardry including knifing Kim Beazley, contributing to the elevation of Labor leader-gone-wrong Mark Latham, and humiliating her long-time allies in the union movement. Disgust with Gillard's push to publish school results on the My School website - and Gillard's shaming of teachers: "the best, most selfless people there are" - was the catalyst that tipped the caustic Ellis over the brink. "[Gillard] has shown in question time no recognisable human characteristic whatever," he fumed. "She adopted a style like Margaret Thatcher's, of lofty amusement . . . she plays a mocking goddess, and she does it very well: what fools these mortals be." Gillard's office politely declined to respond to the Ellis tirade.

No news, good news

BACKBENCHERS trudged back into parliament yesterday to a weary old routine, picking up their daily pile of newspaper clippings for some morning reading. The Rudd government's media monitors compile the clippings every day and include all stories reported in the mainstream press concerning the government. But certain astute parliamentarians who peruse the papers of their own accord realised yesterday there was a certain article missing from their clippings pile. It was an Australian Financial Review story that reported that if the Rudd government wins the next election, a cabinet reshuffle is likely to follow, particularly to reward Kevin Rudd's "praetorian guard" from the NSW Right. The futures of cabinet ministers Simon Crean, Martin Ferguson, John Faulkner and Robert McClelland were all the subjects of speculation. Perhaps the media bees in the Rudd executive took it upon themselves to censor such a destabilising report from the clippings files that it compiled for the backbenchers. Or maybe it was just an innocent oversight.

Boarder security

TONY Abbott has made it clear he intends to be tough on boatpeople, but the Opposition Leader appears to have expanded his hardline stance to include the protection of schoolchildren who reside on-campus, whose lives might be somehow endangered by queue jumpers. In a recent email to refugee advocate Frederika Steen, Abbott reiterated his adamantine position. "It is very important that we protect our boarders," he said. "A Coalition government would restore confidence in Australia's boarder protection system and introduce a suite of strong measures which would discourage people smugglers from risking lives of vulnerable people." Steen took the typo in good humour. "Look what happens when you let the private school border background kids answer your male for you," she said.