Mugs of them all

NOW we know why Barack Obama put off his visit to Australia: to give the Parliament House gift shop a chance to get his name right on their commemorative coffee mugs.

NOW we know why Barack Obama put off his visit to Australia: to give the Parliament House gift shop a chance to get his name right on their commemorative coffee mugs.

Alas, 200 mugs that had been labelled "Barrack Obama" were destroyed yesterday in a fit of embarrassment, but not before two made it out of the shop. One is now in the protective custody of Ten Network political reporter Hugh Riminton (pictured here with his purchase), who merrily tweeted the typo. Department of Parliamentary Services secretary Alan Thompson took responsibility for the cock-up, assuring The Australian that their destruction was carried out at no extra cost to the taxpayer. Surely a "4" neatly inserted between the Barrack and Obama would have set things right, but it's too late now. Still, anyone with a bit of patience, a few tubes of glue and a sharp eye down at the tip could be on to a winner. Alas, the US embassy turned down its chance to comment. Not so Riminton, who informed Strewth: "It's in a cage and I've hired a couple of gorillas from Taronga Zoo to guard it." While it's not for sale, Riminton said he would entertain the possibility of exchanging it for "a house in the south of France".

No laughing matter

THERE was a moment yesterday when Kevin Rudd appeared to channel Tony Abbott. It came when the ABC's Lyndal Curtis asked him this: "Journalist David Marr has written an essay about you where he's argued you're driven by anger. Do you have an angry heart?" Out of his mouth popped that same unsettling laugh the Iron Monk produces when quizzed on a touchy subject, such as his feelings about Malcolm Turnbull's change of heart about quitting. Meanwhile, the absurdity of habitually prefacing statements with "Can I just say?", as though waiting for someone to deny him permission, may be dawning on Rudd. Either that, or he's not keen on anyone following his lead. During a press conference yesterday, a reporter asked if they could ask him a "broader question". Rudd replied, "What if I said no?"

Taking it to streets

ONE political leader averse to laughing things off when there's a perfectly good lawsuit to be launched instead is Slovakian Prime Minister Robert Fico. With the nation about to go to the polls, Fico has sooled lawyers on to cartoonist Martin 'Shooty' Sutovec, who had the impertinence to depict him as spineless. Sutovec has responded with a less flattering portrayal and the message "I've had enough. Have you?", which is being reproduced on 200 billboards across the country. Could it be a tactic worth emulating? We turned to Bill Leak, who opined: "The average life expectancy of a cartoon is about eight seconds. That's how long it takes to peruse one and, hopefully, get the joke. You can cover a lot of ground in eight seconds if you're travelling in a car. I expect the success of Shooty's campaign will be measured in pile-ups, not crack-ups."

All French to us

FOR services to the extended metaphor, we salute Chief Justice Robert French, who launched a recent speech to the Environmental Defenders Office thus: "It is sometimes possible in moments of extravagant day-dreaming to think of the law as a lush jungle ecology. Lawmakers, law enforcers, regulators, administrators, lawyers, judges . . . are among its genuses. Within each genus there are species. A relatively new species is the environmental lawyer. There is a taxonomic debate about whether such persons are entirely pestiferous, unattractively beneficial like the dung beetle, or a truly wonderful new example of God's ongoing creative handiwork. One thing is clear. The species is ineradicable."

The gutter press

WITH Catherine Deveny's tweets momentarily occupying the unrepeatable end of the angry spectrum, we've had to content ourselves with the Twitter work of Crikey deputy editor Jason Whittaker. Last week, when news of Obama's latest non-visit was softened with the possibility of a visit by Hillary Clinton, Whittaker deemed this a case of "sloppy seconds". (Older readers, ask your . . . actually, best if you don't.) Then yesterday, following a tongue-in-cheek Q&A in our Media section with The Manly Daily editor Luke McIlveen, Whittaker reflected: "I don't know who Luke McIlveen, Manly Daily Ed, is. I've never met him. But it's quite clear he's a monumental dickhead." (It's possible Whittaker was merely expressing his alarm at McIlveen's apparent lack of concern for his own welfare, as demonstrated by his cracking of a joke about former Daily Telegraph editor Col Allan's legendary office sink; luckily, Allan is far away in New York.) Happily, Whittaker's next tweet began: "Giving Twitter tutorial to La Trobe uni faculty staff."