Strewth: Popping a cap, Trump-style

The US President threatens Iran with a capital offence.

Going pen pallistic with presidents Donald Trump and Hasan Rowhani.

Following the warm cosiness of the Donald Trump-Vladimir Putin show, it was back to business more like usual yesterday as the US President took aim at his occasionally truculent counterpart in Tehran: “To Iranian President Rouhani: NEVER, EVER THREATEN THE UNITED STATES AGAIN OR YOU WILL SUFFER CONSEQUENCES THE LIKES OF WHICH FEW THROUGHOUT HISTORY HAVE EVER SUFFERED BEFORE. WE ARE NO LONGER A COUNTRY THAT WILL STAND FOR YOUR DEMENTED WORDS OF VIOLENCE & DEATH. BE CAUTIOUS!” Trump didn’t feel the need to capitalise like that in 2013 when he released this tweet into the world: “I predict that President Obama will at some point attack Iran in order to save face!” But that was then, possibly a time before the full power of caps lock had been discovered. If there’s anyone in Australia who’s an acknowledged authority on the use of all-caps on social media, it’s the person at the helm of The Northern Territory News Twitter account, a place of even more capital than Trump has to his name. So we asked whether it was acceptable to switch to all caps part way through a tweet, or whether one should commit to one or the other. Happily they came back to us with a considered response that rendered everything as clear as the water in Darwin Harbour: “YES, GOSH DARN IT! YOU HAVE TO PICK A POSITION AND STICK TO IT … or maybe not!” (By the by, one highlight next month will be the 65th anniversary of the US and British-engineered overthrow of Iran’s democratically elected government, an enterprise in which one of the starring roles was played by Theodore Roosevelt’s grandson Kermit Roosevelt Jr. You’ll Never Guess What Happened Next.)

Hosing down operation

With the by-elections all but breathing down our necks, some online bookies are suggesting the likelihood of a, er, character-building result in Longman for Labor. While Malcolm Turnbull tried expectation management (“It is a close contest and by-elections traditionally and historically swing against the government”), it wasn’t a patch on Labor’s. Here’s Michelle Rowland on Sky News: “Labor has skin in the game, but more importantly this is not about him, this is not about Bill Shorten. This is about the people in those electorates.” Fair enough. Linda Burney went a step farther: “It’s about Malcolm Turnbull. It’s not about Bill Shorten.” Anthony Albanese, who was in Perth supporting Tim Hammond’s hopeful replacement (and Kevin Rudd’s former right-hand man) Patrick Gorman, had to do some of the other sort of expectation management. “Why is it, do you think, that you’re more popular than Bill Shorten, though?” asked a journo, and “It must be flattering, though, to be the most popular? It must be flattering?” And so on. And on. But hats off to the reporter who generously fleshed out the picture for the benefit of those who were only getting the audio.

Journo: “I’m sure they asked you this question. How do you characterise the Liberals’ decision not to run against you …?”

Gorman: “Hugely disappointing.”

Journo: “You said it with a smile.”

Can you spare a dime?

The ALP machine cranks on, tirelessly, indefatigably, sometimes amusingly. A recent donation-seeking email from Labor, meanwhile, arrived with a subject heading that we initially mistook for one of the regular ones we get from the Boys Town raffle: “Your last chance to win.” Yesterday’s begging bowl email brought a different sort of mood: “It’s very close. Are you in?”

A special bouquet

What’s the point of a typo if you can’t have a bit of fun with it? In yesterday’s issue of this august organ, Strewth reader Malcolm McIntyre spotted a “snuff” transformed by a rogue vowel, then ran with it all the way to our favourite former West Australian state politician. Writes McIntyre, “Peter van Onselen suggests in his column today that the magnitude of Georgina Downer’s likely defeat in the South Australian seat of Mayo at Saturday’s by-election ‘could sniff out a second tilt at the general election’. Surely the outcome of Troy Buswell’s olfactory obsessions a decade ago in Western Australia should have been a lesson for all pollies that seat-sniffing is inadvisable.” We once again extend our qualified gratitude to Buswell for doing his bit to reacquaint the nation with that grand old verb “snedging”.

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