Originally published on the deep blog, this is worth spreading about across the spectrum.

This is the pinnacle of arrogance and the peak of popularity.   It is all down hill from here.

 It's official.  We're up shit creek without a paddle.

Anyone who has observed Australia's Prime Minister Kevin Rudd knows he is probably not human, he is more likely a programmable android, he has several skins, and I wrote an article on this in January entitled 'Two Faces'. 


He wears what he believes to be the appropriate demeanour according to the audience, the need and the mood.  He does nothing by chance delivering his lines robotically as if every utterance is scripted.  If the question he is asked does not have a scripted answer, he self-interrogates and answers his own questions.  If he is caught on camera out of the spotlight he stares blankly as if his clockwork has wound down.  He has nothing to say.

So his decision to use the word 'shit' as in 'shitstorm' was planned.   No doubt about it.  Take a look at his lead up, his delivery and his prepared reaction to his 'slip of the tongue'.

Let me say I have no objection to the use of the word shit, hell it comes in handy when describing shit.

But is it appropriate for the nation's Prime Minister to be using it on national television, or anywhere in public for that matter. 

Would any of us be happy to be sitting with our mum on the bus and hear the driver yelling about an impending traffic shitstorm? 

How about when perched on your pew in the Greenhouse Gas Church and the preacher, Al Gore, tells us all about the awful global warming shitstorm?

Or in your malodorous, swampy backyard and your plumber discovers your antique sewer pipes are creating a subterannean shitstorm?

Morality aside, what does it mean?  Isn't your bus driver professionally equipped to deal with traffic of a shitstorm nature?  Wouldn't we expect Al Gore to have a solid grasp of the language required to describe the science of shitstorms without using the word shitstorm? Doesn't a plumber, by virtue of his vocation, deal with shitstorms without a murmur?   So why does the country's leader feel the need?

It's weakness.  It's inadequacy.  It's divisive, Ruddgie politics again.   And it's the need to relate to a world he is not a part of.

Mr Rudd's chosen vocation, like Joe the plumber's shit,  is political shitstorming.  It's what pollies do.

Yet he dismisses the political shitstorming as if he is not a part of it.  He is really saying he has not the strength or the capacity to deal with real debate of the shitstorming kind.

He is really saying he should be able to ride his bulldozer unchallenged without being forced into a blizzard of political shitstorming. 

He is really saying he is not well equipped to handle sudden shitstorms as he is unable to respond to ad hoc questioning without his customary reams of notes.

It is a derisory put down of anyone who insolently dares to whip up a shitstorm; it is a direct challenge to his lack of a plan.

And he feels that that is the language of his well fed audience.  That's how he reckons workers speak and if he wants to be like them and be liked by them he has to patronise them by speaking their langauge.

Bullshit Mr Rudd.  Bullshit.

Being the first national leader to say 'shitstorm' on national TV is not clever or funny, it does not relate to ordinary Australians, they actually expect leadership. 

It's patronising, derisory and weak.  It displays a distinct lack of courage and leadership.  And it shows an unwillingness to fight the good fight in a goodly manner in the arena of your choice - the political arena.

It's not a shitfight, it's called democracy.

The oppositon have the democratic right and a national imperative to challenge any and all decisions made by the government if they feel they are not in the nation's best interests.

It isn't called shitstorming, it is democracy at work.   It may be difficult to understand that Mr Rudd,  perhaps your programmer left out the code for democracy.