Transcript of Throsby's speech to international media at recent promotional press dinner.
Good Evening, Ladies and Gentlemen. Or, as Hogan made you think we all say, Gidday.
Like your President, U.S. foreign policy is a powerful tool.
Despite those ignorant groans of disapproval, I intend to get stuck into the White House and indeed, perhaps, savage you lot for the United States of America's 150 years of foreign policy blunders.
Why so little respect for the White House? I hear you muttering.
Like kings of old your administration lives in a vortex without perspective, forever denied a sophisticated, coherent, or even simply honest view of the world. Clever, powerful (and far too well paid) its members might be, yet every U.S. administration since the Civil War seems totally to miss the point.
In the Japanese harbour of Uraga, 1852, (the Matthew Perry involved was definitely not a 'Friend') began a pattern of international behaviour the very antithesis of your nation's inspiring domestic charter. One that has continued unabated, unabashed.
The western world is extremely grateful to U.S. foreign policy. Those endless fiascos have saved the necks of many incompetent allied governments by the fumbling, stumbling eagle drawing fire. The most welcome distraction for an incumbent facing domestic turmoil is unfettered hilarity at the formidable emblem of "greedom" staggering from the smoke, scorched feathers like Big Bird at a barbeque.
And when one of these deputy dawg allies is facing doom at an upcoming election, well, there's always a US war in the offing to rally those feeble-minded proles to support, to make them forget how abysmal is their own government. Accordingly, I can't but add, that on behalf of Australia, this uppity, arrogant little neoconocracy down under, we thank you, over, over, and over again, from the very depths of our blackened hearts.
On the other side of the coin of imperialism, lesser non-western countries suffered from US ineptitude and meddling. Your foreign policy efforts are, in tandem, best represented by the mobile crane scene from the Terminator 3 movie.
I can't recall a single country you interfered with in the last fifty years - like a great military-industrial paedophile - that hasn't eventually turned around and kicked you in the heuvos. And unlike a paedophile you've never pulled it off!
Without exception, each of the dozens upon dozens of interventions around the world, at the behest of either your corporations or the brain fart of the latest White House ideologue, has yielded an outcome that, if not immediately, has inexorably and inevitably effected the complete inverse of stated intent.
A senior colleague of mine - in the business since the Korean War - overheard a Pommie Prime Minister talking to our Aussie Defence Minister some years ago. They were talking about Errol - Errol this, Errol that. My friend realised for the first time in his career that this mysterious "Errol" he so often saw in government communiqués was a nickname for YANKS - in particular Foreign. Affairs. Yanks.
The penny eventually dropped! he said. The United States had, through it's abysmal success rate fiddling with other countries politics, earned the nickname "Errol" - as in Errol Flynn, the amorous Australian Hollywood actor whose extracurriculars included lustful pursuits. You're journos, look it up!
Most of you lapdogs here tonight are from American networks - and we know who butters your bread, yes? And, may I add, one couldn't find a more embedded lot.
Moving completely away from politics, let me say a few words about your incisive coverage of vital political stories in recent decades. Like I said, moving away from politics.
Where the hell are you lot! Is that all? Here's Watergate, we've done our investigative for this century, got it out of the way. Now on to Hollywood and reality TV for the next 50 bloody years? Good Evening, here is the six o'clock newstainment.
So instead of moving on the the next big exposé, you settled on a circus. Did you believe ridiculing Clinton for an indiscretion - endlessly, nauseatingly, internationally - would get you a Pulitzer? Clinton and Your nation became the laughing stock of the world and You were the clowns of the media circus that is American News (I use the term 'news' loosely and 'circus' tightly).
It's been thus ever since. Even this decade found you making a mockery of serious journalism when Trump and his carnie folk came to Warshington. Rather than straight reporting you went for clickbait. Either endless arrogant libtard swipes at his flyover supporters, or gobshite elevation of this narcissistic turdpipe to frontpage fandom. Unflavoured news would have devastated him, but your ratings-infatuated editors inadvertently - one hopes unintentionally (hopes no doubt misbegotten) - catapulted him into the Oval Office. Nicely done.
Now, as the world trembles on edge of a potentially escalating conflict in eastern Europe, ultimately caused by your persistent encircling of Russia with US missile-bristling bases, rather than explain the history of geopolitics since the USSR collapsed into an oligarchy - yet again, ultimately, caused by US global corporate greed rushing in to fill the capitalist vacuum and stifling Russia's nascent democracy; aka, disaster capitalism - what is the reporting all about? Cheering on the war whilst shedding crocodile tears over the misfortune of the Ukrainian people.
Your masters, the Lords of War, are meanwhile ecstatic that their inventory is again moving off the shelves. But you go on and on about Putin this and Putin that. Sure he's the problem now, and a nasty piece of work, as you keep reminding us. And like pretty well all dictators, dare I say all terrorists, who've burned a swath through some unfortunate country since World War II, Putin's one of your monsters, one of your creations. Yet another deformed tyrant moulded in the pressure chamber of Your famously reckless US foreign policy praxis.
Well, I hope I've brought our two nations closer together tonight, highlighted our good points, shared a few jokes, agreed to disagree, pointed out who's who and who's up who.
I'm sure you'll feel generously disposed toward my new webzine and give it the praise and attention it so richly deserves.
Thank you for attending, I know your schedule is a busy one but you're both welcome to join me at the bar for an after-dinner schooey of Duff or a fruity lexia or two.