A few days back, the internet lost its collective shit when Prime Minister Tony Abbott said “Canadia” instead of “Canada”, a gaffe that would have been mildly amusing if Selina Meyer had made it on an episode of Veep, but because of the Australian media’s collective loathing for all things Abbott, we went ahead and made it into an international incident.
If you were hanging out for Abbott Gaffe 2: The Secret Of The Ooze, well, you didn’t have to wait very long. This morning, in a prerecorded good luck message for the Socceroos ahead of their World Cup match, the Prime Minister got the name of skipper Mile Jedinak wrong, instead referring to him as “Mike“.
The gaffe has set a minor media feeding frenzy in place, with the likes of the Sydney Morning Herald and Yahoo running with it as a top story. Far be it from a blog that regularly reports on reality TV scandals and the world’s hottest felons to try and be the voice of reason, but we’re wondering, is this really, actually a thing?
Cards on the table here: it might make me unpatriotic, but if pushed, I maybe could have told you the name of the Socceroos’ coach, but I have no idea who any of the players are and before this story, and definitely could not have told you the name of Mile Jedinak.
Beyond the sense of schadenfreude that comes when Our Tony makes a blunder in the public eye, what good actually comes from this? Does pinging Abbott for making a gaffe like this not make him seem more sympathetic in the eyes of those who would say that the media continually picks on him for no damn good reason? And really, is this not just the same kind of non-story as when Kevin Rudd said “fair shake of the sauce bottle, mate” in an attempt to sound more like a regular human being?
Perhaps this time around, we need to chill, give Abbott a break and:
Then again, I might be wrong and this might be an offense worthy of a double dissolution.
via YouTube
