The Plight of John & Ashley

You know what really grinds my gears? (What’s that? You love my Peter Griffin impression? Why, thank you!) The travesty of justice that was John & Ashley’s trial by media last year.

After they were ejected from the Big Brother House 10 months ago, the media took the view that what they’d done — turkey-slap fellow housemate Camilla — was tantamount to sexual assault and that they should count themselves lucky no Police charges had been brought. And they were hung out to dry.

Now you’d think that, given where it took place, working out what had actually happened would be as easy as rolling the tape. But Network 10 wouldn’t release the footage. This was very odd behaviour, because they had already streamed it live around the world on the internet. A few sites posted copies of the clip of the incident, but Network 10 worked quickly to use copyright laws to have them pulled.

This left fans speculating wildly on the whole incident, many taking the media view and vilifying John & Ashley. But views quickly started to change as people — mainly gens X & Y — tracked down and watched the clip. This seemed to leave the majority of older people in the ‘hate BB’ and ‘vilify J & A’ camps and most younger people in the ‘BB is OK’ and ‘it was just harmless fun’ camps. And a couple of weeks ago, the Chaser Team took a swing at Channel 7’s Today Tonight, which had put up pics of John & Ashley (real names Michael & Michael) side by side and used graphics to ‘stamp’ the word “LOSER” onto them.

But on Monday’s Difference of Opinion (a show The Guru normally steers clear of) BB05 Housemate Tim Brunero, a journalist who blogs for The Chaser Team, proved that you can be a well-informed, open-minded gen-Xer and still not have your ‘Turkey-gate’ facts straight. He brought up the incident, and described John & Ashley’s behaviour as “inappropriate”. The Guru is disappointed, Tim...


Links: The Guru sets the record straight in The Truth about Turkey-gate.

A__AC Day

The Australian and New Zealand Army Corps landed at Gallipoli (Gelibolu), Turkey on April 25 1915, to begin an ill-conceived land campaign, resulting in heavy losses on both sides. ANZAC Day was established in remembrance.

After 92 years, you would expect there to be a degree of objectivity. Yet the New Zealanders who formed a quarter of the Corps, the British and French troops who made up the majority of the Gallipoli Campaign forces, and the defending Turks seem all but airbrushed out of the Australian collective consciousness.

Casualty figures (approx) were as follows: Turks 275,000, Commonwealth 205,000 — of which 7,600 Australians and 2,500 New Zealanders — and 47,000 French. That’s a total of 527,000 casualties (not including wounded) on both sides. Can it possibly be right to disregard 98% of those?

It’s the failure to even mention the New Zealand troops the Aussies were fighting shoulder-to-shoulder with in many of the pieces run on TV that’s perhaps most surprising. Even Andrew Denton’s Gallipoli failed to paint that part of the picture.

Observing two minutes’ silence and reverently uttering “Lest we forget” are no substitute for genuinely learning from the past. And as for wrapping yourself in the Aussie flag at Gallipoli, well I wonder how a few bus-loads of Turks would be received at Bondi Beach draped in their national flag on ANZAC Day...

The (Unrepresentative) BB07 Housemates

Year after year, Australian Big Brother selects a bunch of easy-going extraverts, similar in age, philosophical beliefs, ethnicity and attractiveness. Big Brother has been embraced all over the world, and elsewhere things are a lot more interesting.

African Big Brother fills its House with people from countries across the continent, with widely differing cultures and traditions. BBUK has diversity coming out of its ears! And Australian Big Brother? Well this year we’re promised "representative housemates”. But what are the chances Big Brother will deliver?

Here are the 12 original HMs. Yup, same ol’, same ol’...





What’s wrong with this picture?“But you’re forgetting about the other 6 possible HMs”, you’re muttering at the computer screen.

Well let’s have a look at the voting figures*: Susannah 65%, Zoran 45%, Harrison 30%, Cruz 25%, Demet 20% and Kara 15%. Great. So Susannah and Zoran have gone in as HMs, and Big Brother is busy giving the other 4 a kind of ‘Guantanamo Bay experience’ to determine the final place. Susannah is 30, but a ‘young’ 30, and nothing much has changed.


People like “Men are still superior” Cruz should be in there from Day 1, being challenged on their beliefs and viewpoints by the other HMs. But the producers don’t seem to have a clue.

Will Big Brother keep his promise? The Guru will get back to you...


* 10 mins before close of voting, 23/4/07

Chaser Team gets 1st Strike

The Chaser’s War on Everything, Wednesday evenings on the ABC, is pretty much the last bastion of biting political satire on Australian TV. (The Glass House, one of the ABC’s most popular programs, got axed. The suits cited needing to give other comedy a chance. But the smart money is on Howard having had a quiet word with the new ABC Head, after seething from all the replays of him, dressed in a green tracksuit, rising from an armchair in a failed attempt at virile celebration of a Socceroos goal. It’s an uncomfortable truth that a democracy can easily edge towards totalitarianism.)

Recent revelations give the Chaser Team a wealth of material — the AWB wheat to Iraq kickback scandal, politicians secretly lining their own pockets, a PM defending a radio broadcaster responsible for a show likely to incite racial violence — the list goes on and on. So why they pick on such innocuous targets as white goods retailer Godfreys and The Australian Chamber Orchestra is a mystery. (And their pranks against undeserving targets are the lead balloons of humour.)

But it’s their attack on moderate Muslims that gets them their first Strike. The skit parodies The Biggest Loser (a reality show about competing to lose weight) with The Biggest Muslim. “I’ve lost over 40% of my Faith!” beams Chas Licciardello, dressed in a full burka, as he removes his veil.

So it seems Muslims in Australia are going to be pilloried no matter what they do. Women who follow the guidance of traditionalist scholars on dress, chaperones, etc., will be accused of not integrating properly into society. And those who have come to the conclusion that the interpretations of key Koran passages by male scholars over the centuries are not, in fact, true to the spirit of The Koran, will be ridiculed as selling out on their Faith.

It is really not on to attack women who are trying to free themselves from the subjugation they were born into while retaining their Faith.

So that’s Strike 1 against the Chaser Team. 3 Strikes and they’re out of The Guru’s — and, I hope, your — viewing line-up.

Guru Receives International Acclaim

Yes, my thanks to a (2CV-obsessed) visitor from the UK for the kudos. As well as the UK, Guru receives visitors from the US, Canada and, of course, Australia. But other recent visitors have surfed here from such diverse countries as China, Israel, Kuwait, Latvia, Mexico and Poland*.

So you will doubtless be excited to hear that Guru is now available in 20 languages! Well, not actually the whole site. But the word ‘curiosity’ is. (Well, Rome wasn’t built in a day!) Here are the translations:

thagmë {Albanian}, zvìdavost {Czech}, nysgerrighedsforskning {Danish}, nieuwsgierigheid {Dutch}, merkillisyys {Finnish}, curiosité {French}, merkwürdigkeit {German}, kíváncsiság {Hungarian}, curiosità {Italian}, peeikearagh {Manx**}, nyskjerrighet {Norwegian}, curiosidade {Portuguese}, ciudãţenie {Romanian}, znatiželja {Serbo-Croatian}, curiosidad {Spanish}, nyfikenhet {Swedish}, ilginç şey {Turkish}, tính hiếu kỳ vật kỳ lạ, tính ham biết sự tò mò, sự ham biết {Vietnamese}, cywreinrwydd {Welsh}


* Could my dream date be a step closer to fruition...?

** This form of ancient Gaelic formerly spoken on the Isle of Man is sadly seldom translated into, and devotees of the language are sure to be happy that it is represented here. However, note that there doesn’t appear to be an exact translation for ‘curiosity’ — ‘peeikearagh’ approximates to descrying or peeping. Alternatives would be ‘fysseragh’, meaning inquisitive or prescient, or ‘cooishagh’, which means artful or wily.

Look Up Someone’s Zodiac Sign

Whether it’s Aunty Babs or Mel Gibson, this handy table will let you quickly find and look up their star (or sun) sign.

Mel was born 3rd Jan 1956. As you can see from the table, traditional wisdom would have him down as a Capricorn, but Al’s Theorem makes him a Cancer. Could a sign that can be ‘changeable, moody and overemotional’ explain a thing or two...?