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The Pope, a primary and being a small ‘r’ republican

by Jamie Snashall on April 26, 2008 in Befuddled Foreigner

Apologies that there’s been nothing for 10 days – I’ve been more exhausted than befuddled as we head into ‘finals season’ - although this version has nothing to do with footy finals in September back home! It feels like plenty has happened both here and in Oz since I last posted.

Pope Benedict XVI has been in the US and has a website (www.uspapalvisit.org) dedicated to covering the trip. Not only that, but just as the President of the US has Air Force One, the Pope has – I’m not kidding – Shepherd One! The papal visit has, predictably, turned British Prime Minister Gordon Brown to Gordon Beige with very little media coverage of his time here.

The big Pennsylvania primary happened on Tuesday for the Democrats. Both camps kept socking it to each other, Clinton won in the end while McCain sat back and relaxed. I have a sinking feeling that he’ll win in November. Here’s one for the Aussies – why do they call it a ‘primary’? Because the level of maturity of the behaviour exhibited by the candidates is sometimes akin to being back at primary [elementary] school.

Meanwhile, my adopted hometown of Canberra hosted the 2020 summit “aimed at harnessing the best ideas for a modern Australia” last weekend. No jokes about 20/20 hindsight either …

Everyone has been ripping into Barack Obama for his alleged elitism, but I guess the summit could equally have been derided as a talkfest for the so-called chattering classes (the local equivalents of Fox News would call them the “latte-sipping, chardonnay-drinking set”). I was pleased to see proposals raised for Australia’s move to a republic sooner rather than later. This is the only sense in which I’m happy to be known as a republican!!

Written by Jamie Snashall · Filed Under Befuddled Foreigner 

Jamie Snashall grew up in Tasmania – that little island to the south of Australia – which made him something of a befuddled foreigner in his own country. The English novelist LP Hartley once said "The past is a foreign country; they do things differently there," and many Aussies would think that that perfectly describes Tasmania, a former British penal colony for the nineteenth century convicts who were too bad for Sydney. Banished at the age of 13, he ended up in the nation’s capital, Canberra, where he became a political junkie, worked as a very civil servant for some years before jumping into the political arena as media and policy adviser to Julia Gillard, who has recently become Australia’s first female deputy Prime Minister. His weaknesses are U2, Star Wars, Thai food and red wine, preferably all mixed up together. In his spare time, he is trying to finish a TV sitcom about a college student and civil servant who are roommates. When not writing this blog and working on his sitcom, he is allegedly enrolled in the Mid Career MPA program.

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