An Aussie peculiarity -- at least to me -- is the use of "____ as ..." to describe something positively. A character named Ja'mie (above) in Chris Lilley's brilliant Summer Heights High used "hot as ...." with the frequency of a typical teenager sputtering "like" every 5 seconds. Well, I've got my own lazy & juvenile quip: "Ass as ..." I'll use it to describe especially heinous media practices. Such as today's front page of The Age, which heralded the Australian women's 4 x 200-metre relay team as miraculous Golden Girls for winning a gold in world-record time. Odd, considering the victory garnered one of the team's members her third gold medal of this Olympics while another has been an Aussie swim team member since at least 2001.
There's nothing wrong with dominating a sport at the Olympics. But it's dishonest flag-waving to call a victory by a foursome from that dominant group as a "spectacular transition from rank outsiders to Dream Machine".
Ass as, too.
No comments:
Post a Comment