A shit storm in a teacup

So, Prime Minister Kevin Rudd has electrified Australians with the use of the word “shit storm” to describe the political consequences of job cuts.

“People have to understand that, because there’s going to be the usual political shit storm, sorry, political storm, over that,” he said on live television.

Kevin 747’s political rivals have accused him of cynical and tactical swearing in order to appeal to workers battered by job cuts.

Liberal MP Peter Dutton was one of those who have accused the prime minister, notorious for the soporific quality of his speeches, of using the S-word to “sound human”.

“We’ve said all along, and I think people are starting to see it now, that Kevin Rudd is certainly manufactured,” Dutton complained. “He wants to talk and appeal to workers in the audience and it was a scripted moment.” (Dutton maintains that the use of “shit storm” was developed and researched in focus groups to combat the criticism, by another opposition politician, that Rudd is a “toxic bore”.)

Melbourne’s Liberal mayor, Robert Doyle, echoed Dutton’s views. Rudd, he said, “usually gives a pretty robotic performance so I’m sure that that was a clever little snare in there to make him sound like one of the lads”.

Rudd has whipped out the S-word before, using it several times when speaking to soldiers in Afghanistan. Nerdy as he looks, he is known to be something of a screamer behind the scenes, and a keen aficionado of the F-word (which, incidentally, he has yet to unleash upon the masses).

Political columnist Annabel Crabb tried to imagine Rudd in training for the shit storm:

“Blood and sweat, tears and focus group dollars went into that single moment. Months of pre-dawn training in which the PM would haul himself out of bed while Therese slumbered on, and slip downstairs in a tracksuit for 90 minutes of sustained swearing at the dog.”

“It’s bad enough for the Libs,” she reflected, “that Kevin Rudd — the nerd they’ve all known and loathed for years — is prime minister on a popularity rating somewhere near that enjoyed by chocolate ice-cream. But when he pretends not to be a nerd, that’s what really burns them up.”

Rudd is a clever man, and he is surrounded by strategists, so he knows the value of dropping an S-word here and there. Australians have always been notorious for their predilection for profanity, so it stands to reason that they would appreciate it in their prime minister. Though there is a prudish, wowserish streak that intermingles with the coarser, more larrikin tendency (somewhat reminiscent of Afrikaners, with their dominees and ordentlikheid and a vocabulary replete with the most magnificently onomatopoeic swearwords known to man), Australians are fundamentally down-to-earth people.

As Simon Barnes has observed:

“Australian speech is lively, demotic, unstuffy: the talk of men with calloused hands and a serious problem with authority. The basic structure of discourse implies a vital truth: if you think you’re better than me, you can f*** off.”

And you don’t get more down-to-earth than a good old fashioned shit storm. Even one in a teacup.