And Who the Bloody Hell Cares?

Guess what is headlining newspapers in Australia at the moment? All sorts of things have happened in the past week or two. There was an earthquake in Chile, some Indian "doctor" type person has been hawking kidneys to the diseased and gullible and I assume the offensives in Afghanistan and Pakistan against various Taliban related entities are still going. I say "I assume" because I don't actually know. The number one topic in the news at the moment is Lara Bingle taking legal action against Brendan Fevola for publicising a nude photo of her. Fevola, swearing innocence, has likewise lawyered up.

For those of you fortunate enough not to know Lara Bingle is a "model" whose main claim to fame is that she starred in a series of woeful ads for Tourism Australia asking "where the bloody hell are you?" Her sole apparent talent is to look good in a bikini. To be fair she looks very good in a bikini. Brendan Fevola is a veritable polymath by comparison seamlessly blending the careers of skilled Australian Rules Football player and drunken moron.

Why is the Bingle-Fevola spat front page news? I can understand Fevola getting a mention in the sports section; he is a genuinely talented footballer. I can also understand Bingle getting mentioned in the social pages; she does look very good in a bikini and she's dating Michael Clarke, a member of the Australian cricket team. But I couldn't understand why either of them appeared on the front page. Then I took a look at the other top stories. The earthquake in Chile was good for a day or two but compared with Haiti the death toll was derisory. I understand not even Angelina Jolie is bothering to put in an appearance. The Indian guy flogging shop soiled kidneys sounds promising but it turns out he has been in custody since 2008 so its hardly breaking news. The offensive in Afghanistan doesn't involve any Australian soldiers and we stopped being interested in Pakistan after we beat them at cricket. Michael Clarke was part of the team that beat the Pakistanis so Lara Bingle may claim a tenuous connection there.

My outrage at wasting newspaper headlines on the Bingle-Fevola idiocy would have more resonance if I wasn't deeply compromised myself. I have no advertisers to please and no readers to pamper and yet I just dedicated an entire blog entry to this pair of oxygen sinks.