Tim Blair

Timbo, I think it is reasonable to think he wanted his equipment back.

As to the other allegation can I merely suggest you research the word with a bit more detail and you may find out what he was in fact alleging about Ms A.

You got an alternative definition of "ho"?

Theres nothing here we can use. He didn't know what skankey ho meant - just that it was an insult. Im sure he meant to insult a plagerer.

Now for important matters. A question has been burning in my mind since I saw the last episode of smallville.

Did young Clark Kent read comic books?

This is all nonsense.

The real question is, what ever happened to Chris Lunn and Paul Moloney? Does Paul still wear those coke bottle glasses and did Chris ever ditch his braces or were his teeth requiring them on a permanent basis?

Tim, help me out here!

Being leader of the ALP is punishment enough, isn't it?

None of those comments by Mark Latham matter - they were said when he was a backbencher and now that he is opposition leader that makes everything different.

So they are "non-core" comments?

Come on, Tim, I'm a great fan of yours, but this is really a cheap shot, unworthy of you. Have you ever heard of playing the ball and not the man? - Oh, sorry, forgot you were a Collingwood supporter!
If you disagree with his suggestion (actually, I think it has merit), then attack it - don't bring up irrelevant crap from the past to attack the man himself.

Timbo, I am not going to do your work for you but my memory tells me there is 4 or 5 meanings of the word.
If people did some homework on Him they would know he is no rap 'music' fan. Even the interview you show doesn't back up your allegation.

Moreover the 'journalist' who wrote about this supposedly has foreign affairs expertise thus one should have expected him to know at least one of those meanings.

If one is to make such an allegation do some work and even rimng him or his office up and confirm it. The impression of this allegation thus far is lazy journalism compounding on lazy journalism.
Very Philip Adams one might say of course I couldn't possibly comment.

Surely the point here is the absurdity and the irony of a knockabout politician like Latham suggesting proscriptive judicial powers to control human behaviour. That's all.

I'm a little surprised at Tim's knowledge of Judge Judy. I'd have thought it was a strictly Americana thing-- that Australians would be blissfully unaware of this sort of pap. In fact, I've seen lots of references on timblair.spleenville.com and similarly far-flung (to me, an American) sites to Americana that surprise me in their awareness of American popular culture.

So what's the deal here? Am I being stupid? Is American pop culture really that pernicious? Is America really all that important? It might be, and I mean that seriously; we are, after all, 300 million people, similar in size to all of Western Europe (I get SO SICK AND TIRED of hearing how, say, Denmark, a country with about the population of my back yard, doesn't like Bush). But what's a reasonable assessment of America's standing? We conservatives over here are a little surprised when outsiders notice us so much, but maybe that's silly, because we're pretty big and powerful, eh? What's the dilly yo?

Bring 'em on, Homer. Give me the "four or five" other definitions of "ho" -- in a context where they are preceded by "skanky".

I don't buy that Latham had no idea what it meant. Besides which, if he used the term in ignorance, he's an idiot.