Saturday, February 10, 2007

Howard is a Nut


This is a picture of Stephen Harper (Canadian Prime Minister) and John Howard (Australian Prime Minister) loving each other up. Howard went to Canada in 2006 to address parliment and my Member of Parliment in Canada, Denise Savoie, did not stick around. Below is an an article from the Sydney Morning Herald on January 25th, entitled "PM in Gaffe over elite Aussie's origins" that shows she was right and isn't paid enough to listen to him.

Prime Minister John Howard blundered when he wrongly assumed a high-achieving Asian Australian was born overseas.
Hosting a reception at his Canberra residence for Australian of the Year candidates, Mr Howard asked mathematician Professor Terence Tao about his origins.
"When did you come to Australia?" Mr Howard is heard to ask Prof Tao in television footage.
When his guest failed to catch the question, the prime minister said: "What part of the world were you born?"
"I was born in Adelaide," Prof Tao replied.
The 31-year-old South Australian teaches at the University of California in Los Angeles and last year won the world's most prestigious mathematics prize, the Fields Medal.
The son of Chinese parents who emigrated from Hong Kong, Prof Tao was a child prodigy who obtained his first university degree at age 16.

I think this sort of speaks for itself. On a side, yet related note, I was out with a friend of mine who is from Africa and this man walked over to us and asked where she was from. I asked him why he didn't ask me where I was from. Anyway, that particular conversation didn't really head anywhere pleasant. But you get the idea, white people = from here, non-white = far away lands (except for indigenous people but that's a story for another day).

But on a positive note Elton John did say "Up yours" to Howard over his anti-gay marriage views on the Seven Network. There could be difficult times ahead for the Howard/Harper love affair.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Well, if the PM was like that, then you can imagine how the people would be!

Yesterday I went to vic-marker and without even opening my mouth to say a word, the guy there said "soooooooo, where you're from?".. I replied -with a hidden laugh-: I'm from HERE!
He was shocked! loool.. I felt guilty for lying, but ignorant people give me headaches!

love ur blog girl.. pleaaaaaaaaaaaase.. pleasssssee keep blogging.. I know what's going around you and HELL YEAH you SHOULD blog it.. its really funny!