Yet each seems sillier than the last.
That’s odd. You would think we’d be getting more used to silly. Maybe we are and, to borrow a saying and twist it: “Don’t argue with Silly. It’ll drag you down to its level and beat you with experience.”
Kenny
So silly was 2017 that author and former journalist Mike Carlton, @MikeCarlton01, felt compelled to award a “Gold Kenny to a “Right Wing Fuckwit of the Week (RWFW).
The almost always unabashed recipient gets a delightful trophy named “The Kenny Award” in honour of The Australian’s Chris Kenny, due to his doggedly aspirational opinion columns.
As mirth crescendoed in November, Queensland’s favourite son, Bob Katter, destroyed journalistic composure around the globe with his celebrated interview opining on the result of Australia’s Marriage Equality vote.
Weeks later Bob cemented his brain-dump dominance in a #SSM parliamentary speech that roused the imperturbable Christopher Pyne to snap “Bobby that’s rubbish.”
Twang
If there’s a colloquialism or phrase that amplifies Australians’ nasal twang or lazy enunciation then it is immediately ours, whatever its origin (usually from England and passed down convict to convict).
Perhaps that such linguistic claim-staking by wannabe ockers is so prevalent is why Throsby entirely missed an online refrain mid-year when everyone was apparently obsessively “cracking open a cold one with the boys.” Or Throsby did notice and, as we say nowadays, no fucks were given.
We realised we were in for it in February.
POTARD
A newly minted POTUS and a recently reminted prime minister spoke by phone.
And Throsby uses the word “spoke” reservedly. We all know what happened. Malcolm Turnbull earned his most valuable nickname “Trumble” courtesy of the accidental White House spokesman Sean Spicer, while Donald Trump simply, well, lived down to expectations.
The only question never actually answered about the call: what was PM Trumble actually thinking by picking up the phone? That he was actually going to have an actual conversation with an actual President? Actually?
44-arsed
Towards the end of the year “multiculturalism” earned an extra dimension as the Australian constitution revealed parliamentarians to represent not only their electorates but indeed whatever country they still retained citizenship of. We learned that the insides of Capital Hill was crawling with foreigners. The high court is methodically turfing them out one by one and will be doing so well into 2018.
Really, Throsby is getting bored with 2017’s old news. The coal-brandishing anti-renewables hysteria, sky-high gas prices, an energy market in turmoil and played like a fiddle by the incumbents, fabricated indignations that spread around the world on cue like a football crowd’s wave, and so inexhaustibly on.