[SMH] http://www.smh.com.au/news/0008/07/features/features17.html (pics from Miss Reconciliation 2000) I'm the biggest, baddest man around, I got no harmony, got no sound. Got no future, what's the past, I close my eyes, I'm the last. Bang on. Bang on. (From I'm Sorry, by Little Johnny) Guest of honour at the Miss Reconciliation Aboriginal drag night this weekend in Newtown was Little Johnny who has appeared with a comb-over and a '70s suit a few sizes too big to take the international media pressure off the Prime Minister in the busy Olympic weeks ahead. "There are a lot of things John Howard won't have time to deal with," says a considerate Simon Hunt. "Now the media will have a real choice." And they'll have Little Johnny's debut single and video clip released last night. I'm Sorry is the work of thousands of hours reassembling scraps and syllables of John Howard's utterances into a harsh nursery rhyme that ends with an apology "to every member of the stolen generation". Little Johnny rises on the ruins of Hunt's spectacular Pauline Pantsdown, the snarling blonde who proved political satire isn't dead in Australia. "His role is to fill in the missing bits of John Howard. He's a bit of a lady's man. He believes in social cohesion. He does break dancing and he apologises." Hunt's formula is: "John Howard plus Little Johnny equals a leader." Pantsdown put "I don't like it" into the political language and his burlesque of the woman did real harm to Pauline Hanson - but can he hurt John Howard? "It remains to be seen. It's a more difficult task. He is a lot more popular. Pauline Hanson was already on the way down." Pantsdown and the prime minister met only once - an awkward handshake at the 1998 AFL Grand Final Breakfast - but it was that eyes-on scrutiny of Howard that first gave Hunt the idea of this cartoon version of the man. Not until he was spurred on in April this year by the Prime Minister's denial of the term "stolen generation" did Hunt lock himself away in the audio lab turning 65 minutes of Howard's voice into 9,000 sound bites - "from a consonant to a sentence" - and building them back up into the certain hit single, I'm Sorry. He worked 9pm to 4am for three months. "You have to be very angry about something to spend this time turning it into comedy." Useful for his purposes were a couple of Howard's slips. A couple of times he actually said "stolen generation" and his partial climbdown after the April debacle was useful because the man very rarely says "sorry" but here he gave a good clear sample when he reassuring "anybody in the Australian community who was in any way offended by that document, I am sorry." On the other hand, Hunt had 26 versions of "bad" to work with. Some words were constructed painstakingly sound by sound. "Catwalk" is born out of "Catherine" and "war" and a selection from Hunt's bank of Howard consonants. But other very un-Howard words were there in full waiting for Hunt to misuse. "Rapture" comes from the Prime Minister's response to a journalist wondering if he thought he would be remembered with love and affection? "I don't delude myself," said Howard, "with notions of love and rapture." Hunt plans confrontations between Little Johnny and the Prime Minister just as there were between Pantsdown and Hanson. "That's part of the game.'' Getting the look of the man involved collecting hundreds of images - especially cartoons. Hunt has photographs of John Howard at every age and from every angle, including above. Little Johnny is not so much the Howard of today as the man of 10 years ago: more comb-over, slightly sharp suits. Hunt found just the one he needed, an Anthony Squires double breaster from St Vincent de Paul. He's eating more and cultivating his eyebrows. "I'm letting them go back to the natural blonde for the first time in 20 years." Does it mean we'll never see Pantsdown again? "Pauline might appear at some stage to promote Little Johnny's efforts because she needs a job. And because she needs the money. You'll only ever see Pauline now with a bucket in her hand.'' ------------------------------------- [ABC] Hanson sartirist releases I'm sorry single The artist formerly known as Pauline Pantsdown has taken on the Prime Minister's refusal to apologise to the Stolen Generation. The artist's new incarnation, Little Johnny, has released a single called I'm Sorry. The track features Mr Howard's words and phrases altered and laid to a beat, including those that many want him to say but will not, "I offer my apologies to every member of the stolen generations". Little Johnny wants the PM to know the pressure is still on. "The issue of the apology and the mandatory sentencing is something that will stick to John Howard for quite sometime," Little Johnny said. He says he is not worried about possible legal action. "I'd hope that in the great Australian tradition of a 'fair go' and being able to laugh about things that we might even quite enjoy it and have a bit of a dance around and the loungeroom with Janette," he said. ------------------------------------------------------ RecOzNet2 has a page @ http://www.green.net.au/recoznet2 and is archived at http://www.mail-archive.com/ To unsubscribe from this list, mail [EMAIL PROTECTED], and in the body of the message, include the words: unsubscribe announce or click here mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]?Body=unsubscribe%20announce This posting is provided to the individual members of this group without permission from the copyright owner for purposes of criticism, comment, scholarship and research under the "fair use" provisions of the Federal copyright laws and it may not be distributed further without permission of the copyright owner, except for "fair use." RecOzNet2 is archived for members @ http://www.mail-archive.com/recoznet2%40paradigm4.com.au/
