RAMBLER

Just a rambling thought as a result of watching too much American TV on the in house channels up here. Hey there's 15 of em, all free, you have to look. Yes most of it, sorry nearly all of it is crap, but occasionally some good stuff creeps in. Lately though I've noticed something that seems to happen a lot, especially on the chat type shows like Leno and Letterman and it's this. Whenever an Australian comes on the show or they speak to an Australian in the crowd the hosts are overcome with an urge to suddenly speak in an Aussie accent. Or at least what they perceive to be an Aussie accent, mostly they end up sounding English or South African.

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So why? Why do they get this urge, I've travelled through many different countries and never once in say Italy did I feel it would be funny or a good thing to speak to an Italian person in a crappy Italian accent. Never once in the USA did I respond to a New Yorker with my Noo Yoik accent. Personally I think my various American accents are pretty damn good, in reality they're probably about as good as say the Jay Leno Aussie accent that I was subjected to last night. I think I would have been thumped on the end of my face if I had tried it in New York and totally ostracised if I'd tried it on in Italy.

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Yet we Orzzzies are subjected to it frequently, maybe they think we're a cute side show, maybe it's genuine affection, maybe it's just a new thing for them. I remember years ago reading that the average American knew next to nothing about Australia apart from the fact that Kangaroos bounced down our cities main streets (I'm not making this up) nor where it actually was on the globe. In fact I had an experience in Washington DC once when a guy asked where we were from and when we replied Australia he responded "where?" we said "you know Sydney where they just had the Olympics". He goes "Oh yeah Sydney, that's up near Canada right?"

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Hmmmm well that's it for my rambling thought of the day.