The Best Australian Humorous Writing by Andrew O'Keefe Read Free Book Online Page B

opposite numbers.
    Lynton Crosby and Mark Textor enter.
    PRESIDENT: Good morning, gentlemen or as Schopenhau …
    CROSBY: Cut the shit, you lefty arsewipe.
    TEXTOR (
through intercom
): Hey, grandma! Hold the calls! Right— let’s kill the rest of the Indians.
Scene three
    The Lodge.
    TOBY: Meshuggenah this, guys, meshuggenah.
    LEO: He did what?
    ADVISER 1: He said that he didn’t want people who threw their kids overboard in this country.
    SAM: But they weren’t throwing their kids overboard!
    ADVISER 2: Yes, well, I think you’ll just have to appreciate the validity of the differences of our political cultures, if you don’t mind.
    JOSH: You know, President Bartlet had just this problem with a group of Chinese Christian illegal immigrants in series three. He told the National Guard to stand down so they could escape from the detention camp, thus preserving freedom and diplomatic relations.
    What does your guy do?
    ADVISER 3: Locks ’em up till the kids start cutting themselves.
    SAM: Aren’t cultural differences wonderful.
    TOBY: What kind of shmo is this nebbish? Can we do anything with this shmendrick?
    SAM: What’s the matter?
    TOBY: Yiddish. I’m all out of Yiddish. This guy has de-yiddished me.
    This guy has de-yiddished me!
    LEO: Calm down, Toby.
    TOBY: Calm down?! It’s easy for you to say, calm down. You’re written without mannerisms!
    SAM: Could we get back to the matter at hand? This guy we’re working for has invaded the Northern Territory.
    JOSH: So?
    SAM: So, it’s the Northern Territory. Of this country.
    JOSH: Oh, I thought it was just one of those African countries we invent for shit to happen in from time to time, like the Republic of Mugunga or Equatorial Bong-Bong.
    SAM: No, apparently it’s a real place—like Montana, only the white people are even crazier.
    JOSH: I always wanted to invade Montana, you know. It would solve our problems in the third congressional district.
    SAM: Yeah, then we could move Jackson on the armed services committee.
    LEO: Which would free up a place on ways and means.
    ADVISER 1: Stop, stop!
    TOBY: What, what? For chrissake, what?
    ADVISER 2: You’re being too multi-layered.
    ADVISER 1: This is Australian television.
    ADVISER 3: You just gave out more backstory in four lines than the entire last series of
Stingers
.
    ADVISER 1: Listen, you’re not really giving us what we need. What’s the problem?
    JOSH: Yes, well, usually you see, we’re all arguing about some knotty detail of policy and President Bartlet kind of floats in and listens to what everyone has to say and then says something gnomish and lateral, with a few quotes usually starting from Thomas More and going via way of Aeschylus to the Ayurveda
Upanishads
about the great wheel of life in order to lay bare the radically transcendental and redemptionist base to American liberalism.
    ADVISER 2: Then what happens?
    SAM: Same every episode. We bomb the shit out of somewhere. Usually fictional—somewhere that’s been made up as the pretext for something we want to do.
    LEO: Like Kosovo.
    JOSH: So, can we get that? Huh, what can the PM give us by way of inspiration? Something from
Paradise Lost, Urne-Buriall
, maybe? A little burst of the
Lusiads
?
    ADVISER 3: Are you familiar with a thing called
Wisden
?
    SAM: So, no inspiring quotes then?
    ADVISER 2: We do have a bloke a bit like that—name of Bob Carr. Closest thing Australia’s had to a philosopher king for a long while.
    LEO: Right, so now he’s busy helping humanity?
    ADVISER 1: No, he got a job with the bank he’d previously hired to build toll roads.
    There is silence.
    TOBY: Right, so at least give us the minor character dying. At least!
    ADVISER 2: Of course. (
Into intercom
) Maria could you get Bill Heffernan over here?
    The PM enters in dressing gown carrying steaming coronation mug of tea.
    PM: Oh hello everybody sorry I’m late I’ve just been