While the Australian media continues to obsess about the Liberal leadership – Rupert Murdoch’s latest comments have received predictable excitement – Murdoch’s broadsheet remembers the important details:
A young woman in red threatened to upstage the US President at a White House dinner when she arrived on the arm of John Howard’s youngest son, Richard.
Never has an Australian Prime Minister been so feted in the US. The state dinner on Thursday night was only the eighth since George W.Bush took office five years ago.
But it was Richard’s Texan girlfriend Kristen Slaughter, with impeccable Republican credentials, who attracted more than her fair share of attention for her year-long relationship with the 25-year-old Australian, a former debating champion.
Ms Slaughter, 24, has worked in the executive office of the President in the White House, and was described by one newspaper as one of the US’s “women on the move”. Perhaps the only glitch in her conservative CV was an earlier association with the left-leaning, pro-feminist group Emily’s List.
It’s not just the Australian that seems to have forgotten about inquisitive, news-gathering. Today’s Sydney Morning Herald features a massive page-one picture of boxer Anthony Mundine from last night’s fight. “Serious” papers have never seemed so incapable of holding power to account.