John Howard hates the Worm. Ooh, he hates it. With a desperate, cable-tugging vengeance. The despicable little critter throws his shoulder into a ticking frenzy of tickerdom, chews his dentures to a pulp, and straight-ahead screws his day for good. Why? Because it shows that his opponent, that faceless apparatchik from Rudd-istan, is more popular than he is. When John isn’t being loved, he gets livid.
But there’s an even deeper reason why John Howard hates the Worm. It shows that he no longer controls the political debate. At this point, John ascends to the vitriolic. It doesn’t take a Freud to see that John detests being out of control for even a second. That little shoulder of his hides such a tantrum potential as would gobsmack Rumpelstiltskin. I pity his poor parents, who no doubt copped the brunt of a tirade of No! No! No! ever since that first surgical arse-slap of his brand-new life.
Now get your bathysphere out, we’re going deep-diving. If we peel back the layers of the pungent onion known as Howard, we can see an even more general reason why he hates the Worm. This one is going to sting, because we’ll be removing the skin of bullshit from the carcass of politics with the flint axe of cold hard reason. This is the dark heart into which Howard fears to peer. So let’s watch on his behalf for a while.
There’s the Worm, all abstract in the dark. The Worm turns; it twists, it dives, it floats to the top. It responds, and it voices an opinion. It represents the shifting thoughts of a collective of viewers armed with a simple piece of input technology: technology that’s about as complex as the paddle controller on the old-skool Atari consoles that you used to play Pong with – if you’re my age, that is.
All in all, it’s a pretty simple device. It’s cheap and easy to make one. You and your mates can use it to collectively control the Worm, all the while watching the pirated Sky feed of the debate over at Ray Martin’s bachelor pad. It’s this simple device that makes John Howard hate the worm more than anything else.
So what is the deep fear in this gizmo for John? It’s this device, not the Worm itself, that gets Howard most heated up. Surely no? But it’s just a paddle! You turn it one way, it shows approval; turn it the other way, and you show disapproval. How can the device be more horrific than the Worm itself? After all, if they like you then it’s a positive tool, isn’t it?
Easy. Just imagine one of these paddles in every home in Australia. Hooked up to the Sky Live feed from Parliament, both House of Representatives and the Senate. Every. Single. Sitting. Day. And we won’t stop there. To every doorstop interview outside the House entrance. To every 7.30 Report. To every Ministerial appearance on the tube. To every Press Conference. To John in general, even when he’s off-screen.
Yes, you got it. We have the technology to run the Worm over the whole damn shebang. Now, think about John Howard with the Worm tracking his every speech in the House. What could be worse? Now there’s an idea that EA Games could make a stackload of cash off. Better keep this idea under wraps – else John shakes himself to pieces, Rumpelstiltskin-style, with his stamping foot stuck firmly through the floor.
