this post was submitted on 25 Nov 2025
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She seems like she’s in good spirits (as does the guy in the back), but I could see that being either because they’re all in on the joke together or because she’s super excited to have the chance to flick off a politician she hates and has been joking with her friends about it. Like, I could see reacting like that if I ran into George W. Bush, but it’s more fitting within the actual context.
I think what tips it over into friendly is that she’s right there. Especially for a former politician (not accurate, but what I originally thought), someone getting that close and being antagonistic would probably be received as more threatening. Though I suspect there’s a lot more wiggle room for that in Australia than in the US, because of guns (which doesn’t even make sense, because the point of guns is hurting someone from a distance, but it might just be the view of any given person as potentially very dangerous) and the culture around politicians.
At least from my experience there just isn't the same reverence about the PM as there is about the presidency. We've had a PM who would catch the train for official events. A comedy group called the Chaser even did a skit trying to get a hug from the old PM John Howard which I don't think they could have pulled off in the US.
Yeah, I think there’s a big enough political divide that at this point, it would be hard to find an adult who would feel honored to meet with each of: Trump, Biden, Obama, and Bush, but the culture hasn’t really caught up yet. There’s probably also the fact that the POTUS is likely to have a lot more political enemies worldwide than the PM of Australia, but I agree that most of it is due to the same cultural differences in our perceptions of the word “cunt.”