Director’s cut … only in America … go bush or else

Director’s cut Who says Australian media can’t have an international impact? Following her Golden Globe victory for Nomadland, Chinese director Chloé Zhao — who has primarily worked in the US — attracted backlash and official censorship in her home country on account of interviews in which she appeared to criticise China. And part of that was down to our very own news.com.au.

Here’s how The New York Times put it:

… they zeroed in on another, more recent interview with an Australian website in which Ms. Zhao, who received much of her education in the United States and now lives there, was quoted as saying: ‘The US is now my country, ultimately.’

The Australian site later added a note saying that it had misquoted Ms. Zhao, and that she had actually said ‘not my country’. But the damage was done.

So there you go: News Corp can also ruin people’s lives by mistake.

Trying it on once more Prime Minister Scott Morrison announced yesterday that JobSeeker recipients might be forced to move to take jobs in regional Australia.

“If there is a job available, and you are able to do that job, then it is reasonable for taxpayers to expect that it will be taken up,” he said.

The argument is — as explored elsewhere in Crikey today — full of holes. But it’s also just a rehashing of something the government (particularly Deputy Prime Minister Michael McCormack) has been pushing for a while now.

McCormack, reading from the card he’s given with words people use on it, told job seekers to “turn off Netflix” and head to the regions in January and extolled the Instagrammable potential of regional work last September. In 2019 he also used it to brush off calls to increase Newstart.

The unemployed look set to replace immigrants as the go-to group to threaten to send to the bush every year or so when the government need a new announcement and a group to kick.

A republic if you can keep it Let’s briefly check in with our friends in the remnant Trumpist wings of US politics. Firstly, there’s this gem from Arizona representative Paul Gosar: a cartoon depicting a man asking a sex worker to “tell everyone America first is inevitable”.

What the image lacks in coherence, it makes up for in white nationalist terminology.

Elsewhere Donald Trump Jr, an inspiration to perpetual disappointments everywhere, took to CBS to trash Meghan Markle following her interview with Oprah. It really sums up the incoherence of modern conservatism: jumping to the defence of a foreign monarchy (your party is called the Republicans) in the name of owning a woke celebrity.

KRudd from the bullypit Finally to Kevin Rudd’s National Press Club address yesterday. You’re pushing an open door with Crikey if you want to talk about what a blight on public life News Corp is. But, if we’re on the subject, News Corp is far from the only one.

We’d argue public figures employing cheap diversions when asked legitimate questions — as Rudd did when asked about his office culture when prime minister — or the use of ominous references to defamation to shut down journalists questions aren’t great for the public discourse either.