Rudd can’t play chess, Matildas’ public holiday palaver and Trump’s uroboros moment

When setting up a chess board, you need to double check, mate Former prime minister Kevin Rudd’s official portrait was unveiled on Friday, and it was about as on-brand as one could hope. An open book on his desk and with him wearing an expression that says: “Oh, I’m sorry, I didn’t see you there. I was just having a big old think about the world.”

Rudd is surrounded by symbolic allusions to his time in office: the Indigenous totems in the background a nod to the Apology, references to his ability to speak Mandarin via Chinese vases, and conspicuous book covers written in what Rudd once beautifully called “this fucking language“. The prominent teacup is presumably to remind everyone of the time he won a celebrity competition to blend a new tea for Twinings — he beat Kerri-Anne Kennerley and Alan Jones — and it was genuinely good (and they still sell it). Hell, we’re amazed not to see a handball.

Then there’s the chessboard — interpreted as a reference to Rudd’s interest in geopolitics. If that’s the case… it may not give the impression of effortless mastery hoped for.

Jack Callil, Crikey’s opinion editor and certified nerd, was the first to notice the board looks off. See, the left side of the board, which Louie the cat is facing, appears to be where the black pieces started out. Yet the top left square, where the white queen stands, is a white square. But this is all wrong — as per chess.com, the board should be set up the opposite way. That square is A8, and it should be H8, which is a black square.

We’re more than ready for a 16-page explanation from Rudd’s office about how we’ve got this wrong.

Trump watch The Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act (RICO) has been in operation in the US since 1970. Its original aim was to prosecute the mafia and other forms of organised crime. It was in this capacity that it was used by then-US attorney Rudy Giuliani during the 1985-86 mafia commission trial on which he built his reputation. Giuliani is now one of 18 people charged alongside former president Trump under the RICO Act for attempting to overturn the 2020 presidential election result.

Trump’s presidency — where all the avarice and menace darkly implicit in America’s system was spat billowing into the atmosphere like exhaust fumes from an engine — is full of details like this, points where the snake coils back on itself and buries its fangs into its tail.

It’s also full of details that for all their menace are too weird to register as anything other than farce. Take Trevian Kutti, another of Trump’s co-defendants in this, the fourth indictment levelled against Trump this year. Once a publicist for artists Ye (Kanye West when he’s at home, or when he’s being fondly remembered via playlists that cut off at roughly 2016) and R-Kelly — which tells you a bit about which sides of history she’s comfortable with — Kutti is accused of, among other things, attempting to coerce Ruby Freeman, a 62-year-old temporary election worker in Georgia, “to engage in conduct constituting the felony offense”. 

Freeman and her daughter Shaye Moss were baselessly alleged to have engaged in election fraud during the 2020 vote-counting process for the state. The pair had been receiving death threats when Kutti arrived at Freeman’s house on January 4 2021 and offered to help. Kutti told Freeman she was there on behalf of a “high-profile individual” (she didn’t say who) and that if Freemen did not confess to having aided voter fraud she would be arrested with 48 hours. Freeman refused.

It goes even lower. Consider the case of David Shafer, Shawn Still and Cathleen Latham, who will go down as, per The Atlantic, “the marks who were willing to serve as fake electors”. They have been charged with “impersonating a public officer”, having “falsely held themselves as the duly elected and qualified presidential electors from the state of Georgia”. They sent fraudulent certificates to then-vice-president Mike Pence in the hope he would count those instead of the authentic votes. Pence did not.

Headline of the day Sure, we have a cost of living crisis. Sure, the need for support services is surging. Sure, housing is a problem and childcare services are out of reach for many. But it’s not all bad news. Via The Australian:

Back of the net! Prime Minister Anthony Albanese has said he would float the idea in today’s national cabinet meeting of a public holiday if the Matildas won the Women’s World Cup final  and then said he wouldn’t, leaving it up to the states to decide. Promising rhetoric preceding a slightly muddled and disappointing follow-through? Under a Labor government, you say? Doesn’t sound right. Anyway, for what it’s worth, NSW Premier Chris Minns is all for it while Victoria’s Daniel Andrews and South Australia’s Peter Malinauskas are non-committal, saying they don’t want to “jinx” things. Opposition Leader Peter Dutton and Nationals head David Littleproud have both shown their characteristic ear for the public mood by opposing it, and businesses have responded as they do every time they’re asked about public holidays.

None would question the great achievements of the Matildas in getting to the first World Cup semi-final in the history of Australia’s involvement in association football. But let’s face it, this is all a bit of an attempt to grasp Bob Hawke’s mantle — and imagine how ridiculous it would seem now if his 1983 declaration that no-one ought to be sacked for skipping work had been less unofficial. I mean, where does it end? A public holiday for the Melbourne Cup or the AFL grand final? Oh, right.

Turns out it’s not stupendously rare, although generally it happens in countries that don’t taste international sporting success with the same regularity as Australia. Trinidad and Tobago, Panama and Peru all declared public holidays when their teams first qualified for the World Cup. Grenada’s government gave the entire island the afternoon off to celebrate Kirani James’ Olympic gold in 2012. Bermuda has celebrated Flora Duffy Day on October 18 since her gold in 2020. And the Maldives’ national football team snagged two days off (a decade apart) for fans for their successes in the SAFF Cup in 2008 and 2018.