Julian Assange, donning a mullet won't make you an ordinary Australian bloke

[struggle4progress]

Assange's new video aimed at Australian voters seems to say: 'I may be a world away trying to evade capture by the military-industrial complex, but mate, I'm pretty much just like you'
Ben Pobjie
Monday 26 August 2013 22.35 EDT

I’m sure that many Australians, after seeing Julian Assange court voters by donning a wig and lip-syncing to a parody version of John Farnham’s You’re The Voice, had the same thought I did: “there is no god”. But it would be all too easy to see Assange’s spoof as evidence of the final cracking of a fragile mind; we need to place this horror in context ...

When Assange decided to run for the Senate, he must have known he would have to face many obstacles, such as having been accused of sexual assault in Sweden and being confined to the Ecuadorean embassy, on the other side of the world for the country in which he's seeking election. But this kind of detail doesn’t seem to worry our Julian at all. No, what seems to worry him is his perception in Australia's popular consciousness ...

And now Assange is proving just how much like everyone else he is, demonstrating that he enjoys a stupid wig and a terrible parody song as much as the next bloke. No longer do we need to see him as distant, remote, arrogant or creepy – he’s not Julian Assange, weird megalomaniac Internet guru, he’s just Julian Assange, ordinary Aussie and terrible comedian ...

Whether it will work is the question. There's still something a bit awkward about him trying his hand at the common touch, a bit like the Pope doing Gangnam Style – you might appreciate the effort, but you can’t help but doubt the authenticity ...

http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/aug/27/julian-assange-mullet-youre-the-voice

[marble falls]

1. Assange has always seemed a bit creepy to me. The video only reinforces the creepiness.

[Warren Stupidity]

2. Did the bannedfromkos mantle fall here?

[struggle4progress]

3. Mr Assange, currently hiding in the Ecuadorian embassy after having stiffed

a number of his supporters by jumping bail to avoid extradition to Sweden, where he would face prosecution on sexual allegations including rape, heads a new Australian political party that has just thrown its preferences to a bizarre collection of minor rightwing parties, including a white supremacist party and a "men's rights" party

The recent campaign video is informative, should you not have watched yet: a top female politician is called "freckle tits" and the Australian public are described as "cunts"

All of this, considered in context, strongly suggests a certain misogyny not only in Assange's personal behavior, but also in his political views and his sense of "humor"

Since contempt for one group of people, such as women, frequently also carries along contempt for other groups, perhaps the Wikileaks Party preferences thrown to a white supremacist party are not that surprising. And in the OP, we hear from someone who rather suspects Julian's contempt extends more broadly to Australian voters

[pscot]

4. Somone would have to suck out 40 % of his brain

through a straw to make him an ordinary Australian "bloke".