where champagne bottles dare

It was a lazy dog dangling kind of day today, so I broke the no-TV-during-the-day rule I often hold myself to and watched the tennis. Unfortunately, though, while the ballwork was great, I was to be punished for this indulgence.

At the end of the broadcast I was not fast enough off the mark to change the channel and avoid witnessing the opening headlines of the commercial news. One of said headlines, to paraphrase, was something along the lines of "Candidate for the opposition leadership challenge, Julia Gillard, makes a slip that could put her out of the contest."

It turns out that - hold on to your hats - Gillard said... "shit." I know, I know. Break out the state of emergency plans and sound the sirens.

Gillard was holding a press event at the time, seemingly in her backyard, and casually uttered the profanity after making some sort of error while blackening the carcasses on the barbecue.

For those not familiar with Australian culture, know that 99.95% of Australians would have done the same in that situation, and 80% of those would have said something more along the lines of "Goddam, you fucking maggot sausage, stay on the fucking grill!"

But to this particular network, the incident was worthy of an attempt at a character assassination via the beat-up of beat-ups. Obviously they didn't see the irony in them airing the word and thus somewhat deflating their own beat-up. If it's ok to air it, what, exactly, is, your, point?

Slow news day on a Right-friendly network. Recipe for disaster.