Culture

Tony Abbott Has Made Humiliating International Headlines After Eating That Goddamn Onion

This is how the world sees us now.

by Meg Watson  14 March 2015

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Australia’s never had the best reputation. We wilfully live in the middle of nowhere on an island full of animals that are trying to kill of us. A large majority of our ancestors were convicts and we have a truly horrific track record with our Indigenous population.

Also, as far as the rest of the world is concerned, we’ve recently graduated from kicking people in the arse with a giant boot to straight up torturing them.

simpsons

Simpler times.

Now, due to the legitimately mystifying actions of our Prime Minister yesterday, we are a nation of deranged mutants who guzzle raw onions like they’re goddamn apples.

Does this custom have great cultural significance for us? Are onions a symbol of power in Australian society? Do we organise our festivities with feasts of raw onions arranged one atop another like a gag-inducing croquembouche?

The world has literally no fucking idea, all because Tony Abbott went and did this:

In the past 24 hours, Abbott’s fateful trip to a Tasmanian farm has been reported by most major news outlets in Australia; this morning it was positioned as the top story on both The Age and Sydney Morning Herald websites. But it’s also travelled elsewhere.

News of the Australian leader inexplicably munching an onion has been reported by the UK’s version of The Huffington Post, a sister site to The Independent, The Global Post, India’s imprint of Business Insider, TVNZ, New Statesman and The Washington Post. It was also jumped on by some Irish publications, which is unsurprising considering he basically called them all drunken leprechauns just a few hours earlier.

“He doesn’t appear to have been forced to, or even asked to [do it],” wrote the reasonably perplexed folks at The Independent.

“Good government sometimes means risking bad breath,” wrote the New Zealanders, making knowing jibes at Abbott’s ill-fated attempt at a fresh start.

“Credit to him, he didn’t even flinch,” wrote The Huffington Post. “[This secures] his place as the hardest world leader. Possibly.”

New Statesman introduced the guy as “International laughing stock Tony Abbott, prime minister of Australia”, listed half a dozen of worst gaffes, and then basically presented the video without comment.

But worst of all, The Washington Post — one of the most well-read and respected journalistic titles in the US — felt the need to clarify things for their readers who perhaps had never travelled to this great southern land.

“Chomping into a raw onion as if it were an apple is an unusual thing to do,” they helpfully explained, forcing every Australian living abroad into temporary hiding.

With some people even tweeting the story to John Oliver in the hopes he’ll do another sketch on Last Week Tonight, it may be a while until this one blows over. All we can really hope is that the PM’s next public humiliation will be something slightly less ridiculous.