{"id":59,"date":"2003-09-30T16:56:23","date_gmt":"2003-09-30T16:56:23","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.dimsumdolly.com\/?p=59"},"modified":"2003-09-30T16:56:23","modified_gmt":"2003-09-30T16:56:23","slug":"the_51st_state","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.dimsumdolly.net\/?p=59","title":{"rendered":"The 51st State"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Australia might as well be the 51st state of America judging by the rate it is copying what America does. And we won&#8217;t even talk about the Iraq war which John Howard &#038; Tony Blair blindly followed America into.<br \/>\nI just read in the Sydney Morning Herald that there&#8217;s going to be an Australian version of &#8220;queer Eye for the Straight Guy&#8221;. The original American version is now showing on TV to test the waters with audiences here. I just think it&#8217;s such a copycat.<br \/>\nThere&#8217;s also &#8220;Australian Idol&#8221; which is currently on, which is based on the exact format of &#8220;American Idol&#8221;. There are three judges, two male and one female. Ian Dickson aka &#8220;Dicko&#8221; is the equivalent of Simon Cowell with his biting and scathing comments. But I love those caustic comments &#8211; that&#8217;s half of the entertainment of the programme. He was so mean that he got called a dickhead by some of the very deluded auditionees (I think that deserved it really!). There&#8217;s even a contest to vote on Dicko&#8217;s most memorable comment. He once told an auditionee that her voice&#8217;s a weapon of mass destruction. Haha.<br \/>\nI rather enjoy watching &#8220;Australian Idol&#8221; &#8216;cos there&#8217;s something very spine-tingling when you listen to a good singer giving a heartfelt rendition of a song. At this point in time, it&#8217;s down to the final 8 contestants. They all sing very well, and I always enjoy listening to good singing. The human voice is one of the best musical instruments.<br \/>\nAnyhow, it&#8217;s like a pseudo-America with all these Australian versions of American shows.  But I believe that Australia has plenty of creative talent of its own and does not need to rely on American show formats to draw audiences.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Australia might as well be the 51st state of America judging by the rate it is copying what America does. And we won&#8217;t even talk about the Iraq war which John Howard &#038; Tony Blair blindly followed America into. I &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/www.dimsumdolly.net\/?p=59\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-59","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-media"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.dimsumdolly.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/59","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.dimsumdolly.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.dimsumdolly.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.dimsumdolly.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.dimsumdolly.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=59"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.dimsumdolly.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/59\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.dimsumdolly.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=59"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.dimsumdolly.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=59"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.dimsumdolly.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=59"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}