Dr. Z on Australians (and Rupert Murdoch)

Nice anecdote from Dr. Z's Mailbag:

How can I tell you this? I'm not the kind of person to nurse prejudices based on country, but I'll give it to you straight. For quite a while, the sound of the Australian dialect set my teeth on edge. You see at one time I worked for an Australian. His name was Rupert Murdoch. The place was the NY Post. The office was filled with his Australian henchmen. Journalistic thugs, we called them.

Toward the end of my tour of duty, it looked like a strike was in the offing. So Murdoch imported a team of strike breakers from his San Antonio paper, again, mostly Australians. Presumably we were supposed to "teach them the ropes" so that they could scab it up while we were on strike. That's the way these people thought. More journalistic thugs. One morning I found one of them going through my mailbox.

"What the hell are you doing!"

"Oh, right, mate."

"I'll right mate you!" I hollered and went for his throat. They pulled us apart.