Mojo lost

In the paper today, Guy Blackman asserts that Brisbane band Powderfinger “famously described John Howard as Like a Dog on their 2000 album Odyssey Number 5.”

Mr Blackman clearly hasn’t paid attention to the song’s lyrics:

In all that he takes, in all that he shows
The higher the stakes, the lower the blows
And all the mistakes that he’s never known
Whatever it takes, he’ll be stealing the show

Now he nervously shakes as we rattle his stage
But he’s happy to be stuck back in his halcyon days
Now we’re trying hard to reconcile a history of shame
But he reinforced the barriers that keep it the same

If you treat me like a dog
And keep me locked in a cage
I’m not relaxed or comfortable
I’m aggravation and shame
But it’s a fine fine time for the people in the lucky land

If you treat me like a dog
And keep me locked in a cage
I’m not relaxed or comfortable
I’m aggravation and rage

While the song is quite patently ‘anti-Howard’, the chorus has the singer objecting in the first-person to being “treated like a dog”, particularly under the Howard Government’s regressive policies on Aboriginal reconciliation.

Get it right, Blackman dude, your street-cred is losing its mojo.