Cools! was here...
Aussie blokes 'turning into metrosexual knobs' Australia's long-celebrated "blokes" are turning into "metrosexual knobs", warns a former opposition leader.Mark Latham says the nation's males are suffering an identity crisis thanks to leftwing feminists and neo-conservatives.Australia has prided itself on the image of its unreconstructed male as a no-nonsense, beer-guzzling, crocodile-wrestling kind of a man.But Mr Latham says that's all changed - and he's not happy.Writing in his new book, the former Labour leader says: "One of the saddest things I have seen in my lifetime has been the decline in Australian male culture."Australian mates and good blokes have been replaced by nervous wrecks, metrosexual knobs and tossbags."He says Aussie man's decline has been accompanied by an erosion of the Aussie language."Instead of calling a spade a spade, our national conversation is now dominated by weasel words and the pretence of politeness," he said."Few people have anything meaningful to say for fear of offending the conservative status quo."He laments the Australian language's loss of the "larrikin" - a word used to describe a fun-loving trouble-maker who bucks authority and conventions.Mr Latham's use of the Australian language, and his own "larrikin" behaviour has got him into trouble in the past.He is seen as the most verbally abusive politician to ever speak in Parliament and broke a Sydney taxi driver's arm in a beer-fuelled fare dispute in 2001.He once described US President George Bush as "the most incompetent and dangerous president in living memory".
