Not on your Nelly Right-wing online outlet Real America’s Voice promises “real news and honest views”, which seems to largely consist of prolifically tweeting uncritical praise for the Trump administration. But a tipster pointed us to an incredible scoop from last week that puts Australian outlets like ours to shame: An Australian was raided by armed police over a tweet criticising a former US president’s conduct? And absolutely no interest from the local media? Googling the victim in question, we found nothing on this horrific act of government overreach. However, we did find quite a lot of other news mentions of Nelly Yoa. That name sound familiar? There was the coverage of his time as a “South Sudanese community leader”. And those new stories about the time Usain Bolt raced across town to be present at the birth of his child. And, oh, the various top-level soccer clubs that were interested in his services. Then there were the phone calls he received from then prime minister Malcolm Turnbull. And that news footage of the entirely necessary security detail that accompanied him on a 2019 court date concerning that series of vigilante attacks he claimed to have been the victim of. We also found coverage of his “lengthy Wikipedia page“, apparently since deleted. But absolutely nothing about this recent episode made it into the Australian papers. Shameful. Blowing one’s own So, anyone looking to get elected has to know that their posters are 100% going to get defaced. Just as often, the vandalism is by people offended by the very concept of politicians; the act of defacement usually involves adding blackened teeth, stink lines or, well, let’s call them Chaplin moustaches. Regardless, most defiling of this kind is opportunistic and requires nothing more than a magic marker. What has been done to the billboard for Clive Palmer’s Trumpet of Patriots party, featuring Palmer and a howling Tucker Carlson, clearly required rather more effort: Someone had to print out three life size figures that make some unfavourable anatomical suggestions about what’s causing those patriotic trumpets to sound (we think they may be in a Terry Gillam interlude from a Monty Python film, and if any tipsters could remind us which, we’d be very grateful) and then affix them to a roadside billboard without being detected. It must be hard not to take that kind of commitment personally. Shipton Sure There are little doorways into history all around us. Alistair Cooke, who was yards away from the assassination of Robert Kennedy and lived long enough to report on 9/11, once took a train ride with Bertrand Russell, whose aunt danced with Napoleon. David Mason played flugelhorn on The Beatles’ “Penny Lane” and knew the composer Ralph Vaughan Williams, having played at the premier of Williams’ last completed work roughly a decade earlier. Williams, in turn, had childhood memories of his own great uncle, Charles Darwin. This was what came to our mind in the bunker when a tipster told us they’d just bought a dining table on Facebook Marketplace (let me finish) off of John Shipton. First, there’s the lovely clash of the mundane with meeting the historic in someone buying old furniture from Julian Assange’s dad. Second, imagine if you didn’t follow politics or media news particularly closely, and this car showed up to sell you a table: We absolutely love the detail of the “DONE” sticker added to each side of the van, like a sold house. Have something to say about this article? Write to us at letters@crikey.com.au. Please include your full name to be considered for publication in Crikey’s Your Say. We reserve the right to edit for length and clarity.