Nobody Told Barnaby Joyce That He Lost His Job, So He Found Out Watching Sky News
A tragic short story in seven words.
It’s quite difficult to feel sorry for a man like Barnaby Joyce.
It’s not just that the one-time Deputy Prime Minister and Leader of the Nationals has done so many unpleasant things — from threatening to euthanise a pair of dogs, to flaunting his love of humankind-destroying coal, to, y’know, the whole affair thing. It’s that he’s been so downright unrepentant about it all.
Indeed, Joyce is the kind of person who would flat out deny eating the last Tim Tam and then putting the empty packet back in the cupboard, even if you literally saw him do it. In fact, he’s the kinda guy who, when cornered, would start telling you he’s never eaten a Tim Tam in his entire life, and that actually, all things considered, you need to sort out your own attitude and leave him alone.
Irony of Barnaby Joyce criticising people's 'religious' opposition to coal. His zealous worship of coal is well known & ridiculed #insiders pic.twitter.com/R5t9ELDgZP
— Jessica Walton ?♀️ (@JessHealyWalton) June 17, 2017
But even the most unrepretant and unpleasant politician is, at the end of the day, a human being, and although we might like to pretend that they’re a weird alien race unto themselves, we must accept that even craven conservatives like Barnaby Joyce have distinctly mortal moments of sadness, regret, loss and joy.
Indeed, that very point was proved last night, during televised commentary concerning Scott Morrison’s cabinet reshuffle. David Speers, the Political Editor of Sky News, announced that Joyce had been “left out in the cold” — that not only was he to be offered no ministry position, but that there was no news that he would retain his title of drought envoy.
The short clip of the conversation was uploaded to Twitter, where it received a seven word reply from Joyce himself, dripping with all the tragedy and pathos of an Ernest Hemingway short story:
Just found out from you guys then
— Barnaby Joyce (@Barnaby_Joyce) May 26, 2019
Listen, there’s lots of rough ways to find out you’ve lost a job, but tuning into the telly for a late night relax and seeing your stale prospects discussed by a political commentator whose tone implies he’d prefer to be talking about literally anything else has gotta be one of the worst.