Oprah’s Version Of Australia Is Our Version Of Hell.

The most gag-worthy news story I’ve read all day – and I went through the wedding photos of the Toowoomban dude who married his Labrador, if that helps put things in perspective – has to be the piece in The Australian about Oprah’s recent “crash course” in all things related to the land down under.

Oprah Winfrey has already given Americans an insight into our culture. According to Oprah’s Aussie Countdown, which screened to 10 million Americans last week, we Australians call men “blokes”, women “sheilas” and we like to meet up at “hip joints” called McCafes to sip on gourmet coffee.

Some of the one-million-strong Australian audience who saw this report on the Ten Network last week were a little surprised to hear of the importance of McCafes to the Australian lifestyle.

“While there are a lot of differences, there is one comforting similarity,” Oprah’s guest reporter, Ten personality Carrie Bickmore, said in her “crash course in the Australian way. While you have your diners, we have McCafes. Guys come for business meetings, girls come for a catch-up over coffee. It’s all just a little bit fancy.”

ARE. YOU. FUCKING. SERIOUS?

The blokes/sheilas malarkey I can kinda cope with, in a cheesy I’m-just-gonna-roll-my-eyes-and-accept-that-Americans-really-loved-Paul-Hogan-back-in-the-day kinda way. But the fact that Oprah – via Carrie Bickmore – is telling her viewers that there’s nothing we backwater fucking hicks like more than congregating at McDonalds and supping on McLattes while we act in ways that fit our gender (Men have business meetings! Women just like to talk to each other, probably about Cosmo’s latest article “Ten ways to blow him away in bed!”) is actually so gross and commercial and sad, I find it hard to believe that anyone involved is able to wander the streets without looking absolutely ashamed of themselves.

The Australian asked the Ten Network and McDonald’s about the curious reference and they confirmed McDonald’s was a “broadcast sponsor and had a global arrangement directly with Harpo Productions for the in-program McCafe activity that appeared in Carrie’s segment”. In other words, the segment was paid for and funded by McDonald’s.

UGH. I am perhaps naive, but even I am surprised to see the most influential woman in the world hawking a fast food conglomerate to a nation in the midst of an obesity epidemic.

And Bickmore… woman, what ARE you doing? How could you even film a segment like that with a straight face? At what price fame? Getting your face on Oprah is a big break, I admit, but is it really worth it when all you’re essentially doing is hosting an infomercial for Maccas? I am embarrassed for you.

The Australian sums it up beautifully in one sentence.

Tourism Australia will probably enlighten middle America about Australia as a tourist destination, but the world will see us not as we are but through the prism of the corporate dollar.

I don’t know why I’m so bothered by this story, but I am. Turns out I give a shit about how my country is represented overseas, and I don’t like it inextricably linked in the minds of middle America with junk food peddlers. Who knew?

MORE: When Oprah educates Yanks on our ‘hip’ McCafes, it’s the dollar talking