However this line is real and well sourced.

LBJ: Well jus’ tell ‘em he fucks pigs.
Aide: But Senator we can’t go around saying your oppenent does that!
LBJ: Why yes son, we can’t say that. Instead we’re gonna make that SOB try to deny it.

There is also the famous Churchill response to a heckler.

Woman in crowd: Prime Minister if you were my husband, I’d poison your tea.

Churchill: Lady Astor, if I were Lord Astor, I’d drink it.

Sounds like a bit of a gut reaction there Jim.

Though I’m all for pollies putting themselves in unscripted and uncontrolled environments.

Best badinage in such scenario I ever personally heard and saw was when John Hewson in the 1993 election campaign held a public rally in Melbourne. And kudos to him for that.

However one of his staffers thought it would be a cool move to have a plant in crowd chuck a dorothy dixer of an egg at him so he could easily pluck it out of the air then shout “I get the catch of the day”. Oh those brutish Labor barrackers and our quick witted next PM, etc, etc.

It all went according to plan and Hewson triumphantly caught and held up the egg and delivered his line “catch of the day!”- only to have a very loud and distinctly Australian voice say out of the crowd, “Mate, that’s a duck’s egg.”

General outbreaks of mirth and Hewson left on stage looking for a staffer to quickly take away the egg in front of his face.

And I also once saw Brumby on the stump (pretty literally, he was actually standing on an old wooden cable spool) in regional Victoria, speechifying away when someone shouted out “what about my water?”. Brumby without missing a beat said “Can you hold it until after I’ve finished?”

Indeed, like ALL that evidence that taxing the crap out of alcopops kills a teenage girl’s desire to get legless on bourbon straight from the bottle instead! :)

‘Ere Proim Minster, whatcha gunna do ’bout ‘housing?

To which Menzies replied:

Well madam, the first thing I;m going to do is put an aitch before it

If I was in that audience as the young smartarse that I am now (except older), I would have heckled back with “don’t you mean policy-based evidence making”.

I think the one lesson we can all draw from this exercise, regardless of partisan viewpoints, is that when it comes to grilling our pollies in real time, unpaid, untrained teenagers do just as a good, if not better, job than the MSM commentariat.

James: every time I read some blogger banging on about “talking points,” I reach for my remote and my revolver – as someone (possibly Gummo Trotsky? Perhaps Eva Braun? Definitely not Mark Bahnisch)once said.

I think you mean – ‘someone offered a point of view that differs significantly from my own.’

The impression of respect was enhanced by the fact that Jones allowed several of the questioners to ask follow-up questions if they were dissatisfied by the first answer. To the relief of all, this privilege wasnt extended to a rabid-looking climate denialist, who looked for all the world like a junior Tony Abbott.

In other words they showed a lot of respect to people who already agreed with Rudd and the ABC’s worldview.

More news at 11.

a representative cross-section of 15-25 year olds, in terms of political background.

Ah, there’s the rub, James. Representative of ideology, certainly, but the fact is a large majority of 15-25 are greens/labor voters.

Mind you, I don’t give a toss of Abetz-like sympathiser routing, so I could care less. Rudd was nerdy, and a bit on the boring side I think. But I also think political commentators in general are way too hard on boring. For an incumbent, especially, it’s a welcome quality for most the electorate I wager. He wasn’t playing to those kids, he was playing to the boomers watching.

Tony Abbott’s session will be comedy gold. It will be the televisual experience of sitting on one of those spa-intakes from the seventies that suck your entrails out your butt.