How sweet it is..... off struggle street

Struggle Street.
It's an evocative battle cry, isn't it? For, and on behalf, of those doing it tough.
And perfect for the age. A free kick for those who understand the politics of the times.
Think of Bill Clinton, wisely defending protesters at a recent capitalist world forum. He knows people are hurting and that they want a voice. That greed is no longer good is a powerful message, and Clinton knows this even without an election to win. Only some post-White House book sales, speaking engagements and the occasional Cuban cigar insertion.
Times are tough, and smart politicians know that people are smarting.
Especially if you don't work for National Textiles. If you're basically on the wage. Or the dole, for that matter.
So it's understandable that Struggle Street is also a favourite catch phrase for newspaper columnists wishing to empathise with the undertrodden, the great unwashed.
That rabid southern columnist, Piers Ackerman, from time to time makes a rallying cry to those on Struggle Street.
And in our own fair state, Queensland Newspapers columnist Terry Sweetman is not without the occasional rally to alms for those pounding the poverty payment.
Sweetman is one of the better scribes on the staff of the Brisbane mainstream monoploy of The Courier-Mail and its Sunday sister.
He has a clear way of transmitting thought; with the uncanny use of nouns, verbs and adjectives. He can be funny, serious, sentimental. He'g got a gift.
What's more, he dares poke fun at establishment figures, and one fears the day that something will tip him over the edge so he becomes Lawrie Kavanagh, writ young.
For the moment at least, unlike Kavanagh, his essays make sense. And more often than not pump for those less well off.
Sweetman writes sweet words, and we at The Bug like him. Especially if it's his shout.
So we feel compelled to take him gently to task over a recent Courier-Mail column (Friday, February 11) over the Aussie exchange rate and his pending OS holiday.
Hyperbole is a useful tool of any columnist, and Sweetman lamented in a piece entitled I need some real bang in my buck that the wobbly nature of the Aussie dollar meant that a planned two-week holiday in New York 'could now encompass a long weekend in downtown Wollongong or some other glitttering light of the south'.
"It only takes about two, maybe three, currency conversions for your holiday aspirations to slide from four star to one-and-a-half, just above Cockroach Country, and for your after-dark activities programme to revolve around hotel cable TV viewing," he complained a bit later.
Now the Aussie exchange rate may be worming this way and that, but does anyone seriously believe it's going to stop Sweetman from exploring the Big Apple if that's what his heart desires?
We at The Bug - and we suspect for that matter the great majority of working-class Australians – can only dream of Sweetman's salary.
Sure, we're as jealous as all hell, but we also grudgingly admit Sweetman can pump out quality columns three times a week. This takes rare talent and he deserves his weekly pay packet of Rupe-ees.
But to be even considering spending two weeks in New York suggests someone who may pass Struggle Street on the way home, but prefers keeping the windows up in the process.
So on behalf of those people on Struggle Street who will, by necessity, be holidaying at Wollongong (if they save up long enough), and on behalf of all those on Struggle Street who will only ever visit New York on Monday nights courtesy of Law and Order on Channel 10, we've got some travel advice of our own for when Sweetman next feels like lamenting about how the fragile dollar is causing 'palpitations of the purse' over some pending overseas soujourn.
Go and tell someone who cares.

- Don Gordon-Brown