WikiLeaks' Julian Assange has confirmed through tweet that he will be running for a seat in the Australian Senate in 2013.... Or, in this case, straight to a seat in the Australian Senate.
As confirmed by Julian Assange's own "mum," Christine Assange earlier today, the WikiLeaks editor-in-chief/founder will be running for Senate in Australia during this September's elections.
WikiLeaks' twitter feed is bursting at the seams with an eruption of posts about Assange's decision, including the possibly odd notion that Assange will be running on the "WikiLeaks party" ticket, something he had bafflingly alluded to in previous interviews about the possibility of his run.
Does this mean that at least our star-cross'd cousin continent to the south will be able to boast the world's first politician who tells too much of the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth? Prak (Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy reference; go with me here), eat your heart out!
Regardless of the opinion of some about whether WikiLeaks has created more harm than good, and the non-too-reassuring fact that Julian Assange far-too-closely resembles creepy actor Julian Sands, Christine Assange went on in the report by National Times to say that she feels her son will be "awesome" in the Senate.
Originally from Queensland where he spent his (mis?)guided youth as a hacker, Assange has since 2010 bounced around under the auspices of a kind of Salman Rushdie-esque fatweh (though, more legal and less fatal) resulting from threats regarding cries of treason/privacy violation/et al and, more substantially, a Swedish sexual assault case investigation that led the contentious figure to take political sanctuary at the Ecuadorian embassy in London, with the British government in rapt anticipation of extraditing him to Sweden.
Rumors abounded as recently as this month about whether or not Assange has been arrested, though he's meanwhile been engaged in his own (Russian airwaves) radio show, and now, will be running for Australian Senate.
Not since Larry Flynt has one man been able to make such a fool out of (numerous) world governments, the media, the entertainment industry (more on that in a sec), and - of course (save your comments) - all of us.
So, it's of no surprise that there are already (at least) two films coming out about the man who seemingly can do anything and be just about anyone... as long as we're willing to believe him. Assange has already referred to Academy Award-winning director Bill Condon's (Dreamgirls, Kinsey) The Fifth Estate as "a mass propaganda attack against WikiLeaks," and prolific/Academy Award-winning documentarian Alex Gibney's (Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room) latest exposé, We Steal Secrets: The Story of WikiLeaks, just premiered at this year's Sundance Film Festival.
It's therefore of no concern to this writer that Assange is intending on taking on the political realm in a far more direct way, as he clearly already possesses at least one all-too-important requisite for the job: the capacity for celebutante controversy par excellence.
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