I gave you a little preview on Friday of the sort of thing one might expect to hear at the ‘We Need to Talk about America’ session at the Sydney Writers’ Festival. Well, Janet Albrechtsen was there. Hers is only one report, to be sure, but she makes the session sound as if it might have been a good one to miss: ‘five voices all nodding and shaking their heads to the same anti-American melody’; ’90 minutes of bashing America in general, and conservative America in particular’; ‘Americans are fat, inarticulate and ignorant. They’re demanding, imperious and spoiled’; ‘the enormous similarities between Iran and America’; and (as you might have guessed by this point) ‘smugness’.