Paul Thomas: Putin should cut and run like Bobbitt and Burgess

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Opinion

She's back! Lorena Bobbitt, the woman who in 1993 went to considerable lengths to achieve her 15 minutes of fame (she cut off her husband's penis) was back in the spotlight this week.

Appearing on a US talk show, Ms Bobbitt delivered one of the quotes of the year - "I found myself in the street with a penis in one hand and a knife in the other" - and a chilling warning: "I'm here to tell you and to tell everyone what happens when a woman gets abused by a man."

I'm not so sure it will catch on. Despite her efforts to turn the incident into a call to arms for abused women and a cautionary tale for abusive men, its real significance is what it tells us about celebrity culture: that fame and notoriety are two sides of the same coin; if you have a distinctive name and do something sufficiently weird or grotesque, you'll become a celebrity of sorts.

As her ex-husband John Wayne Bobbitt put it in a recent interview: "Being the most famous man to have his penis chopped off does have its advantages." (After his penis was reattached - I can't shed any light on how that works but it's a comfort to know that it does - JWB starred in porn movies and slept with dozens of curious women.)

In hindsight, two aspects of the Bobbitt affair stand out. One is the absence of consequences, apart from the couple's ersatz celebrity. Despite admitting that she mutilated her husband, Lorena was acquitted of malicious wounding on the basis of temporary insanity. And even though his behaviour and treatment of her drove his wife mad, John Wayne was acquitted of abuse charges.

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The other is that, despite having remarried and wanting nothing to do with her abusive ex, Lorena continues to go by the name Bobbitt. As they say in marketing: stick to your brand.

With John Wayne Bobbitt back in the news and the Prime Minister offending female parliamentarians, someone had to stand up for the softer, gentler 21st century male.

Step forward code-hopping footy star Sam Burgess, who revealed the main reason he walked out on English rugby and returned to the South Sydney Rabbitohs was he missed his mum.

"Who doesn't miss their mum?" he asked on his return to Australia. (No-one provided the obvious answer: "Sure, but that doesn't mean we have to live around the corner from her.")

It was no surprise his defection was swiftly followed by England coach Stuart Lancaster's resignation. Burgess' abrupt departure and admission that his heart was never in rugby union only served to emphasise the folly of fast-tracking him into the England team.

Like Lorena Bobbitt, who's inordinately proud of something that's nothing to be proud of, Burgess is "proud of what I achieved in rugby union", even though he didn't achieve anything beyond causing Lancaster to take leave of his senses.

To be fair though, he has given English rugby a respite from backstabbing and mutual recrimination and a rallying cry around which it can unite: good bloody riddance.

It hasn't taken long for Vladimir Putin's Syrian gambit to lose its lustre.

Russia's military intervention in the Syrian civil war was widely hailed as a strategic masterstroke that sidelined America, changed the dynamics in the Middle East and made United States President Barack Obama look ineffectual.

After the apparent bombing of Metrojet Flight 9268, which resulted in the deaths of more than 200 Russian holidaymakers, the Kremlin chess master is absorbing some basic lessons of geopolitics: actions have consequences and military adventurism seldom, if ever, goes entirely according to plan.

I don't suppose we should be too hard on Putin given that, despite everything that's happened in the past two decades, only one of the 17 Republican presidential candidates isn't itching for another Middle East rumble. On the other hand, Russia's intervention did coincide with gung-ho former British Prime Minister Tony Blair's admission that the Iraq war caused the rise of Isis.

For the record, this isn't being wise after the event. On October 9, I wrote in this space: "Let Putin 'have' Syria. Eventually it will dawn on him that he has paid a heavy price for the pleasure of thumbing his nose at the world's only superpower and embellishing his personality cult."

The term "eventually" is usefully imprecise, but generally means longer than a month. However, they do say history is speeding up.