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Veep, the HBO television series that follows the struggles inside the White House, is supposed to be a parody of dysfunction in politics.
But sometimes it's not just satire. It's real life.
This week, Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull, who is trying to distance himself from former Prime Minister Tony Abbott's administration, started to roll out a new slogan: "Continuity and change."
"Between Tony and myself, Tony Abbott and myself, there is continuity," Turnbull said on the Australian Broadcasting Corporation. "Of course; I was part of his government, part of his cabinet, but already is also a great deal of change. So, as you go from one liberal prime minister to another, you have continuity and you have change and there has been a lot of change."
Veep fans will recognize the phrase from season four of Veep, where fictional US President Selina Meyer (played by Julia Louis-Dreyfus) campaigns on "Continuity with Change" during her bid for reelection.
The show's creator, Simon Blackwell, said the phrase was the "most meaningless election slogan" their team of writers could come up with.
In S4 of Veep we came up with the most meaningless election slogan we could think of. Now adopted by Australian PM. https://t.co/64YmQvImj5
— Simon Blackwell (@simonblackwell) March 22, 2016
"We needed it to be hollow and oxymoronic, to say absolutely nothing but seem to have depth and meaning. It couldn't be too daft though — it had to be funny but still believable," Blackwell told the Guardian.
Louis-Dreyfus, who has won multiple Emmy awards for her leading role in the show, tweeted that she was "dumbstruck" by the revelation that a real-life politician would copy the slogan.
But then again, this isn't the first time Veep has come eerily close to the hilarious banalities of leading the free world — let's not forget the greatest hits from Hillary Clinton's emails.
