Can She Do Exorcisms Too?

CRICKET lover Tim Blair notes an outbreak of illiteracy in the Silly’s coverage of the Boxing Day Test, attributing writer Michael Gleeson’s betrayal of clarity and concision to Fairfax’s determination that its newspapers would be no worse for the absence of sub-editors. Tim is a newsroom person, so we can take as gospel his word on the practical matter of staffing. But his other observation, that editorial production gets “a little ragged” during this season of beer, prawns and blind umpires, must surely tell only part of the truth, as it is clear from today’s Silly and Phage that something rather more vigorous than post-pudding torpor has its hand on the editor’s tiller. Slyly and in the guise of mere incompetence, there is a ruse afoot to advance the cause of public inanity by giant leaps, rather than the incremental steps that are the Fairfax preference in more sober seasons. It can be the only explanation for the appearance of Stephanie Dowrick, who skips about in fields of earnest and fantastic opinion not visited since before poor Margo decided to become useful.

Dowrick is a colourful woman, although the flamboyance may not be quite so readily apparent to readers exposed only to her open letter to Tony Abbott, whom she insists must stop saying “no” and get those refos packed off in humane, double-quick time to Malaysia’s waiting procurers and standover artists. While most will recognise this is nothing more than Labor’s current talking point -- a provenance lost on Fairfax sorts, for whom any and each Gillard failure is the fault of those who point it out --  readers encountering for the first time the Reverend Dowrick, who styles herself “an Interfaith minister”, will not know just how loopy she can be.

On matters of the soul, this promoter of “spiritual” weekends and flogger of her self-help books is the original one-stop shop, as she explained to the ABC:

I feel so privileged really to wear these symbols on my prayer stole. They cover for me the major faiths that have inspired me and inspired millions of people throughout history and they run more or less historically from the Tao, through Buddhism, the wheel of the Dhamma, through Judaism to Christianity. And then on the other side, this is perhaps my favourite symbol of all because it’s the circle that includes everybody, and I think that’s the heart of my ministry. It’s the heart of interfaith for me that it is totally inclusive, that nobody can be left out.

So catholic is Dowrick’s appetite for hidden truths and her acceptance of all persuasions’ faiths it may be that she just does not know where to stop. Take the the 9/11 truthers, for example, whose conspiracy theories her web site “recommends” congregants learn more about. Oh, and they also need to swot the Bush clan’s plan to dominate the world and learn more of the globalist machiavellis now pulling President Obama’s strings. Here is Dowrick’s recommendation for Synthetic Terror: Made In The USA by Webster Tarpley:

The thesis of Webster Tarpley's 9/11 Synthetic Terror: Made in USA has been enthusiastically received with its working model of the 9/11 plot: a rogue network of moles, patsies, and a commando cell in the privatized intelligence services, backed by corrupt political and corporate media elites. This new, fifth edition adds a significant new dimension. Tarpley's documentation of a plethora of 9/11 drills may prove as revolutionary as the thesis of controlled demolition -- perhaps even more so.

Many people have not been able to see that 9/11 was a false flag. They may seem immune to physical facts like the free-fall speed of the towers, as they take refuge in a lack of engineering qualifications. No math skills are needed to grasp the more familiar, common-sense fact that an act that is rehearsed is also staged. Moreover, understanding how drills are essential to conduit such operations helps us recognize many types of false flags, such as the London bombings, and not only building collapses. Finally, wider public awareness of the dangers and workings of drills could help prevent terror operations, by making them too difficult to carry out with impunity.

Perhaps this sort of nonsense makes sense to Fairfax editors. Perhaps those not already laid off have been promised editorial group discounts at Dowrick’s next $350 per person two-night retreat. Or perhaps Fairfax is now so thoroughly diminished by a collective dementia that it no longer knows any better.

If the last, Dowrick can pray on the company’s behalf to whichever god strikes its editor’s fancy. Allah, Zeus, Yahweh, Odin, Jesus, Confucius – they are all one and the same to her. And make no mistake, at Fairfax it will be taken as a given that all those celestial entities abhor Tony Abbott. It is the righteous path, after all.