The Southbank Quisling

DOWN here in Melbourne, Jon Faine has just taken to the air on Their ABC, starting his programme with reference to the "inexplicably horrible" murder of a London soldier.

No mention of attackers' religion so far.....

....Now he has a Pommy accented reporterette, Barbara Miller, filling him in on the latest details....

Still nothing on the animals' creed....

...Faine wants to know what these ambulatory arguments for capital punishment  meant by "our country"....

....reporterette is puzzled, alluding to "much speculation" about their nation of origin... Golly gosh, they're both stumped, absolutely baffled. Two media geniuses, and neither will announce the obvious: the killers were referring to, you know, Muslim lands....

Miller has toddled off after the conversation's first reference to the Prophet's disciples. It wasn't the London murderers, however, but an utterance freighted with foreboding of what prejudice and devilry the English Defence League might perpetrate in London's "Islamic areas". 

"Whether or not it falls within the definition of terrorism is beside the point," Faine opines of the soldier's slaying ...

... Now it is a tame Melbourne Muslim who is ushered to the microphone. Much concern about what the attack will do to spoil the public image of Islam. There will be much beard-wagging in the mosques tonight as the faithful contemplate how best to endure the unenlightened view that Muslims are more likely to kill without reason than adherents of other faiths.....

First caller, Fred from Williamstown, wonders why anyone should be surprised... "We've been bombing the crap out of them for years" ... goes on to mention that Americans dropped "2000-pound bombs" on "crowded restaurants" in an attempt to kill Saddam's sons.

Next caller, from Altona, explains that English-accented Muslims killing English soldiers on London Streets is entirely predictable because "we" inflict  terrorism on them and no lists of those killed by the West's bombers are ever published.....

.... finally, a female caller urges listeners to read the Koran and absorb the obvious truth that Islam is a violent creed....

Faine keeps interrupting, observing that "the Bible is full of violent passages too" and that there is something unsettling about all religions' texts.

By later today, Faine et al will have settled on their narrative: Once again, as always, the real perpetrators will be the victims.

UPDATE: Faine once again quoting Fred from Williamstown, "If we continue dropping bombs we can expect some blowback," he says, before moving on to the next topic.

Jon Faine Doubles Down

AS noted yesterday, it is a good thing Jon Faine found paid work as a toady on ABC Radio 774, rather than remaining with the law, because a compulsion to connect dots is generally regarded as an asset amongst learned friends. Faine, whose preciousness needs to be valued in carats, displayed none of that this morning, despite the oft-thwarted attempts of Michael Smith and The Age's Mark Baker. Each attempted to address the increasingly insistent question of our Prime Minister's fitness to hold the highest elected office in the land, and neither could get a word in edgeways.

Smith was seldom allowed to finish a sentence and, when he did, his point was engulfed by the shill's interruptions and poo-hooing. Baker fared somehat better, several times insisting on his right to complete a thought, but the Voice of the Taxpayer was similarly unmoved.

If the ABC answered to ACMA, as do commercial stations, listeners could complain, as another ABC Voice of the Establishment, Jonathan Holmes, urged Media watch's viewers to do in regard to Alan Jones' climate-change heresies. Sadly, ACMA has no authority over the national broadcaster, nor does the Press Council.

What that means, as complainants have learned , is that the ABC pays Faine a very generous salary, gives him a pulpit, promotes him as person worth hearing -- and then adjudicates on his fitness to broadcast. One might as well ask the College of Cardinals to discipline the Pope.

The ABC costs taxpayers somewhere north of $1 billion a year. Where do those of us who foot that bill file a consumer complaint likely to be taken seriously?

Tim Palmer and the "Tedium" of Prostate Cancer

IN COMMENTING on the imminent Royal Commission into the sexual abuse of children, Andrew Bolt quotes a little snippet from ABC quality journalist Tim Palmer's interview with one of Cardinal Pell's clerical critics.

Ah, Tim, such memories! It is quite a few years since the ABC high-flier has dropped a line to the Billabong, but Andrew's reference brought the memories flooding back. As a guide to the perspective and sympathies that will shape ABC coverage of what promises to be an extended bout of Papist-thumping, here is what Tim had to say in his spirited and entirely unsolicited defence of an institution far more curious than the Catholic Church, Margo Kingston, who was then doing so much for Fairfax's credibility at her original Web Diary:

Dear Stanley
Time was when tedious right wing crackpots would shuffle off to a cabin in Montana, form a militia and (mercifully) barricade the rest of the world outside.

Now they set up the grownup's version of the lemonade stand - a weblog.

I never thought I'd side with Mr Sheridan on anything but your piece on the virtues of colonialism has achieved that.

I haven't laughed so hard since I read Paul Johnson's Modern Times (obviously a seminal text for you) with its dunderheaded central issues like "who was the better President, Nixon or Reagan?".

So how did I get to your Sargasso Sea of ideas - via Crikey of course. But don't be too encouraged by Mayne's reference, I, and I suspect most others, won't be back.

You write about Margo Kingston's log "It’s like watching some poor unfortunate have an almost-daily seizure. You should turn away, and you know it. But it’s impossible to drag your eyes off the spectacle".

Unfortunately the same can't be said of your site. It's more like watching someone die of prostate cancer. It's tedious, the viewer may die of something else in the meantime and in the long run you just don't want to know about it anyway.

regards

Tim Palmer

When you read, watch or listen to the latest news it is always nice to know a little about about the sort of people who shape it.