Much To Be Said for Beemers and Audis

BRIEFLY and without boasting, a Mercedes once sat in the Billabong's driveway. It was a long time ago and the car, acquired secondhand, older than that. The vehicle was a smooth ride, comfortable, smelled of leather, and met with approving glances when driven to Old Boys functions. Particularly appealing were the doors, which closed with a satisfying crunk, yet none of those virtues were quite enough to win the absolute affection of a young Bunyip whose breakneck passion was for caning down dirt tracks at top speed in the middle of the night. When it came to fun, a clubman-prepared Datsun 1600 with a 240K gear box, worked suspension and a lot of additional oomph-ifiers under the bonnet left the big Hun for dead.

That is not to say another Merc would be shunned. This model, for example, would be a most welcome addition to the garage, especially if equipped with a fishing-rod holder, stowage straps for deck chairs, camp mattress, cooking gear and tent. Age not only puts the handbrake on reckless pursuits, it also opens broader vistas and new appreciations. When the bush beckons these days, it asks to be taken slowly and without a crash hat.

But there is a problem that pretty much rules out any purchase of that handsome G-55 (above). The problem's name is David McCarthy, the company's PR mouthpiece in Australia, who has been very hissy of late about Alan Jones. Not only has he issued press releases asserting that his employer is yanking its 2GB radio ads in response to the host's surreptitiously recorded remark, he has also been quite loud in demanding that Jones return the loaner he has been driving.

Such vehemence always seemed odd. One would guess that Jones' listeners are far more likely to buy and drive Mercedes than the GetUp tragics now pumping out threatening emails to 2GB's advertisers. If Mercedes felt compelled to yank its advertising, surely it would have been a better policy to do so quietly? Instead, McCarthy has broadcast his employer's disdain more widely than the signal of JOY FM, of which he was, until recently, chairman of the board.

Well it turns out, as Mumbrella is reporting, that Mercedes' decision to abandon Jones' show predates the radiohost's unfortunate remarks at Sydney University by some two months, and this makes McCarthy's much-quoted contempt for Jones all the more peculiar. Could it be that he has a private, deeply personal, agenda to push and that, just maybe, he has been using his position with Mercedes to advance it? Do you reckon he saw an opportunity to use his employer's name as a cudgel for beating up on Jones and that the PR man appropriated the car maker's prestige and market prominence for his own ends?

They are questions Mercedes execs most likely will wish to consider if even a few Jones listeners opt for another marque, but curious minds can still cast about for an unofficial explanation.

One of these, it turns out, may be that McCarthy (above) is an ardent and loud gay-libber, not that there is anything wrong with that. Indeed, good luck to him for being part of the movement that has transformed the love that dare not speak its name into the one that never shuts up.

Could it be that Jones' fuddy-duddy persona has got up McCarthy's nightie? Or perhaps, as a fellow who boasts of being out, proud and loud in the office, McCarthy believes that Jones, thought by many to be gay, has shirked a moral obligation to caper openly at the Mardi Gras Parade and use his microphone to advance the cause of adjectively qualified marriages?

We will never know, although Mercedes execs may soon have a good idea when they begin asking some questions.

Sign Up To Make Butch Pay!

THE MAN who no longer has a radio career lambasts one who does, prompting an ally of the rival who bested him to go nuclear by deploying the most feared and respected weapon in the entire arsenal of modern discourse, the online petition.

If you believe Fairfax Media is obliged to charge Butch Carlton a weekly sum in return for publishing his columns, seldom more than look-at-me advertorials, go here and add your signature(s) to the howling throng.

Another petition denouncing Alan Jones claims more than 100,000 signatures. So alert your friends via Facebook, Twitter and smoke signal. Tell them to vote early and often. And most of all, urge them to speak truth to a company that cannot quite remember what it is!

Now vote. One hundred thousand names should be an easy tally to top. Spread the word.

In Quadrant

BACK from a vigorous game of golf and there is good news: Quadrant Online's editor has decided to publish an offering from the Billabong. This one, apparently, must not have been (a) in bad taste (b) libelous (c) overloaded with wordplay (d) "arch" or (e) not quite up to standard.

It is good to know the miserable, nitpicking bastard finds something to his liking every so often.

Boycott Woollies (and Safeway in Victoria)

AROUND 90 cents buys a delightfully refreshing soft drink made with apple and blackcurrant, a particular favourite at the Billabong, where an inch or so is often drained before the bottle is frozen overnight. Stowed next morning in the golf bag to melt as the round progresses, it makes a cold, tongue-tingling zinger all the way through the back nine. 

Trouble is, you can only get this beverage at Woolworth supermarkets, where the Professor will no longer be spending what has been $150-or-so every week, not even if lamb cutlets (another favourite) are marked down to one dollar for trays of 30.

There are quite a few things to dislike about Alan Jones, from the Hansonesque advocacy of tariffs to the emotive irrationality he brings to the topic of coal-seam gas exploration, but from now on it will be Coles all the way.


All who believe that even protectionist nitwits deserve the right to speak freely and that the radio host's apology should have been enough might also want to consider giving Woollies a miss from now on.

And here are some other companies worth spurning.

NOTE WELL: In Victoria all Woollies stores operate under the Safeway banner

AND ALSO WORTH NOTING: Current Fairfax chairman Roger Corbett is a former Woollies chieftain. Evidently he left his spoor behind.

Guess Who's Coming To Dinner?

ANXIETY’s shadow flickered briefly across the happy couple’s faces as they paused before the door of her parental home, a moment for fear and uncertainty to be dispelled by a quick squeeze of the hand and a peck on the cheek. It can be an ordeal meeting your sweetheart’s dad for the first time, and by now Julia understood that very well indeed. The memories flooded back and she shuddered.

“So, Bruce, what do you do and what are your intentions,” her Dad had asked Craig’s predecessor.

“Now that you ask,” replied Bruce, that lovable scamp, “I’m a thief and a very good one. As to my intentions, with your daughter to do the legal work my intention is to become the biggest thief, and I do mean the biggest, in any ACTU-affiliated industrial organisation. When my members are earning $10 an hour, it’s wrong, just plain wrong, that the bosses should have it all.”

Julia caught her father’s expression and saw his concern. He was older, still snared in that absolutist morality, unable without a little help to appreciate theft as one those relative and subjective things, which is how she had come to see it during the rough and tumble days of university and student politics. Once you grasped that the personal was political, that it was about you and always about you, that was the first step on the path to greatness.

“Dad, what you need to understand is that those of us on the left are working for a better Australia, and that’s the important thing. How we achieve that, well sometimes it can seem a bit odd, but rest assured that when everyone else is stealing, no one is stealing.”

Her dad had smiled at his pride and joy. She was so very good at helping him to grasp the way things worked in these modern times, and it was apparent Bruce had been cut from the same cloth.

“I’ll tell you how much I want Julia as my chief legal officer,” he had said, pausing just a second for effect. “I want you to know I’ve left the wife and kids in Perth to share a life with Julia in Melbourne.”

THE Bruce thing had not worked out, although the new bathroom, front fence and other renovations to Julia’s modest home remained cherished and practical mementoes of the love that might have been. Now it was Craig’s turn to pass paternal muster, and Julia reached once more for her swain's sweaty palm, but this time it was not there.

As the door opened she turned and saw that Craig had stepped back a metre or two, rolled up his trouser legs and placed upon his head a handkerchief knotted at all four corners. She had told him how her folks brought with them in the family’s ten-quid suitcases many of the Mother Country’s cultural customs and funny little ethnic ways, and this was Craig’s attempt to cross the divide of otherness.

Craig was twitching now, surrendering to the convulsive spasms she recognised as his notion of dancing, clearing his throat for what became a song that rose, bass and brave, from that cute little tubby-bubby paunch below his diaphragm.

"Men of Harlech, stop your dreaming,
"Can’t you see their spearpoints gleaming…"

Craig was bellowing, but she could just catch her father’s words.

“Your new bloke is an idiot,” he said.

“No denying it, Dad, but he has the makings of a fine Cabinet minister – and he really does love me.”

“Has he left a wife and kids in Perth as well?”

“No, Dad. In Brisbane.”

The father nodded and once again he smiled. It was wonderful to have a daughter who could see virtue when others might not, the girl who had swotted those uni courses devoted to personal entitlement and the right of a modern woman to make her way to the top of the machine by any means necessary, as so many men before her had done.

He didn’t understand it, the new rules that made black into white and ambition the trump of honesty.

But what he did understand was that Julia understood the new world's new rules and he admired the grace with which she had made honesty, fidelity and truth the subordinate satellites of ambition.

He could never be ashamed of someone who had made herself the mistress of such a thoroughly alien universe.

No, he would never be ashamed. And woe betide anyone who said otherwise.

Jacqueline Meets Former Fairfax Readers

TIM BLAIR links to Jacqueline Maley's tale of horror and harassment at the hands of Alan Jones and his  crazed carbon junkies, and normally he would have a point about the Silly reporter's delicate sensitivities. But allowances need to be made in this case, as Maley appears to be heavily pregnant and thus, we can assume, very prone to outbreaks of irrational emotion.

When Maley asked Jones if he was being paid to address the Canberra gathering, one hopes she solicited a few tips on trimming costs.  In the very near future there is every chance it will be Maley's turn not to cash a pay cheque

FOOTNOTE: As readers who follow the last link will learn, Fairfax Media's stock had fallen to 69.5 cents by the end of Monday's trading. That means anyone with a spare $330 million-or-so could pick up about 25% of the company and effectively control it. Or think of it another way. Fairfax is attempting to unload its radio holdings which means, at an industry-standard 10 times earnings, an asking price of around $300 million.

So why pick up only the broadcasting unit when you could have the whole thing?Somewhere in Fairfax's great mound of poo there is a pony. An astute operator could get it up to a gallop -- after cleaning the stable, of course.