The last of his tribe

THERE has long been doubt that Rupert Murdoch is an Aborigine. Sure, he looks like one, if we are to go by the members of the Litjus-Mordie tribe, as does everyone else these days. Anyway, all doubts are now settled and we can be sure he is an Aborigine, albeit a naughty one.

How do we know? Because Martin Flanagan in The Age, a paper once prominent in Melbourne, has written a column about him, and Martin only ever writes about Aborigines and their wonderful, magical powers to kick footballs while the Rainbow Serpent does the umpiring and the power of Country pulses upward through their boot stops. Actually, that’s not right. Sometimes he writes about his dog, but it is very easy to get confused about the subject matter because the tone of indulgent condescension is very much of a piece.

Actually, that bit about the dog is also wrong, because if Bowser gets crook, off to the vet! When an Aboriginal player (no need to mention names) was newly arrived at a certain Melbourne club and inspiring Flanagan to cascades of gushing superlatives, the fawning and expressions of admiration for the recruit's tribal initiation scars were non-stop. How authentic! Surely he must know better than any how to snap a goal, that being one of those  Indigenous instincts, akin to possums finding your rose bushes in the dark. That nonsense stopped only when the club doctor took a closer look, diagnosed ringworm and ordered up an immediate course of treatment.

Patronising wankery is the sort of stuff Flanagan serves up week after week, habitually asserting in The Age, where farce and fact are interchangeable, that Aborigines not only inspired the invention of football but play it better because they are masters of time, space and place, whatever that means. They also make better TV shows because, well, being Indigenous means the panelists cut straight to the team line-ups, as Flanagan seems to think only a blackfella can.

Anyway, King Billy Murdoch is in trouble. Apparently owning media outlets that succeed offends Flanagan, who is grateful that the world has other great wits who can stick it to the old bugger. From his column:

But you knew Murdoch was prepared to walk through fire when he responded to the campaign to get rid of page 3 girls by thundering: ''Is anyone complaining about Page 3 pix a reader? Enough of this elitist nonsense!''

Many of the responses were predictably earnest. Then up popped Nad-I-Am: ''Rupes, I need to know the size of your testicles before I can engage with you. Come on, mate. 20p for a shot of your balls.''
Nad-I-Am is Nadia Kamil, an Iraqi-Welsh comic, and, as we say in sport, she had come to play. She bombarded Murdoch with demands that, as a man of conviction, he put his privates on the line:

''come on, a photo of your bollocks. All shaved & nicely lit. With a speech bubble next to them with some facile news. 20p.'' When Murdoch ignored her, she upped her demands - ''I WANT TO KNOW WHAT YOUR BALLS THINK ABOUT POLITICS'' - finally offering to settle for a similar photo of one of his sons.

All of which, in my opinion, is fair and reasonable comment on Murdoch's tweet….

All of which, in any sane person’s opinion, is a fair and reasonable indication that Fairfax, like Bennelong’s people,  will go to its grave without ever quite appreciating the reality that has invaded its cosy, isolated little world of dreamings.

UPDATE: Spoke to soon. A further flick through the Age website reveals that Flanagan has published a second column, as always ooh-ing and awe-ing about the race-based wonderfulness of Indigenous players. Today, he thinks it a fine thing for Adam Goodes, a superb player and thoroughly modern man, to be leaping about as part of some ersatz, concocted-yesterday approximation of Indigenous tradition.

Goodes was the subject of a racial taunt while helping the Swans cream Collingwood last night. That was nasty, but being recruited to make an exhibition of himself for the amusement of the world's Flanagans is the greater insult. He had just better hope all the white architects of the Indigenous Round don't try for even greater authenticity by encouraging sub-incision.

 

Tell Him You're Indigenous, Gina

BACK in March, Martin Flanagan of The Age churned out 1,000 words or so on the prickly matter of Indigenous footballers and some of the problems – alleged involvement in axe attacks, for example – that have set a few footy club officials to quietly wondering if snatching talented kids from the back of nowhere and dropping them in front of the goal at the MCG is worth the culture shock and complications. That is what happens when you prefer to think of individuals only as members of groups – after all, who would not want Harry O’Brien in their team?

Flanagan, who is ranting today about the threat Gina Rinehart poses to his newspaper, should re-visit that March epistle and consider what he wrote then:

In my experience, when there are rising tensions between different groups, whether they be racial or religious, there is really only one remedy. Engagement. The alternative to engagement is a cycle of rumour and speculation that eventually finds expression through media types who mistake valuable opinion for saying the first thing that comes into their head, as opposed to arriving at a final judgment based on the best information available.

The is no shortage of rising tensions between Mrs Rinehart and Fairfax Chairman Dodgey Rodgey Corbett, but Flanagan is no  longer quite so sure about the efficacy of “arriving at a final judgment based on the best information available.” No pausing to consider Fairfax's dire financial straits or the palpable animosity many former readers now feel toward the newspapers they grew up with. Rather, it is his moment to become of those very same “media types who mistake valuable opinion for saying the first thing that comes into their head.”

The first thing that came into Flanagan’s today was to assert, without reference or citation, “hyperbole of this sort is on a par with saying all journalists are communists, which Gina Rinehart is said to do. (When did you last meet a communist? Seriously. I'd have to go back 30 years.)” Then he is off and defending the ABC from reform. That "engagement" he writes about, it seems to be a remarkably selective exercise.

If only Mrs Rinehart had just the slightest touch of tribal blood, Flanagan might be prepared to at least give her grievances a hearing. But no such consistency from this columnist. 

UPDATE: The source of Flanagan's claim that Mrs Rinehart believes all journalists to be communists has been revealed. He is quoting, without attribution, fellow Fairfaxista Adele Ferguson, who says on this video that unnamed people told her that is what the subject of her newly published biography believes.


There's your quality journalism right there, folks. No wonder they don't want adults running the company.