AT THE moment on the Age website, news that perhaps several hundred people have gone to their deaths aboard a vessel heading for Christmas Island is being given surprisingly little attention. It is there, but at the very bottom of a list of, presumably, more important matters -- stories detailing, for example, that a man has been bitten by a snake, word that it will be hot on Christmas Day and the news that four people less famous than Ian Meldrum also fell off ladders over the weekend. Go right to the bottom of those and other reports and you find a link to the latest lethal consequence of the Gillard government's arrogant intransigence and incompetence.
Funny that. When another boatload of so-called asylum seekrs went down in 2002, the Age could not get enough of it, filling its pages with lunatic smears like this and this and this. Indeed, on the strength of nothing more than a failed diplomat's rancid speculations, the entire Fairfax press went quite beserk about conspiracies and sabotage and RAN vessels that came across pods of floating refugees and then sailed into the night, leaving them to drown.
And it was all John Howard's doing. Of course it was.
Today, though, a nip from a tiger snake is deemed more newsworthy.
What could possibly have changed between 2002 and now?
UPDATE: Just as the Professor was about to grab a screen image of the Age site, mention of the latest tragedy vanished altogether from the roster of most important stories, which still includes that snake under the doormat.
Again, what could possibly have changed since 2002 and now?
