First-person plural possessive

COULD it be that there is still someone inside Fairfax with a little wit and a sense of puckish mischief? Here's the headline on Nicholas Reece's opinion piece in today's Age:

And who is Nicholas Reece, you may wonder?

Why, he's "a former senior adviser to Prime Minister Julia Gillard and premiers Steve Bracks and John Brumby"

That certainly explains the "our".

New Idea 1, Holmes 0

WHAT a pity Jonathan Holmes and Media Watch will not be with us again until well into next year.

It would warm the heart to hear an old queen congratulate the queen-to-be on her happy news, and perhaps to say something nice about New Idea.

The Drum's Next Leading Hand

THE NEWS in Melbourne this morning is that Toyota has laid off 350 workers, management’s efforts to get a little more co-operation from its workforce having been foiled by the Gillard government’s indulgence of bolshie antics on the shop floor. PM Julia Prawn’s solution was bailouts and subsidies, which is what you would expect from a leader with the meat in her tail and nothing but crap in her head. First cruel a business, then tap the taxpayer for the money to keep it afloat. In circles where the brothel creeper Craig Thomson continues to be presented as a dedicated, upright and decent representative of the people, such logic finds little difficulty carrying the day.

What to do with 300 unemployed production line workers? Well here is an opportunity that might help one of them: The Drum needs a new editor, and who better to know something of the real world than a worker now wondering where the cash for mortgage, school fees, car costs, energy bills and grocery bills is going to come from. Seriously, how difficult can journalism be? Not too hard if the Drum’s current offerings are any indication. True, there are a few identifiable kernels in the current screenload of effluent, but one gets the impression they owe their place to a little box-ticking on the part of the acting editor. 'We had better have a conservative or two', you can imagine the Drum’s brain trust saying, 'and then we can fill the rest of the site with exposes of rich people’s ruination of soccer, why irrigators are the spawn of Satan and whether the Greens under Old Mother Milne will be able to extend the magnificence of Bob Brown’s many towering achievements.'

There is nothing, in other words, someone with competence in spot welding or auto upholstery installation could not do at less cost and for a more uplifting result.

So, ex-Toyota workers, why not give former editor Jonathan Green’s mentor, Bruce Belsham, a call? His number is (02) 8333 4303 and he is very keen to hear from potential applicants. If you tell him you know nothing of grammar, fact-checking or what might constitute editorial balance, that would be a big plus. The Drum has standards to maintain, after all.

UPDATE: Another, and perhaps more likely, pool of potential Drum masters might be found on Spencer Street. According to this morning's Media Diary in The Australian, the baffled broadsheet's daily sales are now down to 163,000. Fairfax stock, by the way, has sagged to 73 cents, just 5 cents better than its all-time low. The end cannot be far off.

Wendy's Wonderland -- Part II

IN Radio National’s hatchet job on Viscount Monckton, reporter Wendy Carlisle (below) makes much of her allegedly rough treatment at the hands of those attending the anti-carbon tax rally in Hyde Park. It is an audio verite moment, the note of peril in Carlisle’s voice adding much to the drama. Here is that section’s transcript:

Woman in the crowd [sound from the rally]: Are you from the ABC, dear?
Wendy Carlisle: Yes I am.
Woman in the crowd: Yes, I saw your ... You'll just ... from this. Yeah, enjoy.
Lord Christopher Monckton: ...and that is just four incidents in less than a week in which the ABC has shown its credentials as supporters of utilitarianism, socialism and of fascism.
[Crowd chants, 'ABC, ABC']
Wendy Carlisle: As Lord Monckton spoke, I stood in the crowd not far from the stage, my microphone held high to catch his words. My ABC ID badge was clearly visible and a young man in the crowd turned and started to point at me and mouth, 'A-B-C'. It was then that people started to deliberately push me.
Lord Christopher Monckton: ...not interested in giving people a fair go. So I do have a message for your Liberal and National coalition...
[Sound of crowd jostling and taunting Wendy Carlisle as Lord Monckton continues in the background]
Wendy Carlisle: I'm now being jostled by members of the crowd.
Man in crowd: Don't use force against her. Do not touch her! Excuse me, coercive force is the hallmark of...
Wendy Carlisle: I'm now being harassed by people in this crowd...
[Crowd applauds and cheers Lord Monckton]
Man in crowd: Leave this woman alone... Piss off!... Just leave this woman alone... She's free to stand here... She's free to be here...
Wendy Carlisle: I've actually never encountered this in a reporting job ever before.

So here are another couple of questions:

1/ Who was that white knight who lectured the crowd about “coercive force is the hallmark of….” and did he accompany Carlisle to the rally?

2/ Why was the quote truncated before his sympathies, pro or con the tax, were made clear?

From the broadcast audio, you get the impression that Mr White Knight is most likely an anti-taxer prepared to extend a sense of decency and fair play, even to ideological opponents. But if he is, say, Carlisle’s beau, that needs to be stated, since it would raise the possibility he might have been acting as both agent provocateur and supporting player in an orchestrated and deftly edited  hit on Monckton and his supporters.

Prior to this, although omitted from the broadcast’s transcript, Carlisle can be heard begging sotto voce for space as she worms her way through the crowd to the apron of the stage. Why did she feel this re-positioning was needed? Her microphone was quite clearly picking up Monckton's every uttered word. And why did she feel the need to nestle in the bosom of the mob? A friend of the Billabong who attended the rally insists that a roped-off space directly in front of the stage was available to the press. So why did Carlisle, who says she was but feet from Monckton, not duck under the barrier and stand even closer to her subject? 

One way to settle these points would be for the ABC to post the full, unedited  tape of  Carlisle’s afternoon amongst the Hyde Park barbarians, including any other exchanges with Mr White Knight.

The only (semi)comprehensible audio snatch from the crowd comes  at the start of the above section, when an unnamed woman wishes Carlisle well, addresses her as “dear” and urges her to enjoy the afternoon. After that comes an apology from someone in the crowd and the exclamation “There, that’s better.” Is that really what thugs say when pushing women around?

That unedited tape could make for some fascinating listening.

A FURTHER THOUGHT: Wouldn’t it have been nice if some member of the crowd had captured Carlisle’s “scary moment” on video. Flip cameras are cheap, easy to operate and their footage is simplicity itself to upload. In the light of the ABC’s manipulative partisanship, having recourse to an independent view of its operatives’ actions would do much to settle those frequent accusations of bias.

Missing Link

FORTY EIGHT hours have passed since Wendy Carlisle of  Background Briefing put to air her assault on Viscount Monckton -- two days in which a transcript of the sixty-minute slander has failed to appear.

The ABC must struggle through on a paltry billion-or-so dollars per year, but surely it could have processed and posted the script by now. Unless, of course, it would prefer to make a line-by-line examination of its handiwork rather difficult.

Readers might like to drop ABC supremo Mark Scott a polite note and ask why it is taking so long. He can be reached at:

Scott.Mark@abc.net.au

UPDATE: Background Briefing's page now says a transcript will be available on Tuesday afternoon.

And in further development, Carlisle says she will be "tweeting a response to claims I got it wrong on Lord Monckton". Let's help the poor, put-upon thing, shall we? After all, a 140-character limit doesn't provide much scope for elucidation. How about this:

"Can't touch me, I work for the ABC"

Until the election, sweetheart. Until the election.

UPDATE II: Now that we know Carlisle's transcript will be going up soonish, thereremains another reason to contact Mark Scott. Apparently the ABC recruits its in-house lawyers from the bargain bin.

Scott.Mark@abc.net.au