Dead Men Walking

THEY'RE all gone now, with Ernest Borgnine the last of The Wild Bunch to join the heavenly choir. First it was William Holden, then Strother Martin Warren Oates and Ben Johnson, the Gorch brothers. And finally, at 95, Borgnine as well. Here's the most famous stroll in cinema history:

All very slow and meticulously paced, which makes what follows all the more striking:

If you haven't seen The Wild Bunch, or haven't seen it lately, get a copy and settle down for a treat. More than 40 years after its release, director Sam Peckinpah's mad genius still shines. Two years ago, Borgnine spoke about one of the five greatest flicks ever made:

The sad thing is that most people will think of Borgnine as McHale. He was a great actor and The Wild Bunch would not have been half so good without him.

(Thanks to commenters who noted that Strother Martin is not Warren Oates, and also that the Professor is a dill.)

The Age Pleads: Spurn Our Advertisers!

SAY WHAT you like about The Age, but you cannot fault Melbourne’s broadsheet for failing to stick with its principles.  Take senior editor Michael Short, for example, who might at some dimly grasped level of comprehension appreciate that newspapers are supported by advertisers keen to bring customers into their shops. But does that consideration colour his journalism?

Not on your nelly! With the retail sector experiencing all sorts of pain, Myer reeling and David Jones valued primarily for its real estate, Short today provides a sympathetic pulpit to Tamara DiMattina, who wants readers to spend October spurning consumerist emporiums of the sort that advertise their wares in the pages of the Age and Silly. Ms DiMattina explains:

"Buy Nothing New Month is not at all against retail; it's not anti-capitalist … It's suggesting you buy as much as you like during Buy Nothing New Month, as long as it is second hand. If you want to get into the Brotherhood of St Laurence stores or Sacred Heart Mission stores, they have great stuff. But if you wouldn't set foot inside a charity store, then there are also plenty of second-hand designer stores, as well."

Short must feel there is no risk to advocating DiMattina’s cause on the grounds that, since the Age recycles green memes endlessly, there is absolutely nothing new in its pages that remaining readers will feel obliged to boycott.

UPDATE: Girls, why opt for one of those fusty, well-cut, properly hemmed-and-darted, planet-destroying frocks when you could be the toast of the Age newsroom -- if not the paper's advertising manager -- in something like this fetching little number, which DiMattina whipped up herself?

DiMattina thinks her dress "looks way better than the cookie cutter approach of high street labels". To Age readers perhaps.

Lost In the Woods

IT IS QUITE a few years since a copy of the Age was delivered on a daily basis to the Billabong, so it is no more than an assumption that Harvey Norman still buys the odd page of advertising space in Melbourne’s broadsheet. If the retailer does indeed continue to support that newspaper and its Silly sister, perhaps senior managers should find a moment to reflect on what they are getting for their money. They may think they are paying to reach a well-heeled demographic, people who will visit HN stores and spend big on furniture and wotnot, but the more obvious result of their advertising dollars would seem to be a deluge of slurs and abuse in the paper’s news columns. There is more of it today, with a story by Silly consumer  affairs correspondent Alexandra Smith alleging  a murderous assault on Boamabee State Forest koalas by timber-getters whose harvest of forest products eventually finds its way into HN showrooms:

"Harvey Norman claims its Naturally Australian flooring products are sourced from 'sustainable and renewable natural resources' when instead they are contributing to the destruction of Australia's native forests and destroying vital koala habitat,'' the group's report, to be released today, says.
Markets for Change calls on Harvey Norman to phase out selling products made from native forests … [and] to give their customers clear and accurate information about the source of their wood products."

The story doesn’t really stand up. The trees are being logged legally by a Boral subsidiary and processed at a Boral sawmill, with Harvey Norman’s involvement limited to re-selling the processed goods. If that logic holds, then the same eco activists who have caught reporterette Smith’s ear also should be up in arms about Global Mail benefactor and Greens mega-donor Graeme Wood, whose online travel agency encourages holidaymakers to burn the world’s petroleum reserves and torment polar bears.

But mention of hypocrisy is not the most curious omission from Smith’s story, which fails to mention Markets for Change’s campaign against Harvey Norman as one more example of the way in which the party of Rudd and Gillard has allowed green activists to shape its agenda and pervert the intent of the nation’s laws. The carbon tax is, of course, the classic case study, but little sops and green favours inserted here and then in legislation are just as much the product of the corruption that has characterised Canberra since late in 2007.

Briefly, in 2010 the Rudd-Gillard crew re-vamped the Trade Practices Act, which was re-christened the Competition and Consumer Act 2010 and announced by Shirley Strachan impersonator Craig Emerson as a great tool for keeping wicked business interests on the straight and narrow. What Emerson did not mention at the time were the Act’s sanctions against organisers of boycotts – well most boycotts, anyway.

The notable exception, spelled out in Section 45DD – which, as far as is known, was not given that tag in honour of Emerson’s top-heavy former squeeze – permits boycotts if “the dominant purpose for which the conduct is engaged in is substantially related to environmental protection or consumer protection”.

And there you have it. A boycott that would be illegal for any other purpose can proceed without restraint because Labor licensed its green allies to harass companies and organisations they do not like. And the thing about the boycott’s organisers is that they do not like much of anything to do with commerce, which is perhaps to be expected from a crew led by a posse of World Wildlife Fund, Greenpeace and Australian Greens notables.

Oh, there is another curiosity about Smith’s story: there is little that is new about it. Markets for Change has been pumping out the anti-Harvey Norman propaganda for well over a year, re-cycling scares to keep its campaign in the headlines.  There are, however, stories it might have been interesting to see explored – potential lines of inquiry noted in May last year by professional forester Mark Poynter at Online Opinion.

 

But that would require a little more effort than the simple act of re-writing without question a well-funded lobby group’s latest press release.

                     

  

Murphy's Lore

QUITE a few years have passed since anyone thought a poor Bunyip worth the effort of punching, but the memory of what it is like to be on the receiving end of stinging blows remains a vivid lesson in what not to say and who not to say it to. It seems Katharine Murphy has spent too little time drunk and abusive in the company of St Kilda supporters to appreciate the dynamics of your typical assault, and this can only be viewed as a sad deficiency in the training of a quality journalist, as her column today makes clear.

Now bear in mind that the latest poll is out and shows a further shrinkage of Prime Minister Yabby’s stocks. If she had the decency to call an election, the only reminder of a parliamentary Labor party would be a handful of surviving hacks and the dissipating stench of their booted companions (plus, quite possibly, a collection of hard-centre tisues beneath Craig Thomson’s former perch). So, with the Coalition on top in two-party terms by 58 points to 42, how does Murphy’s ignorance of fisticuffs manifest itself?

The poor girl thinks it possible that, while her idol is flat on her back and being pummelled relentlessly, it remains possible for Gillard “to play with Abott’s mind.” Playing with Bruce Wilson was one thing and Mrs Emerson’s husband another, but how Gillard might go about gaining a psychological advantage over Abbott taxes the imagination. What might Gillard do to put her foe off his game, apart from hand out talking points to dutiful parrots like Murphy, who never quite explains how this punch-me-harder strategy might produce dividends? The closest she comes is this:

Whyalla is still standing folks, and so am I, she is saying. Give us a chance to prove we aren't complete, dissembling dills. The government has managed to establish a prima facie credibility test for Abbott, who has rowed his boat out very hard, and left himself not a lot of room to re-position if the debate starts to turn.

So, Abbott has rowed out from shore, metaphorically speaking, but finds no room on the open seas.

Fairfax has people who occupy editors' offices. We know this because three of them were fired last week. But do the ones who remain actually read their columnists' copy? Perhaps, like so many former readers, they find the effort of wading though such tommy-rot more trouble than it is worth.

  

Always Hot In The Cubby House

THE SILLY’S little green imp Ben Cubby keeps the faith – the faith in cherrypicking, that is. The Arctic is melting, he tells readers, advising that the cracking pace at which ice is vanishing represents “the impact of warmer air and water temperatures” which “can be directly measured”.

Yes, it can be directly measured – as it was back in March, when ice levels were up and nudging the 1980s average. Somehow, perhaps because he was too busy being a carbon-tax supporting quality journalist, the easily distracted Cubby neglected to mention that little fact.

WUWT has all the charts, some of which show declines while others describe increases. Fairfax shares should be so lucky.

Better? You Bette!

ANDREW BOLT has dug up an audio track of Dean Martin singing Baby, It's Cold Outside, which may introduce the younger set to a fine song and the rather different morality of the era that produced it. A better version, minus the annoying girly chorus, is the one by Bette Midler and, of all people, James Caan, which was shot for For The Boys but ended up on the cutting room floor. That scrapped footage can be viewed below, but to hear the song properly and in full, buy the film's soundtrack.

UPDATE: Also from For The Boys, Middler's take on PS, I Love You:

A Warming Thought For Carbon Day

AS SOON as the liars' collective now resident on the government benches is turfed out, the carbon tax will be repealed and the cost of fuel will go down. Then we can afford to have a little celebration, just like they did the old days:

UPDATE: AS you would expect from this gaggle of knavish incompetents, one of the first casualties of the carbon tax will  be .... eco-friendly electric cars.

A FOOTNOTE: Burning our PM at the stake is not offered as a serious suggestion. She is far too greasy a specimen to be safely incinerated anywhere near dry grass or wooden buildings.