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.

Seek Not Inspiration from Marieke Hardy

A REMINDER to commenters: Please, watch your language.

It is impossible these days to ride public transport, walk the street, dine in a restaurant or watch the telly without being exposed to casual obscenity, so there is no need for more of it here. Those who cannot form a sentence without the procreative verb should put their energies into comedic screenplay treatments for the ABC, where foul speech is taken as the hallmark of wit.

That said, there are some some things that make it very hard to keep a civil tongue, but is still worth the effort.

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.

Captain Cook's Genocidal Tendency

WHATEVER the misgivings about the current Victorian government's lack of spine and philosophy, news from the Harbour City makes the Garden State's guardians seem resolute by comparison. Whatever his other sins, it is inconceivable Ted Baillieu or one of his ministers would turn the state's parliament into a pulpit for branding Captain Cook a genocidal racist.

But in NSW, the relevant minister actually thinks it is a bonza idea. From the Silly's report on the latest take-an-artistic-white-blackfella-to-lunch cash handout:

The NSW Aboriginal Affairs Minister, Victor Dominello, said the NSW Parliament was the ideal venue to display provocative artworks.

"These are challenging issues that are being portrayed by artists who have the right to express themselves freely,'' he said.

The man whose skills are on display is Jason Wing (above), a bona fide Aborigine of the modern kind. You know, the sort whose duskiness has been so bleached by colonialist oppression that only grant administrators and prize committees can recognise it.

(Thanks to Catallaxy commenter Tom for tracking down the picture)

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Don't Mention the Whore

HEY, you luvvies at Fairfax and the ABC, better crank up that racket about Alan Jones another notch (or revive Abbott The Wall Puncher, the previous week's theme, which has gone off the boil a bit).

HSU sleazebag Mike Williamson has just been arrested and, if you don't sustain the din, there is a possibility the public might enjoy a moment's peace to consider the matter of the brothel-creeping Craig Thomson and our Prime Minister's reliance on his vote, not to mention her own immersion in union corruption.

Yeah, quick, whack on (and off) about Jones. As quality journalists, you know it is the right thing to do.

A FURTHER THOUGHT: As Williamson's daughter worked until recently in the office of the Prime Minister, it can be taken for granted that he is an intimate of Gillard, who has quite possibly added his notch to her bedpost, beside those of Craig and Bruce. As a married man, she must have found him irresistible.

AND A CLARIFICATION: The "whore" in the headline refers to Williamson, not Gillard, who is not known to have accepted money for sleeping with other women's husbands.

Bathroom renovations, a new fence maybe, but not cash on the dresser.

Found Guilty of Being Male

A NOTE ARRIVED last night from a reader, let us call him Mr Spring Street, who took exception to this little blog’s eroded faith in Victorian Premier Ted Baillieu’s intent or capacity to achieve, well, anything worthwhile. It seems that politics is a team sport and, even if your side’s captain has no idea to which end his squad should be kicking, those in the grandstand to the right of the oval have an obligation to shut up, wave the team colours and barrack for him anyway. A nice note, by no means abusive, it was in its way quite flattering. It is nice to know that one’s thoughts are taken seriously enough to be read, even if that consideration is but an overture to their summary rejection.

Then again, perhaps the correspondent had a point – for such was the thought which figured in the nightly examination of conscience as a weary Bunyip drifted off to sleep. Perhaps, to quote a recent example, Baillieu cannot be held entirely accountable for failing to respond with leadership and the bold stroke to the chaos that strangled Melbourne’s roads when the Burnley and Domain tunnels were shut down, just in time for yesterday's morning traffic peak.

But that’s the thing about One Term Ted, lovely bloke and consummate gentleman that he is. One makes half a decision not to harp on his deficiencies and the very next morning there it is, another example of what he isn’t doing! This morning it is an opinion column in The Walking Dead by a dancer called Jerril Rechter, now CEO of Victoria Health, who has made the recent and shocking murder of Jill Meagher her excuse to lament the low nature of all men, not the rather more narrow demographic of Labor-appointed judges and magistrates who turn loose career criminals and then shield their culpability behind the sub judice laws. Late-night TV viewers, who cop more than their share of tax-deductible public service announcements, will be familiar with Rechter’s schtick, which is of a kind. Those who retire early will get the drift from the clip below:

See, if the Great Bunyip hangs a pair of testicles (or even one) on the muscle-bound amalgam of idiocy and thuggery that is your senior feminist’s conception of a typical male, that carrier of the XY curse is a latent rapist by biology’s definition. Just water the seed of violence with a little beer and an angry pistil will spring forth to rear and twitch in the direction of any and every woman observed to be walking unaccompanied on a darkened street. Years ago, when feminism was first in flower, the Parkville Asylum and surrounding suburbs were plastered periodically with signs that captured the mindset in five short words, “All Men Are Potential Rapists”. The message is a little more polished these days, but the sentiment, bolstered by some very dubious statistics, remains unchanged.  Here is Rechter’s gist:

Sunday's peace march in Brunswick went beyond a community's outpouring of grief; it was also a show of solidarity for a woman's right to feel safe, no matter where she is. It was heartening to see so many men take part.

The march was also a reflection of how more and more men now understand that they are instrumental in preventing violence against women.

They can stand up for equality, they can refuse to turn a blind eye to a mate's disrespectful behaviour, sexist joke, or thinly veiled threat hidden behind a distasteful remark at the pub, work, or on the footy field. It has to stop. These are the conditions that breed violence and harm women.

Get the picture? Poor Jill Meagher is dead because Bill asks Bob if he has heard the one about the lesbian who jumped from the Eureka Tower and landed on a parking meter. Rechter is banging the same gong the left always whacks when a specific outrage generates headlines: Don’t look at the actual incident, never that. Instead, direct the debate and public focus to the general theme. There are more grants to be garnered by this means and, best of all, the broadest of broad-brush approaches precludes any standard by which the campaign’s success might be judged. In this instance, making blanket generalisations about all men, not just rapists paroled in defiance of decency and common sense, is both meme and gravy train.

It would be nice to think Baillieu appreciates this tactic and that he has some notion of how many Labor holdovers, like Ms Rechter, he has retained in his state’s public service, where they continue to operate as if the 2010 election never happened. They are biding their time, cashing their cheques and waiting for the day when the rightful, righteous party takes charge once again at the top end of Bourke Street.

Meanwhile, Victoria's judicial system remains an arrogant, slow, self-absorbed, crony-infested, immensely expensive citadel of incompetence populated by jurists who regard social engineering, not the public’s protection, as their primary brief.

The Billabong’s overnight correspondent opined that Victoria is not Queensland, and how a southern-state version of Campbell Newman would be rejected by the electorate. Be that as it may, we might as well have a Labor government in the Garden State if the existing one is capable of nothing more than operating revenue cameras and covering the mortgages of its embedded enemies.

UPDATE: Those who bristle at the ad featured in the video above might appreciate this:

Don't dare laugh or Rechter will be seeking to have you charged as an accomplice in Jill Meagher's murder.