You've done it again, McGeough!

ONE wonders why they bother, getting things conveniently wrong that is, when the curious nowadays find it so easy to check. On Sunday in the Silly, intrepid correspondent Paul McGeough set out to present a predictably partisan account of all this recent fuss concerning the sacking of the US consulate in Benghazi, the murder of the American ambassador and three others beside. McGeough, soulmate and recent groom of a Palestinian activist, is rather predictable in reporting on the region’s troubles, which he generally ascribes to the Zionist Entity and its Yankee sponsor. No doubt this makes for a peaceful and loving home life. But sometimes, in order to interpret the wider world as seen from the bearskin rug by the happy couple’s fireplace, facts do tend to get a little mangled.

In that Sunday column, McGeough charts a tangled path through this and the other of what has been quite the can of worms. For example, he seems to regard the central issue of the Benghazi scandal as being that one of the pillaged buildings was occupied by CIA nogoodniks, who were spooking and spying all over the place. Others wonder why talking points were altered and speculate as to Obama’s motives in attempting to present the well organised, 8-hour attack as a spontaneous demonstration prompted by a YouTube video. But McGeough will have none of that, harping about the presence of so many CIA operatives in Benghazi. Here is what he had to say:

Of the more than 30 American officials evacuated from Benghazi following the deadly assault, only seven worked for the State Department. Nearly all the rest worked for the CIA, under diplomatic cover, which was a principal purpose of the consulate, these officials said.

Whoops! Sorry about that. The paragraph above is actually what the Wall Street had to say in December, but very easily confused with McGeough’s words, which are strikingly similar:

Of more than 30 Americans evacuated from Benghazi after the attack, only seven reportedly were on the State Department payroll. The others all used diplomatic cover for their CIA work, which was the principal purpose of the diplomatic ''post''.

Newlyweds have many distractions, so entertain no harsh thoughts of cutting and pasting on the part of the man with umpteen Walkley Awards. It must have been a moment of preoccupation or coincidence, the purest of coincidences, and nothing more.

Somewhat harder to explain is this snippet, which appears to be all his own work (emphasis added):

...the State Department and Secretary of State Clinton, in particular, were being made to carry the can for the failure to adequately protect what was a CIA operation that, by the nature of its work in tracking Islamist militants and Stinger missiles commandeered from Gaddafi's munitions dumps, was a more likely target than a conventional consulate.

Was the Dance of the Bee being performed as McGeough attempted to write his dispatch, offering much distraction? Or is the Silly’s correspondent simply a dope, immediately assuming that the US had armed a mass murderer because, well, that is what the US does.

When did the US sell Stinger missiles to Gaddafi? Well, they didn’t, not ever, and why would they? Sell shoulder-fired weapons capable of bringing down a jumbo jet to a man with a proven record of, er, bringing down jumbo jets?

What Obama did do, apparently, was give them to the rebels to counteract Gaddafi’s ground-attack planes, and now that the dictator is dead and gone the administration wants them back. The problem was that many of those rebels, especially the weird beards of Ansaral-Sharia, are al Qaeda associates and none too fond of infidels, not even conciliatory ones with the middle name of Hussein. Ambassadors get even shorter shrift.

By next weekend, when McGeough once again explains the world to the dolts at home – the 290,000 of them who still read the Sun-Herald, at any rate – everyone else will have connected the dots and made a startling conclusion:

Obama gave Stingers to al Qaeda! Others are thinking along similar lines.

      

Safe,well and on the ABC

At the the end the first Batman film, the one with Jack Nicholson and Michael Keaton, the Joker falls to his death.

But that was just Hollywood and there was never any need to send a wreath, as Q&A demonstrated last night.

 Next week or soon thereafter, Sarah Hanson-Dung, who values trees more than people (except if they are illegal aliens), will banish any fears that Poison Ivy might have come to grief.

Exit Door

MANY words will be devoted to the life and career of The Doors' Ray Manzarek, who was carried off by cancer of the bile duct this morning at the age of 72. Few, however, will note his finest quality, which was finding the patience to put up with Jim Morrison, who must have been an extraordinarily annoying co-worker. Indeed, you could argue that much of what is distasteful and unpleasant in the conduct of today's youngsters first crystalised in the antics of the amateur pharmacologist and alleged poet. Loud, abrasive, rude and habitually intemperate, Morrison marked that sad transition from the days of responsible substance abuse, when getting bent was done quietly and in private, to the era when deficiencies of character are paraded as transgressive virtues.

All the same, and despite his enduring admiration for a man who extended his adolescence to the age of 28, Manzarek  was an interesting fellow. In the video below he describes the genesis of Riders on the Storm. Who knew it started as a cowboy song?

The Wowsers' Return

THE AD below has been popping up Fairfax sites. Doesn't that seem like a rather large number?

Let's nut this out: 10,315 seconds = 171.91 minutes of TV gambling ads per week, but let's make it 172 minutes for convenience's sake.


If Tom Waterhouse and friends were to claim three minutes of every broadcast hour between 3pm and midnight -- an overestimate, to be sure, given that commercial stations are limited to 13 ad-minutes per hour -- that would mean Little Miss Misery is watching 57 hours of television every week.

If that is genuinely the case, if she is planted in front of the screen for longer each day than her parents spend at work, exposure to the latest betting trends and opportunities would be the least of her problems. Far more serious, if we put any credence in that figure of 10315 seconds, is the unavoidable conclusion that her parents are deliberately keeping her awake, perhaps in order to run a book on the moment when seizures begin.

Then again, it might just be an example of what the loudest scolds and stickybeaks have always done better than anything else: Lie.

Butch buffs' buffet

AS it feels morally obliged to do, week after week, the Silly has once again published some of Butch Carlton's deeper thoughts. This may be a case of "do unto others", as there can be no scribbly editorial units in Fairfax World Headquarters who have not wondered what they will be doing with themselves when the receivers chase everyone out of the building. Perhaps, if they continue to provide a forum for a failed radio host, karma will kick in and their own coming days of even greater irrelevance and mounting financial stress will be mitigated by the indulgent charity of some as-yet-unknown philanthropist. Well, it's a theory, and just as valid as the notion that Silly readers arise of a weekend morn eager to bathe in the spleen of the otherwise unemployed.

The matter of where they will get their fix when the Silly is shuttered is pressing. But there is hope of relief, as it has long seemed that Butch's columns are written not with the ink of coherence but as a consequence of inscribing random thoughts on little bits of paper and plucking them in no particular order from a hat. If buffs were to collect his columns and slice and dice them, they could assemble fresh doses of Butchalalia every single day of the week.

To demonstrate that there would be no erosion of tone and substance from such a method, The Professor has this very morning taken today's offering and re-arranged the paragraphs in random order. It even works for the headline. See if you can tell the amalgam from the original:

Magnificent When A Guard Drops Her PM

From now on, disabled Australians and their families will find their burdens lighter, their hopes brighter. In this turbulent political year, Gillard somehow discovered in us what Abraham Lincoln so memorably described as "the better angels of our nature".

"Great morning tea with Snake Gully Shire councillors," they say. "Very much looking forward to tonight's dinner and folkloric performance to welcome the visiting Archimandrite of Antioch." Often there is a grainy photo of the happy knees-up.

I speak with authority. The north shore's bosky woods and grassy glades were my childhood playground. I attained high rank as a leader of the Seagull Patrol in the 1st Lindfield Scout Troop, and I was a prefect at Barker College (until an unfortunate Muck-Up Day incident saw me drummed out of that band of brothers). I nearly rolled an MGA 1600 on Eastern Arterial Road, Killara, in 1964. Later, my two elder children grew up in Turramurra. So, although politically I am a class traitor and I've moved thankfully away, I still claim cred …

Imagine my surprise when legions of the Twitterati reported back that, not long ago, Devine herself had upset the punters by accusing a gay tweeter of "rogering gerbils". It's a funny old world, as dear Lady Thatcher used to say.

How churlish. It was that spirit - or lack of it - which led the opposition Whip Warren Entsch to deny a pair to a Labor MP wanting to go home to Sydney on Thursday to care for her sick child. Politics, politics, always politics. Entsch was eventually persuaded to back off, but not before he had sniffed that: ''People's obligation in the first instance is to be in this Parliament.''

But, deary me, the place has changed. When I was living there some 20 years ago, a local matron knocked on the front door one evening, blue-rinse awry, fear in her eyes, panic in her voice. Concerned, I invited her in.

''The people who've gathered here today from around the country to witness this debate know what this means,'' she croaked.

It's when she drops her guard that she's magnificent. Humanity, passion and decency shine through. So it was on Wednesday, when she introduced the DisabilityCare bill to Parliament in a tide of emotion, tears welling, voice choking. Between sobs she spoke well and her words deserve to be remembered:

"Mr Carlton, you're in the media - there's something you should know," she quavered. "We must do something. The Chinese have moved into the street!”

Those gathered did not include the opposition, where the green leather benches were shamefully empty. Yes, the Coalition and its leader support national disability insurance; but in an election year it would not do to be too enthusiastic about a Labor reform, apparently.

Julia Gillard is so much better when not trying. Stuck behind a lectern, droning away at some boilerplate speech cranked out by her office gnomes, she is cold and remote, more than a bit prissy. Groping for prime ministerial gravitas, she comes across all head girl on speech day.

A fortnight in, the Twitterverse continues to reveal its mysteries to me. There was something of a spat between myself and the News Ltd columnist Miranda Devine a week ago when I tweeted a joke about her claim that she'd been "embedded" with the riot squad.

That done, we turn to a more fundamental question Australians must confront: where and what is Sydney's north shore? This has been bothering Herald readers, or some of them, on the letters page all week.

Prime ministers are ever conscious of their place in history. Gillard has been viciously assailed by her enemies, not least by those in her own party. Few prime ministers have been so abused, not even Gough and Malcolm back in the days of rage.

The most prolific of all is @Colvinius, who is Mark Colvin, host of ABC radio's PM. He scours the world's media and digests it for his 35,000 followers. The funniest I've encountered is the Melbourne writer and comedian, @benpobjie, who rattles off a fusillade of one-liners.

''DisabilityCare Australia starts in seven weeks, and there will be no turning back.''

Politicians tweet about the good works they perform, keen to tell the world of their dutiful attendance at worthy civic functions and obscure ethnic frolics. @Malcolm_Turnbull and @KRuddMP are assiduous at this, as you would expect.

The north shore begins at Boundary Street, Roseville. It runs up the Pacific Highway and the railway line to Wahroonga and not a metre more. The posher side stops two kilometres east of the line, but most definitely does not include St Ives. People west of the line get in, but only if they're within a kilometre of their local station. And that's that.

It was obvious, tacky and silly, I admit. I took it down and apologised. Shocked, The Australian put me on page three last Saturday, and her Melbourne colleague Andrew Bolt, the Rinehart Cowboy, went nuts as well.

But the future will acknowledge her commitment of the nation to care for its disabled is a towering Labor landmark on the road to social justice, in every way as significant as the basic wage, the aged pension, the 40-hour week, Medicare and Mabo. And take a bow, Bill Shorten, for bolting the policy together.

But the absolute trump is @ShockJockCoach. I haven't a clue who that might be but, as the name suggests, each morning he or she tweets a running commentary on the wretched excesses of Alan Jones and Ray Hadley. It's not just hilarious ; it's a great national service.

Here is the correct answer, which I never tire of giving: if you have to ask, you've got no business being there. They don't want you in Warrawee and Turramurra, Pymble and Roseville. You can christen your children Hamish and Sophie and book them into Knox and Abbotsleigh; you can acquire the mandatory golden retriever, and the Volvo XC90, and the Federation bungalow with the tennis court, but still they'll see through you. Honestly, you'd be happier in Frenchs Forest.

There you go, Butch buffs. It's as easy as a former Slater & Gordon union lawyer.

 


 

Phew, that's a relief!

Who says media organisations devote themselves only to bad news?

As the above revelation was first published last October, somehow going unnoticed at the time, much thanks is owed to Fairfax's Ladies Pages for thoughtfully combing its archives and installing a retro-link in today's homepage. That's the thing about quality journalism: it endures.

And thanks also to Providence for the happy coincidence of the writer's family name. If Ms Clementine's surname had been, say, Apple instead Ford, an essay setting out to demolish the theory that vaginas are iPods would have made no sense whatsoever.

A poultry sum, taxpayers, for talent such as this

BEYOND Melbourne, where the silly things footballers do tend to be remembered for longer than their follies warrant, few will recall The Adventures of Little Boris, a short film that caused quite a stir in 2009.  Without wanting to be a spoiler for those keen to view the YouTube video, the plot follows the amorous progress of a rubber chicken as it woos, seduces and drives a van over a plump beauty from the freezer cabinet. While poorly shot, the film does have some redeeming social value, as Boris sets a fine example by wearing a condom throughout his every carnal encounter, albeit on his head.

Alas for North Melbourne’s pocket-camera auteurs, safe-sex advocacy did not save them from the wrath of those who take offence for a living. While Andrew Demetriou and the AFL’s other old women clucked and scolded and went to great pains to let everyone know they recognised the video as a metaphor for sporting society’s institutionalised oppression of women, the entire team was fined a five-figure sum and the cash donated to some noisy feminists. Hard though it is to credit, Age reporterette Samantha Lane won a major journalism award for her scoop, which sheds more light on major journalism awards than does the video on the sex lives of chooks, rubber or otherwise.

Four years on and one can only feel sorry for the poor Kangaroos and their emptied wallets. If only they had thought to persuade their critics that footballers are transgressive artists they might have split a very generous cheque from the Australia Council, which yesterday welcomed its new CEO, Tony Grybowski. Appointed by Minister Tony Burke, Grybowski would almost certainly have lauded Little Boris as a creation worthy of generous public support, for such is the conclusion to be drawn from the $38,000 awarded one year after the Little Boris outrage to Linda Dement, who will use it for the

“creative development of an audio-visual performance responding to live data capture from an all-girl roller derby game.”

No doubt it will make compelling viewing.

A professional arts administrator – did Raphael or Turner have one of those? – Grybowski was on the panel that approved Dement’s hand-out, so one assumes he thoroughly appreciates her oeuvre, which she is very keen to flash. Respectable readers should abandon this post right here, as the images below make Little Boris seem rather tame by comparison.

(A considerable amount of empty blog space now follows. This will allow the sensitive to depart before being confronted by the who and what their taxes are supporting.)

Porking not your bag? Well, what about an act of loving intimacy with a skinned rabbit and companion Coke bottle?

While citizens unversed in the modern aesthetic may not recognise high art when they see it, all will understand the meaning of this:

$75.3 million

That is extra funding awarded to the Australian Council in Wayne Swan’s latest act of ledger-demain.

Do you think Grybowski and pals can spend all that cash before September 14? If they are in the mood to try, the North Melbourne Football Club might overcome its former regrets and set to work on Boris The Sequel: Duck, Duck, Goose.

For those who cannot get enough of Ms Dement, her folio is here. Fun with Porky and Bugs is part of the pictorial sequence to be inspected by visiting her site and clicking on the image reproduced below.