Monday, March 12, 2012

Bob Katter's Stolen Moment?

BOB KATTER is getting a kicking for seeking to repair Anna Bligh's damage by going after homosexuals, if you can believe it. Why his new party is picking on poofters when so many Labor figures have been convicted of molesting children is a mystery, but it's his party and he can decry if he wants to -- no matter how irrelevant his fixations may be.

Another mystery, one that may say quite a bit more about Katter and his mates' fitness to exert any influence on public policy, concerns the photo of the two chaps being used in his TV ad. It has been smudged and blurred from chest level down, and the first reaction at the Billabong was to see this tampering as an attempt to suggest the boys were going the grope, entertaining a dwarf or making  the imaginative acquaintance of a ferret.

The answer is a bit simpler than that: Bob's braintrust appears to have stolen obtained the image from a company which sells stock images. The blurring seems to have been inspired by the need to obscure the rightful owner's watermark, which readers can see below:

......ACTUALLY, no it doesn't. A modest commenter points out that the ad's blurring wouldn't have covered the watermark as positioned below, so the picture was most likely bought online and everything about its use is quite probably proper and above board. And it also demonstrates the Professor is a dill for immediately jumping to conclusions.

So what to do? Take down the post and pretend it didn't happen? Well that would be worse, as it might be seen as hiding the shame of a stupid error. How about this: Leave the picture ...


... cross out this bit

Expect Bob's next ad to be a denunciation of private property.

... and substite...

Expect Bob's next ad to denounce the state for sticking its nose in your business, as long as you're not gay.

(There, that took a bit of wiggling, but it does preserve some little Bunyip dignity)

UPDATE: Did you catch another of the sensitive little touches in Katter's ad? Newman folding a skirt.



FOR THE RECORD: Gay marriage enjoys no support at the Billabong, nor does the heterosexual variety (particularly the heterosexual variety, as has been made clear many times to the Rufous Bird). Two people deciding to share lives and a bed do not need to be forced into a threesome with the state, which should stick to filling potholes and dispensing susso packages of cheap lentils to all the public servants and ABC employees it needs to fire.

41 comments:

  1. state, which should stick to filling potholes and dispensing susso packages of cheap lentils to all the public servants and ABC employees it needs to fire.

    Rightly so Professor.
    So far I have not read a word you wrote, I could seriously disagree with!

    Frightening and scary.
    Cheers

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  2. Seems to fit right along side this other Katter ad that he says is a spoof:

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dSn-XuUT-Ig&feature=related

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  3. Hey, why should heterosexuals be the only miserable marrieds?

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    Replies
    1. Why should you label all heterosexual marrieds miserable?

      Heterophobe.

      Delete
  4. .. tax, inheritance, social security, child custody ..?

    ".. it isn't actually practically possible for the government to "get out of the marriage business." It's a fuzzy libertarian dream without any clear meaning. If civil marriage did not exist, the courts would have to invent it."

    http://www.whatswrongwiththeworld.net/2012/01/why_the_government_should_be_i.html

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    Replies
    1. Contract law handles all of those objections. Go the newsagent, get a form, tick the boxes, sign and file.

      If you buy a horse, does officialdom send an authorised third party to officiate at the transaction?

      And consider the very definite downside: With government in the deal, what's to stop someone like Katter regulating on which bed post who must hang your trousers, what you may do behind closed doors with your partner(s) or the spilling of seed in the wrong orifice?

      Don't laugh. Some US states banned oral sex and Ireland, if I'm not mistaken, banned contraception.

      Allow government into any aspect of private life and, guess what, you don't have a private life anymore.

      Delete
    2. "Allow government into any aspect of private life and, guess what, you don't have a private life anymore"
      Fascinating.
      Would you consider balloting 20 year-olds for military service in a war zone "allowing government into your private life?"
      And do you remember which end of the political continuum applied this as policy in this country from 1965 until 1972?

      Delete
    3. PhillipGeorge(c)2012March 12, 2012 at 7:17 PM

      Prof, as far as I know the vows spoken in a Church or anywhere are a common law contract. You don't need the bits of paper even.

      Remember a quaint old idea "breech of promise"

      Now, back to power to the people. Teach anyone what a Jury is. Jury Nullification etc.

      Moreover Prof. The Scots had 'common law' marriage until quite recently in 'historical terms'.

      But Prof - what is a homosexual? No really, what is one? Can a homosexual be one, on their own, on a deserted island? Self identifiers ? Does it have any equivalent of the ancient practise of consummation. To avoid all society living like "idiots" the concept should be given wings.

      Marriage used to confer rights to have children; the right to coitus; the right to attempt being fertile.....

      The devil is there in the detail and the ignorance of utopians is profound.

      Delete
    4. PhillipGeorge(c)2012March 12, 2012 at 10:51 PM

      typical typo; breach of promise

      guns have breeches; & with all this talk about pump action love affairs

      anyway, don't be alarmed -

      one can still hold a belief in the mystical power of anal intercourse to produce nirvana states, cure depression and avert youth suicide, promote self respect, social harmony, honour decency,
      its the mechanism, some say for the next, punctuated equilibrium quantum leap in evolution where pigs finally mate with birds to produce porcus avianus.

      Delete
    5. "Can a homosexual be one, on their own, on a deserted island?"

      Maybe they do a Tom Hanks and play with their balls..

      Delete
    6. PhillipGeorge(c)2012March 13, 2012 at 8:17 AM

      Interesting Question - I cried when Wilson deserted his postman.
      Some palaeontologist believe an outbreak Porcus Avianus flu was what wiped out the mega fauna in Gaytopia Jurassicus - the most progressive epoch of rectal evolution.

      Delete
  5. Don't know what all the fuss is about. I've been having the "same sex" for almost 30 years. Not sure why folks would be marching in the street for that...

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    Replies
    1. Elizabeth (Lizzie) B.March 12, 2012 at 6:58 PM

      Golly gosh Gibbo, that sounds as if after a while the glamour and fun goes out of it. Could that be true? Surely not.

      Same old, same old, 2.5 times a week, year in, year out, just like the self-declared Bob Ellis?

      Imagination to the rescue, I say. Makes heterosexual same sex worth marching for. Yea for the brain, the primary sex organ.

      Delete
    2. PhillipGeorge(c)2012March 12, 2012 at 7:01 PM

      Gibbo, try your left hand.

      Delete
  6. The add is a shot at Campbell Newman who is a typical local government type in the pay of developers. In this case Katter is questioning Newman's conservative bona fides. It's not irrelevant at all, people have a right to know who they're voting for.

    Also, no surprise that 'conservative' nancy boy Andrew Bolt has gone into skirt lifting mode screaming 'homomphobia!'. Ann Summers was right when she painted Bolt as a slimey opportunist. The former Labor staffer doesn't have a conservative bone in his body.

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    1. Totally agree.

      Bolt isn't even controlled opposition, he is an agitprop artist.

      His covert support for socialist monsters like gillard should embarass him; instead he laughs all the way to the bank.

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    2. Is that so?
      Then what to make of Gillard, is she a pretend laborite? She has openly told the public she doesn't support Gay marriage, yet one of her flock is trying to get it through the parliament...hypocrisy much?

      Newman has a private view while his party has a different one, and I'd guess that exists with every Catholic in the Labor Party but then the Labor/Greens mobs do hypocrisy like no others.
      As for Bolt -- he is a paid commentator but entitled to call himself what he will, and his views are more conservative and cogent than most of the jeft so he isn't a socialist despite Ann Summers" stretching of facts and suppositions to the contrary.

      Delete
  7. Prof, can you direct your mate BoltA to Wikipedia referencing "The Political Spectrum" and explain to him that being a conservative means you are of the right wing please?

    It's getting rather embarrassing now for all Ozzies that our most read conservative journo doesn't understand the political spectrum. Or, does he?

    Can you also ask him to enunciate exactly what it is that makes him a "conservative". Traditionally a conservative "promotes the maintenance of traditional institutions" so says the trusted Wikipedia. Yet, BoltA has gone off like a mad woman's shit, excoriating Katter for...promoting the maintenance of the traditional institution of marriage.

    BoltA the conservative even chucked a "homophobe" slur for effect. I always thought that was stock leftist language but, BoltA says he's a conservative so now I'm really confused.

    Re. the two Frenchmen fondling each other, how do you know that the picture hasn't been purchased? Perhaps the pixellation was to blur the obscenity of the breasts and womb being fondled. It is a rather distasteful series of photos. Yet, it's actually promotional material for homosexualists.

    Has BoltA blundered by casting homosexualist promotional material in the florid terms he has? Could be a bigger scandal here than first thought.

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    1. Quite so, Anonymous. The rot set in with the Married Women's Property Acts, didn't it. Imagine allowing a married women to keep her money! Then they gave women the vote, and it was all downhill to the the trashing of laws that criminalised sex against the order of nature, good laws which protected us from abominations like fellatio, and which put sodomites in jail for life. Is there no end to the attack on "traditional institutions"?

      Delete
    2. Hey, when you've finished beating up your straw man can I have a lend?

      Delete
    3. Giving women the vote has been an absolute disaster for right-wing parties in the West. But your a facetious libertarian prick so your probably more interested in peoples 'rights'.

      Delete
    4. Elizabeth (Lizzie) B.March 12, 2012 at 8:45 PM

      "Perhaps the pixellation was to blur the obscenity of the breasts and womb being fondled."

      Yes, as a woman I do find this obscene, and I actually find very few things so. Adults in any gender combination obsessed with arses, armpits, black leather whatevers, seven inch stiletto heels or penis puppetry, generally you name it, are fine by me if that's what they want, in private, and without coercion. But anything to do with kids fires my ire. This is about children. It mocks and denigrates children via women and our bodies in their most basic functions, evolved over millenia. It resists acknowledging something very fundamental about reproduction: the right of a child to know its biological origins. Two men do not and cannot reproduce a child even though they may raise it. Way it is. Get over it, guys. Fiddle with your dicks: you don't have a uterus, your brains are labelled male even if they reside where you're fiddling.

      Delete
    5. Yeah, you're right about how giving the vote to women has weakened the conservative vote. It's hardly a coincidence that the century of the women's franchise has been the century of the culture of rights without responsibility. Go figure. In Switzerland they held out to 1973 and it's one of the richest countries in the world.
      As to the weakening of our institutions, it was only about 150 years ago that the penalty for buggery was the rope, no questions asked, no "mercy", no "commutation of sentence". Then the hand-wringing Milquetoasts (dissenters mostly, disloyal to our institutions to a man), having denied street urchins the opportunity to be useful with their wretched child-labour laws, turned their attention to the plight of sodomites! and before long death had become life imprisonment, then 20 years, a slap on the wrist that was hardly ever enforced (Oscar Wilde only got two), then two years, then in the UK in 1967 - repeal! NSW held out till 1984, and down in Tassie they had the right stuff, until the unelected judges of the High Court thought they knew best.
      We should be winding the clock back, not rushing headlong down a dark passage, if you'll forgive me.

      Delete
  8. I I suggest removal of the Katz hat to see if there is anything UNDER IT ? Or has he Secretly joined th petty Bourgoise Batchelors of arts party ? He is obviously crazy enough . For GODS sake he LIKEs the krudster!!??

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  9. "A threesome with the state"? so you have had one. Personally I my threesomes with people, but each to his own.

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  10. The pixelation in both images wouldn't fully cover the watermark. I think it is unlikely that they used a combination of pixelation and manipulation to remove the watermark.

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  11. The blurring seems to have been inspired by the need to obscure the rightful owner's watermark, which readers can see below

    If you watch the ad again and stop it at 25s you will see that there is no watermark, and the blurring is only of the breasts and womb.

    The position of the watermark in your picture Prof, is at the young man's chin line. This area is clearly visible at 25s, not blurred, and there is no watermark.

    I hope that bringing this to your attention saves you from some sort of legal action since you are implying that the authors of the ad have stolen the picture.

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  12. The other homosexualist promotional photo used in the ad is here -> (http://www.123rf.com/photo_5978026_portrait-of-a-homosexual-pregnant-couple-expecting-a-baby.html)

    The watermark is at the friendly Frenchies' shoulder lines. This area is visible in the ad at 9s, no pixellation of that area, and there is no watermark.

    The pixellation is more likely something that a conservative would do to limit the offensive nature of the photos, whilst still drawing attention to a matter that would outrage conservatives.

    However, I am operating on traditional definitions of the term conservative. In the new Oz, defining yourself as a conservative obviously means whatever you want it to mean.

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  13. Here's a story for you Prof, the SMH says "Two European men who posed with fake breasts and a pregnant stomach prothesis are believed to have been used in the Katter Australian Party's anti-gay marriage advertisements without their consent."

    and

    "It is believed the men did not know their image had been used in this manner."

    (http://www.smh.com.au/opinion/political-news/what-katter-gay-marriage-attackad-was-too-coy-to-show-20120312-1uu36.html)

    Consent is granted when the pictures are purchased, which doesn't cost much at all. Here are the prices for download: http://www.123rf.com/islogin_globalv4.1.php?is_islogin_credits=1

    It's even "Pay-As-You-Go" or "Subscription". No where is it stated that you must call the two friendly Frenchman and let them know what you intend to do with the photos.

    I'm thinking of purchasing several poster sized ones, laminating them, and putting them us wallpaper in my man cave.

    What a beat up over nothing. Why doesn't some journo simply ask the ad authors if they had purchased the photos?

    Very disturbing to see so many "conservatives" go into full on leftist beat down mode on Katter. But, then, Robert Manne did make the astute observation:

    "He obviously saw there was reputation and money to be made from being conservative. There were no examples of such people in Australia. In the mid ’90s this type emerged and he was one of the first."

    What a complete rout of conservative Australia that by the 90s there were none left in the media. And nothing's changed since.

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  14. Susso - Now there's a fantastic old school noun.
    My Great Grandfather was a returned man from the "Great" War.
    A 5th Battalion original who landed on April 25th.
    Bayoneted, gassed and finally machine gunned out of the war, he returned to Melbourne in early 1919 and spent 10 years on susso before obtaining work on the waterfront. No Centrelink back then. Hard labour on work gangs in country Victoria with 2 visits home per year unlike the lazy, tattooed, ear stretched losers that are milking the public teat these days.
    A true hard man, husband, father, Freemason, drinker, fighter, larrikin. I have very fond memories of this wonderful man, beer in hand, silver hair and nicotine yellow fingers from a lifetime of roll your owns.
    Always voted Labor but he lost faith in his later years, he was firmly from the Bealey Snr mold - the party was morally bankrupted and destroyed by middle class scum that worshiped the empty vessel Whitlam.

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  15. If one is going to go into legalisms... there's this in the license agreement:

    "‎'3.5 If any Licensed Material featuring a model or property is used in connection with a subject that would be unflattering or unduly controversial to a reasonable person, Licensee must accompany each such use with a statement that indicates that: (i) the Licensed Material is being used for illustrative purposes only; and (ii) any person depicted in the Licensed Material, if any, is a model. "

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  16. Your dignity, and integrity, remains intact as always Prof.

    I did not mean to suggest any threat of legal action, and was sincerely pointing out,in your interest, a possible ramification.

    I salute you.

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  17. Ah, I see even the Perfessor falls under the Left's net of post modern confusion, flailing about confusedly to re-set personal moral boundaries in the new world order of political correctness. Do the Left own everybody? Professor, oposing gay marriage is not the same as the government sticking its nose into somebody's private business. Although in this instance I do enjoy the metaphore.

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    1. PhillipGeorge(c)2012March 13, 2012 at 8:03 AM

      there's only two options - either you support gay marriage or you're a misogynist homophobic xenophobic right wing reactionary extremist fundamentalist tea party gun stockpiling hunter who spills dioxin in every square inch of remaining tree frog habitat between Siberian tundra and Macquarie Island -

      it's sophisticated sophistry, not that dangerous generalisation stuff.

      Even Andrew Bolt gets it.

      Delete
    2. I oppose gay marriage, and I don't fit your caricature at all--too old and teetotal to boot, with a family friend who is gay and great

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    3. Jazza I see they've got to you too. You have a gay friend who is great - so what. That says nothing about homosexuality from the perspective of morality. Your approach is exactly the sort of post modern, whatever-suits-me attitude towards morality that the Left have foisted onto an unwitting society. In the place of a genuine morality we now have political correctness (on their terms of course), at the forefront of which has been the 'gay agenda'. The gay issue has proven to be a potent weapon to break down traditional moral standards, and with it the credibility of the conservative/right whenever they blithely go along for the ride.

      Delete
  18. God bless Katter the Hatter.
    He has created total and complete confusion in the Right-wing blogosphere.

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    1. Yes he has, and that's because those who cosider themselves to be conservative are either too afraid to express their opinion, or they are suffering the confusion of having allowed Leftist post modern relativism and duality permeate their worldview. Something I'm sure you're familiar with in your topsy turvy world of post modern make-believe, Numbers. And I doubt that you believe in God - no room for such a thing in the universe of the navel gazer.
      What is everybody pretending to be offended about? A picture of 2 gay guys in a political ad that rails against gay marriage, from a bloke who wears a cowboy hat. It's the funniest thing I've seen in politics for a long time. Whatever happened to Australia's sense of humour? Oh that's right, the Left suffocated it.

      Delete
    2. PhillipGeorge(c)2012March 13, 2012 at 4:15 PM

      If it has wings it might be the feathered mammalian Porcus Avianus - see if you can get a photo of them procreating to share it with the blog.

      Delete
    3. Sorry if your old fascist brain explodes then Wittaker

      Delete
  19. I'm in a legal same-sex marriage. There are very few of those in Australia, but there are some.

    It seems just plain wrong that a lacuna in the law allows the existence of a same-sex marriage like mine, but not for others who wish it.

    We've just celebrated our 31st anniversary. The sky does not appear to have fallen, nor society collapsed over that period.

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