MEDIA WATCH DOG is up and Gerard Henderson is in fine form, with items on Media Watch, self-described "eminent journalist" Margaret Simons, Q&A, the Finko & Rickety Review, and Bob Ellis, who has climbed back aboard the Labor gravy train and is once again advising Bob Carr in his capacity as foreign minister. No mention if Ellis is being paid for his insights, but as Carr is a good Labor man, Ellis a mate, and the public purse open and handy, to think otherwise would defy history.
Oh, and there is a note to Bruce Belsham, now head of ABC Current Affairs, to which the man who hired Jonathan Green and launched The Drum has yet to respond.
A bumper edition, with only one disappointment. Nowhere does Henderson mention that Green, having kept the ABC legal department busy with matters related to defamation, is now being moved to a compere's gig on Radio National. The question is, who will replace Green?
Reader suggestions on the best person to continue Green's brave legacy are welcome.
By the way, is it only the Professor who understands "drum" to be archaic Australian slang for a brothel? Perhaps Craig Thomson, the Kleenex Kid, would make a good editor.
UPDATE: It seems drum's use as a term for a house of ill repute goes back quite some way, according to one self-proclaimed authority.
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"the Kleenex Kid"! You're a wicked man, professor.
ReplyDeleteJeremy Sear?
ReplyDeletePut yer money on Misha Ketchell's perfect pedigree. Ex-Age, ex-Crikey, ex-Media Watch and now at The Conversation with Jaspan. His mates have probably told him it's his job if he wants it.
ReplyDeleteDRUNK OF THE WEEK - Leslie Cannold, The Drum, ABC News24:
ReplyDelete"...there’s been a huge ramping up of, you know, when we think back to where this all started, most Australians were in favour of a carbon tax. And then there’s been lots of deep-pocketed people who’ve tried to, sort of, you know, sway public opinion. And, surprise surprise, that’s been effective.
But deep down, once people realise that, in fact, it really isn’t going to be so problematic for them in terms of their hip-pocket and in terms of this vague sort of gesturing that all of their jobs are at risk – and they find that there’s going to be new, you know, opportunities for people in the new, you know, carbon economy, they probably won’t be so against it."
Thank you, Gerard Henderson
Love the bit about the 'new carbon economy'. There's a new carbon? Leslie, have you been holding out on us? Are its emissions lower than old carbon? If it comes cheaper than $23 a tonne, there may be hope for the economy yet.
DeleteWhy do they persist with the conceit that he "resigned"? The ABC is a sheltered workshop. This is just a job transfer.
ReplyDeleteCollectively - can we bear it? (With appropriate apologies to Mr. Henderson)
ReplyDeleteI threw Radio National out with the trash ages ago. Mr. Green's gig simply reinforces the notion my decision has been sound.
I find The Drum fairly ho-hum these days, so whoever replaces Green will probably be of little significance. I'm sure some Crikey hack will jump at the chance. Leftards like keeping things within the family unit!
JMH
'Drum' is a type of roll-your-own tobacco. Perhaps a great sponsorship opportunity is being missed. It's an ideal way to introduce the ABC to the market SBS-style, while at the same time keeping up with their ganga-loving demographic.
ReplyDeleteAnd what's with this 'editor' business? That's for baldies and cougars, not Quality Occupists. Make the editorship a collective of light-headed young unemployed tokers proferring their journalism degrees; plenty of takers there and all fully certified lefties.
Smokin' hot, Prof.
Political incest is endemic with leftists. Jobs for the B A s.
ReplyDeleteI seem to remember that Sir Humphrey Appleby was particularly scathing about Dr LESLIE CANNOLD's old alma mater, The University of Essex
ReplyDeleteThanks for the off-the-record update, sfw. It's been a bugger of summer for anything to do with standing in water, as opposed to having it fall all over you.
ReplyDeleteNo troubles, gotta say I've never heard of a brothel being referred to as a 'Drum'. Lots of other words such as knock shop etc. Then again you were possibly raised on the other side of Melbourne. Up till the 80's it was possible to identify the area where one grew up by the slang words they used.
DeleteKnocking shop. Now I'm running out of names...
ReplyDeleteI used to think "rubbitty" was slang for brothel, until in a moment of clarity, realised it was short for rub-a-dub-dub, ie pub.
As for drum, "Let me drum this inta ya," may have occasionally been heard before fisticuffs.
Bob Ellis proclaims on his blog that he and Bob Carr go into a darkened room together once a fortnight for a date. Okay nothing sinister. The go to the "pictures" together and share a choc-top.
ReplyDeleteSomething which may be of some slight interest:
ReplyDelete"Argumentum ad nauseam is the logical fallacy that something becomes true if it is repeated often enough. The overuse of an ad nauseam argument that can be easily shown to be false leads to the PRATT - the "point refuted a thousand times"."
http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Argumentum_ad_nauseam
Cheers
I thought we were still on "National resist a homophobe awareness week"
Deleteminicapt - I had a chance encounter with a social worker yesterday and naturally we sat and chatted about those "thousand point" of data. Her rough estimations are that one in three girls and about one in four boys are at the receiving end of some form of sexual abuse - in our enlightened times.
It makes noises about the "bad" old days when women couldn't vote seem so inane; insanely inane.
You are shocked by the numbers. Gayphilics in Gaytopia are incensed. Nearly 8.5 percent more abuse is being done by heterosexuals against young girls than by homosexuals against young boys.
Is that what this means?
Given that there are 30 to 50 times more heterosexuals than there are homosexuals there is actually about a 25 times greater incidence of "abusive" urge/ thought processes in the homosexual than there is in the heterosexual.
Imagine all that repression then of women not having the vote?
Relativism is a black hole for a great deal of logic.
And homophilic liberals like Andrew "I'm not right wing" Bolt have some unintended not so metaphorical blood on their hands.
Bleeding from a ruptured sphincter might be a small price to pay for liberal joys - you might want to say. And children are enormously forgiving. It is hard hearted grown ups in a state of denial - refusing to seek forgiveness out that exacerbates abuse all the way thru to Shakespeares "sticking point" .
So happy days Andtrew - with all those statistics.
Us bigots and phobes should be ashamed of what will never make it to print in any liberated media.
And social workers. Well they find it frustrating when people don't want to know. Tinsel town and gay, fairy floss and carnival lights. And Journalism of unreality.
The mad hatter and the mad monk so full of phobia but champions of free speech like Andrew "no phobia's here" Bolt finally coming out.
Melanie Phillips = please move to Australia - baffling incoherence is at its zenith. And one single Jewish conservative is all Australia would need to have one conservative in the main stream media - just one would be refreshing stuff.
Someone like John Pasquarelli, Bunyip. A real 'strayan, and a real artist to boot!
ReplyDeleteF*** I cringe at, and detest these Age/ABC groupthink indoctrinated c***s and all the smug arts-degree unthinking devotees who give us Adam Runt and its consequences.
I don't know how you can do what you do without going psychotic, but keep it up cobber. We need you. continued........
If this Adam Runt had suddenly emerged through a storm drain in Swan St Richmond, dressed only in mud, eating discarded kebabs and pizza, smoking the odd cigareete butt and proclaiming undisputed truth about the state of Man, I would have voted for him.
Does the fact that he is a lawyer with designer spectacles and an expensive haircut not alert you to your folly and vanity, you useful idiots?
"who understands "drum" to be archaic Australian slang for a brothel?"
ReplyDeleteNot at all.
"The Drum" refers to the Goss, The Good Oil, the most reliable information. Apparently it's derived from the drumming of African tribes used to pass on information.
My father (ex-RAAF where the term was routine) used it a great deal. It has absolutely nothing to do with brothels, a subject that seems to be front of mind for Bunyip and others who post here.
In a good Catholic home many years ago," He gave me the drum on Xxx and his horse down at the pub "was the sort of phrase often said by the pater.
ReplyDeleteSince it meant the"good goss" had been passed on, I don't think the circles that family moved in would have even had a hint of the connotation the prof has used???
That said,I thank God for Gerard Henderson's excellent read each Friday mid afternoon.
I think he is a veritable bloodhound on the trail of all the ABC foibles, hypocrisy and spin, and more power to his arm and yours Prof
I'd like to put forward the ABC journalist who triggered the evacuation of their Brisbane newsroom last year because he:
ReplyDeletea) couldn't spell
b) didn't understand Google
Reader suggestions for a replacement to continue the fine legacy. Has everyone forgotten the mighty Margo?
ReplyDelete-Carl
On slang for brothels - I've been around for a bit, going back to the late '60s and '70s when Wooloomooloo had back lane queues of punters waiting for their turn, and have never heard a brothel referred to as a "drum."
ReplyDeletesfw on March 16 at 13:11 correctly cites "knock shop" but I very much doubt "drum" had wide currency during the past 50 years.
That's right Mick. I have never heard 'Drum' used for a brothel. 'Knock Shop' (name any other type of shop where you have to knock?) is the only slang I know, and having been in the Army, I would have heard otherwise. Love the beach and sunset logo thing there too mate.
DeleteLove your work at Tim's blog too. Cheers.
As a side note, I used to bone chickens with an old bloke in Geelong (he used to be a beef boner and gun local footballer etc in his time) and he used to tell me about the prostitution world back in the 50s/60s in Geelong. There was some bird called 'thrippeny Lil' and another called 'two-bob Maisie'. Bloody funny stories.
Mick, I've only heard one person use it in relation to knock shops -- an old bloke who cut cane in the fifties up your way. He was telling me what the cutters would get up to on a tear and said something like "and thehouse mongrel at the drum broke my jaw." When he saw my bafflement, he translated this as "the bouncer at the brothel".
ReplyDeleteOh there'd be localised vernacular for sure.
DeleteThis exchange reminds me of Mrs Mick's puzzlement about brothels. I once explained the origin of "red light district", with its origin founded on the red light out front identifying the premises as a brothel.
A couple of years later the ever inquisitive Lady Mick (who migrated from Asia 20 odd years ago) noted just how many brothels there were in Southport. She'd spent that period passing numerous doctor surgeries in the then unrefurbished streets there, with their old fashioned square red lamp suspended from the shop awning ( http://photofix2010.files.wordpress.com/2010/01/surgery-sign.jpg?w=450 ) assuring herself they were all brothels!
One of your regular correspondents(quoting his father who served in the RAAF as the definitive source) says that the word "drum" has absolutely nothing to do with brothels. Yet the Concise New Partridge Dictionary of Slang and Unconventional English (published by Routledge) has this to say on p. 222:
ReplyDeleteDrum noun ... 2 by extension of the previous sense, a brothel AUSTRALIA 1879, ... 5 Reliable information, inside information AUSTRALIA 1915
Boom boom...
Hanyu,
ReplyDeleteSo its your turn to give numbers his daily pwning?
I have never been able to understand what Green did all day as 'editor' of The Drum. In traditional journalism, the 'editor' was the person who was responsible for content and quality control. Since Green never took responsibility for either of these things, I can only conclude that he spent his days playing Angry Birds or something, after spending 15 minutes putting up the day's dross on the website.
ReplyDeleteGreen rejects Drum as rhyming slang, but “drum and bass” is a likely rhyming slang for “place”. What Green and too many others tend to neglect is an etymologist’s fallacy: that a word has only one derivation. Clearly, a coiner of a new term will consider not only how a new word will sound but also how it relates to other words.
ReplyDeleteConsider the Cockney rhyming slang for testes, “orchestra stalls”. Why not “theatre stalls”? Well, not only does “orchestras” have a nice trisyllabic oomph, but it puns with the ancient Greek, ὄρχις.
In Hobart, there used to be a disreputable area called Wapping, quite near the docks, full of houses and women of low character; “wapping” was also slang for “tupping”, “treading”, “shtupping”, and the like. Recently, the area was gentrified, the name resurrected, and the area now has a small shop: it’s a Wapping shop.