THAT Graeme Wood, the Global Mail’s sugar daddy, has more
money than sense should by now be obvious to all, even allowing for the $1.7
million he has poured into the Greens. Somewhere north of 10 per cent of
Australians believe Old Mother Milne to be sane, so it cannot be said that his
political enthusiasms represent one of the rarer forms of madness. As an
aspiring media proprietor, however, well he’s out there on the far borders of
derangement.
Everyone – no, make that the few – who have visited his
vanity press will know that, unlike the printed page or your standard web site,
the Global Mail’s display moves sideways and is very annoying to read. Take for
an example the work of youngster Joel Tozer, who
has extruded this log of words about a chubby matron in leather trousers who
enjoys sex with young men and is keen to turn a dollar on open-source porn. Why
she should invest entrepreneurial effort in such a project is a mystery, given
that there are many and much easier ways to line the pocket -- like calling Mr
Wood, praising mung beans and asking for a spare million-or-so. He gives it away
quite freely, so why should a slutty sixtysomething be denied? And if the mung beans prove
an insufficient inducement, a stated preference for doing it sideways would certainly produce a cheque in the first post.
But enough of Wood’s money, for it is Tozer who is the real object
of wonder. On Saturday, the intrepid cub journeyed to Sydney’s Hyde Park, where
many sons of the Prophet were a’bristle with more than their usual quota of
inchoate resentments. Tozer pulled out his little camera and snapped some
pictures, one of which is below. Yes, that’s the one, the happy family shot of
that junior jihadi and his sibling being prepared for a life of good, old fashioned,
multicultural intolerance.
What a scoop, you might think. How thrilled Tozer must have
been as he dialled the Global Mail office and screamed, “Hold the sideways
slide, sweetheart. Do I have a picture for you!”
Except he didn’t. Tozer published the picture on Twitter and
has yet to write a single word on the site of what he witnessed. There’s one of
your up-and-coming quality journalists for you! Meanwhile, Tozer’s picture has
gone around the world and the poor boy has been reduced to asking that more
competent media organisations seek his permission to reproduce it. One gathers
few have bothered.
Any other media boss would have been miffed. That picture
might have been syndicated, bringing in royalties and re-print fees and boosting
the Global Mail’s profile with people other than Fairfax refugees who have
heard that the proprietor is a soft touch and will hire pretty much
anyone with a yen for hot Green
action and Old Mother Milne.
The sexygenarian in the leather trousers should look into
that scenario. Now that Wood has played about with the written word, a move into
non-profit movie production is quite likely the next step. What a pity Sideways has already been released.
