Toe The Line!

LEADING journalism academic and trainee court reporter Margaret Simons is auctioning her sandals for charity, a noble gesture and potential boon to poor unfortunates in two different varieties of sheltered workshop. The first, your more conventional kind of lunatic, may soon benefit from additions to their institution’s supplies of basket-weaving materials. And the second, well that would be any Fairfax reporter or editor sufficiently astute to recognise the career-boosting benefits such footwear might bestow.

They could, for example, be worn proudly in either the Silly or Phage newsroom, where open toes would be taken as firm evidence of the new owner’s belief in rising global temperatures. With Fairfax reporters attempting daily to outdo each other in demonstrating their faith in the catastropharian creed, those pre-worn Birkenstocks would leave all but Melissa Fyfe’s jogging shoes in their dust.

Or – and this might be the better career strategy -- they might be used for paddling office heretics. If some undiplomatic soul strays from the groupthink that characterizes all the Fairfax papers, whack!, six of the best, followed by an open invitation for ideologically sound colleagues to examine the welts.  Administer that sort of punishment and the office disciplinarian will be put on the first plane and sent off to cover any number of international events.

And no need, either, to fret over consequences. In the unlikely event of the police being summoned, the office windows at both the Phage and Silly are sealed shut.

Saint Spanky

TO: Julia, Wayne, et al

FROM: Bruce Hawker

SUBJECT: Hit ’em for six!

Comrades,

As you know, the latest polls show our evolving strategy  is bearing fruit. We are now just 10 points behind Abbott’s mob, which is giving our people something to work with at last. Michelle Grattan, Michael Gordon, Peter Hartcher have the talking points and are banging the drum about the growing pressure on Abbott and how his own backbenchers vomit spontaneously at the mere mention of his name. Malcolm Turnbull, the guy we can beat, is onboard to resume Opposition leadership so long as Goldman Sachs gets to trade carbon permits, which won’t be a problem if Bob B. can make Rhiannon shut her yap about Jews running the world.

Pretty soon we’ll switch our media assets to Abbott’s woman problem (again) and we’re also bringing out the big guns. Anne Summers is working on a fresh Monthly investigation of Abbott’s background which will reveal (a) that he is still a Catholic and (b) a real scoop, his lifelong links to fascism.

Turns out Abbott was born in London just two miles from the former home of Oswald Moseley. Anne is just wonderful! She pioneered this line in her attack on Andrew Bolt, which noted his mum lived as a child in a Dutch town with a Nazi mayor during WWII, and nobody raised an eyebrow. Thank God for modern journalism trainers like Matthew Ricketson, who urged people to buy Quarterly Essay and read Little Bob's investigation of News Ltd. We have put Ricketson on the press inquiry (he’s very grateful), so we should now consider appointing him and Summers to whatever regulatory body we institute when the final report comes in, as requested, with a finding that News Ltd is a threat to democracy and Rupert personally abducted the Beaumont children. (Summers working on this too; seems Rupert has historic ties to Adelaide and once owned a Valiant with a very big boot. Love that gal!)

So things are looking good – and about to look a whole lot better, thanks to Peter Roebuck. Hold on to your hats because this is dynamite stuff: Abbott killed Australia’s leading cricket writer. Don’t you just love it!

Our people will push the line that Abbott hates alternate sexualities and drove Spanky over the balcony with his intolerance. ABC already understands this, and no problem selling the line to Fairfax, which will be bronzing the cricket writer’s ping pong bat and awarding it every year to the most promising young sports reporter who manages to conflate cricket with right-wing intolerance.

Summers working a related angle too – penchant for budgie smugglers apparently an indication of Abbott's suppressed homosexuality, plus the statistical likelihood he was buggared by Jesuits as a schoolboy. Posse of climate scientists standing ready to assert their computer modeling proves Abbott was penetrated on precisely 14.3 occasions; they reckon they can prove he enjoyed it too, but that would mean slipping them another $10 million in research grants. Cheaper alternative: Get Flannery to say Abbott owns a Panasonic vibrator and is very happy with it. Wink. Wink.)

To recap: Things looking good for us at last. We have always had the media, now we have the martyr and the message.

Onward and upward,

Bruce