DOCTOR YOWIE says it will take him at least an hour to wriggle free of domestic obligations and report to the first tee, so there is yet time to see what wisdom Australia’s quality journalists have been distilling for weekend readers. At the Silly, for instance, the kettle is cold, with blonde economics writer Jessica Irvine informing us that, while markets are efficient, they are not fair and more redistribution of wealth is required. If you are Jessica that makes sense, and if it also makes sense to her boss, Silly editrix Amanda Wilson, it may be that it is the sisterhood which makes most sense of all. There are many dills with testicles filling Fairfax pages, so you can only think Irvine’s piffle is Wilson’s endorsement of equal opportunity idiocy.
If that is the case, the Saturday Silly is a bumper issue, because someone has re-animated Ann Summers, another blonde, and pointed the desiccated corpse of her intellect at the matter of Julia Gillard’s conspicuous lack of public appeal. It is not that our PM is a liar, an overgrown student politician, a liar, an atrocious manager, a liar, or a promoter of grubs and ally of brothel-creeping till-ticklers – no, none of that has anything to do with it all, not even a bit. Yes, you guessed it. In the Silly Menstrual Herald it all boils down to Gillard being a woman and, consequently, cursed by the sexist burden of needing “to invent herself in front of us, to define what a woman leader is by being one”. But don’t you worry, because Summers has it all figured out:
“…the more anniversaries she ticks off, the greater the likelihood the Australian public will come to accept her, admire her and, who knows, even like her.”
Yes, that would be right. The longer Gillard survives in office, the longer she will not have been ousted – a startling insight which establishes our PM really does have something in common with the Professor, who is never in the kitchen so long as he remains in bed. Did Summers need to be bribed with some of those hand-me-down, AWU-financed outfits from Town Mode (not the leather mini, God forbid!), or is she simply incapable of expressing any thought not tapped from the standard mould of feminist victimhood?
Down in Melbourne, a third blonde, Suzy Freeperson-Greene, is inspired to all sorts of ruminations and regrets about Christmas by a suburban trader group’s miscue in hanging decorations on the Kew Junction war memorial. The local merchants had the tinsel down in no time – less, actually, than Freeperson-Greene takes to make her point, which emerges in the final paragraphs as having something to do with a vagrant who paints red hearts in black trees and sells them to people who wish to encourage public nuisances. Since it is a miserable image and she is another of the Phage’s many resident grumblebunnies, the author can rejoice in having her festive season kicked off on a suitably depressing and dour note.
To her credit, though, Freeperson-Greene does advise readers that, come Christmas, “kids do complicate things.” It is a most reassuring observation. Even at Fairfax, every so often anyway, they really do notice what goes on in the world the rest of us inhabit.
If that is the case, the Saturday Silly is a bumper issue, because someone has re-animated Ann Summers, another blonde, and pointed the desiccated corpse of her intellect at the matter of Julia Gillard’s conspicuous lack of public appeal. It is not that our PM is a liar, an overgrown student politician, a liar, an atrocious manager, a liar, or a promoter of grubs and ally of brothel-creeping till-ticklers – no, none of that has anything to do with it all, not even a bit. Yes, you guessed it. In the Silly Menstrual Herald it all boils down to Gillard being a woman and, consequently, cursed by the sexist burden of needing “to invent herself in front of us, to define what a woman leader is by being one”. But don’t you worry, because Summers has it all figured out:
“…the more anniversaries she ticks off, the greater the likelihood the Australian public will come to accept her, admire her and, who knows, even like her.”
Yes, that would be right. The longer Gillard survives in office, the longer she will not have been ousted – a startling insight which establishes our PM really does have something in common with the Professor, who is never in the kitchen so long as he remains in bed. Did Summers need to be bribed with some of those hand-me-down, AWU-financed outfits from Town Mode (not the leather mini, God forbid!), or is she simply incapable of expressing any thought not tapped from the standard mould of feminist victimhood?
Down in Melbourne, a third blonde, Suzy Freeperson-Greene, is inspired to all sorts of ruminations and regrets about Christmas by a suburban trader group’s miscue in hanging decorations on the Kew Junction war memorial. The local merchants had the tinsel down in no time – less, actually, than Freeperson-Greene takes to make her point, which emerges in the final paragraphs as having something to do with a vagrant who paints red hearts in black trees and sells them to people who wish to encourage public nuisances. Since it is a miserable image and she is another of the Phage’s many resident grumblebunnies, the author can rejoice in having her festive season kicked off on a suitably depressing and dour note.
To her credit, though, Freeperson-Greene does advise readers that, come Christmas, “kids do complicate things.” It is a most reassuring observation. Even at Fairfax, every so often anyway, they really do notice what goes on in the world the rest of us inhabit.
