Spencer Street "suicide march"

In the current edition of The Spectator, Neil Brown shakes his head at the sad daily spectacle that is The Age:

I did not know whether to laugh or cry last week when I read two pronouncements from the Fairfax stable. The first was a headline in the Age: ‘Royal Mail appoints new chef’. It illustrates that the Age is no longer a newspaper but a lifestyle magazine that is besotted with the incestuous food culture and the celebrity gods who rule it. There is no law against headlines like this, but it highlights the absurdity of a commercial organisation chasing a narrow section of the community to the prejudice of the majority, its real potential market. Even stranger is that it continues this suicide march despite collapsing circulation and share price. The Age forgets that the readers it needs to survive are not the minority who pay $100 for a meal prepared by a celebrity chef at some over-priced clip joint, but the majority, the normal average citizens who simply cannot afford such luxury or self-indulgence. But the Age has, sadly, long lost any sense of representing normal, average citizens.

There is only thing to regret about the passage: The Spectator was fetched to the Billabong from the newsagent only today, whereas it was formerly available of a Friday morning. It seems the distributor now delivers on Mondays, meaning less good reading to enhance the weekend pleasure of a comfy chair.

Tom Switzer, who edits The Spectator, should do his utmost to see Friday distribution restored. It would be in his readers' interests, hence his own. It is just wrong to be kept waiting for Rod Liddle's thoughts on the Affair of the Racist Handbag, quite possibly the funniest thing any of us will read this year.

 

Sell the ABC? No, let's torture it to death

Joe Hockey is copping grief for saying the Coalition would not sell the ABC, as if this was some sort of betrayal. Actually, it's a testament to the future Treasurer's acumen.

How could you sell the ABC? Any potential buyer would look what must be at least a cool billion (and probably more) in severance benefits and run screaming from the table. No matter how much those who love to fantasise about handing the walking papers to Young Chip, Red Skelton and all the other incestuous fruits of an organisation now run by mates for the benefit of mates, it just can't happen that way.

Make the public broadcaster carry ads -- that's not a bad idea. Neither is making those Friends of The ABC show just what their friendship is worth by donating to keep, say, the Artscape wankers or First Tuesday Book Club on air. That's what the Americans do with their Public Broadcasting Service and that seems to work OK.

They could even run raffles and competitions. Win a date with Old Scrotumface! Scoop the pool by nominating how many times Tony Jones will interrupt! Guess what present Mark Scott will give his mentor, Fred Hilmer*, on Godfather's Day! Have your name tattooed on Marieke Hardy! Hire out Jon Faine as a kiddie-party clown! The possibilities are endless.

The ABC cannot be sold, it's impossible. But come September 8, that doesn't mean we can't have a lot of fun with it. You know, just like cats with the mice they capture.

Give us strength, Great Bunyip, to torment the living daylights out of that rotten, rancid outfit.

*After Uncle Fred was finished with him, Scott was a natural for the ABC: rotten content with not even the pretense of an obligation to make money 

A FURTHER THOUGHT: One fruitful area for investigation -- very uncomfortable investigation -- must surely be how the ABC goes about hiring its, er, talent. Do Marieke Hardy's parents put in a good word for her? Or consider Julia Baird. Freshly returned from the US, where she helped shunt Newsweek into oblivion, she appeared fleetingly in the Silly, but no jobs there with all those lay-offs. Then -- hey, presto! -- she's all over the ABC, compering the Drum and popping up all over the place.

So who hired her? Where was the position-vacant ad published? If it was published, who drew up the required qualifications ("candidate must by blonde, good looking, have helped ruin a venerable magazine and be no taller than 163cm now less than 161cm...." You get the idea.)

These are questions it will be so much fun to have answered!

The "so completely true" Fairfax dirt on Abbott

Not to go on about Fairfax, but it’s hard not to if you are an adult. Here is a company that used to be of the left but was still relatively sane and semi-reliable in the retailing of information. Yes, they had Alan Ramsey doddering away and A Dill Horin very lightly paraphrasing the latest plea for cash, understanding, and more cash on behalf of ASSWIPE (Australian Society of Social Workers Inventing Problems Everywhere). And of course there was Margo, whose tenure at the original Web Diary probably marked the point where Fairfax abandoned any pretense that sanity was a prerequisite of employment.

Poor Margo is long gone but the madness continues, albeit with a greater grasp of the apostrophe, and it can be observed at Daily Life. Now it is not a bad idea having a website for women, who like to read about shoes and celebrities, salads and what the stars have in store for them. Daily Life has all that, and you can only imagine such material attracts its fair share of readers. But being Fairfax, leaving it at that would have been too sensible, so the company installed an editor who gussied up the standard offerings with a bevy of prolix harpies, all given free rein to go on at great length about the things modern women need to know. “Your Vagina Is Not a Car”, for instance. One of the site’s more memorable scoops, such news must have come as a gross disappointment to a certain small subset of DL visitors who imagined they would no longer need to hail cabs.

How anyone could publish such piffle would be a great mystery but for the suspicion that DL’s editrix, the ardent Sarah Oakes, is even more unhinged than the writers she hires.

Take her yesterday offering as an example, “Is Penny WongThe New Ryan Gosling?” Not unless he is a hypocrite, which may well be the case, and a lesbian to boot, a somewhat less probable attribute. Ms Oakes vapours through several paragraphs that explore and expand her theme before climaxing with the name of Tony Abbott on her lips (emphasis added):

While Penny Wong has the credentials to be a new Australian gay-feminist superhero we're not sure she'll gain the international traction of your-boyfriend-Ryan-Gosling. However she's definitely a candidate more worthy of a Hey Girl Tumblr than say, Tony Abbott, who's parody version is kind of a misfire. It's a sad fact that it would probably be a lot more funny if it wasn't so completely true.

As per a Fairfax editrix,  here is a sampling of “so completely true” stuff about Abbott, who is apparently a sex-mad lecher and, placing him entirely beyond redemption, a Catholic

Now remember, all of the above -- and scores of other, equally slanderous slurs -- are "completely true", at least as seen from the sheltered workshop for half-wit propagandists that Fairfax has willed itself to become.

Roger Corbett, Fairfax's chairman, once ran a large supermarket chain. How long long do you think one of his store managers would have stayed on the payroll if he or she had decided to stock the freezer cabinets with dog dirt and soiled toilet paper?

You've been warned

Eleven and a half minutes of glorious, raving, ratbag paranoia.

Our First XI is woeful, so it is good to know we can still produce wonderful fruitcakes.

How many mates will he get to hire now?

There's good news...

This is Tim Soutphommasane's last regular column....

and bad news

He starts tomorrow as Race Discrimination Commissioner in the Australian Human Rights Commission

When Labor goes down on September 7 all the usual suspects will be generating excuses and explanations -- sexism, Murdoch, etc., --  which will give them something to do and, ideally, keep them too busy to do any further damage to the country.

But what to do with Tim the Race Hustler and many others, whose mates have buried them away in various gigs where they will continue to suck on the public teat while white-anting the Abbott government's efforts to repair six years of damage?

One solution: dismantle the sinecures from the bottom up. Cut their funds, throw the inbred leftist luvvies into the street and tell them to get real jobs. You know, the sort where they pay tax rather than suck up others' contributions to the alleged public good.

Let's hail ALL Vietnam vets who beat their wives

Alcohol, perhaps too much of it, if that is possible, figured somewhat in Saturday night’s early recreations, which took on a foggier complexion when Young Master Bunyip arrived at the Billabong with some companions to reclaim from the attic sundry items of furniture and clothing. When one member of the party proved incapable of walking a wide desk through a narrow door – not that difficult if you go about it the right way and aren't prone to fits of giggles – the suspicion that marijuana might be to blame came to the fore, as did a subsequent offer to share what young people call “a number”. The Professor was warned not to draw too deeply, as those inexperienced in these things can “flip out” and make fools of themselves. Like, for example, not being able to fit a desk through a door.

When today dawned clean and Sunday sober, it seemed at first that an evening of drug and alcohol abuse had bequeathed no lingering ill effects. The world certainly seemed normal. The latest edition of The Age, for example, was a representatively wretched example of what arrogant morons can produce if given free rein, and on Insiders it was more of the same. Was Ol’ Scrotumface  just a tad down in the mouth? He certainly seemed that way, as did David Marr, whose customary lament that the rest of humanity is not so smart as he seemed freighted with a poignant resignation. Perhaps it was word of the latest polls, poor fellow.

But then came coffee and a closer look at The Age, and with it the suspicion that there might just be a little, lingering bit of that reefer madness clouding perceptions. This story about an Aboriginal who served in Vietnam and has suffered more for the experience than his paler comrades is a real head-scratcher. The point seems to be that former Lance-Corporal David Cook was hard done by, something the headline asserted: “War does not discriminate, nor should we”. Yet there was no evidence in the article that Cook has suffered, or did suffer, while serving under the emblem of the Rising Sun or later as a direct consequence of that period in his life. Indeed, the author, academic Noah Riseman, actually says khaki was the only colour which mattered during Cook’s two tours, skin tones being irrelevant to the business of keeping himself and his mates alive. Yet somehow the impression is left that Aborigines who served in Vietnam have been denied their special recognition.

Baffled by the story as published, a bit of Googling turned up some quite interesting information on Cook’s activities subsequent to his honourable discharge. Like the Age article it also was written by Riseman, and its details paint a rather different picture.

First, it turns out Cook won’t talk about his early life or memories of having been “stolen”, quite possibly because he finds it unpleasant to recall childhood neglect. And then things get even more interesting.

An admitted wife-beater who acknowledges his truculent attitude toward police brought grief upon his head, the further details of Cook's life, as summarised by Riseman, include his subject’s former propensity to whack people with iron bars. This habit earned him six years in jail. It appears that Cook is now a reformed citizen and doing good works protecting Cambodians from land mines, for which he should be praised. A column describing how a troubled man straightened himself might have had a point to it, albeit with less opportunity to pluck those ever-reliable victim strings.

The pastiche of inference Riseman assembles to suggest the Army was somehow to blame for Cook’s troubles can only be viewed as deeply, and perhaps intentionally, misleading. Cook was, by his own admission, a nasty piece of work, yet Sunday Age editors appear not to have been up for the due diligence of checking facts against comfortable and comforting preconceptions.

The Professor knows what he was smoking last night but whatever they hand out at The Age must stronger by an order of magnitude. Don’t bogart that joint, comrades. Save some for the receivers.

  

Murdoch! Murdoch! Murdoch!

YOU might imagine that Gay Alcorn, former editrix of the Sunday Age, would have on her mind at least one issue more galling than the boundless evil of Rupert Murdoch. Sexism, for instance, and the fact that at about the same her heroine, Ms Gillard, was frothing about Tony Abbott’s misogyny, the enlightened, progressive, sensitive, culturally advanced and highly principled Fairfax Media mounted a gynoputsch that saw her replaced by a man – sage correspondent Cameron Forbes’ little boy, Mark. On the same day in Sydney, her Silly counterpart, Amanda Wilson, was rudely replaced by another XYer, Sean Aylmer of BRW, otherwise known as the Very Little Book of Lists (and bugger all else). Aylmer and Forbes went on to preside over substantial losses in circulation, and have each since failed upward to loftier Fairfax perches. But no, Margo Kingston’s half-sister prefers to have a go at the opposition. Is it nature or nurture, do you reckon?

To be fair, Alcorn’s column in today’s comic isn’t 100 per cent unhinged. Early on in her ramble, she dismisses “media commentator” Tim Dunlop as someone who doesn’t know what he is talking about. The woman isn’t entirely loopy, just mostly (although, irony upon irony, in this instance Dunlop is correct: neither Murdoch, nor Fairfax, is anywhere near as influential as once they were).

But after that she is all over Murdoch like a rash (or should that be a Rebekah?), until finally, right near the end, she has this to say:

In the 2004 election, the Herald Sun published a story that said, among other distortions: ''Ecstasy and other illegal drugs would be supplied over the counter to young users in a radical policy framed by Senator Bob Brown's Greens.''

The Australian Press Council found, six months after the election, that it was ''irresponsible journalism'' that misled readers.

Brown said the article caused ''irrevocable harm'', possibly costing a candidate his seat. Whether Labor or the Coalition wins is up to the Australian people, of course, but don't pretend Murdoch's intervention can't make a difference.

Well, yes, the Press Council did say that, and still does in its archived rulings. But in the matter of the Greens’ then-policies on illegal drugs, the adjudication limits itself to these few specific words:

Additionally, regarding the headline on the article, Sen. Brown said that it was 'manifestly wrong' and that Greens policy was a call for 'a study of options'.

Unlike the big parties, The Greens have made their 2004 platform vanish. Try hunting it up via Pandora, Trove, Wayback Machine or Google and all you get is a 404 message. Perhaps they recycled it as mulch for mung beans. Whatever the old platform’s fate, the current policy document is quite concise in stating  that the party does “not support the legalisation of currently illegal drugs.” This is quite a change from the 2004 document.

The Web being a wonderful thing there are snippets and snatches of the 2004 Greens platform still to be found. The IPA, for example, published a lengthy analysis, with direct quotations, and this is still available. As the IPA is an organ of jackbooted intolerance and free-market perfidy, Alcorn would never dream of going there for enlightenment.

But what of Margo, surely she trusts her sis?

Well, at the post-Silly Web Diary, the one with all that ruinously expensive bolding, here is how one of Ms Kingston’s correspondents commented on the Herald Sun story, in theprocess quoting the now-disappeared 2004 Greens platform:

The first step in their policies is to de-criminalise drug usage. Nowhere, and this must be repeated, nowhere do The Greens advocate illegal drug taking.

The Greens’ policies state that:

The regulation of the personal use of currently illegal drugs should be moved outside the criminal network.

Drugs are a hot button issue, just the sort of thing to get a reaction. Greens’ policies acknowledges as much:

Drugs and substance abuse are complex issues and strategies need to acknowledge this complexity.

Other misleading statements in the 31 August article include the assertion that ecstasy would be supplied over the counter to young users. Real policy:

Investigations of options for the regulated supply of social drugs such as ecstasy in controlled environments where information will be available about health and other effects of drug use.

The Greens’ policy only talks of "investigation of options". It doesn’t state that their intention is to start issuing ecstasy, ad libitum, as soon as humanly possible. And why has the Herald-Sun said the drugs would be issued to "young users"? Are they insinuating that The Greens would hand out drugs like candy to children and teens?

Remember, the author is a Greens sympathiser, so speed-read through his rationalising commentary and dwell upon the directly quoted, italicised sentences, appraising them for what they are – everything the Herald Sun said:  The regulation of the personal use (not the elimination of personal use); information will be available (not information might be available)on the options for the regulated supply. The “option” isn’t to consider legalising drugs, it is ponder how best they might be distributed.

On marijuana, the writer acknowledges that the Herald Sun is spot-on:

With regards to the use of cannabis, the Herald-Sun is correct. The policy does support "the controlled availability of cannabis at appropriate venues".

The Greens policies also recommend "the decriminalisation and regulation of cannabis cultivation and possession for personal use, while monitoring its effects on the health of young people".

This is not as far out as it seems. Remember 1999, when Victorian Liberal Premier Jeff Kennett floated the same idea? The concept certainly doesn’t belong to the ‘loopy left’.

Many may argue this is all hair splitting. Yet it is important to make the distinction between a drugs policy that is advocating heavy regulation, education and research into the effects of certain drugs, legal and otherwise, against a completely irresponsible and libertine (sic) free-for-all, as the Herald-Sun would have us believe.

The Herald Sun attempted to appeal the Press Council ruling but was denied a further hearing. Perhaps it should now launch a second attempt by lodging a complaint against Alcorn’s column. Not that it would take such a step, of course. A paper that declined to appeal Judge Mordy’s shameful slagging of Andrew Bolt as a racist isn’t going to take action on this.

And anyway, by the time the Press Council brought down a decision, the Age will be available only in Newspaper Heaven, right beside the latest celestial editions of Melbourne's other vanished papers, The Argus and Newsday.