A dirty word around here

I don't make a habit of yelling obscenities at my father down the phone, but when the conversation throws up (and I use the expression advisedly) the name of a certain tabloid hack, I cannot contain myself. After my father has demonstrated that he's fallen hook, line and sinker for the 'free speech' canard, and that he's one of the readers whom said hack has squarely in his sights when he (the hack, not my father) sets out to bring out the worst in human nature, in all its greed, spite, envy, small-mindedness and mean-spiritedness, and my dad is not habitually any of those things as a rule, I say to him, Father, I say, let me ask you something.

Suppose, just suppose, that instead of being an evenly distributed mixture of both your parents, you had turned out the absolute dead spit of your father, with no visible sign that you were your Scottish mother's son.

Let us then suppose that for some reason you had been taken away from your father, or he from you, in early infancy, and, despite your lack of any family resemblance to her, you had nonetheless been brought up exclusively by your mother, in Edinburgh or Stirling or Glasgow, being taught her values and supported by her family.

Let us further suppose that then, one day, a grant or scholarship or job became available that was earmarked exclusively for persons identifying as Scots. And let us suppose that you applied for, and were successful in obtaining, said grant or scholarship or job.

What would you say, and how would you feel, if some non-Scottish tabloid hack then wrote a breathtakingly unpleasant, crudely sarcastic, factually inaccurate and demonstrably defamatory article identifying you by name and sneering at you for being a false pretender to eligibility for this prize, arguing that you do not look Scottish (for he just knows what a Scot is supposed to look like) and therefore cannot possibly be your mother's son, and therefore -- 'therefore' -- not a Scot?

Frankly I thought this was a pretty classy argument, and I was hoping it would stop my father in his tracks. Unfortunately, for him as for so many other people and to quote the great Fran Leibowitz, the opposite of 'talking' is not 'listening'. The opposite of 'talking' is 'waiting'.

Tony Abbott, family man

It's perfectly all right to parade your daughters around to prove you're a straight, clean-living family man. But on the other hand, everyone knows that giving birth is icky secret women's business. Those wussy football clubs whose players and officials don't think twice about stars missing a grand final if their partners are in labour, or indeed Ricky Ponting missing the second Test in Sri Lanka, are just pansies and need to grow a pair.

Whoops, did someone say 'pair'? Not if Daddy Tony has anything to do with it.

Tony Abbott. The go-to guy for all that is spiteful, punitive, hypocritical and mean of spirit.

SPIT.

Dear Mark Latham,

Perhaps she just doesn't like your children.

Lots of love,
Pav xxx*

*See? Kisses! Love! Warmth! Empathy! And yet...

Rape culture? What rape culture?

In the latest incident of schoolyard fights being put online, a YouTube user who went by the name 'TheCoonpatrol' uploaded several mobile-recorded videos of fights at Swan Hill College, in the state's north-west.

The seven videos showed students trading punches, surrounded by laughing and clapping onlookers, chanting "fight, fight, fight". ...

In one video, a student shouts at his opponent: "I'll f**king rape you 'til you're f**king dead". In another, an onlooker shouts: "Bitch, f**king take it".

It's a long time since I was at school, and I was lucky enough to go to an all-girls high school, which meant I got treated and was allowed to act like a human being rather than like a girl, so while I saw plenty of subtle bullying I don't think I ever saw a single physical fight. A bit of retaliatory hip and shoulder on the hockey field was as physical as we ever got. (Not me personally; hockey was much too rough for me. I was happy to play dirty, but in the debating team, not on the hockey field.)

But up the road and round the corner at the so-called brother school, while they may have had their share of physical fights, I'd bet quite a lot of money that they didn't express hostility in the language of violent sexual assault. Especially not to each other; they would have been far too appalled by the slightest suggestion that they might be poofters.

Also, have a look at the name this charming little group of uploaders have given themselves. Ironic, really, given the derivation in rap – itself tragic (the derivation not the rap, though a lot of the rap is crap as well) – of the way they talk to each other now. Maybe it's just deeply inherent in the worst of human nature to be some form of bigot.

Points will be deducted if your answer is based on neither faith nor prejudice

Today the national broadcaster makes its contribution to the ever-growing pile of human ignorance and stupidity by encouraging the populace in the belief that there is no difference between opinion and fact, and furthermore that everyone's opinion has the same value and anyone who says it doesn't is one of those horrid inner-city tertiary-educated latte-sipping leets. I give you the ABC's article on the mysterious mass bird deaths occurring around the world, complete with comments thread: 'What do you think killed the birds?'

It only took about two seconds for someone to turn up and say it was God's wrath, too, though this chap gets shot down in flames in short order and just as well. Fortunately quite a lot of the commenters aren't buying it, in fact, as you'll see. Suggestions as to the bird death cause include 'Stephen King' and 'Lord Voldemort'.

And look on the bright side: at least it wasn't structured as a quiz with opinion options A-D, or, worse, A-B, like those pernicious things all the MSM sites run from time to time that go 'Do you think [insert name of person involved in sub judice case here, totally inappropriately, destructively and quite possibly illegally] is guilty? YES/NO.'

Every time a mainstream media site asks one of these cunningly phrased yet inane questions the populace gets just that little bit more confused about the nature of truth and just that little bit dumber. What do you think blood is made of? What do you think NaCl means? Who, in your opinion, is the Prime Minister? What do you believe two and two adds up to? What colour do you think the sky is? Do you think it's turtles  all the way down?

Because everyone knows you've got a right

A British backpacker has "defended" himself against the breach-of-privacy charges laid against him for covertly filming a young woman in a 'uni-sex bathroom' at a Queensland resort by saying 'I just wanted to see her naked.'

Spot the weasel word here. Yes, that's right: 'just'.

'Just' as distinct from what? The unavoidable implication here seems to be 'I only wanted to see her naked, which is my perfect right as a man and anyway what's the harm, I didn't rape her or anything so what are you all going on about?'

His lawyer calls his actions 'a lapse in judgement.'

Me, I'm off to the bottle shop to see what Scotland has to offer. Somehow a glass of wine just isn't going to cut it, after that.

Next time you're thinking John Howard was the Meanness of Spirit King ...

 ... think again.

Tony Abbott, fearless would-be saviour of the good burghers of Woodside in the Adelaide Hills from the invasion of the bomb-concealing, classroom-hogging, doctor-stealing alien hordes small handfuls, thinks that women and children in fear of their lives should be parked somewhere as horrible as possible, lest they forget that they deserve punishment for, erm, being in fear of their lives.

But then, we know what Abbott thinks about women and children, don't we.

Given the published reaction of some of the selfish, short-sighted, mean-spirited citizens of Woodside (and I bet there are plenty of Woodside citizens who don't fit that description, but did they make the papers? Oh my wordy lordy no they did not) to the idea of a detention centre being located there, I should have thought that was punishment enough. If someone threatened to plonk me down in the midst of that lot, I wouldn't care how many pretty trees I was surrounded by, I'd still be begging to be sent to the desert.

For a while I thought they had a point when they complained about not having been consulted (although, as Chris Bowen and several other people have quietly pointed out, it's government land and they can do whatever they like with it), but surely it must be clear to everyone by now, given their under-informed whingeing about how terrible it would be if they were a bit disadvantaged by a sudden influx of population, that the reason the government didn't humbly ask their permission was that if they had, they would have said No, we hate f*cking foreigners, naff off.

Now that it has been painstakingly made clear to these citizens that of course extra support services will be provided, I see they've shifted to whining about how hard it will be to get people to safety if there's a bushfire. Obviously they're not aware of this little fact about their own town:

The CFS has developed a list of townships that have been identified as Bushfire Safer Precincts for South Australia. This is a place of relative safety and may be considered as a place for people to stay in, or relocate to if their plan is to leave their home on a bad fire day. Hahndorf, Mount Barker, Nairne and Woodside are considered Bushfire Safer Precincts.

If the citizens of Woodside have ever whinged in the past about the possible influx of people fleeing from the Hills bushfire hot spots, it hasn't made the news.

And in the meantime, Abbott is having a field day doing his best to broaden and darken the mean streak in human nature, and to cosset and force-feed its fears.

In the words of the First Dog on the Moon ...

Australia, what have you done?

When testosterone attacks

Everyone already knows that the judgement of former Labor leader Mark Latham isn't super flash (though it's better than that of the Labor blokes who put him in charge), but even Latham sank to new lows of error in choosing to confront Tony Abbott yesterday -- thereby hijacking a function for old soldiers; stay classy, Mark -- and ask him more stupid, irrelevant questions in his "job" as a "journalist" for the ever-reliably-scummy (speaking of sinking to new lows) Channel Nine, who seem to be doing an excellent job of keeping themselves in their own news. As you would, having had that amount of practice.

Because Latham may be a big hulking boofy bloke who can break cab drivers' arms and try to yank little old deaf dudes in glasses off their feet and rip their arms off while pretending to shake their hands, and he may be four years younger than Abbott,  but Abbott is a zillion degrees fitter, and he's a trained boxer with just as much, though far better controlled, natural aggression. And he would have known that had he lost his temper and beaten the bejesus out of Latham, at least three-quarters of the population would have cheered. And probably voted him in. Don't even think about it.

Code red

From the increasingly indispensable Grog's Gamut:

At the Liberal Party campaign launch, the big policy announcement was the plan to introduce mandatory prison sentencing for people who harbour asylum seekers. The policy Abbott was most proud of was announcing the return of the Pacific Solution.

In 2007 the voters were pretty much of a mind that Pacific Solution was the type of policy only a backward looking, racist and morally bereft nation would employ. Now it is Abbott’s set piece.

Just so you know.

Sorry, Annabel, not good enough

The ABC's Annabel Crabb published a long, informative, entertaining piece at The Drum the other day, characteristically witty and meaty, in defence of journalists and their current behaviour and reportage on the campaign trail.

Much of what she is says is fair enough. But nothing she says can possibly excuse what I've just heard on the radio.

I got into the car and turned on the radio and there was Julia Gillard in Queensland, mid-speech, announcing the Government's seniors policy, after what I imagine was a somewhat stressful morning meeting Kevin Rudd for the first time since she became Prime Minister. The seniors stuff sounded pretty good, mainly the improvements to the pension situation but also several other things. Jenny Macklin followed up. And then it was time for questions.

I listened for a total of just over half an hour, apart from the four and a half minutes it took me to duck into Dan Murphy on the way home, and I heard one, and only one, question, right at the end, about the policy announcement. Every single other question, asked mostly in an aggressive, smartarse, gotcha tone of voice by what sounded like a bunch of extremely young journalists (with the exception of -- wait for it -- Mark Latham, who was "working as a guest reporter for a commercial network"; is there no scrap of venomous fuckwittery of which the man is not capable?) was about her meeting with Kevin Rudd, except for the ones about the presence of Mark Latham.

Wah wah wah shrouded in secrecy (actually, said Gillard, there was a TV camera and sound gear in the room) wah gotcha wah wah why didn't you make eye contact (actually, said Gillard, just because you didn't see something doesn't mean it didn't happen) wah wah gotcha blah are there really two leaders wah wah wah knifed blah blah assassinated wah wah doesn't Mark Latham upset you blah not helping wah wah aren't YOU having a hard time wah wah gotcha blah Kevin Rudd Kevin Rudd Kevin Rudd.

Gillard answered every single one of these aggressive, repetitive inanities with humour, patience and grace.

As someone with an 83-year old father and an older sister recently turned 60, I would have quite liked to hear some questions about the seniors policy. I didn't think it was too much to ask. Perhaps the baby journalists thought Julia had spoken about it so clearly and in such detail that there were no questions left unanswered. But it seems more likely that they didn't hear a word she said and were filling in time tweeting and texting till her mouth stopped moving and they could start yelling But we need to talk about Kevin!

Can anyone tell me what this appalling crap is all about? Has journalism become a matter of goading someone until they lose their temper or burst into tears? Exactly when did loss of control or bodily containment become the stuff that "news" is made of? Did any of them even realise that there were policy announcements being made? Is this the kind of scrum that produces the kind of rubbish we're getting in the papers and on  the news? Do journalists really think that public life is a soap opera in which the only thing that matters is emotion, personalities and gossip? How much of this is being driven by the Rupert Murdochs of the world? Can you really blame the obviously extreme youth and inexperience of some of these journalists when Kerry O'Brien is doing more or less the same thing every night on The 7.30 Report? Now that journalism is something you need a university degree for, what on earth are they spending those four years teaching them? And is the Australian public really only getting the media it deserves?

Whatever the answers to these questions may be, I am bloody glad I'm not a journalist. I would be hanging my head in shame, mortification and sorrow at the untrained flea circus this once noble profession has become.

Damn it, sorry

For the second time in as many weeks I have hit the 'publish this post' button instead of the 'save as draft' button, exposing my terrible typing and failure to put in links till the very end. Sorry. Please disregard. I can spell 'obscenely', really I can.
Edited version available shortly.

Moderation

Comment moderation has been turned on.

Temporarily, I hope.

All women's fault(line): whoever would have thought?

It's not very scholarly of me, but I'm going to assume that the Doonesbury page, in its 'Say What?' feature, is accurate both in its quotation and in the attribution of the quotation:

Many women who do not dress modestly... lead young men astray, corrupt their chastity and spread adultery in society, which increases earthquakes.

-- Iranian cleric Hojatoleslam Kazem Sedighi

One has heard of the earth moving but one never realised this was what they meant. I guess that little earthquake here in Adders the other night was caused by the number of people rudely bonking other people's wives and husbands reaching critical mass and causing some kind of butterfly-effect electro-magnetic earth-vibration thingy. It was Friday night, after all.

Next time you see someone say 'Human rights trumps cultural sensitivity', this is the kind of thing they're talking about. Mind you, I wish I could say that one never sees this kind of staggeringly wilful, or wilfully staggering, ignorance wheeled out to support ideological oppression and the maintenance of social power structures in the West, but unfortunately it happens all the time.