Because, of course, any minute now someone's going to let Pengilly know that he wasn't having a private conversation, and that his opinion of the Prime Minister is there for all the world to see, and then he's gonna take it down. Much too late. Hah.
UPDATE, 2.07 PM: Yep, he's taken it down. Hee Hee.
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11 comments:
I tire of the abuse hurled at Julia Gillard, and continue to feel it occurs because she is not a man. Enough! This dude has shown himself to be scum.
It's so upsetting I don't even know where to start. I did write to him, because I'm hoping to be voting from Kangaroo Island in the next election, but I know how much he'll care about that.
a: It's a disgusting and disrespectful thing to say about anyone.
b: Don't these fools receive media training? How many "private message" cock ups will there be before people realise that Twitter and the entire internet for that matter is public?
Oh, drats. Just looked up when the next election will be. Okay, no chance I'll be voting from Australia in that one. Still appalled though.
I'm puzzled that any politician would be so naive as to make such a comment to a journalist, regardless of whether or not they thought it was made privately. As nothing is ever truly off the record with journalists, I can only assume that Pengilly thought his comment reflected a widely-held view that was somehow socially acceptable.
I do hope that Isobel Redmond is up to the task of setting him straight. TFA
Well done for snatching it though.
More and more I think most journalists are scum, and their preference for personal abuse and trivia by far outweighs any effort at real and accurate analysis of issues. Interesting, isn't it, that now some of them are having to admit that the Parliament has actually been getting a lot of real work done.
There are parts of journalists which I would rather like to see being twisted and crushed.
Such a strange profession.
I owe most of what I know about the art and craft of writing to one journalist, a man called Hume Dow, who was older than my parents, and who had worked on the Age, which I think was back then still the Argus, with George Johnston and Charmian Clift during WW2. Whenever he talked about the gorgeous and brilliant Clift, he was unable to finish any given sentence. He would just waver off in mid-syntactical construction and gaze off into the middle distance. Hume taught me how to proofread properly and what good 18th century prose looked like and why Hemingway in A Movable Feast, but not in his fiction, was a miracle of writing.
Another of my major mentors, whom I knew intimately and won't name (grounds, incriminate, etc) was also an exceptional journalist. I have great respect for a number of contemporary Australian journalists (Megalogenis, Tingle, Marr, Colvin et al), not to mention the legendary international ones, and I have just finished reading a novel about two heroic journalist-photographers, Gerda Taro and Robert Capa, who both died in the service of their vocation. And I think all these things may be why I hold the bad ones in such utter contempt.
Maybe I've missed the response to a remark made by Julie Bishop early last week post the Commonwealth shindig in Perth, but personally speaking I find Bishop's remark "Gillard was rubbing up against all of visiting dignitaries" worse. Much worse. Not helped by the fact that Kelly failed (yet again) to ask a politician to repeat something offensive when being broadcast on our ABC.
Sleazy,low level and constant hazing on a specific characteristic, eg Gillard as a woman, has its equivalent in the US, where the right keep up a insistent, low buzz on the topic of someone ending Obama, Kennedy-style.
The behaviours in both cases derive of a violent redneck pathology manipulated by media bosses and spinners, are not "accidental" and are sick.
But the Slipper incident seems to indicate there is a still a role for wit in politics, which must baffle the reactionaries no end.
Sleazy, low level and constant hazing on a specific characteristic, eg Gillard as a woman, has its equivalent in the US, where the right keep up a insistent, low buzz on the topic of someone ending Obama, Kennedy-style.
The behaviours in both cases derive of a violent redneck pathology manipulated by media bosses and spinners, are not "accidental" and are sick.
But the Slipper incident seems to indicate there is a still a role for wit in politics, which must baffle the reactionaries no end.
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