Friday, February 11, 2011

Bob Ellis, Piers Akerman, and peas in the pod turn into the Bobbsey, sorry, we meant the Dum and Dee, twins ...


(Above: first a word from First Dog, to set the mood. Click to enlarge and find more First Dog here. Pew pew pew).

The anonymous editorialist strikes again, with perhaps the silliest remark in the entire storm in a teacup of the Tony Abbott affair, on view in The first casualty of war damages Seven:

Politicians seldom win sympathy. But no fair-minded person would think Mr Abbott deserved this as reward for putting himself in Afghanistan, in harm's way, to support our troops.

Putting himself in harm's way? In which particular way? The danger of catching a taxi in Sydney to the airport? Don't they have Commonwealth cars with driver? Catching a Qantas flight with concomitant maintenance risks? Sorry that's no more in harm's way than the average international tourist. Or perhaps it was a military aircraft? But don't the military have the best available equipment?

Perhaps it was the danger of shells spilling out of the weapon Abbott fired? Or the impact of recoil on sensitive shoulder? But haven't they largely eliminated recoil, and don't the shells kick well clear and wasn't he wearing ear protection?

Perhaps he went on patrol with the troops? No, they stopped him from doing that, he was a closely guarded base camp warrior as removed from the action as any finely bedecked scrambled egg officer.

Truth to tell, Abbott put himself as much in harm's way as the pond does by daily crossing the street in Newtown, given the average risk of road, or for that matter, air travel. The only upshot of putting himself in harm's way was to shoot himself in the foot by a bit of verbal macho male posturing while in the company of real, actual warriors.

It's the troops who are in real harm's way, and in his or her's inimitable way, the anonymous editorialist downgrades both what they do on a daily basis, and what Abbott did in his fly in-fly out visit, political agenda clutched in hand.

But then the anonymous editorialist is on a redemptive crusade:

As a conservative Liberal, Mr Abbott is seen as fair game by many in the press gallery with some holding him in open contempt. So while they agreed the Opposition Leader had said nothing wrong in Afghanistan, many journalists still attacked him for his awkward response to Seven's claims. It seems like something of a witch trial to condemn a man for his reaction without taking into account the egregious nature of the allegation to which he is responding.

Uh huh, but isn't calling Abbott's response 'awkward' an attack on his 'awkward' response? And don't most journalists regard most politicians as fair game? In much the same way as the wretched Australian is always war mongering about the NBN, climate change, the Greens and the Labor party?

Well, there are geese and then there's the anonymous editorialist, and then there's the most astonishing news, overlooked by many, that arises from the affair, which can be revealed here today, which will rattle, perhaps even shake and destroy forever in this country the notion of left and right.

Bob Ellis is actually Piers 'Akker Dakker' Akerman in disguise. Or vice versa. Or their columns are penned by a singular automatic writing machine that attributes authorship on an arbitrary basis.

No, it's not just the shared portly appearance, there's a shared spiritual dimension.

We might at some other time discuss Ellis's theory of sperm lines or sperm trails, whereby jocular men might trace their 'six degrees of separation' by the women with whom they've had intercourse, or his notion that washing is inappropriate, since women are drawn to men laden with the scent of sex (a whiff of exchanged juices with a dash of manly sweat), or his movie The Nostradamus Kid, an elaborate celebration of the joys of stalking, but our real joy today is his effort for the Drum "unleashed", entitled Trial by subtitle, wherein he speaks of the plodding, slack witted rhythms of Julia Gillard, revealing nothing, arousing no interest, reporting no news, and contrasts these rhythms to the muscular, manly rhythms of Tony Abbott, given hell by born-again wowser morality

Irritate a Woy Woy waiter and lose your political career. Text a woman lewdly and lose your sporting career. Say ‘skid-mark on the bed-sheet of our democracy’ and lose your party membership. Curse an umpire for his bias and be sent off the field.

Bugger me dead Bob, what's your real fucking problem? Is it that a man can no longer be a man, because of all the castrating sniping by feminists?

No, at least not today, because it turns out it's Channel Seven that's the problem:

They showed, I think, that they are not of good character, any more than the yapping lap-dogs of Fox News, and it will be puzzling if they are not brought before the Senate and asked why they should retain their television licence.

Um actually Bob, they've just been hauled up before ACMA for a much more problematic bit of reporting regarding David Campbell, and given the all clear, as outlined, with link to the full report here at Crikey, in Seven News cleared for outing Campbell.

But there's no way of stopping a sobbing Ellis in full verbose flight:

They cheated with the visuals. They cheated with the sound. They cheated with the context. They told in an intricate serpentine way a big lie about our alternative prime minister.

Uh huh. Run up the flag so we can all salute. But then Bob is infatuated with Abbott:

Tony Abbott speaks, famously, off-the-cuff and often rather well. Within his genial manner of speech is a large fraction of honest reflection, self-doubt and self-mockery.

Why he sounds inordinately like Ellis's image of ... Ellis. Narcissism rides again.

Meanwhile, we must now quickly zoom off to Akker Dakker for his piece Out of Left field come slurs and innuendos.

He too believes that Seven is contemptible and that Abbott is a brave, bushwhacked lad. It turns out that Seven is a hot bed of revolutionary left wing socialist commie perverts, which no doubt explains their desire to out David Campbell:

... most clearly, it was a patently party partisan attempt to embarrass Abbott.

But it was in keeping with a slew of well-documented attempts by the gutter Left press to smear conservatives with fabricated claims that have been a feature of a number of notorious second-rate media performers over the past decade.


Dear sweet absent lord, quick, someone get on the blower to let Kerry Stokes know that he owns the local equivalent of Pravda, or perhaps Mosfilm. Oh wait, the Russians have gone capitalist too ...

Akker Dakker then rehearses a litany of complaints demonstrating that the evil gutter left press, largely owned in this country by that dangerous left winger, and proto-Stalinist, comrade chairman Rupert Murdoch, have shown their bias in many sordid matters, not least the Iraqi turkey affair (the war, it turns out, was a real turkey), the Macbeth affair (and don't you worry about Abu Ghraib), the Hicks matter, the global warmists, and so on and on, in the usual quintessential delusional unbalanced, some might say unhinged way, until we reach this par:

The Fairfax media and the ABC, the print and electronic arms of the nation’s Green-Left, routinely rush to publish unchecked anything that puts conservatives in a poor light.

But Akker Dakker, the ABC has rushed to print Bob Ellis, and he agrees with you about channel Seven and the hard done by Mr. Abbott. You are now officially kissing cousins, or as Keats might have put it, close bosom friends of the maturing sun king. Let angels sing, and a heavenly chorus emote ethereal words, as left and right merge ...

It's true that we all have a lot to learn from Akker Dakker when it comes to the most bald faced, outrageous statements, designed to distort and prejudice the truth of any matter, as with this little outburst towards the end of his piece:

The same culprits were quick to claim that the gunman who shot US Democrat senator Gabrielle Giffords last month had links to the conservative Tea Party movement and was influenced by former vice-presidential candidate Sarah Palin and right-wing media.

In fact, he was a crank with Leftist tendencies.


Akker Dakker offers no evidence of these leftist tendencies. Perhaps it was gunman Loughner's attempt to join the US military in 2008 that proved his leftist tendencies, or perhaps it was his attempt to assassinate a Democrat - some might say leftist - politician that clinches the argument.

Or perhaps it was just a bald-faced smear, of the usual kind, so no evidence is required. But we do love the Akker Dakker wrap up, and his conclusion that the Seven Network is part of a vast leftist media conspiracy:

Riley’s grotesque report was of a parcel with the Leftist media’s campaign to discredit Tony Abbott and conservatives generally.

Viewers should be on their guard against the putrid lack of principle exhibited by those trying to prop up this globally discredited brand of politics.

Oh yes, such a flapping and a squawking and a leftist media worm hunt in the fowl yard.

Now let's return to the final words of Bob Ellis as he too confirms the Seven network is part of a vast conspiracy:

For these are big lies told, and unretracted, and oft repeated, lies composed and shaped to cause vast grief to the widows and surviving parents of gallant soldiers in the line of fire without a skerrick of justice in them.

I ask Channel 7 to supply the missing close-up, or to say why they have destroyed it.

And ask Mark Riley to donate half his next week’s wage to Legacy.

There you go. A scoop for the pond.

Peas in a pod, birds of a feather, a matching pair, Bobbsey twins, compadres, a matching set, two minds thinking as one, two of a kind, dead ringers, doppelgangers, spitting images, like minds, carbon copies, look alikes, harmonious kin of the kissing cousin kind.

Could this see the reunification of the ABC and the Murdoch empire? Could some ultimate good arise from Abbott's off-hand remark?

Oh crap, merde, we made a mistake with the genders when it comes to the Bobbsey twins metaphor.



And there it was staring at our face like an apoplectic, nodding Tony Abbott.

Yes, it's Ellis and Akker Dakker, arm in arm:


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