(Above: the scandalous News Corp awards, and the fraught Erin McNaught, their presenter. Screen caps, link below).
It's been awhile since we dropped in on Tim Blair, but now seemed like a good time to check up on how he's handling several crushing blows life has surely dealt him these past few weeks.
First there was the outrage of the "Can Do Better" award at the news.com.au Green Awards.
Who got the gong? Why that fiskally challenged nong Senator Steve Fielding. As for the citation, it's worth repeating at some length to save you having to watch it and Erin McNaught, a presenter with an alarming style in ear decoration:
After having a look at all the good work being done by Australians, this category belongs to the people who just keep disappointing us. With the 'can do better' citation, we're putting them on notice that they need to do more to help the planet for all of our futures. The dubious honor this year goes to the leader of the Family First party, Senator Steve Fielding. Despite all the studies telling him he's wrong, Senator Fielding still doesn't think humans are to blame for global warming! In fact he actively encourages the sceptics, drumming them up for anyone in power who will listen, while at the same time attacking Green groups with his climate graphs. Senator, we're here to tell you you can do better.
Talk about the fix being in. Not only does News Corp blatantly and deviously attack a man with a learning disability, they do it so their own resident sceptic doesn't collect the gong.
If you want to see News Corp pitifully attempting to be a good corporate citizen, you can go here.
But why not go instead to Tim Blair's blog, in the very heart, the belly of the beast called News Corp, to discover that Fielding is just a rank amateur, small beer put up against a monomaniac relentless in his pursuit of carbonated thinkers. Blair be a remorseless greenie eating machine.
Yep, it's just another typical day in Blair land, so there's a bit of Tim Flannery bashing about predictions of future war (No blood for carbon), which did nothing so much as remind me of the stupefied self satisfied members of the commentariat in the nineteen thirties (or if you're more an Edwardian of the ponces strolling the boulevards in the spring of nineteen thirteen).
Then there's mockery of eco-bonding fanatics who like to have a drink together (when really they should apparently be drinking camomile tea), and below that a joke about carbon youth dancers which carries a powerfully charged slur against hydrocephalics.
It's almost a relief to get to an item about motoring, before heading back to a piece on greenists, before being offered up a cheap shot at Spanish cops (well at least we were spared a flamenco joke, Olé).
Now I remember why I stopped visiting. Same old, same old, never ending, as obsessional as the Greens he flails away at.
Perhaps there's an explanation in all this - some kind of disturbance in the Force? - and no, it can't just be losing the golden glory of a News Corp citation, which should manifestly have read:
The dubious honor this year goes to one of News Corp's most honored bloggers, generator of a huge number of hits for the Daily Telegraph. Despite all the studies telling him he's wrong, Tim Blair still doesn't think humans are to blame for global warming! In fact he actively encourages the sceptics, drumming them up for anyone in power who will listen, while at the same time attacking Green groups with his climate graphs. Blogger Blair, we're here to tell you you can do better.
No it's not that, though it's transparently unfair and suggests News Corp isn't above skullduggery as it weights the results by introducing a jury to over-ride populist voting. Poor Steve Fielding. But there's an upside. Nobody pretends to notice or to take seriously anything that News Corp does when it pretends it's a serious, concerned global citizen.
No, there's something darker, deeper, more tangibly evil. Hmm, think I've got it.
Tim Blair is a Collingwood supporter.
And they lost.
Well it wasn't so much a loss as a massacre. Go Cats (or so I'm told I should say).
And if Blair supports this kind of football team, what's that say about his ability to project developments in the shifting world of global techtonic plates, physical and cultural and social, over the next fifty years?
But wait there's more - Blair follows Formula 1 racing (and has a soft spot for that overbearing pompous git Jeremy Clarkson) - and the news that Nelson PK Jr deliberately crashed a car so a mate could win a race would surely have shaken even stout hearted, hardened petrol head souls to the core.
Why even a tribe of NZ bowlers couldn't pull the lead as appallingly as Formula 1 attempting to call itself a sport, but poor Tim has to try to dismiss the current fuss as a 'sideshow', under the header Flavio hits the wall.
Well sports fans in the know - not me, I'd rather watch a couple of blow flies racing than endure the full length of an F1 event - tell me that it's right up there with the 1919 World Series Black Sox Scandal as one of the pivotal disgraces in sport. After all, here's a man crashing a car - which - crashes being what they are - might have killed the driver, fellow competitors or innocent bystanders - so someone else can win. If you ever wanted a definitive example of current competitive sporting loonacy, that's it in a nutshell. (Black Sox here).
So what did the FIA do about the scandal? A two year suspended ban on Renault, helped along by team boss Flavio Briatore and chief engineer Pat Symonds taking a hike. And then all the experts muttered how right and fair it was, because it wasn't Renault did the deed, it was just a couple of rogue elements involved in a conspiracy.
Not to mention the win at all costs culture of petrol heads.
Never mind. In the old days of baseball, it used to be that three strikes and you were out. These days, it just means you take a walk to first base. Because you know what? I suspect there's a closer link to the behavior of the FIA and News Corp's preferred treatment of its favorite blogger than you might think.
Lambasting poor old Steve Fielding when it's Blair that wilfully, persistently, day in, day out, does all the crashing and the bashing ... when the fix is in, the fix is in!
Now who won that race? Go Hedgehoppers:
Have you heard the news?
What did it say?
Who's won that race?
What's the weather like today?
It's good news week,
Families shake the need for gold,
By stimulating birth control,
We're wanting less to eat.
It's good news week,
Doctors finding many ways,
Of wrapping brains in metal trays,
To keep us from the heat.
It's good news week,
Someone's dropped a bomb somewhere,
Contaminating atmosphere
And blackening the sky,
It's good news week,
Someones found a way to give,
The rotting dead a will to live,
Go on and never die.
Have you heard the news?
What did it say?
Who's won that race?
What's the weather like today?
(Below: it's good news week. A Cats mascot proudly on parade, and Nelson Piquet Jr exploring the wall. Hey Nelson leave that wall alone).
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