Startling news.
There's clear evidence some of Colin Wilson's mind parasites have begun to infect the commentariat columnists. Or else the spores have drifted through space for centuries, for untold millennia, and chosen this week to do their work, and shift the commentariat towards the middle.
How else to explain Paul Sheehan's sudden desire to publish Ten anti-anti-commandments and Lord Monckton's verbal bombs.
In it, Sheehan spontaneously combusts and discovers that the anti-commandments he led with, in such a superficial and ill-considered manner in his earlier column, might be open to alternative evidence or dispute, and so suddenly Lord Monckton's insights have become "verbal bombs."
Well last time I looked it wasn't the business of columnists to be parrots, and as someone who regularly shoots off a foot while aiming at a rabbit, belated attendance by Sheehan at the track of insights is better than not heading off to the track at all. Even if done belatedly, ineptly and with a lingering sense that Monckton is so much more fun tossing bombs than the dull deliverers of actual insights. What a fickle popping jay fop of a swollen turkey cock.
And it seems the mind parasites have been busy elsewhere. There's Gerard Henderson in Australia's 'racist' tag is myth heavily hyped busy slagging off the lunar right and the loony left, and trying to stake out a calm middle ground - though not before delivering a few hefty swipes at Warwick Thornton for daring to suggest that Australians might have a racist attitude to aborigines, and managing to blame the usual suspects:
No doubt those alienated leftist academics are the same as those leftist socialist youths who loll around on street corners waiting for an Indian to bash, as a way of bringing the socialist utopia that little bit closer. In much the same way as alienated leftist academics - as a kind of agitprop theatre - heavily infiltrated Pauline Hanson's One Nation party, and led to the unseemly rhetoric of the Hansonite days. And for all we know are still doing it today on white supremacist sites. Such jolly pranksters, worthy of Ken Kesey.
Still yet again Henderson has managed to get through an entire column without once mentioning John Howard, though perhaps that's just as well when it comes to the close kissing days of Howard and Hanson, when it suited Howard to let the redhead do the running for him.
And he also manages to get through the column and Outlook's profile on Australia without mentioning that the one murder of an Indian national that looks like it's on the way to being solved involved the charging of Indian nationals with the killing (Anatomy of hate as magazine unleashes anti-Australian rage).
Such restraint. While the mind parasites - or the alien spores - still have a bit of work to do on Henderson, who could argue with the piety that Indians have been a successful part of the Australian experience. Why, visiting south King street in Newtown would lose all meaning if it weren't for a visit to the Fiji Market run by Don and Margaret Prasad.
But surely there must be a local commentariat columnist who can step up to the plate? What about the always reliable Akker Dakker in the Daily Terror?
Sob, the mind parasites have got him too. Sure he starts his column with a cheap joke about being crazy - always sensitive to the needs of the mentally ill to be laughed at - but the rest of his column Crazy way to treat our most vulnerable shows signs of concern for the standards of care for mental health, and even calls on government action to tackle the problem - as opposed to delegating it to the private sector, and letting those who can't afford to pay go quietly mad in the bus shelters thoughtfully provided for the homeless.
Akerman even sounds moderate in tone, unlike this site, whose best advice to anyone suffering mental health problems in NSW is to leave the state.
Even over at The Punch, Australia's most dim-witted conversation, there's an air of tranquility, peace and understanding which might even satisfy the corpse of John Lennon.
Sure Scott Ryan contributes The bad news stories buried during the holidays, which lists the press releases of bad news delivered by the federal government during the holiday break. As a member of a Liberal party which was notorious for exploiting the trick, he knows whereof he speaks, so rather than do a Neddy Smith and dump the bodies on a beach, he just rolls out a series of gentle lollipops. I suppose it keeps his arm in, but reading his piece is like being hit around the head by a volley of meringues.
Even Paul Toohey's eye-catching header The new internet vomit turns out to be one of those tragic Murdoch minion efforts which seems designed to ramble - or vomit - on, as a device for showcasing a little payback:
There’s a bloke who writes a blog that is linked to Crikey. He’s not a journalist, but the readers wouldn’t know that. He gets on the phone now and then and speaks to town council-types and relates every word – I mean every word – they say.
He colours the quotes in red.
He does this because, in his mind, he thinks it’s dishonest to deny his readers a single word (not that he ever rings anyone who might disagree with the line he’s pushing).
This bloke gets no apparent subbing. He’s not challenged by his editors. He represents the new internet vomit.
This is the writing that will fail in the online news age.
Once people start paying for news, sites such as Crikey are going to suffer. People are only going to commit to one or maybe two genuine on-line news providers. Other subscriptions will be cancelled as an unnecessary expense.
Um, Paul, glass houses, stones, danger. Don't count the cash in the till until the customer's parted with the loot. If Crikey is going to suffer, then The Punch is as dead as a dodo, is pushing up daisies along with the worst sort of vomitous blogging currently doing the rounds.
And you illustrate why - carrying on like a typical blogger about the impieties of a typical blogger, and imagining, deep within your own rich, wretched fantasy life, that the intertubes is going to be reduced to a couple of genuine on-line news providers, with the punters lining up to be shorn of their cash and hand it over to Chairman Rupert and be ever so grateful.
How about if you want to slag someone off, you actually name the object of your ire. Instead of just chewing on some grass and then doing a doggy up chuck? Even give him a link, he could probably do with the attention and the traffic ...
Bit more work for the mind parasites to do over at The Punch.
But all the same it's a quiet day at loon pond.
Taps fingers nervously. Jeeze, it's preternaturally quiet around here. More tapping. Beads of thin sweat. Agitation. Standing up, pacing about.
For god's sake, forget rationality, someone please deliver a Paul Sheehan squawk, and never mind subtlety or the finer points.
What's the point of having a loon pond if the alien spores have introduced an unnerving civility and a tendency to look at the finer, nuanced side of disputations?
(Below: a standard case of infection by alien spores).
Remembering that you hate tree killers, you might not be aware that the Herald only published the 'facts brushed over by global warming fanatics' stuff, which means the rubbish went out to newsagents and subscribers, while the other bit could only be found by hunting online.
ReplyDeleteSheehan is a joke, and not just because of this and magic water.