(Above: actual icepick believed to have been used in the murder of Trotsky. Notice the resemblance to Miranda the Devine's keyboard, and Malcolm Fraser's startling resemblance to Trotsky in the badly staged re-enactment in the photo below. More on the icepick here).
And so the trashing of Malcolm Fraser begins all over again.
Just after Janet Albrechtsen bemoaned the bee hive mind of the left, why here comes Miranda the Devine strutting along, determined to show just how much of a collective beehive mind the conservative commentariat contains.
If you join the modern Liberal party, it seems you'd better not be Piggy, or if you are, you should prepare for a 'kill the beast' party in best Lord of the Flies fashion.
In A convert to the preaching will have no power to change, the Devine is determined to prove that she's the bitch from hell, and she can shove the slipper into an old man with reckless abandon. Cop this for an opener, as she lumps Fraser in with Peter Carey:
You had to feel for Marcia Langton on ABC TV's Q&A panel this week, stuck between two men so terminally pompous, out of touch and in love with the sound of their own voices you felt at times they might fall stiffly off their chairs and writhe on the ground in private ecstasy.
Malcolm Fraser and Peter Carey, fresh from the Sydney Writers' Festival, are the sorts of self-styled intellectuals who give thinking a bad name.
Actually - and perhaps for the first time - I felt some kind of sympathy for Fraser and Carey, being given a dust up by a woman who gives thinking a bad name, and whom you couldn't - not without disgracing the concept - honour with the title self-styled intellectual.
Perhaps self-styled loon, or ratbag, or unstylish feral ranting and raving member of the personal abuse commentariat.
The next time you read some member of the commentariat blathering on about playing the man rather than the ball, or people dwelling on personalities rather than policies, remember it's fair game, and you can shove it up them Miranda style, preferably loaded with a goodly abundance of class hatred and spiteful bitterness.
You see, Fraser kept his quitting of the Liberal party very quiet, didn't use it to sell his book, and feared front page haymakers having a field day, and for good reason.
Cop this bit of payback and group think:
He (Fraser) has always gone out of his way to malign and belittle John Howard, his one-time treasurer who well and truly eclipsed him in the PM stakes. How it must have rankled that some half-deaf nerd from Canterbury Boys' High could best him, the tall imperious scion of the Victorian squattocracy who speaks as if he has a mouthful of cotton wool.
Sheesh, and they reckon the comrades are the ones to knife their own in the back. Take that literary icepick to the back of the neck Malcolm.
Still, I'm sure John Howard is chortling away at being called a half-deaf nerd. Now there's an image for a legacy ...
Fraser's folly of course is to pursue sundry ideological lines which puts him at odd with the current Liberal zealots, and with the likes of Miranda the Devine. This requires a cleansing, a kind of verbal icepick to the stem of the brain, to make sure there can be no deviations from the norm. If no gulag is convenient to hand, then it's a simple matter of hysterical abuse ... of a personal kind, with hints about drooling bitterness in old age:
He (Fraser) also accused the opposition, laughably, of not pursuing government wrongdoing hard enough. Better yet was his confident claim that the British and American governments knew Saddam Hussein had no weapons of mass destruction and the Howard government, if it didn't know, "should have".
He's obviously been reading too much Green Left Weekly, or perhaps he gets his history from the Hollywood conspiracy genre of Green Zone. Even the host, Tony Jones, didn't pursue this fruitcake line.
He's obviously been reading too much Green Left Weekly, or perhaps he gets his history from the Hollywood conspiracy genre of Green Zone. Even the host, Tony Jones, didn't pursue this fruitcake line.
Fruitcake!? So now we have a new definition of fruitcake. The preposterous notion that a government should have a firm understanding, grounded in reality, for going off to war, a war in which thousands were killed, and millions displaced. If that's fruitcake mom, give me some more of the fruitcake.
Fraser of course made the mistake of suggesting that Tony Abbott isn't fair dinkum - a relatively benign observation given the way that Abbott comports himself, let alone what he says about being economical with the truth - but this of course places him in Malcolm Turnbull's camp, and so there needs to be another 'kill the beast' session, with icepick, in what can only be considered an extraordinary Freudian outburst. How did that old Doors song go? This is the end my friend, I'll never look into your eyes again? Take it away Miranda ...
The Freudian highlight of Monday night's show came when Jones inadvertently referred to Fraser as "Malcolm Turnbull". Fraser looked pleased, and you can see some similarity in the two men's unscrupulous ambition and capacity for destruction. But Turnbull is positively humble by comparison, can admit mistakes, and does not eat himself up with old grievances. He is a far sunnier fellow.
Yep, there's a considered response to Fraser's concerns about the demonising of migrants. If there's one thing Fraser would probably like to be remembered for, it's his humane response to the conflict in Vietnam, and his willingness to embrace its refugees - which I guess is how the local bakery and dry cleaning establishments are being run by Vietnamese.
Such talk of course is treasonous to the right, as they use boat people to whip up hysteria and fear about the 'foreign' and the 'alien' and the 'peril from the north' come to take away our resources and lifestyles, and swamp our cities with gutter trash (and any resemblance to the extreme right of Hansonism is of course just a convenient coincidence).
But wait, we haven't yet done with killing the beast. It must be drained of all blood, gutted and hung up to drain, as required by Freudian ritual:
While spruiking his memoirs earlier this year, Fraser denied that he had become a leftie, insisting he had not changed but the Liberal Party had lurched to the right.
Tony Abbott a lurch to the right? Nick Minchin a lunge to the far right? Eric Abetz a stellar loon? What ever is Malcolm on? These are veritable centrists! Provided the centre is somewhere near the moon ...
That is his perception. But to many observers the Reinvention of Malcolm Fraser is a fascinating study in internal psychological conflict writ small into the craggy creases of his former matinee-idol face.
Sheesh, where to start on the Freudiansm implicit in these pars as Devine forlornly contemplates the craggy creases of the former matinee-idol face. Was she ever infatuated with big old Mal, the head prefect? Did she think of him as some former Über Dad? Does she have the remotest conscious idea of what she's writing?
Oh yes she does. Think of Ripley yelling "get away from her, you bitch", transcribed to account for gender. Get your hands off my party, you bastard. Because you've become one of the aliens, one of the monsters. You see, Malcolm used to be a wonderful monster, and now he's become a different kind of monster"
He used to be a cartoon version of the jut-jawed, born-to-rule elite, the ''Life wasn't meant to be easy'', razor-ganging, Nixonian supply-blocker who became the most loathed politician of his time; now he resides in the very bosom of the progressive left which once reviled him, the pin-up boy of the GetUp! crowd.
It's as if he has a permanent case of Stockholm Syndrome - the defence mechanism in which captives identify with their tormenters and eventually adopt their beliefs.
Go on Miranda, don't hold back. Call him a dribbling demented old fool, in a dribbling demented way. Whatever you do, don't try to be moderate or gentle. Be that Ripley bitch from hell, confronted by alien thinking. Show us all how it's done:
There he was, having come to office in 1975 in a most ruthless and unorthodox manner, by overthrowing Labor's progressive darling Gough Whitlam, violently hated by those who saw him as an illegitimate symbol of oppressive patriarchy, and soon enough snubbed by his own party. On university campuses the family name was defaced with a swastika in place of the ''s''. For a long time he was not welcome in fashionable circles and was ridiculed for losing his trousers in Memphis. Regarded as disappointing and a bit of an embarrassment by colleagues, the prime minister who once lionised Mugabe and Mao was blamed for making the Liberals unelectable for 13 years.
Ah yes, the trousers in Memphis. The only mystery is that it took so long for it to emerge in Devine's piece. If you're unfamiliar with the story - what you haven't heard that Billy Snedden died while at work, on the job, so to speak? - then there's a short piece in the wiki here.
And as for the cant about lionising Mugabe and Mao and making the Liberals unelectable for thirteen years, et tu John Howard? Given that you seem to have been happy to trot off to war to help out Hamid Karzai?
But I digress. We haven't yet finished with the Devine's kindly explanation of why Fraser turned soft and wet and leftie, no matter that he showed signs of such wetness during his actual regime, and her representation of his policies and positions is wildly distorted, in the way of a feral child determined to assassinate her father, in best Freudian manner:
It would have broken lesser men. So in a way you can understand his eager acceptance of the small kindnesses which started to come from former opponents. Whitlam always had an amused, half-bemused look on his face as he posed with his new best friend, a convert to all sorts of progressive convictions. The more Fraser converted, the kinder his former foes were to him, and the more he must have boiled at the petty injustices from his own indifferent party.
You see. Not once a mention of actual policies or positions. It's all psychological and the doddering old man, fallen from grace, consorts with his foes, a quisling, a traitor, a treasonous old duffer. Worse than the Vichy French.
The odd thing is that he would have done a lot more damage to conservatives if he'd remained in their ranks. Instead, he's turned into the crabby old muppet Statler, harmlessly heckling the rest of the cast from his balcony seat.
The odd thing is that he would have done a lot more damage to conservatives if he'd remained in their ranks. Instead, he's turned into the crabby old muppet Statler, harmlessly heckling the rest of the cast from his balcony seat.
Um if Malcolm is Statler, does that make Miranda the Devine Waldorf, harmlessly arguing from her balcony seat with the crabby old muppet next to her?
Whatever, gourmets of loon pond will recognise that they have been privileged to witness a truly wonderful piece of scribbling, containing an execrable assassination, worthy of the thought police of East Germany, in a desire to hold the fort, and rally the troops around Tony Abbott, and incidentally eradicate any thought of soft leftist retreat towards Malcolm Turnbull.
Meanwhile, the Liberals shed the likes of Petro Georgiou and keep the likes of Julie Bishop. It's a funny old world, and Miranda the Devine certainly makes it even funnier.
Why if she was a man, and a little gender reassignment wouldn't hurt, this particular assassination piece would surely allow her to sing the Doors song with a particular relish in the following lyrics.
Never mind his actual ideas, it's time to roll up the sleeves, put the steel capped boots on, wake up before dawn, and get to work, as she despatches Malcolm Fraser to the abattoir for dissidents and naysayers:
He took a face from the ancient gallery
And he walked on down the hall
He went into the room where his sister lived, and...then he
Paid a visit to his brother, and then he
He walked on down the hall, and
And he came to a door...and he looked inside
Malcom, yes son, I want to kill you
Mother...I want to...WAAAAAA
By the way, if you want to see how the socialists farewelled Trotsky after his death, go here. If you can't see the Freudian connection to Miranda the Devine following the party line, you need to see a shrink ...
(Below: spot Miranda the Devine. I'm thinking the craggy creases and the jaw make the muppet on the right Malcolm Fraser, and the one on the left therefore must be Miranda the Devine. Hang on, Miranda the Devine on the left? Wash out your mouth with soap at once, and report for latrine duty! But, but ... it's Waldorf on the left and Statler on the right!)
Oh my goodness, the cute little latte set: useless academics, public servants and so on, are suddenly feeling sentimental over one of their own in manners, privilege and education, to wit: Bunyip Aristocrat Mal Fraser. Look at Brunswick Street now, crawling up his bum, but golly what would you expect, from such nose-led hairdo poseurs.
ReplyDeleteAnd just watch his state government equivalent, Jeff Kennett (who sold everything we owned) get the same from these dopes eventually, all he has to do is grow old and talk nice.
Mal Fraser was the shiftiest rat ever in Australian politics (worse than Billy Hughes) sneaking through the back door of Government House to overthrow an elected Labor Party. Say what you like, dream all you want, Whitlam will never forgive him.
Grazier Mal goes back a long way: pirated land and slave labour. He is employer class, gentleman farmer, suing you, sacking you, putting you on the street. He's a landlord with his own personal army: the state police. He's a magistrate, total bastard, fining you on behalf of himself for trespassing on land he thieved years ago.
Near the end of these gangster's lives they'll seek atonement, remake themselves, but don't be fooled, once a fascist always a fascist. They'd do the same again.