Janet Albrechtsen, The Australian, and a series of provocative questions ...

(Above: Oscar Wilde, Lady Windermere's Fan, here at Project Gutenberg, and cheaper than a copy of The Australian. Like ... free).

There's nothing like a series of compelling, provocative questions to start off the day.

Janet Albrechtsen shows how it's done, in Sexual harassment circus raises thorny questions.

The pond is always in favour of grasping the nettle - who knows you might end up with a Shakespeare reference on an Aesop fable or a Sean O'Casey quote - and we certainly approve of grasping the thorn, or tackling thorny issues, or raising thorny questions, since then you might end up in an Oscar Wilde fairy story like The Nightingale and the Rose, available here at Project Gutenberg along with the others in his Happy Prince collection.

It always helps when speculating in this way by not knowing the full facts of the matter, so that the questions can remain truly speculative and thorny. It's also helpful if the matter is before the courts.

Then you can scribble about being intellectually curious - usually enough to get you on a charge sheet as knowingly being or acting in the manner of a member of a dangerous elite - but here a good excuse for a column. And of course since actual knowledge is not the issue - as opposed to a series of provocative questions - a waiver, or a disclaimer right up the front is important.

Not to defend the retailer or McInnes. We may never know exactly what happened in this she said-he said dispute. But one thing is certain. This case warrants plenty of legitimate questions, no matter how uncomfortable that may be to some.

Happy? Got a few thorns nearby?

Good, because then you can spend the rest of the column attacking Kristy Fraser-Kirk and her "clever" legal team by asking a series of questions. All in the guise of an aforesaid curious intellectual - how we hate that elitist tag, abhorrent to everyone when all that's needed for the asking of provocative questions is curiosity and scepticism:

Indeed, a curious and sceptical observer could ask a series of legitimate questions about the Fraser-Kirk claim.

Indeed. While some might think curiosity means nosiness, we think it at the heart of scientific inquiry.

We could even ask a series of informed and informative, let alone legitimate questions, if we'd sat in the court room actually listening to the evidence unfold.

We find curious scepticism such an exemplary methodology that we were moved to a series of incisive provocative questions.

Why is it that Janet Albrechtsen consistently writes through her hat?

Why is Janet Albrechtsen using a matter before the courts to recycle common legal gossip? Common, you ask? Well I suppose you could call this uncommon:

The case comes on the heels of a very public split within Michael Harmer's high-profile legal firm in which his managing partner Joydeep Hor departed, reportedly taking with him 125 clients. The Fraser-Kirk publicity was a neat reminder that Harmers was still in business. The home page of the media-savvy firm provides a one-click link to the Fraser-Kirk case with a collection of news stories favourable to Fraser-Kirk, a hotline number and online form for others to pass on information about "inappropriate behaviour at David Jones" to the law firm.

Nothing wrong with that. But it's a reminder that there's more to these cases than meets the eye.

Well there's nothing wrong with that. But it's a reminder that there's more to these columns, and to provocative questions, than meets the eye.

But remind me again, why is Albrechtsen scribbling about a matter before the court? And why does she think it's okay to tilt the machine while playing pinball?

In the end, after raising as many provocative questions as can be managed, inevitably it's time to reach a conclusion:

If companies are going to be dragged into the courts even after they do the right thing, they may just do the wrong thing by women in future.

Say what? How does Albrechtsen know what happened in negotiations between lawyers, the complainant and the company in question? How does she know they did the right thing? And how will companies seize on this particular example as an inspiration for doing wrong by women in the future?

And does she think they will, or is this just an obligatory muttered incantation, of the kind once summoned by the Delphic Oracle? Does Albrechtsen think she's the Delphic Oracle?

Sometimes it's better simply to stick to asking questions than to resort to rhetorical blather to provide a generalised point and a summary indictment as a way out of a column ...

And as we know very little about the actual matter to hand, we'll leave it there, in much the same way as we're content for the courts to deal with rugby league footballers and their sexual escapades on what seems like a daily basis ...

Of course we could ask a set of provocative questions, which allow for all kinds of innuendoes and implications and muttered asides, but that would see us applying for a job as columnist at The Australian.

Speaking of The Australian, we've been asking a series of provocative questions about Jack the Insider, an anonymous blogger who's found shelter from the storm at the rag. You can catch Jack here, where he's described thus:

Jack the Insider is a highly placed, dedicated servant of the nation with close ties to leading figures in politics, business and the union movement.

By golly, we're standing by for a righteous denunciation and unmasking by The Australian. You see, as the rag explains in A storm on the internet, the House of Murdoch is fiendishly dedicated to honesty and transparency, whenever it can pull its head from its bum:

Our writers can be held to account and we can be sued for anything we publish.

Um, actually the most anonymous of bloggers can be sued for anything they publish. And any blogger who imagines that anonymity provides them with refuge against defamation would be well advised to take legal advice.

So really this is just a pompous sentence by a pretentious preening prat who confuses anonymity or a nom de plume with accountability and liability and defamation:

We take seriously our responsibility to be fair and accurate as well as courageous in our journalism.

Which is such a nonsense, I immediately felt like asking, in Janet Albrechtsen style, a series of provocative questions about the NBN and climate change. And the rag's reporting of same.

And we value transparency. For example, we allow letter writers anonymity rarely, and when we do, we in effect are asking readers to trust we have checked the writer's credentials and made an informed decision about the material.

Uh huh. So that's the letters column. Any other anonymous comments within the tent?

The net is a different beast but that does not mean it is exempt from scrutiny.

QED, it's time to go around the intertubes unmasking wayward and presumptuous bloggers who possibly might get more hits than the preening ponces hiding in the House of Murdoch.

The reality of The Oz's "exposure" of Greg Jericho is simpler. It was a "good story and good for the internet". Suddenly The Oz knows what's good for the internet. What a pile of horse manure, as we used to say in the good old days in Tamworth. It leads to even funnier nonsense - anonymity is even less valued in the internet age than ever.

What on earth does that mean? Take a look at any of the House of Murdoch rags, and they're full of comments trading under assumed names, tags, pen names, call them what you will.

Indeed some of the more outrageous right wing blogs associated with the Murdoch tabloid rags - such as Andrew Bolt, Tim Blair and Piers Akerman - are profoundly reliant on anonymity, so that the hits keep coming and the clowns can scribble outrageous assertions while sheltering like mushrooms on the Murdoch pages.

While sometimes blathering about anonymity, Australia's most cheap assed conversation The Punch, would perish overnight without it.

The reality is that the Oz acted with spite, and malice, and meanness and more than a tad of envy, in exposing a blogger, when the exposure revealed zip in relation to breaches of duty or anything actually newsworthy.

Instead the envy is clearly on hand by the rag citing 1000 readers a day, exposure on The Drum, influence at the ABC, and shock and outrage, the actual chutzpah of a blogger attending a blogging conference, and being surrounded by twitterati. The result? Mr Jericho is fair game ...

But if The Australian cares so much for transparency and deplores the use of pen names, why does it encourage the frivolous nonsense of Jack the Insider? Surely if you're going to be a righteous sanctimonious prick with your head up your bum, such posturing should be avoided?

For fear that other bloggers might get the idea that it's okay to be a high level dedicated public servant scribbling furiously for the House of Murdoch under cover of anonymity, by deploying a pen name ...

I keed, I keed. At least when Random House published The Insider's Guide to Power in Australia by Jack the Insider, they had the honesty to provide the tag "As told to Richard Fidler and Peter Hoysted".

But hang on, Fidler and Hoysted are layabout tossers who work for the ABC - indeed you can catch Fidler's conversations hour here on 612 Brisbane.

Is that why Jack the Insider must remain anonymous? To hide the way that The Australian has been infiltrated by insidious cardigan wearing members of the ABC? To disguise the truth that one of the few consistently jolly segments in The Australian is written by wretches working outside the paranoid fortifications of The Oz?

Thorny provocative questions indeed.

As usual, if you want an interesting analysis of the how and the why and the what of The Australian and its mean spirit and its lame, petty minded justifications, you're better off not reading The Australian. Why not instead try Margaret Simons here.

And now, since we mentioned Oscar Wilde, here's the tree advising the nightingale how to embrace the thorn:

“If you want a red rose,” said the Tree, “you must build it out of music by moonlight, and stain it with your own heart’s-blood. You must sing to me with your breast against a thorn. All night long you must sing to me, and the thorn must pierce your heart, and your life-blood must flow into my veins, and become mine.”

“Death is a great price to pay for a red rose,” cried the Nightingale, “and Life is very dear to all. It is pleasant to sit in the green wood, and to watch the Sun in his chariot of gold, and the Moon in her chariot of pearl. Sweet is the scent of the hawthorn, and sweet 48 are the bluebells that hide in the valley, and the heather that blows on the hill. Yet Love is better than Life, and what is the heart of a bird compared to the heart of a man?”

Yes, yes, silly deluded nightingale. The Australian is more righteous than life, and what is the name of a public servant compared to its relentless campaign to purify the internet and destroy anonymity, a campaign more noble and laden with honour than even Stephen Conroy and his filter, and infinitely incomparable to the anonymous heart of a man in the bloody film department who just liked to scribble, and not get his blogging and his work duties confused.

End result?

“You said that you would dance with me if I brought you a red rose,” cried the Student. “Here is the reddest rose in all the world. You will wear it to-night next your heart, and as we dance together it will tell you how I love you.”

But the girl frowned. “I am afraid it will not go with my dress,” she answered; “and, besides, the Chamberlain’s nephew 55 has sent me some real jewels, and everybody knows that jewels cost far more than flowers.”

“Well, upon my word, you are very ungrateful,” said the Student angrily; and he threw the rose into the street, where it fell into the gutter, and a cart-wheel went over it.

“Ungrateful!” said the girl. “I tell you what, you are very rude; and, after all, who are you? Only a Student. Why, I don’t believe you have even got silver buckles to your shoes as the Chamberlain’s nephew has;” and she got up from her chair and went into the house.

“What a silly thing Love is!” said the Student as he walked away. “It is not half as useful as Logic, for it does not prove anything, and it is always telling one of things that are not going to happen, and making one believe things that are not true. In fact, it is quite unpractical, and, as in this age to be practical is everything, I shall go back to Philosophy and study Metaphysics.”

So he returned to his room and pulled out a great dusty book, and began to read.

Ah the frivolity of women. Almost as problematic as the frivolity of The Australian. Constantly converting lives lived into cockie cage liner.

Time, perhaps, to ask some deep, penetrating questions of the kind you find in the curious intellectual elite. Deep thorny provocative questions.

You buy The Australian? Is it time to think. again?