(Above: the fawning hacks of Murdoch. No link, because we hope you have a life to lead).
In the strange old days, working class parents used to aspire to a tertiary education for their kids. Mine did, thinking that knowledge might be a way out of the working class ghetto, where you'd done no crime but you still did the time ...
Winfrey's arrival in Australia, where she will broadcast her show from the Sydney Opera House, has been the cue for mocking commentary from the tertiary-educated critics who refuse to accept that anyone as popular as Oprah could serve any useful purpose. (More than just a TV Star).
The instinct to mock anything that could be considered popular is an unfortunate trait of the self-styled sophisticates who dominate much of the media debate here.
In the strange old days, working class parents used to aspire to a tertiary education for their kids. Mine did, thinking that knowledge might be a way out of the working class ghetto, where you'd done no crime but you still did the time ...
These days ...
Well, these days, it seems it's a singular crime to have had a tertiary education. Take The Australian ... please take The Australian and shove it where the sun don't shine, as we used to say in our rough working class way - which today offers up this fine insight:
Now this could have only been written by an embittered wanker who failed to gain a tertiary education, or just as likely, a disingenuous wanker who had a tertiary education, but purports from a well paid position wanking away as a Murdoch minion, to be at one with the workers, who presumably, unlike those damned tertiary leets, are at one with Oprah.
Did the scribbler bother to do a survey, to ascertain the actual credentials of critics of Oprah? Or is this just another shoddy example of cynical stereotyping, where the tertiary leets cop the blame?
Of course for reliable bashing of Oprah we like to turn to the Murdoch owned Fox News - there's a sample in Is Oprah Starting Her Own Cult? Or how about Tell-All Author Claims Oprah's Influence Led to Media Blackballing.
Damned tertiary educated embittered Fox News ...
The familiar refrain does make me wonder why anybody with a tertiary degree actually buys the rag - can masochistic self-hatred extend to this kind of ritualised self-loathing?
What's even more amusing is that The Australian then goes on to defend Oprah for her leet liberal tertiary educated skills. You know, she shovelled a million votes Obama's way - thereby, as Fox News constantly reminds us, installing a Kenyan Muslim in the White House - and she recommends such elevated novels as Tolstoy's Anna Karenina, which had wallowed in a disinterested America before Oprah came along to save it. Where would Tolstoy - or perhaps Shakespeare for that matter - be without Oprah? Well, only in America ...
Even the wretched Jonathan Franzen, who got huffy about The Corrections being included in the Oprah club has seen the light, and allowed Freedom to be a club pick.
But hang on, Franzen is one of those tertiary educated leetists, having studied on a Fulbright Scholarship at Freie Universität Berlin in Berlin, and thereby learned German. I guess there are are tertiary elites and then German-trained tertiary elites ...
On and on rants The Australian with a chip on its rough working class shoulder:
That's the thing about mass appeal -- it's seductive. The 56-year-old Winfrey knows that in spades, so it is really no surprise that Tourism Australia has been happy to fund her visit here. TA has no truck, it seems, with the analysis of some elite commentators that her audience in the US is not sufficiently sophisticated to grace our shores.
Yep, there it is again ... the Tea Party rhetoric about elite commentators ...
Why I guess there must be a bunch of tertiary educated leetists in the United States as well as in the lotus land of Oz ...
Her critics in the US have tried to dismiss the Oprah phenomenon as mere tabloid television, but Winfrey has pioneered discussion of social issues once taboo on mainstream American television and thus has conquered prejudice towards homosexuals and other minorities in a way overt activism could never have achieved.
Has conquered prejudice towards homosexuals? Sssh, don't ask and we won't tell about the state of prejudice in the United States ...
This is of course epic defensiveness of a Murdoch castle kind.
This is of course epic defensiveness of a Murdoch castle kind.
The tabloid press - which is chiefly Murdoch in Oz - has had kittens about Oprah's visit, and sees it as a way to stem the bleeding and kill trees and ship rags by the squillions. It is, in the usual tabloid way, unseemly and vulgar, but then nothing more is to be expected from a tabloid rag ...
What is unseemly is the way The Australian carries on about elite commentators and tertiary educated scribblers, so soon after it purported to be a thinking person's rag and launched a campaign involving stimulating questions - when was the last time you were inspired - featuring intellectual giants such as Phillip Adams and Ray Martin, and ending with the punch-line "Think Again".
The instinct to mock anything that could be considered popular is an unfortunate trait of the self-styled sophisticates who dominate much of the media debate here.
Uh huh. Actually it's the wankers in the world of Murdoch that dominate much of the media debate here. News Corp controls an unseemly amount of print - between 61 and 78% weekday, Saturday and Sunday of Australian newspaper circulation, some 111 suburban newspapers, 25 regional newspapers, 30 magazines, 25% and management control of Foxtel, and a third of Sky News Australia (via BSkyB), and now the spawn of Murdoch - one Lachlan Murdoch - is extending his interests - from DMG radio (53% reach of the Australian market, in all metro areas), and the deputy chair of Prime TV to his recent acquisition of a key share of the Ten network (and more here if you can bear to read it).
On that evidence alone, to make the remark in The Australian true, it should have read the instinct to mock anything that could be considered unpopular is an unfortunate trait of the self-styled sophisticates who are published routinely by the Murdoch press, a bunch of wankers who lamentably control much of the media debate in Australia.
And how's this for a concluding non sequitur?
It is evident in much of the commentary on the forthcoming royal wedding, where republicans are in danger of repeating the mistake they made at the 1999 referendum when they assumed that making a negative case would be enough to carry the vote.
Uh huh. So it wasn't John Howard who did down the republic via a stacked constitutional assembly and a wretchedly worded referendum, it was those pesky tertiary educated elites (including of course that utter ponce Malcolm Turnbull).
Enough of this nonsense already. We don't watch Oprah, and we don't care that she's in Australia, and the notion that somehow she'll boost American tourism in Australia - when her show's demographic inclines to the people who can mainly afford to stay at home - is an idle one.
No doubt some consultant scored big persuading government to toss out dollops of cash, while muttering learnedly about multipliers ... which you will no doubt be pleased to learn not only encourages growth in the primary and secondary sectors of industry but increases jobs in the tertiary sector (google it, because we fear providing a link might only encourage tertiary educated people to write reports, and there's only so much room for a report writing wanker like me).
Yep, Oprah's visit is encouraging tertiary wankers. Oh no more tertiary wankers to flagellate themselves by buying the Oz ...
On the other hand, we have nothing against Oprah, seeing as she's a successful entertainer, and there's nothing wrong with that, and she takes - it turns out - a wider interest in the world than that allowed by the pretentious preening of The Australian, seeking to make her the working world's pseudo-academic, socialist and caring liberal squillionaire.
But at the end of it all, I'm wondering why a tertiary educated person, a member of the elites, or those self-styled sophisticates who dominate much of the debate here would be seen dead carrying, let alone be seen reading, The Australian.
Is this the ultimate form of self-loathing, self-fear and self-hatred?
People, people, there are easier ways. Wear a cilice, join a BDSM club and line up a decent whipping, wear high heel shoes with at least a spikey six inches on display, scourge yourself on the back with a nettle, get your ears pierced (or your nipples), cover yourself in tattoos, or perhaps, if you like to emulate John Safran, line up a crucifixion in the Philippines ...
One way or another, please Think. Again.
And by the way, while thinking again, why not read Julie Posetti's The Australian. Think. Again. Mmm, that Posetti, always in the culture wars with Chris Mitchell ...
I wonder if Chris Mitchell has a tertiary education?
(Below: warning. The advertisement below is likely to induce profound nausea and other strong side effects, and in the case of pseudo-sophisticated leets and tertiary educated types, a heart attack or brain haemorrhage, followed by death. Still, we're told one dose provides a healthy immunity to the system, and might even stop you ever thinking again. So there's an upside, and more work for tertiary educated doctors. But don't think of sending a tertiary educated lawyer our way. You've had your official warning and there's an end to it).
No comments:
Post a Comment
Comments older than two days are moderated and there will be a delay in publishing them.