(Above: Julia Gillard explaining to Tony 'Macbeth' Abbott how he can have it all, and all he has to do is help to ruin the planet in his own small way - still from Throne of Blood, still one of the best versions of Macbeth for the screen).
Fran Kelly this morning on Radio National's breakfast show... words amounting to the notion that Colonel Gaddafi has been a successful leader of Libya these last few decades ...
Successful? Mussolini made the trains run on time, and Adolf Hitler gave Germany the autobahn and the peoples' wagon, to the eventual joy of South America, and my uncle who once ran a local franchise, but successful?
I suppose giving up plans for weapons of mass destruction and keeping the oil flowing to the west was a successful strategy, and never mind the crazy as a fox behaviour and the savage oppression of the citizenry, along with the routine torture and murder of dissidents.
What a pity the bombs only hit the tent all those years ago in Operation El Dorado Canyon, which was denounced by all and sundry at the time. Strange how when there's talk of targeted political assassinations, as opposed to millions of innocents suffering, politicians get most uncomfortable, but somehow manage to be strangely comfortable with the eternal suffering of the citizenry, provided it's not their citizenry, and there's no knock on the door, and there's no short quick gallumphing march to the guillotine set up in the grounds of the Place de la Revolution ...
I guess morning radio is a tricky beast, and language always a worry, and no need to hang Kelly for a single word. (Unless I happened to be a Gaddafi style absolute ruler and then on a whim I must just think about it).
But it gives me a real problem. Have I turned into Gerard Henderson, listening to the ABC and whingeing about it? Or have I become one of those dangerous middle class radicals that Henderson sees under his bed just before retiring for the night?
Never mind, on we go, and first on the agenda, has anyone noticed just how over the top and far away and off in to la la land Tony Abbott has gone this past week in terms of rhetoric, in a truly heroic effort to bring back the nickname of the mad monk, and give it some currency?
TONY ABBOTT: You know, this latter day Lady Macbeth will be saying "Out! Out foul spot! Out! Out foul spot!" But she said it and she will be judged by it. (here).
TONY ABBOTT: You know, this latter day Lady Macbeth will be saying "Out! Out foul spot! Out! Out foul spot!" But she said it and she will be judged by it. (here).
That's the sort of language we use on the pond, since the pond always prefers irrational and irrelevant metaphors, analogies and sundry stupidities to actual political debate. That's what we learn from the commentariat, who always prefer to evoke police states and North Korea and Adolf Hitler to settle things ...
Ever since the soup Nazi turned up on Seinfeld, it's been the approved form of discourse amongst the dangerous radical middle class, who always watch a sitcom before an argument over dinner ...
Is it any way to discuss and create policy? Is it any way to run a country? Of course not, which is why the commentariat, the pond, and now Abbott are singularly useless ...
Well someone's at last ticked off the mad Banquo's ghost at the kitchen table, muttering about the evils done, and it's here in Lady Gillard must confront climate change. (curiously changed from its online header Gillard's Macbeth Moment on Climate Change).
But not content with preposterous literary analogies, Tony 'Rasputin' Abbott has also called for a people's revolt.
Yes, not content with the fevered tormented demented sense of loss he feels in his own mind about how the leadership of the country has been snatched away from him ...
To prick the sides of my intent, but only
Vaulting ambition, which o'erleaps itself
And falls on the other.
... he wants the rest of the country to join in, over a scheme that owes its origins to the Howard government, of which he was a part, and yet it's just a reduced, tepid minor variation of a strategy he was a supporter of at the time, until the wind blew north by north west, and he changed his mind, until he changed his mind again ... And he has the cheek to berate Gillard for breaking trust ...
Talk about the pot and the kettle having a conversation on a rapidly heating stove ...
Meanwhile, poor hapless Tony Windsor has revealed he's had death threats - trust me they're as mad as hell in Tamworth, madder than a cut snake at a country music festival in January listening to the howling music in the century heat after downing a keg and ready to go out the back of Maguires to sort it out - and has suggested the debate might be going over the edge.
But that's the only style and strategy that Dr. No understands, and his current bout of dementia and hysteria must surely be causing some concerns for his more moderate colleagues. How do you deal with a leader that issues an order like this?
Tony Abbott has ordered his troops to focus on the government during what will be a protracted climate change debate and to shelve their personal views so they do not become distracted by an internal fight over whether global warming is real. (MPs to ignore climate belief and attack on tax).
Yes, the chooks need to be herded, because some still don't believe in the crap of climate change, but for form, Abbott now believes in it, and leaves the dog whistling to others, while producing as much chaff and Lady Macbeth images as he can manage. In terms of literary assassinations, that's about equal to the pond dubbing him the Raskolnikov of his political generation. Oops, too deep? Let's just settle for him being Macbeth ...
Are we far away enough from actual climate science yet?
Can someone please immediately do an imitation of John Cleese strutting about, saying sssh, whatever you do, don't mention the war. The very heart and soul of the debate - what to do about climate change, and whether global warming is real - can't be mentioned, while we get all this phoney goose strutting and verbosity about another big new tax?
So no, Warren Truss, it's not about Julia Gillard being a liar, it's about what to do about climate change, unless you assume climate change science is crap, and unless you assume the Abbott scheme to thrust billions of taxpayers' dollars into the hands of big polluting industry isn't also a big new tax.
Abbott is standing dangerously close to the void, where he might simply tear everything down, so that he can indulge in the process of rebuilding it. But that kind of rhetoric and action has its own price. Just ask Macbeth ...
Is fall'n into the sear, the yellow leaf;
And that which should accompany old age,
As honour, love, obedience, troops of friends,
I must not look to have; but, in their stead,
Curses, not loud but deep, mouth-honour, breath,
Which the poor heart would fain deny, and dare not.
Because if climate science is reasonably correct, or even half way towards being correct, with all the implications that flow from it, not for my generation, but for future generations, then the show pony routines that Abbott is mounting right at the moment, ill informed, rhetorical, gestural politics with the most shallow gutter appeals to the selfish in us all, are truly disgraceful, and will in the end produce a backlash ...
Meanwhile, it being Tuesday, we couldn't let it go without noticing the latest effort of the smirk, the prattling prat Peter Costello, giving the AFL yet another pasting in Big men fly into a fury at those who dare question the AFL.
It seems big Petey has only just noticed that around February, as a warm up to the season proper, there's always a juicy flow of sordid sex, drug and alcohol scandals before the professional footballers get out on the gladiatorial field and thump the shit out of each other for the pleasure of the paying punters ...
I guess when you're a pompous prick, seeing what unfolds beneath the lower hems of your garments often escapes you, but it's passing wondrous that Costello only seems to have noticed now, when he might have had a field day as a politician in any of the past decades. And instead he kept mum ...
Oh I almost forgot to mention, better than mum. He was number one ticket holder at Essendon for years, when it suited him, and until he got dumped after losing power, and he was replaced by Leigh Clifford, another mad Bomber. (Peter Costello dumped as number one Essendon ticketholder).
Strange to think of Costello as more a mad bomber than a smirk, but I think I can handle it. I've always thought of him as a typical hypocritical politician, so it won't be so hard ...
As usual, you only have to turn to the handy online Wiki to discover a List of Australian rules football incidents, sketchy some years, but nonetheless full of colour and movement from 1910 to the present, and with plenty of supporting documentation. Perhaps Costello could pay particular attention to what happened during the years he was a politician and in power and a show pony number one ticket holder trawling the footy punters for their votes and in a position to do something about the things he now complains about ...
Instead, after trawling through Milton Orkopoulos and Ricky Nixon, he concludes thusly:
A brave journalist could take up these issues. They should not expect a polite reaction from the industry. But everybody else would be interested in some real answers.
Yes, indeed. Never mind our ceaseless quest for a brave politician in actual power ...
A brave journalist might wonder just how much Rupert Murdoch and his minions will shovel down the throat of the AFL for the rights for the big circus, while nobbling Channel Ten's sports channel One, all to the greater glory of Foxtel, if it can snatch the crown away from free to air, and the money thus shovelled then trickles down through the vultures and the percentage takers to the hapless out of their depth testosterone driven gladiators who can expect a bare ten years on the field before they return to the bush, battered and with bodies broken.
And everyone who forks over cash or watches the box is complicit in the process and the scandals, and some abuse the rewards, and some make use of their moment in the spotlight to better themselves and help those around them ...
Given the requirements of professional football and its gladiatorial element, and the money and the free flowing drugs and sex, the wonder is that there isn't more scandals. Just look to Hollywood and Charlie Sheen for inspiration ...
But when you only want the superficial sports highlights, trust Pete the smirk. He's your man ... and if he keeps talking down the sport, just maybe the amount being negotiated for the rights will go down. And if you believe that, it so happens I have the Collingwood Football Club for sale, right now, and at a special price just for you ... since that goose Eddie Maguire is just a vegetarian falafel ...
Anyway, it seems that the gladiators are now in the wrong game. I have it from a usually reliable source regarding boofhead thinking - perhaps you need to be one to know - that the UFC is now the way to go, as explained by John 'searching for my macho machismo' Birmingham in UFC: It's sickening, it's brutal, it's utterly compelling.
There you go Petey boy, another sport ripe and ready for you to take up your righteous beating stick and give it a thorough verbal pounding. As opposed to a decent ground and pound with actual blood, or results ...
(Below: eek, and it's happening right here, right now in the inner west of Sydney, according to the Inner West Courier from which this image was capped. Tigers on the prowl in schools, pretending to be role models. Eek, won't someone think of the children, and never mind the Pacific Islanders and indigenous folk who find it the only way to make a buck in a society long used to them performing in Jimmy Sharman's tent).
Well I suppose it makes a change of style from Jimmy's day.
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