(Above: the subbies at The Australian are now so tired, they can't even get out a photo for the splash for Christopher " " Pearson. Guys, guys, attention must be paid. Enough with the inverted commas already).
In the last few weeks, Christopher " " Pearson's column has become increasingly eccentric.
This will only be of interest to a coven of cultists, dedicated followers of conservative fashion, anxious to learn that Simon Crean should be PM, and that former chairman Kevin Rudd organised his heart operation so as to destabilise the Gillard government, and perhaps even more cleverly, use it as the basis for a coup.
Sadly, all good things come to an end, and this week's offering, Gillard walks, chews gum and is stuck with tax, is only remarkable for its unremitting banality and predictability.
It turns out that Pearson has an unhealthy obsession with the activities of Julia Gillard, right down to her capacity for taking gum for an early morning walk, and despite all the distractions offered during the week - world financial meltdown, hah, what financial meltdown - he's demanding that she continue to put the carbon tax front and centre of her activities.
The result's a kind of Fatal Attraction crossed with Play Misty For Me crossed with Misery column - yes, women always tend to be the stalkers in movies - though if you want some gender balance, perhaps you might think of The King of Comedy or the two versions of Cape Fear as suitable role models for wannabe columnist stalkers.
Pearson broods about the launch of Christine Nixon's Fair Cop, a most outrageous assault on the minions of Murdoch and their righteous search for truth and justice, and finds comfort in Niki Savva's scoop that Gillard's office is being run by "teenagers", when we all know young people will be the ruination of the planet - handed over in such jolly good shape by the older generations, and then the young handing it over to the apes, and next thing you know we've got a half dozen ape movies hanging around on the intertubes.
Even the prospect of the very fast train can't distract the steadfast Pearson, nor even the hope that riot squads will be deployed against aslyum-seekers.
No, it's the carbon tax, or nothing, proving that Pearson can't take gum for a walk, at least not if will get him off his pet theme.
So he spends the rest of his column contemplating polls about the carbon tax, and salivating at the prospect that all in Queensland save Rudd would lost their seats if an election was to be held right now.
Aye, but there's the rub. An election isn't about to be held. Oh the agony, the unfairness of it all.
Oh and then there's the matter of the science involved.
Pearson is a very sophisticated scientist - no talk of carbon dioxide being weightless from him - and he settles the science on the basis of polling:
The number who thought it was caused by man was the same last week as in April at 36 per cent. The number of those who thought it was caused by natural cycles rose by six points to 32 per cent.
Hang on, hang on, roll that first sentence back a bit.
... what's responsible for global warming?
Why reading that you'd almost think global warming was happening, and now we were consulting the polls to determine what was causing it, whether the activities of humans (men included) or natural cycles, or perhaps undersea volcanoes ....
Surely Pearson has stepped into some gum here, and it's clinging to his shoes, because he seems to have clean forgotten that the planet is actually cooling, as established by him as long ago as March 2008, with the compelling insights to hand in Climate facts to warm to ...
Or if it's warming it's simply because of those pesky undersea volcanoes (Pearson claims that undersea volcanoes cause global warming).
That way lies inspirational insights:
When Charles Darwin unveiled the theory of evolution, the world at once divided into rationalists and creationists. The theory that man-made greenhouse gas is causing potentially catastrophic climate change is another great divider. On one side are the sceptics, who want compelling evidence. On the other are the true believers.
Yep it's the creationists who are genuine scientific sceptics, and theory of evolution lovers who are the true believers. Or some such gobbledegook.
Guess we'll need to consult a poll to sort that one out.
In the meantime, we wait with bated breath Pearson's insights into Tony "carbon dioxide is a weightless gas" Abbott's direct action scheme:
Can you ever imagine a time that Pearson might, as a way to end his column, scribble:
On the strength of that I think it's safe to say that the voters have made up their minds on Tony Abbott's direct action scheme and the forthcoming debate in parliament and the media over the legislation is unlikely to have much effect apart from entrenching resentment.
Well you could, if you believed, like the character in H. G. Wells' story The Country of the Blind:
All the old stories of the lost valley and the Country of the Blind had come back to his mind, and through his thoughts ran this old proverb, as if it were a refrain—
"In the Country of the Blind the One-eyed Man is King."
"In the Country of the Blind the One-eyed Man is King." (the full story available at Project Gutenberg here).
Speaking of old proverbs, Randy Newman has been doing a tour of the antipodes, his voice now more a croak than a musical instrument, but for those who've grown old with him, here's a flashback to his younger days (and you can catch an amiable interview with him on ABC FM here).
Yep there's more to life than consulting polls and rabbiting on endlessly about the proposed carbon tax, but then you might end up in a healthy, obsession free relationship to the world, and better still, find Christopher " " Pearson's weekly column no more than a one minute distraction, an amusing blind alley down which you stumble, before doing a U-turn, and getting the hell out of there ...
Dorothy,
ReplyDeleteI know it is not Sunday but I just could not contain myself! I know you love topics like ethics and News Corp... well mix in banks, personal savings and prostitution, and you get one hell of a funny piece!
George Bernard Shaw did over Phillip Jensen years ago with the introduction to his play Major Barbara:
ReplyDeletePractically all the spare money in the country consists of a mass of rent, interest, and profit, every penny of which is bound up with crime, drink, prostitution, disease, and all the evil fruits of poverty, as inextricably as with enterprise, wealth, commercial probity, and national prosperity. The notion that you can earmark certain coins as tainted is an unpractical individualist superstition. None the less the fact that all our money is tainted gives a very severe shock to earnest young souls when some dramatic instance of the taint first makes them conscious of it. When an enthusiastic young clergyman of the Established Church first realizes that the Ecclesiastical Commissioners receive the rents of sporting public houses, brothels, and sweating dens; or that the most generous contributor at his last charity sermon was an employer trading in female labor cheapened by prostitution as unscrupulously as a hotel keeper trades in waiters' labor cheapened by tips, or commissionaire's labor cheapened by pensions; or that the only patron who can afford to rebuild his church or his schools or give his boys' brigade a gymnasium or a library is the son−in−law of a Chicago meat King, that young clergyman has, like Barbara, a very bad quarter hour. But he cannot help himself by refusing to accept money from anybody except sweet old ladies with independent incomes and gentle and lovely ways of life. He has only to follow up the income of the sweet ladies to its industrial source, and there he will find Mrs Warren's profession and the poisonous canned meat and all the rest of it. His own stipend has the same root. He must either share the world's guilt or go to another planet. He must save the world's honor if he is to save his own.
This is what all the Churches find just as the Salvation Army and Barbara find it in the play. Her discovery that she is her father's accomplice; that the Salvation Army is the accomplice of the distiller and the dynamite maker; that they can no more escape one another than they can escape the air they breathe; that there is no salvation for them through personal righteousness, but only through the redemption of the whole nation from its vicious, lazy, competitive anarchy: this discovery has been made by everyone except the Pharisees and (apparently) the professional playgoers, who still wear their Tom Hood shirts and underpay their washerwomen without the slightest misgiving as to the elevation of their private characters, the purity of their private atmospheres, and their right to repudiate as foreign to themselves the coarse depravity of the garret and the slum. Not that they mean any harm: they only desire to be, in their little private way, what they call gentlemen. They do not understand Barbara's lesson because they have not, like her, learnt it by taking their part in the larger life of the nation.
All Jensen needed was a helpful aide to produce a bowl of water, for the washing of hands therein. Job done, and no need to trouble the bankers further ...
A most enjoyable link and read, and it led me back to George Bernard Shaw, with the preface here
http://www.gutenberg.org/files/3789/3789-h/3789-h.htm
and the play here
http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/3790
The only problem? Now we've eaten the roast lamb on a Saturday, instead of saving it for Sunday ...