(Above: how about replacing 'Australia' with 'Murdoch land'? Sheesh, doesn't anyone understand proper branding?)These days Crikey is turning into the 'go to' site for sordid insights into the paranoid castle sometimes known as 'is your News Limited' down under.
The latest leak is a hum dinger, under the header Leaked: News Ltd bites the dust, and since we respect the paywall, all we'll say is it just goes to show the "connectivity of niche", while reading about dimensionalising the News brand (settle, spell checker, settle) is almost as wildly exciting as the "visual language for employee engagement initiatives" that's mentioned in the gabble speak ...
And they say the hard hats in News don't know how to wash down a fine meal of oysters on the rocks with lashings of marketing spiel kool aid.
Along with the story, you get the whole eighty six page re-branding proposal, and naturally the Fairfax team have joined in the glee about "Project Darwin" with 'News Ltd' axed in major Murdoch rebranding.
To show how delusional the re-branding exercise is, goggle at this:
A list of “hot topics” for implementation include accountability, standing up for consumers, accuracy, owning up to mistakes, and environmental, sustainability issues.
Spare my sainted aunt. Andrew Bolt owning up to mistakes and embracing environmental and sustainability issues? Pass me that kool aid, I want what it's got ...
Not well communicated? Hundreds of journos and subbies beavering away and they couldn't communicate outside a wet brown paper bag?
The howling at the moon at the pond reverberated long into the night, and this morning there's still the lingering sense of an ode to joy (settle, Beethoven, settle).
Dear sweet absent lord, according to the brief, News Ltd reflects and fights for the values of middle Australia ...
Who'd have thunk Rupert Murdoch was a middle Australian of middling stature, wealth, and attitudes?
Well we can't wait for News Ltd to evolve to its next level of consciousness, and we particularly love the idea that it's supposed to launch a paywall for various rags in the next month or so, while the Dr. Who-like evolution and transformation will happen next February.
You know, because it makes so much sense to sell everyone a subscription to a Datsun, and then explain they've actually purchased a Neeesan. (oh yes, we love the way they talk of veeerhikullls in the land of the free).
Of course there's another way to describe it, and for that we turn to the urban dictionary and the nerdish world of computers:
... you attack your firewall / software / website / whatever from the outside, identify a flaw in it, fix the flaw, and then go back to looking. One of my programmer buddies refers to this process as 'turd polishing' because, as he says, it doesn't make your code any less smelly in the long run but management might enjoy its improved, shiny, appearance in the short term.
Well let's hope the management finds the shiny new appearance distracts from the smell of the commentariat columns and mind set on view on a daily basis, stinking up the place like a skunk with no anal scent gland control.
There's one further delicious prospect to contemplate. Much as we believe in the stork, this leak didn't land in Crikey as the result of the stork dropping it down the chimney. Clearly there is a disgruntled liberal with a sensa huma lurking somewhere in News Ltd land. Perhaps even - gasp - a greenie ...
What is needed now is a ferocious campaign to ferret out the dissident and crucify him or her. We recommend the self-criticism techniques deployed by Chairman Mao, to ensure proper group think is sustained:
Thoroughgoing Murdochians are fearless; we hope that all our fellow fighters will courageously shoulder their responsibilities and overcome all difficulties, fearing no setbacks or gibes, nor hesitating to criticize us Murdochians and give us their suggestions. “He who is not afraid of death by a thousand cuts dares to unhorse the emperor”—this is the indomitable spirit needed in our struggle to build Murdochianism throughout the antipodes (or some such, consult the thoughts of Chairman Mao on Criticism and Self-Criticism for the original).
And I guess if that fails there's always the old-fashioned Stalinist secret police routine, as perfected by the East Germans ... or perhaps they could call in the Metropolitan Police to discover the leaker, as they did in the UK with The Guardian. (What's that? The cops backed down? Oh no, when clearly The Guardian is as guilty as hell, and News Corp just a hard done by corporation).
Moving right along, there's barely room to note that hard working, twice a week these days Fairfax columnist Paul "Field Marshall Grumpy" Sheehan's contribution to the News Ltd world view, in Abbott not listening to the Labor deserters ...
Today the talk is of bogans, and what do you know, but the generally grumpy Sheehan today has come not to praise Tony Abbott to bury him.
Oh sure, there's the obligatory man love on view for the first half. Abbott is a Rhodes scholar, believes he eats the actual body of Christ on a Sunday, and is a pugilist who has mastered the art of politics and puts fear and loathing into lefties.
Naturally these ill-tempered loons try to traduce the master politician by calling him a bogan, as if being a bogan was somehow a problem rather than a strength which connects to the great unwashed masses, the people at large:
So when an inner-city Green voter like my friend scorns Abbott as a bogan, he is not merely indulging in cheap snobbery but referring to the cut-through quality that makes Abbott appear an island of humanity in a sea of spin.
What's most amazing about this sentence? Surely it's the claim that Sheehan has an inner-city Green voter friend.
This is roughly equivalent to admitting that Sheehan dines out with the devil ... or at least sups with one of Satan's closest friends.
And surely a close second would be the straw man notion that Abbott is a bogan which makes him come across as an island of humanity in a sea of spin.
Abbott might, as Sheehan contends, be the man with the big mortgage, swaggering gait and a history of making authentic gaffes, which appeals with those who have a bias towards authentic gaffes, but he's not really a bogan.
And not many people call him one. A boofhead thug maybe, a pugilistic bar room brawler perhaps, but in reality the north shore jock shines in him like a cleansing beacon.
But why does Sheehan have need of the 'bogan' straw man term of abuse? Well you see 'Bogan' Abbott has got into bed with the Greens on the matter of the Migration Act. It's a serious mis-step, according to Sheehan, the first of the dear opposition leader's leadership:
Yes, Sheehan speaks for the common folk who want strong border protection, a large boganish constituency which loathes the human rights industry, and wants punitive policies in place because it hates the idea that people can self-select to come to Australia.
What was that about entrepreneurial spirit and the idea that people might show initiative by climbing into a leaky boat and risking all for a better life?
And the various polls that show a majority of Australians accept the burden of on shore processing, as in Voters say no to offshore process. And the majority that realise that the off-shore processing at Nauru was a fudge that saw most asylum seekers end up in Australia anyway. And those who accept Malcolm Fraser might have a point, and understand that, in Afghanistan and in Iraq, as in the old days in Vietnam, the old shop rule - if you break it, you buy it - should still apply ...
If you get to the end of Sheehan's piece, you'll find him approvingly quoting the words of Julia Gillard against Abbott.
And there's the ultimate irony, and the cheap Sheehan rhetorical trick exposed.
It is after all Julia Gillard who routinely gets called a bogan, what with her funny bogan accent, and her bogan hair and clothes, and her bogan boyfriend. Why she even won a FIX award as Australia's biggest bogan as recorded in Julia Gillard is 'Australia's biggest bogan', and now she has her very own bogan sitcom, way more tacky, down market and down beat than the worst excesses of Kath and Kim.
Who can forget Julie Bishop and her snide reference to the Lodge as Bogan-ville, as noted in Kevin Rudd turns tables on Bogan-ville talks? Why in that article the word 'bogan' is fully explained to the gentle readership of The Australian, who know that when you reach Penrith you must beware dragons ...
A "bogan", of course, is a derogatory term sometimes used interchangeably with "yobbo".
Keep on with the polishing, Oz management.
And who can forget Janet Albrecthsen (and Christopher Pearson and others in the commentariat) anguishing over Gillard's accent in Mea culpa time? Not so fast:
Start with something so basic it barely gets a mention. That voice. Gillard's accent is curious. Especially if, like her, you grew up in Adelaide, had a working-class background and went to public schools. I'm often asked why I don't sound like Gillard. Easy. No one in Adelaide sounds like Gillard. Certainly no one who went to Unley High School, hardly a school of hard knocks. Could she have manufactured those broad nasal vowels, so different even from her Adelaide-accented sister, to fit her political emergence within Labor's left-wing factions? You feel so cynical even suggesting it.
Yes indeed. Of course in Pearson's thesis (borrowed from Bob Carr) it was so Gillard could fit in with the lawyers and the culture at Slater and Gordon.
Never mind the naked personal prejudices, just romp in the bogan fields of commentariat abuse ...
Well here's the thing. The idea that Sheehan leads with - that lefties think of Tony Abbott as a bogan - is so bizarre that you have to think is inner city greenie friend is either completely delusional or completely out of touch when it comes to matters of bogan status.
It's not that he's indulging in cheap snobbery, so much as he hangs out with Paul Sheehan and clearly couldn't spot a bogan from a mile away, even one wearing zinc cream, a floppy hat, thongs and a T-shirt, and sporting an ice chest full of tinnies ...
Let's reverse engineer that Sheehan remark, and see how if we can do a retro-fit:
So when an inner-city Fairfax hack and ratbag like Sheehan celebrates boganism, he is not merely indulging in cheap reverse snobbery but referring to the cut-through quality that makes bogan Gillard appear an island of humanity in a sea of spin.
Gibberish? Yes, but no more gibbering than the gibbering and gyring in the wabe routinely to be found in Sheehan's columns.
(Below: go dinkum bogans).
No comments:
Post a Comment
Comments older than two days are moderated and there will be a delay in publishing them.