(Above: Louis Napoleon, just the man we need in these troubled times?)So where were we?
Lordy, lordy, when the mouse is away, do the cats come out to play or what.
It seems that while the pond's been away, with nary a thought of Australia fogging its brain, the ACL, aided and abetted by the Jensenists, have been indulging in some fine gay-bashing, with all the subtlety, fear and loathing of a piece of two be four.
And then not to be outdone, the local fundie Islamics felt the need to indulge in a little riotous behaviour, simply because of a YouTube movie which sets a new limbo low for awful production values, let alone script and direction.
Using that child-like logic, every punter trapped in Singapore Airlines with Men in Black 3 as the lead movie in the entertainment unit should have rioted and brought the plane down long before we reached the west coast of Australia.
Tommy Lee Jones did have the sense to turn up for a top and tail cameo, take the money and run, but what to say about a script that shows there's only one way to deal with alien vermin - splatter the matter.
It's the perfect Republican scenario, and no doubt the Mittster is thinking of the insights it offers in relation to border protection even now. Forget all this jibber jabber about law n'order, and justice and jail, just zap the the bugs, and if you've got to travel back in time to save the Alamo, well just do it ...
And then there was the matter of Tony Abbott not just being a handy amateur boxer, but allegedly a tidy two-fisted jabbing wall-puncher.
It had never crossed the pond's mind that Abbott was a rampantly aggressive and assertive politician in possession of a powerful death stare.
No truly, who'd have imagined it, particularly in the fetid atmosphere of University of Sydney politics way back when, as crazed conservative Catholics of the B. A. Santamaria kind waged war against the commie pinko perverts and associated lick-spittle lackeys (the pond thought both sides quite mad, and maintains this attitude to the present day).
What's funny was the response of The Weekend Australian, which the pond had the misfortune to pick up in Singapore Airlines lounge.
Well it was free, even if free doesn't make it a bargain.
Coming off a Jesuitical holiday away from what passes for the media in Australia, it was a reminder of what an extraordinary spectacle the constantly feral tabloid provides on a daily basis.
There was Greg Sheridan rabbiting on endlessly about how it was all the fault of the commie pinko perverts, and nothing to do with the heroic DLP Catholics (except they weren't DLP, they were NCC, and that mysteriously makes a world of difference), and how Tony Abbott was wonderful and might save the world, and even more mysteriously deeper into the rag there was Sheridan also writing about South Pacific. (Rhodes steals the show in Opera Australia's South Pacific - behind the paywall but why should you care?)
It turns out that Sheridan is as silly as a cultural critic as he is as a political writer:
I hope Rhodes doesn't take this the wrong way but I must confess that my musical tastes are a little middlebrow. I have a candy ear. For me, music is 70 per cent melody (the sweeter the better), 20 per cent character and 10 per cent rhythm. So for opera I like Verdi and Puccini, the most delirious enjoyment I have at concerts is provided by Tchaikovsky, and if I see the exquisite Australian Chamber Orchestra, I like the program to be mostly Mozart.
Uh huh. Well there goes the twentieth century. Bugger off Shostakovich, farewell Stravinsky, goodbye Bartok and Leicester square. If only he'd admitted he had a cloth ear because even a nibble of Sheridan on art might turn you off candy for life.
I mean, what sort of self-righteous, sanctimonious goose could write this sort of nonsense as he elevated Jersey Boys over South Pacific:
...as musical theatre it wove an engrossing plot around the career and marital dramas of the group and did enough to advance this modest soap opera drama quite well between the songs. South Pacific was more ambitious in trying to make the music integrally part of the plot, and its plot is more ethically worthy, being a plea against racial prejudice.
But you see I already hate racism, so instructing me on this point, though entirely welcome, does not earn South Pacific any extra points from me purely as entertainment.
What a ponce. Talk about conflating entertainment and instruction, and boasting how he hates racism, while at the same time being the proud author of How I lost faith in multiculturalism a.k.a How the Wogs are Ruining Australia (behind the paywall but why should you care).
But you see I already hate racism, so instructing me on this point, though entirely welcome, does not earn South Pacific any extra points from me purely as entertainment.
What a ponce. Talk about conflating entertainment and instruction, and boasting how he hates racism, while at the same time being the proud author of How I lost faith in multiculturalism a.k.a How the Wogs are Ruining Australia (behind the paywall but why should you care).
Who on earth thinks Sheridan should be allowed out for a night of musical theatre, and then be allowed to scribble about it? Even old musicals should be treated with a little dignity and respect. They are not animals!
Ah well, they allow him to write about politics and international affairs, so you might as well have a trifecta of silliness ...
What was even funnier of course was the way the pack of feral fox-hunters and hounds in The Australian foamed and raged about people daring to dig back in to Tony Abbott's past. The pack were out in force, saturating the rag with rage, and valiantly supporting Julie Bishop as she frothed about character assassination.
This from a rag which was only recently busily digging through whatever excrement it thought it might find in assorted online dunghills so that it could be flung at Julia Gillard.
Naturally there were many worthy defences mounted. It seems that while Tony Abbott might have a problem with women, likely the problem was the women, and not Tony Abbott and his feisty Catholic fundamentalist desire to control their bodies.
And then there was the matter of his alleged homophobia. Not true, said Christopher Pearson, who somehow managed to conflate his personal relationship with Abbott into a complete rehabilitation of Abbott's attitude to gay marriage.
Tony Abbott is not homophobic (inside the paywall but why should you care), he bellowed, on the basis that he was gay and Tony Abbott did right by him, especially at his mother's funeral.
It was a peculiarly indulgent, emotionally wretched, maudlin and sentimental conflation of the personal and the public, slightly nauseating in the read, and then it concluded with the usual mantra from the hive or the herd mind:
Marr is attempting to suggest that people who accept the whole gay policy agenda pretty much at face value are emerging as a silent majority. Either it's a Nixonian strategy or, if he really believes it, he's been living in a gay-friendly enclave and working for The Sydney Morning Herald for far too long.
There's no sign that Pearson has the remotest clue what his sniggering about a "gay-friendly enclave" sounds like, but since he follows it up with a reference to "more experimental menages", we can take it as his usual bout of fear and loathing, of the self and of others, no doubt helped along by Catholic piety offering him pie in the sky in the bye and bye...
Judgmental, pompous, same old same old ...
Meanwhile, there's poor old Barners chipping in with a timely reminder of why Abbott strikes some people as aggressive, not just for the jutting chin and the death stare and the lycra-clad loutishness that sends the likes of Miranda the Devine into a rutting frenzy, but the rampant swagger:
"Some of that's his own fault. I wish he'd stop square-gaiting when he walks."
The opposition leader is well known for his cowboy-style swagger.
Barners, being a Tamworth lad, knows whereof he speaks. Square gaiting is a trotting term, as anyone who once sat and watched the mind-numbing trots at the Tamworth show would know, but naturally it's also been applied to the way some indolent humans move about (as the urban dictionary notes here).
The opposition leader is well known for his cowboy-style swagger.
Barners, being a Tamworth lad, knows whereof he speaks. Square gaiting is a trotting term, as anyone who once sat and watched the mind-numbing trots at the Tamworth show would know, but naturally it's also been applied to the way some indolent humans move about (as the urban dictionary notes here).
Of course Barners was only saying this to remind us that Mr. Abbott is wonderful, and full of humanity and listens to others, and incapable of getting stuck in the rut of political correctness, but when even your best mates note that you walk and talk with a certain pugnacity, why is there any surprise that Abbott was as pugnacious back then as he is now?
But it did remind the pond of a vision it had at the Royal Palace of Amsterdam in de Dam square.
There was an exhibition on, contemplating the role that Louis Napoleon played in the Dutch state. The various stands were glowing. It turns out that Louis fixed water management, the legal system, the education system, the political system, turned the old town hall into a spiffy palace, improved science and the arts, giving the locals a version of the Prix de Rome, and generally making everything wonderful.
Most particularly he perfected the art of turning up at sundry disasters to inspire the populace, including a gunpowder explosion in Leiden in 1807 and major flooding in 1809 (here at his wiki).
Visions of Tony Abbott turning up at fish markets and shops and dog and cat shows to warn citizens how the sky would fall once the gunpowder carbon tax exploded in their faces immediately leapt to mind.
Sadly the exhibition finished its run a few days ago, but the pond swears blind it was like reading The Australian on a daily basis, devoted as it is to the glories and the wonders and the works of women and gay friendly Tony Abbott.
Room after room devoted to this Renaissance man, explaining how he was the font of the wisdom that would deliver Dutch society into a rational, gay friendly future.
And then the dream shattered like crazed glass. You see, the Dutch at the same time were voting in a new government which will be pro-European, delivering a firm blow against Euro-scepticism, while also making a marked shift away from the extreme right-wing immigrant-baiting parties. No doubt the Bolter is shattered, destroyed ...
Yes it's the European disease. Now who amongst The Australian or the Tony Abbotts of this world would imbibe from that poisonous cup? Where there's talk that climate science might be worth paying attention to, and issues of sustainability deserve some notice?
Ah well, it goes without saying that none of these parochial one day wonders hit the radar in Europe, where the talk was more of the Hillsborough scandal and the vile front page of The Sun, and assorted apologies associated therewith, and the usual Euro brooding and murders in France and bleach in milk in England and so on.
But by a synchronicity, just as the pond was being reminded of the darkest days of Thatcherism, and its links with Murdochism, what should pop up at the end of an episode of Big Bang Theory as the plane dragged a reluctant pond back to the land of sun and silliness, and yes, inevitably tomorrow, it being Tuesday, Gerard "prattling Polonius" Henderson maintaining the rage and defending Tony Abbott in that gay friendly Fairfax enclave as he did last week?
It was this from Chuck Lorre:
Or it might just be the voice of the Jensenists and the Islamic fundies and Greg Sheridan and Christopher Pearson and the whole pack of baying blood hounds that infest The Australian these days ... or a reasonable facsimile.Oh Australia, you bloody beaut. Can someone pack the pond and ship it back to Europe, at express post speed?
Welcome home. I know you deserve a rest from the madness but its terribly hard to take it without your sanity to provide the necessary balance
ReplyDeleteLouis Napoleon may have been a fine figure of a man, but if you want manly and an heroic waxing job, then this incredible hunk fits the bill.
ReplyDeleteGreat link Earl, great spoof, says more than a thousand words and great to see it in a more generous size. Better to die on your feet laughing at The Australian than die on your knees reading it ...
ReplyDeleteIt sounds like you've been to Amsterdam. As a keen student of best practice transport planning in cities I'm very envious of you. I hope you saw how the practical Dutch do bulk delivery, which is to park the delivery van on the wide footpath, causing minimal interference to pedestrians and none at all to the many other people on bikes and in cars using the equitably divided road space. Something that every city in the world should aspire to, of which Sydney is leading the way due to the efforts of Clover and op.eds from people like Elizabeth Farrelly. Thanks for putting the Dutch election result in a nutshell. I had tried to Wiki who was who over there but all the different acronyms for the parties just confused me. I don't think I'll ever grasp what a Christian Democrat is.
ReplyDeleteOh and welcome back. You've missed an especially eventful week, perhaps the one where Abbott finally jumped the shark.
Hi Jim, sorry your comment ended up in the spam bucket.
ReplyDeleteIf you do go to Amsterdam you will see that the eminently practical Dutch use the wide footpaths for both pedestrian walkways and bicycle paths, and it's up to cyclists to pay due attention to these pedestrians (who also keep a sharp eye for wayward bikes).
Deliveries via the footpath therefore can involve disruption to cyclists and to pedestrians.
In the narrow streets of the old town, deliveries occur wherever space can be found, and can involve disruption to cars and scooters and bikes and pedestrians. The point here is that the Dutch expect everybody to share the limited space in sensible ways without the kind of road rage you can find daily in Sydney as people make their way about using what once were goat tracks.
Elizabeth Farrelly raging at a delivery man for taking up bicycle space would be a rare event in Holland, since the simple and rational solution is just to cycle around someone going about their job.
Cycling in Holland is a delight, whereas in Sydney it involves imminent danger and intolerance on a daily basis. The cult of the lycra-clad macho cycling cowboy is replaced by sensible people using sensible bikes to get about in a practical way, with the flashiness generally left to the Tour de France. Google images for the wondrous bakfierts or bakfietsen. In much the same way there are many more small cars and fewer giant-sized 4WD monstrosities.
Will Australia ever see a return to this practical car-walking-cycling culture, which was once common in Sydney streets, and survived a little longer in country towns? Probably not until there's a popular perception of a more urgent need to lower transport costs and reduce road clog and rage.
If you want to use Amsterdam as a reference point, the main thing to note is that in many areas cyclists share the footpaths with pedestrians and so they jointly stay out of the way of cars. Putting cyclists in the way of cars only occurs at intersections, where motorists are expected to give way.
Carving bicycle paths out of roads looks like an attack on motorists. Having broad footpaths with bicycle paths within doesn't look like so much of a land grab.
There's a lot to be learned from the Dutch. We stayed in an area which was serviced by train, the metro, two differently routed trams, abundant bicycle paths, and roads, not to mention shank's pony. All that was missing was easy access to the canal system and all this in a city with a population of around 2.3 million for the metropolitan area...