The response by the chair of News Ltd, Rupert Murdoch and editor of The Australian, Chris Michell, to Janet Albrechtsen's piece on ABC bias, almost defies belief.
It is not the first time they have argued that Albrechtsen isn't biased, even as she ranted on endlessly yet another time about the biased make-up of the panellists on Insiders, one of a series of endless rants about the ABC and public broadcasters to be found in the rag and its commentariat. Somehow, Murdoch and Mitchell trust their "outstanding" commentators, by claiming that they are "carrying no ideological badge and pushing no line". Well that settles it, doesn't it?
Don't they realise the woman is so batty - some might say bat-shit crazy - that she seriously entertained Lord Monckton's notion that climate science was being deployed as a stealthy way of the UN achieving world government, and that as a result, banning her from the ABC for all eternity was a public service and gesture towards public sanity that was beyond measure.
Oh wait, in its usual way, the pond deployed the wrong reading glasses.
The piece is actually titled For normal viewing lean left, and you guessed it, it's in The Australian, and placed behind a paywall so you never have to read it, and it starts this way:
The response by the managing director of the Australian Broadcasting Corp, Mark Scott, to Janet Albrechtsen's piece on ABC bias, almost defies belief. It is not the first time he has argued this case, even as he presented figures to a senate inquiry on the biased make-up of the panellists on Insiders. Somehow, Scott trusts his "outstanding" commentators, by claiming that they are "carrying no ideological badge and pushing no line". Well that settles it, doesn't it?
Oh yes and it was scribbled by one Andrew McIntyre, a well-known figure at the IPA, which of course carries no ideological baggage - except perhaps that smoking's good, climate science is bad, government totally useless, mining wonderful, Gina Rinehart a genius - and pushes no line, except perhaps that greenies are the tool of Satan, Laborites part of Lucifer's gang, and independents crazed blood-sucking vampire zombies. So that settles it, doesn'it it?
Yes, yes, the end of the world, which looks like it might be a tad delayed, will be a welcome relief from the sight of The Australian publishing yet another bout of complete and utter tosh - some might say bullshit - from the usual anal retentive suspects.
Naturally McIntyre builds up to the apocalyptic truth of what watching the ABC will do for you:
It also would explain why so many educated, generally mildly apolitical, well thinking middle class people with a regular diet of the ABC and Fairfax, simply are not aware that, for instance, the world has stopped warming for the past 16 years, that hurricanes and extreme weather events have declined and are not related to global warming, that Doha was a dismal failure, that the NBN has never had a cost benefit analysis, that Green jobs cost money ... and jobs, that growing the economic pie is not the same as redistributing tax revenue Bravo Tony Jones or that the Great Barrier Reef is not being destroyed.
Oh yes, the kool aid is thick on the ground at the IPA, where the blithe issuing of fact-free assertions is just a daily part of routine business.
Does McIntyre even begin to understand the asinine offensiveness of such condescension towards his audience, and his readers, and their alleged ignorance, which he's seemingly in the unique position to set right by making a string of unproven assertions?
Nope:
As I explained 10 years ago on a panel at an ABC national staff conference in Melbourne; there is nothing more boring than a one-sided football match. Why doesn't the ABC be brave and challenge itself with controversial, mainstream ideas? It would be "most arresting, informative and effective", as the Dix report concluded more than 30 years ago.
Uh huh. Sciences is like, you know, a football match, and if you bribe the referee or play a good game, you'll get the right result, and give those greenies a damn good licking.
The same goes for tobacco and mining of course. Sure smoking might kill you, but remember, it's your right to die.
And those controversial mainstream ideas will naturally be sponsored by the IPA and its sponsors, who sponsor it to ensure that the right messages are sponsored.
Which is why the world is continually pounded by the sponsor-approved and paid for messages routinely blathered into the ether by lackeys of the IPA, spreading carnards for benefit of the mining, tobacco and other industries ...
And wouldn't you know it, because that was yesterday, today the rag runs a piece by James Delingpole, which they want to charge you for, but which you can find for free at the UK Daily Terror, and which consists of ... yes, you've guessed it, more ABC bashing, along with other stupidities, including a profoundly neurotic hatred of wind energy. Well the pond can understand a hatred of some kinds of wind energies, but let's not lower the jokes to the level of a Delingpole.
Naturally the piece starts with a childish, simple-minded provocation, and remember it's free at Australia you are so totally gay, because charging for it would be so totally het:
I mean "gay", of course, in the offensive, playground, politically incorrect sense of the word. As in: "Your Dad's car is totally gay." Or: "That shark was so gay he didn't even manage to take your whole leg off." This is the kind of usage that would you have you arrested in Australia these days, such is the gag-making political correctness of the land they once called the Lucky Country but which now ought more properly to be named the Haringey of the Southern Hemisphere.
Yes, today we're blessed with a dim-wit light bulb - fifteen watts if you're lucky - showing the usual abysmal, pathetic, condescending, fuck-witted colonialist Victorian mindset of the average British twat - replete with a host of equally fuck-witted stereotypes:
When I tell this to people who've never been to Oz they are usually surprised. Australia, they imagine, is a rugged, no-nonsense place where the men all look a bit like Crocodile Dundee (or, at least, the late Steve Irwin), and where their idea of a chat-up line to the Sheilas on Bondi beach is "Hey Sheila. Do you want a ****?" (to which they'll add, if Sheila is reluctant: "Well would you mind just lying there while I have one?")
What an imagination, fresh from the cinemah of 1986.
Stone the fucking crows eh James, and bet you got kicked in the crotch the last time you asked for a shag, and she said get off the fucking grass you pathetic Fosters-drinking pommie bastard, I'd rather shag a convict. Or a cane toad ...
Or some such thing. Because this is the level of stupidity and offensiveness that Delingpole offers the world:
If Jimmy Savile were alive today he would definitely be heavily into wind farming.
Yep, wind farms and pedophilia go together like a horse and carriage.
Of course at this point you realise that if you engage in this sort of discussion, you're just feeding the troll whose feeding his own bunch of chuckle-headed trolls, a right proper bunch of English gits, reading up on yet another twit's twattish impression of a tour down under.
A bigger question is why The Australian re-printed this particular bit of trolling, and then feels it can charge for it, when the UK Daily Terror offers this sort of tripe for free ...
But then the answer is obvious enough, because today the digital Oz became truly tabloid (screen cap, no hot links, click to enlarge):
Yes Delingpole is just there to fill up the space between the ads for Spotlight, and if you can find a mug punter who will pay for him and click on a Spotlight ad, why you've got the perfect lizard Oz reader.
A mug squared, a mug nonpareil, a mug of the first water, a mug who makes a squirrel sound like a rocket scientist. Squirrel!
But look the pond never likes to let a reader go away empty-handed and empty-minded, which happens all to often when News Ltd turns up on these pages. So here's a trade mark for you:
Oh okay, it's just a fowl little story about cock suckers, but it's more amusing than reading (and especially paying to read) Delingpole. Oh okay, that wouldn't be hard ...
So is there any story out there that can top cock suckers and James Delingpole and Andrew McIntyre?
No please don't mention Deadwood:
Al Swearengen: You can't cut the throat of every cocksucker whose character it would improve.
We're being serious here, and it's the end of the world as we know it. So let's just head over to the local Daily Terror for a moment:
Oh look it's a Spotlight Xmas there too, only a bit more subtle, nuanced, under-stated and tasteful. Eek, the Oz is more tabloid than the Terror ...
Seems it's hard to spot the difference in News Ltd rags these days. Remind us George:
... they had not gone twenty yards when they stopped short. An uproar of voices was coming from the company and its rags. They rushed back and looked through the window again. Yes, a violent quarrel was in progress. There were shoutings, bangings on the table, sharp suspicious glances, furious denials. The source of the trouble appeared to be that James and Andrew had each played an ace of spades simultaneously.
Twelve voices were shouting in anger, and they were all alike. No question, now, what had happened to the faces of the pigs. The creatures outside looked from pig to man, and from man to pig, and from pig to man again; but already it was impossible to say which was which.
And so, speaking of those angry voices, the pond pauses to celebrate yet another extraordinary "exclusive" insight at the top of the page of the lizard Oz:
Amazing, astonishing exclusive.
Chinese power shifting the Pacific balance!
Who'd ever have guessed it, who'd ever have thunk it, and so many people not realising it was such an exclusive thought.
And just another way to add to the FUD of apocalypse day, so exclusive it pushes Swannie's budget betrayal into second spot! Amazing scenes ...
Oh okay, the pond just wanted to remind you of those great, great deals at Spotlight, before unveiling its very own exclusively exclusive, pretty unique header: Indian power 'shifting Indian Ocean balance', which is an update on that ancient header Cowboy power 'shifting Prairie balance' outside of Deadwood.
Yep, at last the pond understands the hunger for an apocalypse.
If all you've got is the Murdoch press for insight, it's like trying to survive on a diet of crackers and Monterey Jack cheese, aged a month if you're lucky ...
(Below: and now in honour of James and Andrew, including an oldie from First Dog. Click to enlarge)
Did you mention Deadwood, DP?
ReplyDelete"Well that's one in a row for you, Wild Bill!"