Have we got some twits atwittering for you ...

(Above: unless of course you're looking at the reptiles at the lizard Oz, and then it's 110% conspiracy theories)


The pond remains astonished at the cheek of Chairman Rupert doing a tour of the antipodes at the precise moment that the shit hits the UK court fan.

But then you don't get to be an outrageous billionaire by playing the shy shrinking violet, and it's a measure of the supine forelock tuggers in the local media that few saw the comedy potential.

In today's Fairfax, Mike Carlton drew attention to the hoo hah surrounding the London trial, with Private Eye managing to be as shameless and as offensive as Tony "ditch the witch, Bob Brown' sbitch" Abbott on his Dr. No trail of mindless sloganeering ... and achieving its reward by getting noted by the Daily Mail here.

The pond merely reports and you decide on the demonising of women, and to ponder why chairman Rupert was down under while the British were employed in their favourite pastime of the ducking stool ... though to get further away, he could have gone to Antarctica, so perhaps Australia is a respectable choice.

Sssh, you can even mention climate change if you don't mention the trial.

As Carlton noted, with big Rupe in town, the results were predictable:

It's easy to tell when Rupert Murdoch is back in our midst. His newspapers' attacks on the ABC rise from their customary muffled drumbeat to a thunderous roar as his hacks jostle to bathe in the light of his countenance. Fairfax Media generally gets an extra biffing as well. 
So it was again this week. Andrew Bolt, Melbourne's village idiot, ordered Tony Abbott to sell off the ABC forthwith. An editorial in The Australian demanded that the joint be put to fire and sword. Assorted lesser toadies joined the chorus.

Ah the village idiot.

It's as if London and the News of the World was just a fading dream, not even a nightmare.

Carlton also ravaged the gathering of the lickspittles:

Merry toasts were drunk: Death to the ABC; Down with David Marr; Climate Change Be Damned, and so on. The jollity continued as Alan Jones, Professor David Flint and Christopher Pyne engaged in a spirited bidding war in the charity auction for a pair of Tony's red Speedos. Alan emerged the gracious winner and, ever the entertainer, led the company in a rousing rendition of Tomorrow Belongs to Me, that wonderfully evocative anthem from the movie Cabaret.

And so on, with Carlton in fine form.

And there were a few others, though sadly not the Fairfax editorialist, who managed to take Murdoch's tour down under as a wildly exciting contribution to the debate on dangerous ideas, as you can read in If ideas are truly important, let them be heard, though eventually the editorialist got around to the bleeding obvious - that climate change might be an example of the way News Corp has become a Soviet gulag for ideas:

Where Murdoch and Abbott agree, though, is on climate change - an issue notable in its absence from the Lowy speech. It is hard to see how a nimble, modern Australia can ignore the opportunities and challenges of global warming. 
The omission highlights a risk in Murdoch's forthright intervention in the national discourse. His cheer-squad has fostered left-right concocted wars on culture, history, education and climate, as though national debate is a winner-takes-all competition. Indeed, many see the Abbott election victory as entitling it to impose its ideology across all aspects of national life. 
Australia needs an open debate so people of all world views can honestly critique Murdoch's vision or improve on it.

Uh huh. Try having an open debate with the reptiles of the Murdoch press.

But there should be a special mention for those who didn't take Murdoch seriously, with a special shout-out to Rodney Tiffen, who imagined Murdoch as a particularly obnoxious taxi driver, and so asked Can we talk about the weather, Mr Murdoch?, while there should also be a special mention of Stephen Hutcheon's piece, which at one time had "cult" in the header, a reference that has now disappeared, and been replaced by the much more somber and respectable Rupert Murdoch tracking his own movements with wearable computing - though the Californian cult aspect of Murdoch's flirtation with modern technology still lurks in the piece itself.

So why should any of this matter? Well if you head off to the reptiles at the lizard Oz today, joining the pond's usual pilgrimage to the swamp, the stench of rotting old ideologies, and accept Murdoch's mantra that "opinion is news", you'll find that there's nary a new idea or a new opinion-maker to be found in the fickle whirling finger of fate in the carousel at the top of the digital page.

There's Paul Kelly cogitating the bleeding obvious.

But, but, but, Iraq and Afghanistan seemed such a good Murdoch idea at the time (here for Chairman Rupert telling all his papers to back the Iraq war)

And yet again there's Bjorn Lomborg peddling his usual, "stay calm and carry on as usual and continue to fuck the planet" in Burnout is no cause for alarm, provided you google your way around the paywall.

It's a particularly blatant and naked form of dissembling. Don't worry folks, everything is going to be fine until 2050, and by then you'll be dead - remember the old fart demographics for the rag - and it'll be someone else's problem:

Last week in this newspaper I pointed out that global warming is actually a net benefit for the world and for Australia, at least until 2050. This is because the benefits of agricultural CO2 fertilisation are much bigger than the costs of increased water stress, and because fewer cold deaths outweigh extra heat deaths. This is documented in the latest and most comprehensive, peer-reviewed article, collecting all published estimates showing an overwhelming likelihood that global warming below 2C is beneficial. This does not imply that global warming is not a long-run problem. Moreover, cost-effective solutions are still warranted for the adverse effects by the year 2100 and beyond. 
But it shows we need less scaremongering in the climate debate.

"Less scaremongering", is of course code for "sit on your arse folks and don't lift a finger because 2050 is such a long way away" and besides there'll be lower fire probabilities in Mexico, South America, Africa, Asia, India and "about half of Australia" (yes the Simpson desert is safe from bushfire), and meanwhile, why not just keep doing a bit of fuel management and burning off.

As soon as someone says "it's not shameless" you know it's completely and utterly shameless, and sure enough Lomborg is shameless:

It is not shameless to correctly point out that global warming will likely be a net benefit till after 2050. Hopefully that fact can cool the climate conversation, so we can choose the better solutions.


Hopefully the Oz will find someone else to write on the implications of climate science, instead of Lomborg, who shifted from outright denialism to delaying tactics and obfuscation ... and rarely mentions the oceans.

Oh okay the pond is dreaming. If you were trying to give up smoking, Lomborg would be shamelessly whispering in your ear, "go on, another one won't hurt you, there's always tomorrow, you can probably keep doing it until 2050, and then you might have to worry about it, assuming you're still alive".

Then there's Judith Sloan gloomily announcing that there's no future for food manufacturing in Australia, unless everyone joins Judith in working for two dollars an hour.

She really is beyond the valley of the dour. How soon can we outsource the Oz to Hong Kong? And the commentariat with it?

Then to wrap up proceedings, we get the usual twaddle from Chris Kenny, all atwitter in a twitterish way about twitter, as you can read in Better to observe than play dangerous game of follow the tweeter. if you google your way around the paywall.

It will be remembered that Chris Kenny was one of the lickspittles who caused Richard Ackland such heartburn in Compliant media fed on leak soup and other titbits.

Yes, there he is, amazingly in the centre with Dame Slap to the left of him, unless of course you flip the image and she's to the right of him. Of course the only correct photo, hard to work out how to do it, would have both of them to the right of each other ... just to  be fair.

Thrive on disruption, new ideas, Silicon Valley entrepreneurs, advances in communications eliminating the tyranny of distance, a free media promoting free democracy, banishing elitists, access to news and information instantly anywhere in the world when and where we want it, dramatic innovations from egalitarians, not elitists, and all the other futurist hogwash chairman Rupert talked about in his speech?

Whoosh, there it is, going over the head of Chris Kenny, off to la la land.

You see, Twitter is leftist and full of young people:

Open to anyone, Twitter includes users from almost every conceivable viewpoint. But overwhelmingly young, its political debates are dominated by simplistically ideological views. 

Open to anyone? Why how shockingly outrageous and egalitarian ...

As for those young people and their simplistic ideological views, utterly unlike the simplistic vision of Chris Kenny:

Many studies have shown this listing to the Left, most recently an iSentia study of favourability in Australian politics. It showed Twitter is more volatile than talkback radio or opinion polls but that at the time of the election it was much more favourable for Labor.

You know, when all a crazed right wing hammer can see is leftist nails, you're going to get a bizarre pounding of a technology on the basis of an ideology.

Much of Kenny's piece is spent explaining why politicians should fear and avoid Twitter, and make sure this "jejune tail" can't wag the dog of mainstream politics.

You couldn't find a better explanation of why the reptiles at the lizard Oz will never have the first clue about new technology, or the young, and why Murdoch's bold call for new ideas is all just a smokescreen for events in the UK (and why therefore it was a nonsense for the Fairfaxians to pretend for a moment that they should be taken seriously).

The real world of the Murdochians is paranoia and fear, and Kenny provides a useful short list of all the current fears and phobias:

The Twittersphere tends to be a world where climate change is the world's greatest crisis and the solution is a tax in Australia. 
The greatest inequality is the absence of gay marriage; private corporations are bad and government interventions are good; Julian Assange is a hero, Rupert Murdoch a failure; recreational drugs should be legal but cigarettes banned; and conservatives are either stupid or evil. 
It really is that silly. And that is fine. People are quite entitled to their views.

But are they entitled to their views?

Let's go back to the start of Kenny's piece, and there you will find as fine an example of fear of the populace as you could imagine. Kenny knows that chairman Rupert has called for an egalitarian approach, but deep down, unless you're a rabid, raving right wing loon of the first water, Kenny doesn't want to know about you.

The contempt is tangible, the ambivalence hugely comic, and so we leave you with a dose of this ambivalence:

Reporters in a television newsroom familiar to me 20 years ago used to refer to some viewers as the "double Fs". 
 It was an "in" joke stemming from a quiz show that led in to the nightly news. 
During one episode a contestant was asked, "How many Fs are there in the word, dolphin?" "One," she answered, before being given another chance. "Two." And so the reporters would joke about dumbing down their stories for the "double Fs".
Journalists sometimes fall into the trap of disdain for their audience in the same way politicians can be tempted to look down upon their constituents. This sort of aloofness and disrespect for the wisdom of the crowd can be fatal in both politics and journalism. So too can cheap and unrestrained populism. 
The crucial trick in both pursuits is to know when and how to listen to the masses.

Indeed. The crucial trick of course is to be a clever Kenny, who knows when and how to listen to the masses - you there in the back FF row, just shut the fuck up - and who knows that Twitter is full of upsetting left-wing young people.

But do go on with your condescension and your "double F" joke:

 Politicians and media crave feedback - ratings and sales are the constant quarry in one field, while votes drive the other. Unsolicited responses provide clues on how to achieve both. 
 Anyone who has handled mail or emails in a newsroom or political office becomes adept at spotting the telltale signs of the obsessive agitator: the crowded page, the annotated news clippings, the SCREAMING UPPER CASE. The self-selecting feedback can skew their views of the broader public. It shouldn't but it sometimes does. 
Yet to do their jobs effectively, and to discern useful public opinion, a lot of this public feedback needs to be taken seriously and given due weight. 
In the absence of professional polling, it is this sort of interaction that guides decisions, priorities and tastes. The only quality that can fill the vast chasm between unsolicited public feedback and the measured results of ratings, sales and votes is sound judgment. 
Call it political acumen, mainstream sensibility, or news sense; some people have it and others don't.

Naturally Chris Kenny, as a wonderful media professional has it, and you, dear reader, don't.

Which is why Kenny can detect how dangerous it is to plunge into the Twitter void, a deep and dark pit of instant feedback, and never mind that Chairman Rupert is inordinately proud of his instant health feedback app, or that indeed the Chair has been known to tweet himself and set minds and hearts aflutter with his ravishing 140 character insights:

But marching brashly into this void over the past few years has come the powerful force of social media. Instant feedback. Two-way interchanges between friends and followers, likes and favourites. Instantaneously measurable, easily decipherable, provable and reusable - the attractions for politicians and the media are obvious. 
Give an interview, then check Twitter to read the reaction. Break a story on television, then post it on Facebook and count the likes. Success, failure, popularity and criticism all measured and received in real time.

And so on and so forth, and so apparently sensible folk and politicians and Chairman Rupert must avoid the dangerous world of the young and their real time ways, and never mind Chairman Rupert crowing about his real time health app feedback or his killer tweets, suffused as they are with crazed youthful left wing ideology.

Bloody lefty commie pinko pervert, and with nigh on a half million followers!

What a hoot, and while the pond never tweets, being stuck in the blog world at 1.0 (the upgrade is due by 2050), how kind of Chris Kenny to prove that the opinion pages and the commentariat of the lizard Oz are full of luddites heading towards the iceberg of complete irrelevance, like the Titanic operators unable to unable to understand the best way to use their radio system ...

(Below: further wise thoughts on Twitter)