It's exhausting blogging at dial-up speed - thanks be unto Malware and "the Optus the" - and for a minute there, the pond also thought that it might have a problem reporting on Dame Slap's column this week.
After all, she slags off Bono, and who could argue with that.
She also assaults Taylor Swift and DiCaprio, to which the pond is never no mind, while defending heroic business leaders and noble CEOs, slaving away at their assorted coal mines.
The pond almost shed a tear when the Dame got on to dismissing all this cruel and idle chatter about income inequality. It turns out that income inequality is all about freedom. A select few have the freedom to be rich and the vast majority have the freedom to be poor. Now there, as Humpty Dumpty might say, is a knockdown argument.
As for the pond, we're mortified to brood about narrowband, and deeply ashamed to lack the deep empathy for the poor that fills Dame Slap to her core.
So what has Bono got to say for himself? Why did he rouse the Dame's ire?
Why the cad's a tax minimiser.
What's worse, he doesn't do it particularly well.
Let us jump to the heart of the matter, and let us just wonder why it remains cool to be dinkum:
Oh you wretched, feeble Bono, and we're not just talking about your songs. Here's how you do it, Bono me lad …
But don't think this gives Dame Slap any credibility problems.
Just because News Corp is famous for keeping its tax away from the tax man doesn't mean stones shouldn't be thrown in glass houses. And please don't expect Dame Slap to start scribbling about News Corp taxes in a scathing manner. After all, a society that puts censorship and the thought police above equality will surely see chairman Rupert keep his billions …
But look, the pond admits that it took that gobbet from the end of Dame Slap's piece and as the loon archive of record, it behoves the pond to submit to the court the first parts of the text, because there are other weighty matters to be considered.
Dame Slap, it seems, is angry about Hollywood and its stars, which is piquant considering that Chairman Rupert owns one of the majors, and she was even angrier about The Revenant, though no doubt it had nothing to do with Fox turning down further financing of the show because of pay or play contracts for both DiCaprio and Tom Hardy (or so you can Greg Hunt here).
That must have been irritating to the Foxers, given the positive critical response and the okay but not spectacular b/o.
What really gets Dame Slap wound up is all those Hollywood stars preening about pretending that they care about the poorest people of earth when really they should get their climate science from a real expert, like the Chairman or one of his minions.
You know, because getting hitched to a showbiz celebrity is, when you think about it, just the sort of outrageous behaviour we might expect of rich pigs savouring the pleasures of their trough ...
Happily, it seems we must turn to the likes of Chairman Rupert to put human creativity in the service of humanity.
Yes, it's fuck the poor and celebrate the rich day at planet Janet, and why not, while we're at it, also fuck the planet ...
Which perhaps explains why, likely as not, the pond came away with a sense that however it's cut, whatever uprisings there might be of the 18th century kind in the future, however much Dame Slap might urge the rich to enjoy their cake, while telling the poor to shove the gruel down their cake hole, humanity is deeply fucked …
Forget about coolness and degrees of dinky di coolness or even warmth and that international conspiracy of world government being organised by the UN, as Dame Slap warned us about a few years ago …
Oh and other like minds too ...
Just think deeply fucked … as they get you both ways, coming and going ...
Yes, that's all the fault of Bono and Taylor Swift and Leonardo. Penn and Teller would approve ... oh what a fine art is the art of distraction and envy in the pursuit of untrammelled greed...
And here's a lovely description of the freedom of equality that Dame Slap so passionately espouses:
ReplyDelete"The law, in its majestic equality, forbids the rich as well as the poor, to sleep under bridges, to beg in the streets and to steal bread ." ]A France]
And so very gratifying too, to see that Moorice is still Moorice: totally unaffected by the reality of the world around him. Come to think of it, that's just a weeny bit like Tones, too ...
Hi Dorothy,
ReplyDeleteSurely Dame Slap should know that the reason the CEOs aren’t shouting from the rooftops about their fabulous wealth and all the benefits that it brings to the world, is their morbid fear of kidnap.
http://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2015/sep/22/tax-office-did-not-go-to-police-over-fears-wealthy-would-be-kidnapped-inquiry
DW
Dame Slap selling capitalism, ends her rant pointing the stick at Milton Friedman: "A society that puts equality before freedom will get neither. A society that puts freedom before equality will get a high degree of both."
ReplyDelete[The Slap's shtick miss-hits on: "The society that puts equality before freedom will end up with neither. The society that puts freedom before equality will end up with a great measure of both." - Created Equal, an episode of the PBS Free to Choose television series (1980, vol. 5 transcript)]
Capitalism?
noun
The definition of capitalism is an economic system in which the means of production and distribution are privately or corporately owned and the operations are funded by profits.
Use capitalism in a sentence
An example of capitalism is the prison system in the United States being operated by private companies.
Milton Friedman, pointing back at Dame Slap:
“History suggests only that capitalism is a necessary condition for political freedom. Clearly it is not a sufficient condition.“ (Capitalism and Freedom, 1962)
3. Capitalism
You have two cows. You sell three of them to your publicly listed company, using letters of credit opened by your brother-in-law at the bank, then execute a debt/equity swap with an associated general offer so that you get all four cows back, with a tax exemption for five cows. The milk rights of the six cows are
transferred via an intermediary to a Cayman Island company secretly owned by the majority shareholder who sells the rights to all seven cows back to your listed company. The annual report says the company owns eight cows, with an option on one more. You sell one cow to buy a new president of the United
States, leaving you with nine cows. No balance sheet provided with the release. The public buys your bull.
"You show me a capitalist, and I'll show you a bloodsucker" (Malcolm X)
The pond re-watched The Big Short the night before, and regrets that, thanks to Optus and Malware, it failed to note the film's splendid resonance with the thoughts of Dame Slap.
Deletehttp://www.stockjournal.com.au/story/3686511/australia-day-honours-2016-the-full-list/?cs=4893
ReplyDelete21 gongs for "service" to a church, one of those also for "service" to religion.
9 Anglicans + 8 Uniting + 4 Catholics + 1 Islamic + 0 Scientology = 22
Yeah, I know, but when did religion ever add up?
3 Freds, 1 Nguyen, 1 Reptile:
OFFICER (AO) IN THE GENERAL DIVISION
Professor Henry Isaac ERGAS, Kingston, ACT
"For distinguished service to infrastructure economics, and to higher education, to public policy development and review, for his impression of a dessicated coconut, and as a supporter of emerging artists."
Hi Anon,
ReplyDeleteMaybe it was for services in fucking up the NBN.
http://www.crikey.com.au/2013/11/21/when-malcolm-met-henry-ergas-gets-a-second-bite-at-nbn/
DW
Excellent link DW. You know how to maintain and to fuel the pond's rage ...
Delete