A few might think it's wrong of the pond to bury Dame Slap in the quiet Sunday arvo slot, where nobody pays much attention and nobody much cares.
But the glory days of planet Janet seem long ago. Where's the United Nations using climate science to establish a world government by Xmas? Where's the triumphalist donning of the MAGA hat, and the slipping out into the streets to celebrate? Where's "Lord" Monckton when he's not needed?
These days Dame Slap tends to sound like someone involved in student politics, as if the young and foolish are worth the time and the trouble.
The pond blames it on Dame Slap's hitching up with the IPA, a notorious distiller of kool aid, and the Dame's natural tendency to organise and lecture everyone …
While Dame Slap blathers on endlessly about intellectual freedom, really it's only useful if your values are 'aligned' with hers and the IPA.
She will never tolerate any difference or dissent. Either live on planet Janet, or cop abuse for your reprehensible choice ...
Oh fucketty fuck, they've got a new bunch of fanatics to do their bidding, descendants of the lost band of warriors that once saw Santamaria's mob roam the grounds at the University of Sydney, the onion muncher amongst them, punching walls to make a point …
But wait, if you thought that return to student politics, it gets even more comical ...
Around this point, the pond lost interest in this IPA storm in an ideological teacup - perhaps it was the social welfarist Ayn Rand reference that did it - and resorted to a cartoon showing the big boys at play, demonstrating the history of freedom across a few thousand years of Western civilisation.
Now remember to don your MAGA cap with Dame Slap first …
At some point, Dame Slap's rants usually turn into a litany, whereby she drags in all the other things that have upset the harmony and balance of the goop on Planet Janet ...
So, as predicted, the litany began ...
Frankly, the pond is uncertain how the reptiles balance their notion of journalism with having a paid up member of a shadowy, unsavoury, lobby group of the IPA kind having its propaganda peddled by one of its columnists.
Will we ever see an expose of its funding? Will we ever read about why it was such a fierce devotee of tobacco, and never mind the thousands it helped kill? Will we ever read about any of the other scandals that plagued it?
Not in this branch of the 'free' press, which is about as free as Pravda, which also blathers about freedom of intellectual inquiry being upheld and protected, while certain matters remain strictly off-limits …
Here …
It's a fucking charity? Well, I guess that Scientology is supposed to be a religion ...
And here ...
Freedom of intellectual inquiry upheld and protected?
In your horse's arse.
Freedom of Gina's puppet to blather more like it …
(here)
The pond apologises for getting distracted … there's still a gobbet, and a chunk, to go ...
Yes, when will Dame Slap's dream for the United States finally land in Australia?
Okay, the pond is bored, but there's that chunk to go, and it really is an intellectual freedom ripper … you know, along the lines of teach the argument, and creationism should have a role in the school curriculum, and what's wrong with intelligent design and the flagellum, or Gina Rinehart's money, and coal, and rip it out of the ground, because now the tobacco money seems to have bottomed out?
Intellectual freedom from the jackboots of the IPA? Not likely, not when Dame Slap is around to herd students towards the abyss …
And speaking of that abyss, a last few cartoons to celebrate Dame Slap's America …
It truly is appalling that the Institute for Paid Agitprop manages to qualify as a "charity". I always had this naive notion that a "charity" was an organisation that tried to do good things for people who needed good things done for them, but I can't see any attempt to accomplish that by the IPA. Its history has been quite to the contrary.
ReplyDeleteBut perfect territory for Dame Slap to operate in while continuing to pretend to be a "freedom loving journalist" or some such arrant nonsense. And I guess the IPA is a charity in one sense: it certainly receives a whole lot of charitable donations from the Gina Rineharts of this world.
Though I guess the Dame Slap and IPA view of freedom really consists of the freedom to lie and distort, such as their assertion that Peter Ridd was "sacked by James Cook University for challenging the quality of climate science". It was nothing of the kind as the trial judge Salvatore Vasta tried very hard to emphasize when he said:
“Some have thought that this trial was about freedom of speech and intellectual freedom. Media reports have considered that this trial was about silencing persons with controversial or unpopular views. Rather, this trial was purely and simply about the proper construction of a clause in an enterprise agreement.”
https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2019/sep/06/peter-ridd-awarded-12m-in-unfair-dismissal-case-against-james-cook-university
So I reckon that might just be some part of the reason that even the Morrison government won't be supporting Peter Ridd on behalf of Janet and the IPA.