I don’t know if this is just an attack of ennui after the holiday festivities, but all I can find to say about the new year is blah blah blah.
Same old politics politicking on. Same old fights between right and left. Same old controversies, increasingly bereft of impact due to over-exposure. Same old msm misogyny against the PM. Yes, it’s taken me a long time to come round to acknowledging that. I have my disagreements with Ms Gillard, and I didn’t want legitimate arguments against her to be obfuscated by allegations of misogyny. It was bad enough when the feminists went wild at her ascension, conveniently ignoring the context in which it took place.
But I have to admit that there can be no other reason for the msm’s unceasing attacks on her, their unwavering support of that grotesque ferret Tony Abbott, and their wilful ignoring of Gillard’s considerable achievements. To collapse into primitive binaries: Abbott’s a man. Gillard’s a woman. The msm can’t deal with it. They are profoundly misogynist. They would see us delivered unto the mad monk rather than have a woman in the Lodge.
Gillard is undoubtedly a woman of strong character and great political talent, and I think she’s growing into her prime ministerial role. That said, she’s a politician. I feel no compunction about embarking on a stereotyping frenzy when it comes to them. They are liars. They are hypocrites. They are self-seeking, ego-driven megalomaniacs and they are quite likely psychopathic as well. However, within these parameters, some are not as bad as others. Gender makes no difference whatsoever, except, perhaps, in the way in which these dangerous dysfunctions are expressed. That said, I bet all my xmas presents that Gillard would have taken us into the illegal Iraq invasion, just like Howard. Then there’s her stand on the Australian citizen in big trouble overseas, Julian Assange. Her government’s implied preferencing of Chopper Reid over David Hicks in the matter of proceeds of crime. The mess she’s made of asylum seeker policies. Oh, here I go again re-visiting the same old fights. But what else can one do? Fall silent?
Anyway, if we are going to be critical of our PM, let’s not allow misogyny to muddy the waters. We don’t need it.
Then there’s the same old windbags on commercial TV and the same old botoxed, artificially bosomed, tarted up bottle blonde anchors and presenters. Except when they’re bottled brunettes. I guess that’s some kind of variation.
It’s freaking me out how so many TV women are starting to look exactly the same, with the tortured hair, and bloated lips through which they deliver their version of the day’s news and (ahem) analysis in breathless girly voices. They’re modeling themselves on the Fox News girls, aren’t they?
Reminder to self: now @RupertMurdoch is on Twitter give him a serve about his anchors. And champion pie-stopper @Wendi_Deng also has a verified account, making a husband and wife team rivalled only by David and Kristen Willamson, who I am coming to below this image of an ideal Fox anchor:
A brief respite yesterday when someone on Twitter directed me to this blog, a site wherein Bob Ellis and David and Kristen Williamson recreate for readers a blog version of the Jerry Springer Show. Transfixed by the same awful fascination with which I have in times of self-destructive boredom watched adults self-mutilate on Springer’s show for the emotionally challenged, I read this mutual exchange of abuse and recrimination, much of it overtly and covertly sexual, and laughed my head off. The Williamsons struggle with silly attempts to defend themselves against the irrational onslaughts of Ellis in outraged linguistic flight. Everybody knows Ellis can outdo anyone in a public brawl because unlike most of us, he has no boundaries. He will say anything. And he does.
Against this floridity, David and Kristen splutter the kind of middle class indignation that can only be mocked, because of its mediocrity, and its utter failure to see beyond itself. Far too much of it in some of his plays, unkind people may mutter, and not always satirical?
All in all I’d rather read Ellis than either of the Williamson’s, but only if I was water boarded into making a choice in the first place.
Things may look up. Then again they may not. I am waiting for the Rapture. I am steadfast. I have faith.
Related articles
- Gillard attracts misogyny like kitchens attract ladies (thepunch.com.au)
- On misogyny and female columnists (newstatesman.com)
No Place For Sheep 
Glad you’ve joined me on board the Good Ship Gillard Jen [ducks].
The blond thing is bizarre. All ch 9 female on-screen talent apparently have to be blonde as a result of nature or nurture. ABC has resisted this so far.
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Yes, you’d better duck my friend. I have missiles.
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Just curious as to what you think the Government could or should be doing re the Assange charges in Sweden – or do you mean the nebulous threat from the US? As far as I am aware, apart from politicians calling for his demise, the US has not actually put out a warrant for his arrest – under the laws Obama has just signed into law there it seems they could grab him from wherever and not wait until he goes to Sweden, if indeed he ever does. So, apart from informing themselves and not talking about ‘illegal’ activities what should they be doing?
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I was referring to Gillard’s initial reaction to Assange – claiming that his activities are “illegal” a claim she hasn’t retracted as far as I’m aware.
As well, compare the support offered by Gillard to the “Bali Boy” – it was far more certain that the Bali Boy had done something illegal than it ever has been about Assange.
They ought to be as vocal in their support of Assange. He is just as much a citizen as the Bali Boy. Why doesn’t Gillard ring him up?
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Possibly because Bali Boy only embarrassed himself and his family whereas Assange released a whole heap of pointless cables designed to embarrass the Australian Govt?
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Well, I don’t accept your premise that he released a whole heap of “pointless” cables, though I accept that embarrassing governments is one of his aims. I have no problem with that , I don’t see governments as protected species. They are servants of the people aren’t they?
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Absolutely, but to then turn around and demand help from the govt you just embarrassed takes a lot of brass. Plus I think someone is being a bit fast and loose with the truth about what assistance he is getting and also the Bali Boy – I very much doubt that Gillard called him – I suspect media spin. Consular assistance, and only consular assistance is provided to Aussies in trouble overseas – unless the possibility of the death penalty is in play. As the US have not yet moved on Assange there is nothing the Govt can do ATM. If they were threatening the DP then I think that the Govt’s reaction would be very different. But I don’t think you can expect them to risk pissing off an valuable ally on the basis of something that might happen to an Australian citizen.
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Well, setting up Wikileaks takes some brass, I don’t think Assange is short on brass.
I don’t think there’s any doubt Gillard spoke to the Bali boy on the phone – I agree it’s very difficult to ascertain just what is being done for Assange, if anything, in terms of support. I think Gillard set the tone for the government’s attitude right at the beginning of the saga, and unfortunately has done nothing since to suggest the government considers him anything but guilty of illegal actions. It’s a bit hard to argue that the govt’s attitude to the Bali Boy was as condemnatory as it is towards Assange. I know this is entirely to do with our US alliance, as was our part in the illegal invasion of Iraq, the detention of Hicks in Gitmo, and all the rest of the morally corrupt decisions all our governments have taken at one time or another in the name of protecting our US alliance.
I think Wikileaks started an important process of holding govts to account – and I think we urgently need such an organisation. I also think anyone who attempts to run one will be subjected to death threats, witch hunts, denial of services, financial ruin, and everything else the ruling classes can throw at him/her. When power is threatened, it reacts with savagery of one kind or another. Look at the Occupy movement. Did you read the Naomi Wolfe analysis of that? Cheers, Jennifer.
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I haven’t read Naomi Wolf, but I will look up the article. I agree that anyone doing wikileaks will be targeted, but the Australian Govt can’t do anything until the US actually makes a move, which they haven’t yet. Assange is being given consular assistance, but all that means is that someone from the local embassy makes sure he gets details of local lawyers – which I expect Assange’s own legal team is taking care of – and that he is not mistreated and as he is on house arrest then that is about all they can do, and all they do for anyone. I don’t think the PM spoke to the Bali Boy on the phone, and the difference there was that BB had been charged with drug offences and was in a country well known for its tough stance on drugs.
Now, I am taking it on faith here – that the Govt will move to protect Assange if the US does try to extradite him to face the DP. However, I doubt that they will do much if the US say they only intend to lock him up and throw away the key. He has made powerful enemies and no friends within the Govt.
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Woolf link: http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/cifamerica/2011/nov/25/shocking-truth-about-crackdown-occupy
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What happened to governance in this country? Both the ALP and LNCP leadership are second rate, barely aware of what used to be called vision, and far too pandering to interest groups to be much good at the helm of SS Australia. I don’t personally think much of Gillard (mainly because of some of the values she holds) but can recognise that she doesnt get a fair shake in the media. I think though her method of ascension to power keeps her permanently on the nose with some and that will never be forgiven so she cannot fairly expect to be loved and admired. To expect fairness in what is known is “a dirty business” is hopeful.
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This year doesn’t look much different you’re right. And look, my desk looks the same, the tree outside my window looks the same. pretty much sums up the future for the time being.
But what I find ironic is that the initials msm to me have always meant “men who have sex with men”. Or I assume that’s not who you’re referring to?
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Nope, I have nothing…
I’m worn out after reading Bob’s blog.
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But the MSM are still whining about asylum seekers as if 4 million of them arrived last year instead of 4500.
And you are right, Gillard would have taken us to the illegal invasion of Iraq – I have never heard here utter one word about the place or against the invasion.
Latham and Crean were the two with the balls to say it was wrong and illegal and they got bolloxed for it.
I don’t like Gillard because of her actions, not because she is a woman.
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Exactly.
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Gillard’s achievements? That is the problem for her, she hasn’t any. Not only is she the worst Prime Minister this country has had, she is a contender (likely the leading contender) for the title of worst leader of a liberal democracy in the modern era.
The woman is incompetent. Way above her pay grade. It is a national embarrassment that such a common-as-muck opportunist is our Prime Minister.
What has the ALP come to when the best they can come up with something like what they’ve put in as PM?
Misogyny doesn’t come into it. It doesn’t need to. She has led the ALP to the lowest primary vote in memory, & kept it there. Barring an unforseen circumstance in the interim, come election time she’ll lead the ALP over a cliff to one of their worst electoral defeats ever.
That will be her place in history.
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While Tony Abbott, glorious leader of the LNP, is a born leader with clear objectives and goals (to be PM no matter what, that is, I can’t find any others). I don’t think it’s going to be as cut and dried as you think, Steve.
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Thanks for the link Jennifer.
Julia Gillard has negotiated more pieces of legislation through a hung parliament in her first term than John Howard did when he had a majority. That is her achievement. What has the vuvuzela of Australian politics done apart from intone an endless nunber of no’s?
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Re the long conversation between Jennifer and Mindy, I’d go back to AJ’s comment as to governance. The procedures in place need to be applied consistently, without fear or favour. Assange is Australian, therefore we should avoid the same error made in the treatment of Hicks, say, or in a different sort of situation, Dr Haneef.
Law makers have introduced too many grey areas into law, for often irrational or even sinister reasons.
Marilyn is quite fair to suggest that the law is applied as a general rule, after Kant. Were it the case the world would be in less of a mess than it is now. In reality, it wont be, for to allow fair process for and humane conduct toward refugees would mean reestablishing fair process as a universally applicable norm.
The best that seems to happen in a failed global system evolved over time, is that locales, when pushed, will fight for their communities and individuals that are part of them, as has happened with the Occupy movement. Establish a bridgehead for change and then expand outwards- if its right for white people to hold onto to habeas corpus, etc, then why should not the principle then be applied to all, most of all the starving billions.
Finally Julia Gillard. I’d agree with most of the comments made so far, she’s no Snow White. But then how many politicians that we’ve seen, male of female, have ever look any better. So Mindy’s last comment says enough for me- they have pushed stuff through, its just that some disagree with the policies and legislation.
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I hope they have learned from the Haneef cluster f*ck but time will tell. I can understand the concern that something could happen to Assange like happened to Hicks and I would condemn any such actions. But we have to wait until the US makes a move before any action can be taken. If and when that happens hopefully our Govt will do the right thing.
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I’m hoping that too –
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Just filched this on Assange from the SMH:
As most Australians contemplate a traditional Christmas of over-indulgence and recuperation, we should spare a thought for one of our less fortunate compatriots. He lives in exile under house arrest, awaiting one last hopeful court appeal. He faces a perilous future should that appeal fail.
He will then be extradited to a third country, merely for questioning about allegations of sexual assault which under Australian law would not likely result in any criminal charges.
There he will be held on remand and incommunicado, and will be liable to further extradition to a fourth country, believed to have already instituted legal process relating to activities unconnected with the allegations of sexual assault. His prospects of a fair trial in that fourth country are negligible. Its vice-president has labelled him a ”high-tech terrorist”. The current front-runner to challenge the incumbent president in next year’s election has branded him an ”enemy combatant” who should be murdered.
In Australia, the official response has been less extreme but still hostile. The Prime Minister and the then attorney-general both alleged he had broken the law, but have been unable to tell us which law. They have refused to retract this allegation even in the face of advice from the Australian Federal Police that no offence under Australian law has been committed.
The Australian government has refused to intervene on his behalf with the foreign governments pursuing him, despite friendly relations with those governments. The activities in question have earned him the Sydney Peace Prize, the Walkley Award for Most Outstanding Contribution to Journalism in Australia, the Martha Gellhorn Prize for Journalism in the US and Liberty Victoria’s Voltaire Award for Free Speech. The readers of both Time and Le Monde voted him person of the year for 2010.
Contrary to dire predictions that those activities would imperil the safety of nations, all they did was shine a light into the dark recesses of international relations, exposing the uncomfortable truth behind the outward expressions of diplomacy.
The accused man is, of course, Julian Assange, probably the most famous Australian in the world today. The price of that fame has been the Kafkaesque fate described above. It is easy to shrug and say he had it coming for daring, Prometheus-like, to take on forces far greater than himself. It is far harder to pause and question this complacent response.
Imagine instead that he was the citizen of a country not obsessed with security at the expense of liberty; a country mature and self-confident enough to distinguish its own interests from those of its allies; a country whose political leadership could tell politics from policies; a country not riven by culture wars and marred by character assassination; whose citizenry could take offence at obvious injustice to one of its own and do something about it.
The Christians among us might care to pray for such a country this Christmas. But we need to stop to reflect on Assange’s fate and what it says about us and our country. What responsibility do we as Australians bear?
These are uncomfortable questions, likely to disturb our usual summer torpor. But we need to ask them. Merry Christmas.
Michael Pearce, SC, is a former president of Liberty Victoria. He is one of 74 signatories to an open letter to Kevin Rudd published today about the plight of Julian Assange.
Read more: http://www.smh.com.au/opinion/politics/assanges-treatment-says-a-lot-about-us-20111218-1p0o2.html#ixzz1iTI3DLpp
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Back after visiting the Ellis blogsite. If he has a problem with the Williamsons, it may be with Kristen, who looks likes she’s swiped a knockabout mate from Bob and worse still, is reforming him (Williamson). Three’s company..
I thought his comment on the King’s Speech were balanced and informative. The real treat came in an earlier piece savaging that mendacious coward, Henderson and his pet project of undermining the ABC, a neglected issue.
Finally, that unfortunate woman with swollen lips in the included photo.
Is it some sort of human version of the face cancer the Tasmanian Devils are being wiped out with?
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Haha pretty nasty, isn’t it? I can’t figure out if it’s a real woman or a doll. Seriously.
I like Bob Ellis in spite of how aggravating he can be. I’m just really glad I don’t have to deal with him personally.
He’s now invited Ben Pobjie out to lunch at Machiavelli’s. objie has graciously accepted. But it looks like the Williamson’s are still out in the cold where they deserve to be IMHO
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Oh, Paul. Don’t give me reasons to revisit Bob’s blog! I’ll never get anything done.
But a deserved GH savaging is pretty enticing.
And is there a use-by date for the constant parroting of the line, ‘Worst PM ever’? Oh, yes, it’s self-evident, as much as every other MSM message that gets zilch analysis, not that such a glib assertion deserves any. The statement in itself reduces politics to barracking for your favourite football team – in fact, sport gets much more thorough and honest analysis in this country than politics, maybe because there’s not as much at stake for those pushing the agendas.
No, I’m not ‘barracking’ for Gillard, or anyone else. Values – as much as we can detect them – and policies are what we expect – and get in differing degrees – from our pollies, and it wouldn’t hurt to comment directly on these at times instead of constantly claiming the other team sucks.
Now excuse me while I go looking for evidence of the ‘better economic managers’ myth and other conversation-stoppers 😛
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One question – why are the MSM still reporting the lie that if only Abbott and Gillard make some dirty deal we can shove asylum seekers off to some other place?
Are they fucking cretins?
No need to answer that last questions.
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And why is it our business if Indonesia make entry to their country easier to save lives? Do we own Indonesia? Protect their borders or what.
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You may be interested in this Reuters article by Jack Shafer about the parallels between sports and politics reporting. He tells it like it is:
http://blogs.reuters.com/jackshafer/2012/01/03/presidential-campaigns-sports-writing-and-the-fine-art-of-pretending/
‘Steve at the Pub’ should read it too, so that he might stop sounding so obviously puerile. In other words, he should realise he is being played like a sucker.
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Maybe the editors at ABC 24 could read that article as well.
After all the hogwash I almost endured this morning (I flicked back after five minutes avoiding it) about the presidential circus, I was left wondering why the ABC 24 channel was ever set up. Surely it would be more honest to just take live feeds from the US MSM around the clock than to fly Oz reporters there to parrot the same irrelevancies and make out that this is somehow a world news service? I would be happy to throw more money at the ABC 24 enterprise if reporters did (i.e. were allowed to do) some decent reporting of far more important issues around the world – or even Oz, for that matter – and ignored the constant US election cycle altogether. Sheesh!
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So many people are complaining about ABC’s increasing tendency to be like commercial media. I have to agree sometimes: the other night I thought I was watching ch9 news. Except there wasn’t a bottle blonde big lipped anchor.
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Re Victoria Collins’ comment, from an outsider’s perspective American politics does seem as much anthropological ritual as actual rational decision-making. They have their own metalanguage, that defies decoding from outsiders, words used in certain contexts that would trigger no response from us, that will provoke a fierce debate on war, or abortion there, say.
I wonder what off-shorers make of our politics?
Are we as objective as we would like to think ourselves to be, therefore?
We can smile at others for behaviours we think self delusory, but what if outsiders found us and our “rationality” to be as pitiful and perhaps exploitable?
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#SBS – A FILM FOR THE LOSERS WHO THINK WE NEED TO PUNISH ASYLUM SEEKERS AND REFUGEES. I OF COURSE KNOW ALL THE ANSWERS BECAUSE I WAS INVOLVED.
IT MIGHT FIND ME IN A DUNGEON WITH ASSANGE ON 25 JANUARY.
# 9:30
The Man Who Jumped
Send to a friend
#
Australia Day 2002. In South Australia’s Woomera detention centre, protests by asylum seekers erupted. More than 200 of the detainees were on hunger strike, some had sewed their lips together. The atmosphere was explosive. At the height of the conflict, a bare-chested young man climbed on to the perimeter fence and, without warning, jumped on to the coiled razor wire below. Ten years on, this program revisits this disturbing story and asks: Who was this man? Why did he jump and what happened to him? (Commissioned by SBS) (Documentary) M (A,L) CC
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Please? What the hell is MSM? It sounds like you’re talking about a media brand, but could it be something to do with “social media”?
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OK, I eventually found a link to ABC Drum which explains all.
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main stream media!
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