Archive | January, 2012

And now for something completely different…

16 Jan

Later today I’m putting up a brilliant short story by a friend of mine, that will take our minds right away from this distasteful legal twaddle.

In the meantime, I have to moderate all your comments before I publish them, as I’ve been advised that Melinda Tankard Reist’s lawyers are monitoring the blog and twitter for any “vilification” of the lady. If any such thing appears in comments on my blog I cop another legal threat, and it will be added to the list of my crimes against MTR. On twitter, well, I guess it’s every human for him or herself.

Also, I’m not always on the blog so if I don’t moderate you for a few hours please don’t get pissed off at me.

It may be all piss and wind, but does anybody really want the hassle?

I’m also told that it is ALLEGED that MTR is backed by seriously wealthy Christian fundamentalist lawyers, and that money may not be a problem for her as it is for most of us.

Now I am going to get out of the PJ’s that I’ve been wearing for the last two days for  emotional and physical comfort, and take the dog out.

Fortunately I was given a superb kimono for Xmas so I’ve been able to throw that over the PJ’s. The kimono along with my scarlet painted toenails has allowed me to keep up my usual sartorial standards despite the legal twaddle. It is so important to keep oneself looking as good as one can, no matter how demanding the circumstances in which one finds oneself.

I feel an incipient hysteria. That is, if I’m allowed to describe myself as hysterical, without incurring the awful wrath of the language police that was visited upon Justin Shaw, and to a lesser extent myself, just last week. It is amazing how many people there are in the world who want to control every word that comes out of someone else’s mouth. To be set upon by two wildly differing feminist factions within the space of three days because of what one has said, is indeed a novel experience

So far the year has been full of excitement and controversy. Pass me the gin and the chocolates.

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Who would Jesus sue?

15 Jan


If you are interested in Melinda Tankard Reist’s fundamentalist Christianity you’ll find a biography here with far more detail than I provided, including her affiliation with the Salt Shakers, a Christian fundamentalist organisation founded by, among others, strident anti-homosexual Baptist preacher Bill Meuhlenberg. Meuhlenberg’s latest anti same-sex marriage rant, titled “When darkness descends upon a nation” was written in reaction to the recent ALP decision to support same-sex marriage.

Among other rhetorical gems, you’ll find this comment on Prime Minister Julia Gillard:

And what of Labor’s leader? Did we really ever expect that a fornicating socialist atheist was going to really hold the line on this? Of course not; certainly not when she is in bed with our other leader, a homosexual socialist atheist.

What you will also discover in the Tankard Reist bio is that for 12 years she was employed by Tasmanian Senator Brian Harradine as his bio ethics advisor. During this period Harradine successfully prevented Australian women from accessing the drug RU 486 despite it being available in other Western countries, and the numerous trials that had proven it’s safety and effectiveness as an early abortion drug.

But wait! There’s more! During Tankard Reist’s employment as his bio ethics advisor, Harradine also successfully prevented AusAID,the main Australian government overseas aid organisation, from funding any organisations that provide “abortion training or services, or research, trials or activities which directly involve abortion drugs,” even where it could save the life of a woman.

The Harradine-determined AusAID policy allowed funding for counselling after an abortion, but disallowed the dissemination of advice and education to women in underdeveloped countries who sought safe abortion.

A World Bank Report at that time estimated some 68,000 women in underdeveloped countries died as a consequence of unsafe abortion, and some 5.3 million suffered temporary or permanent disability.

This situation caused Bernard Keane to write this in Crikey, in an article titled “AusAID conservatives have blood on their hands:”

As a consequence of the restrictions, thousands of women overseas have died from unsafe abortions (see Sue Dunlevy’s excellent article from last year for some figures). Those deaths are a direct legacy of Brian Harradine and the Howard Government’s willingness to cater to the medieval delusions of the superstitious.

Tankard Reist’s involvement with fundamentalist Christians opposed to abortion, contraception, surrogacy, and homosexuality are well documented, and I have to wonder why she’s singled me out at this point in time for writing about her religious beliefs.

Throughout her career, Tankard Reist has doggedly described herself as a feminist, despite her anti choice stand, and her willingness to align herself with people such as Meuhlenberg and Harradine, who seek to exert their control over women’s bodies. Tankard Reist appears to be quite comfortable supporting and abetting this urge to dominate and control women, while simultaneously railing against what she considers the objectification, sexualisation, and pornification of women in popular culture.

Tankard Reist apparently has no qualms about having worked for a man whose determination to impose his religious beliefs on government policy prevented women far less fortunately placed than herself  from accessing medical help and education about contraception and abortion. It appears to be of little consequence to her that women in underdeveloped countries suffered and died as a direct consequence of Harradine’s religious beliefs, during the period when he was her employer.

Yet show her a Kanye West video or a Brian McFadden clip, or women in Victoria’s Secret lingerie who like pole dancing, and she’s got petitions going every which way to silence and censor. What’s wrong with this picture?

As I think Jesus is reported as having observed, by their friends you shall know them.

(The title of this post comes from a tweet I received yesterday and I think it’s brilliant.)

UPDATE: I received the letter of demand from Tankard Reist’s lawyers on my personal email address. They state that they’ve sent a hard copy to my home address. I am not in the phone directory and I have no landline in my name. My personal email address isn’t available on my blog and neither is my home address. It probably wasn’t difficult to find someone who would divulge my email address, but my home address? 

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MTR threatens Sheep with legal action if we don’t censor our posts about her immediately

14 Jan

Just got home to find a letter from the lawyers of Melinda Tankard Reist demanding I withdraw all my posts about her or very bad things will ensue.

This is pretty amusing when you read some of the things MTR writes about those she does not approve of.

She’s going to have to sue a few more blogs than just mine, because I’m not the only one who’s written that she’s a Baptist, and attends Belconnen Baptist Church. It’s well in the public domain.

And how bizarre it is that someone who is a devout Christian is so cagey about her faith and her practice? Why not be open about her religious faith? Christians usually are. What does she have to hide?

At least I know now why Rachel Hills didn’t ask those questions, or if she asked the questions, didn’t publish any answers!

“Write about my religious beliefs and I’ll sue you!” Now that’s novel.

If you want to see just how cagey MTR is about this watch this interview with ABC TV’s Jane Hutcheon when Hutcheon asks about her religion and how it affects her work. She tries to follow Jesus, she says, but she doesn’t want anybody focusing on her religion because that will distract from her work.

Well, we might all be about to find out just exactly what MTR’s religious faith is, because she’s going to have to come clean if she wants to sue me.

Just when you think things can’t get any more bizarre…

 

 

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Apologies

14 Jan

My apologies to everyone who left comments over the last few days – I forgot to say I’d be off-line and not responding and new commenters wouldn’t be moderated. Sorry, I know how annoying that is.

Back now! Cheers Jennifer.

The questions Rachel Hills didn’t ask Melinda Tankard Reist

10 Jan

I just left this comment on Rachel Hills’ article “Who’s afraid of Melinda Tankard Reist?” published in Sunday Life, 8 January 2012.

I’m surprised that you didn’t mention Tankard Reist’s religious affiliations. She’s a fundamentalist Christian. As feminists we learn to always ask anyone who is publicly morally prescriptive  where they are coming from. Yet you don’t ask that question.

Tankard Reist’s critique of sexuality is based on the moral values of fundamentalist Christianity. She is of the religious right and a member of a church that preaches the second coming of Christ, the end time, and evangelism.

If we can tell Tony Abbott to get his rosaries off our ovaries because of his Catholic beliefs, why aren’t we telling Tankard Reist the same thing? And why are journalists such as yourself concealing her religious affiliations?

Like other commentators, Hills focuses on Tankard Reist’s pro life feminism. There’s been a lot of twitter chatter over the last few days about who is and isn’t a feminist, and there’s plenty of women who don’t believe that anyone who is anti abortion can also be a feminist.

That’s not the argument I’m going to have here, because for me what is far more important than whether or not Tankard Reist is a feminist (whatever that word means, very little I sometimes fear) are her religious beliefs, and the way in which they determine her beliefs about human sexuality.

Tankard Reist is a Baptist. Their belief system includes the second coming of Christ, end times, evangelism, and the belief most relevant to this post and a central tenet of the Baptist faith: the Virgin Birth.

Tankard Reist believes that the woman chosen to bring the boy god Jesus into the world was a virgin. Mary did not conceive the baby Jesus through sexual intercourse. The boy god required a fresh, unsullied virgin to inhabit throughout his gestation.

Why? Because the followers of the doctrine of the virgin birth believe that sex filthies the human female, and renders her impure. The inherent impurity of female sexuality can be tempered by the sacrament of Christian marriage, wherein sex is a means of reproduction, and offers relief for the male. It is better to marry than to burn, advised St Paul, demonstrating how little he thought of female sexuality.

The boy god needed a pure vessel, unfilthied by sexual experience. In this sense Mary was the most famous objectified woman in the history of the world, for to dehumanize a woman to the extent that you perceive her sexuality as filthy is objectifying indeed.

The Virgin Mary was in fact co-opted as a dehumanized life support system for a  foetus.

It is from this fundamental position that Melinda Tankard Reist advises women and girls on sexual matters.

While I don’t like seeing little girls dressed as sexy adults anymore than MTR, what concerns me is that in campaigning as she does against the “sexualisation” and “pornification” of women she’s preaching her religion’s belief that there is something inherently wrong with female sexual expression.

I am also suspicious of her conflation of girls and women, when the two situations are entirely different and should be treated as such. Exploiting the sexuality of children (and children are sexual beings) is a whole other matter from the so-called epidemic of “sexualisation” and “pornification” of adults. I would like to see a journalist question Tankard Reist on her persistent conflation of the two. I believe it is deliberate.

We are sexual beings. Many of us, male and female, like to express our sexuality. It’s a big part of our identity. The ways in which we’ve chosen to do this have varied according to the style of the time. The ways some of us choose to do it in 2012 are, I would argue, no more or less scandalous than at other periods of human history. Yet a new sexual dysfunction called “sexualization” has entered the social discourse, driven initially in this country by Tankard Reist. She then gathered around her a motley crew of radical feminists and middle class moralists who tacitly ignore their considerable differences in the interests of the greater goal of fighting the twin evils they claim are destroying our society: sexualization and pornification.

I am unaware how many of her supporters are religious, but I would argue that they have in common an inclination towards zealotry, and an ethic of purity, both of which are to be found in non believers.

Are Tankard Reist and her supporters in reality pathologizing all expressions of female sexuality? Genuine sexualization we may well get upset about, as a particular form of dehumanization, but are they using that word to obliterate the perfectly normal concept of female sexiness?

Does Tankard Reist believe that being sexy and feeling sexy is pathological behaviour outside of the marital bedchamber? And why does nobody ask her this question?

“Sexualization” and “pornification” are done to women, according to Reist. Women don’t choose to dress, work and play in ways that fit these pathological categories. They’ve been forced into them by men for male gratification. If you think you choose to wear high heels and a short skirt and learn pole dancing, you’re wrong. The patriarchy made you do it. If you think you like to show off your legs and breasts because it feels like sexy fun to do that, you didn’t make that choice, you know. You are actually so brainwashed that the whole concept of choice passed you by long ago. You are a victim.

If you want to look sexy because you’d like to have sex, if you earn your living as a sex worker or perform in porn, in short, if you express your sexuality in any way at all outside of marriage, you are dysfunctional, immoral or both.

Somebody needs to ask Tankard Reist just what she considers an acceptable public expression of female sexuality. I suspect the reality is, she doesn’t have one. For religious fundamentalists, there is no such thing. A woman must be modest and pure, but definitely not sexy and enjoying it.

What kind of a lesson is this to teach our girls about their sexuality?

Having thus far failed to take control of the sexy and eradicate it’s expression through the invocation of morality, defining it as a pathological disorder is the next step in the reactionary battle for control of female sexuality.

Tankard Reist is very accomplished in deflecting questions about her religious faith. In an interview with Jane Hutcheon for ABC TV’s One on One, Reist coyly states that she “tries to follow the teachings of Jesus” and then insists that her work must stand on its merits and her belief system is irrelevant.

But if your religion teaches you that women must be “pure”, that sex must be heterosexual and occur only within the sanctity of marriage, and that its primary purpose is reproduction, how can this not affect your perceptions of sexuality as expressed in the world around you?

When you choose to make your life’s work campaigning against the ways in which women sexually represent ourselves, do you have the right to withhold your beliefs about female sexuality from the public you seek to influence?

There’s no doubt women are objectified in some media and by some men, and this can be detrimental to everyone. However, it seems to me that the last person we want making judgments about how to best address these issues is a fundamentalist Christian, anymore than we want Tony Abbott in control of our abortion choices.We need to think very carefully about where this religious-based approach to sexual issues is going to take us.

I don’t care if Melinda Tankard Reist is defined as a feminist or not. She is anti abortion. She is deceptive and duplicitous about her religious beliefs and she does not declare herself. When asked why not, she counters that people would not hear her message if her religious beliefs became a distracting focus. She does not believe in any public expression of female sexuality, in other words she is repressive and dehumanizes women.

So, Ms Hills, how come you didn’t tell your readers all of this?

My last word on amoral life support systems for an erect penis

7 Jan

Hysteria: Macquarie Dictionary: morbid or senseless emotionalism; emotional frenzy

It’s too time consuming to write individual responses to arguments about Gail Dines, hysteria, and pornography so I’ll write a blog and then link. Please skip this if you are absolutely sick to death of the whole thing.

It is Gail Dines’ argument that boys and men who view pornography inevitably undergo a negative transformative process that entails total loss of respect for women, and a crippling inability to conduct satisfactory relationships. Through viewing porn, boys and men come to view women as the “cunts, whores, sluts and cumdumpsters” Gail Dines says pornographers say we really are.

Boys and men who view porn become nothing more than “amoral life support systems for an erect penis” that seeks relief in the most brutal, selfish and degrading manner possible with the cunts, whores, sluts and cumdumpsters who won’t expect intimate relationship and have no sexual needs of their own, or indeed any existence of their own outside of being the cunts, whores, sluts and cumdumpsters that Gail Dines says pornographers say we women are.

Boys and men, because they are born too stupid, ignorant, base, brainless and vile to do anything else, believe the pornographers and become what Gail Dines says the pornographers claim they really are, that is ALSSFTEPs.

According to Dines, we already have millions of ALSSFTEPs in the parts of the world with internet access, who are already behaving towards women as if we are CWSC, because those millions of boys and men who view porn on the internet have inevitably transmogrified into this undesirable, sexually dysfunctional human male. No exceptions. If you watch it, that’s what you’ll become.

Even if prior to subjecting themselves to the influence of pornographers boys and men exhibited no aggression, disgust or contempt towards women, they will inevitably do so after exposure, because the pornographers have revealed to them who they really are and in so doing, have liberated them into authenticity.

According to Dines, boys and men are incapable of distinguishing between reality and fantasy. That’s why so many of them also annoyingly labour under the delusion that they are really Tom Cruise in Mission Impossible.

But wait! There’s more! Men believe pornographers even more than they believe ordinary film makers because the pornographers get to them directly through their penis. This “powerful delivery system” over rides all male reason and morality, and renders them incapable of ethical behaviour. Even if they’ve been quite moral and well-behaved thus far. The nasty, nasty dick always rules in the end. OK?

In other words no matter what else you have learned in your male life prior to accessing porn, once the pornographers get to you it is as nothing, and all men become first blank slates, and then scaffolding for ill-intentioned stiffies. So parents, stop wasting your time instilling a moral compass into your boys. Once they google porn it’s all over for them, and you. You’ll be living with an ALSSFTEP who thinks the women around him are CWSCs and there is nothing you can do to prevent that. In fact, face it, especially you daft mothers. Your male children are inherently disturbed and its only a matter of time before porn strips away the semblance of decency you’ve deluded yourself into believing you’ve encouraged in them. Better to wring their necks at birth and keep a few corralled for breeding till we’ve established global sperm banks and can do away with them forever. And their stinking porn.

But no! some Dines defenders indignantly cry! That’s not what she’s saying! She’s saying porn portrays men like that, she isn’t saying men are like that! You are misrepresenting her!

OH. Really?  REALLY? You mean Dines is saying porn is a STORY told by pornographers, and not reality? Dines is saying boys and men aren’t REALLY ALSSFTEPs, that’s just how pornographers portray them?

Then tell me, I beg you, Defenders of Dines, what is all the bloody fuss about? If Dines’ acknowledges men capable of distinguishing between fantasy and reality, if Dines’ acknowledges that the notion of men as ALSSFTEPs and women as CWSC is only a STORY told by pornographers and not actually what men and women are, then she has no fucking argument at all, and the whole anti porn thing is a gross beat up.

If that isn’t what she’s saying, then what she’d have us believe is that Gail Dines and those whom she persuades to her POV are the only people on the planet who know that porn is a story, and everyone else mistakes it for reality and adapts their behaviour accordingly  so we can be as real as porn stars too, because after viewing porn there is nothing else we care about, and nothing else we want to be.

There is nasty porn available. There are women who participate. There are men who treat women badly. Nobody is saying otherwise. But that is a very far cry from the sweeping and insulting generalisations about all men, all women and all porn that Dines makes.

My question to Gail Dines and her defenders is: do you believe that all boys and men who watch porn are or will become amoral support systems for an erect penis?

If you answer no, then your rhetoric is hysterical. If you answer yes, your rhetoric is hysterical. Either way your argument is hysterical. QED.

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Hysteria: Phreudian phallusy or what?

5 Jan

In the latest issue of The King’s Tribune there’s an article by one of the editors, Justin Shaw, titled “Porn is Bad.” It’s a must read for anyone with an interest in the politics (poetics?)of porn from the perspective of an articulate and honest male consumer, rather than that of anti porn activists, or academics arguing against them.

I was delighted to read the piece, as its long been my complaint that voices such as Shaw’s are not  included in the debate. Though I hesitate to use that word, seeing as the anti porn activists brook no debate. You’re either with them or against them in their war on the producers, actors, and consumers who in their view form the pornographic axis of evil.

In the second paragraph of the piece you’ll find this comment: “Gail Dines gave a series of hysterical screeches when she visited Australia last year…” An accurate and unremarkable assessment of Dines’ performance I would have thought, but no. This innocuous observation provoked a surge of outrage on Twitter, with tweeps complaining the comment was misogynist. Everybody knows or should know, they argued, that the term “hysterical” has been used to denigrate and discredit women, especially feminists, for decades, and Shaw was allegedly perpetuating that abuse in his description of Dines.

You’ll get no argument from me that “hysterical” has indeed been used to discredit women. I just wonder though what we will be left with if we demand the discontinuation of all terms that can be used to discredit women, and for that matter, men. I have on more than one occasion used the word “hysterical”to describe the behaviours of certain male politicians, and I think I might have once unkindly attached it to Clive Hamilton after reading one of his more florid anti porn rants. Colloquially, the word is used to mean emotional excess, mental agitation, and loss of self-control.

The term “mass hysteria” is not gender specific, and is used to describe the behaviours of groups containing men, women, transgendered and un-gendered people. In sociology the more frequently used term for mass hysteria, is “moral panic.” I rest my case.

So what is the (potted) history of “hysteria?”

It was apparently Hippocrates who first used it to define “disturbances of the uterus” thought to cause all manner of ailments peculiar to women (“hystera” meaning womb) though there are arguments about that explanation of its origins.

In the mid to late nineteen hundreds the many and varied symptoms of hysteria were attributed to sexual dissatisfaction, and physicians treated their female patients with “pelvic massage”, that is, clitoral stimulation to orgasm. In order to spare physicians this arduous task, women were eventually dispatched to midwives for treatment, and then offered vibrators.

An aside: I can attest to the value of midwife administered orgasms. My second child was born in a bean bag at home, and I was attended by a midwife. At some point in my labourings, she tenderly applied an herbal cream to my lady bits and in the process, brought me to a spectacular orgasm. As I was groaning anyway, none of the assembled spectators were any the wiser. I strongly recommend this practice as an aid to delivery.

Back to hysteria. French neurologist Jean-Martin Charcot became fascinated by inexplicable paralysis in some of his female patients. As there appeared to be no organic reason for their troubles, he decided psychological factors were to blame. To this end he hypnotised them, in an effort to discover the repressed traumas he suspected were being expressed physically.

And then came Freud. Fascinated by Charcot’s theories, Freud gave the world his brilliant (if not always accepted) theories of repression and conversion disorder. Initially he confided to his colleague and friend Wilhelm Fliess (a man with bizarre opinions about the purpose of the human nose, but that’s another story) his belief that much of the hysteria he found in his female patients originated in premature and abusive sexual experiences during their childhoods in middle class families. This was perpetrated on them by relatives, or nannies. With no means of expressing their trauma, or even acknowledging it, Freud’s female patients converted their distress into any number of psychological and physical symptoms that were, in his terms, hysterical. That is, without apparent organic cause, sexual in origin, and particular to women.

Unsurprisingly, Freud’s insights into middle class family life did him no good in the climate of the times, and it’s alleged that he dropped them in order to save his reputation. He then came up with his Oedipus Theory, and there’s debate as to whether that did him a lot of good either, but that’s also another story.

The problem is the symptoms of hysteria are still inevitably defined as female, yet we know this is a nonsense. As Freud well knew men are also sexually abused, and can suffer after effects every bit as “hysterical” as those endured by women. Freud would have done us all a favour if he’d coined a non-gendered term to describe the symptoms he observed in both male and female patients as a consequence of repressed trauma, but alas, he did not, and here we are in 2012 still fighting about hysteria.

In defense of Shaw, his sentence doesn’t read to me like a misogynist use of the term: I can think of no other that so accurately describes Dines’ performances and her intention to inspire moral panic (mass hysteria) in her audiences.

And she almost succeeded for this viewer when she used the acronym ATM to describe a sexual practice that I do not find inspirational. In the elegant words of @ruminski this concerns [redacted lower body orifice] to [redacted upper body orifice]. It has nothing to do with cash dispensers, except if you’re paying for it.

Following Meatloaf, I will do anything for love, yes I will do anything for love, I will do anything for love, but I won’t do that. No, I won’t do that.

Let’s not throw the baby out with the bath water and attempt to rid ourselves of all language that can be used to denigrate somebody. Intention is everything. In my view, Ms Dines speaks hysterically on the topic of pornography, with the intention of provoking moral panic. I can only hope that the outrage provoked by Shaw’s use of the term does not blind readers to the importance of his observations. I wish he’d publish them on the Drum as well.

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Same old msm misogyny, all politicians are liars, and only if I’m water boarded

3 Jan

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.

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