In her piece on ABC’s The Drum this morning, academic Lauren Rosewarne takes to task a group of women who apparently have done their best to metaphorically lynch TV personality Chrissie Swan for smoking while pregnant.
I am not interested in having a smoking while pregnant debate, and Ms Swan’s perceived moral failings. Neither am I a fan of vicious pile-ons. What does interest me is the language Rosewarne uses to describe those criticising Swan, whilst simultaneously calling for us to cease “scrutinising and loathing” other women.
Swan’s critics are, according to Rosewarne, members of the “militant mummy mafia” and “holier than thou über mums.” Rosewarne claims she feels it is “…verboten to question the lactaters, or the baby-carriers, or the gluten-free vegan wholefood earthmothers.”
She continues, in an outstandingly anti feminist and alarmingly patriarchal-like complaint: “As a feminist, apparently, I should know better than to ever dare take on any woman who has ever Created Life” (note Dr Rosewarne’s use of capitals here).
Well, I’m a woman who has Created Life, lactated and been a baby-carrier and I have no objection at all to being questioned (“taken on?”) about that or anything else. I do, however, wish to note my objection to being cast into the inexplicable abyss of Rosewarne’s only too-evident prejudices against women, all women, who give birth.
I have no idea of Dr Rosewarne’s personal circumstances, and I support the right of any woman to choose to remain child free. Indeed, there have been occasions on which I have cursed myself for refusing that option, and instead, sticking with dogs.
Be that as it may, I do not expect a public feminist to speak of me and women like me with such contempt and disdain, simply because we’ve given birth to future generations. It’s a dark and lonely job, but someone has to do it.
Mothers, like any other human category, do good things and not so good things to ourselves, our offspring and other women. We are not always nice to one anther, and neither should anyone expect us to be. However, for a feminist with a public platform to publish a wholesale denigration of women who are mothers is absolutely unacceptable, particularly when it’s done under the guise of appealing for women to stop judging and criticising one another.
This false division between mothers and women who are not mothers, for whatever reason, is sickening to me. I believe it is destructive to us as individuals, and as a species. There is no great kudos in either state: they are, in the best of circumstances, choices and should be respected as such.
If Dr Rosewarne really feels she cannot “take on any woman who has Created Life” she is seriously restricting her life experience, and that, I respectfully suggest, is a problem for her rather than the rest of us.
No Place For Sheep 
I agree with your assessment. Whilst there is ample room for women and feminists to disagree with each other – and thank goodness for that – there is too often an attitude of ‘You’re either with us or against us’ in the diatribe that pretends to be discussion. I was especially disappointed with Lauren Rosewarne’s choice of divisive rhetoric.
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You hit the nail on the head! These sorts of articles, discussions, controversies ar about nothing more than creating false divisions. Divide et impera as the Latins would have said. One would think after years of debate and gallons of spilled ink that people would be able to understand that things and people can hold two things at the same time. but alas we are left with division and confusion. I think it was Chomsky who noted that in our capitalist/patriarchy society we are allowed to say whatever we want on a very small range of topics, but on the questions that really matter there is endless silence.
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Reminds me of the term used by Herbert Marcuse aways back: “Repressive Tolerance”.
It is more than a conscious thing; it extends into design and aesthetics; permeates our age. You walk into a park, sit down and admire a pond when suddenly you have a sense of something unheimlich, turn about and there is a security camera watching you..
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Hello,
I* would like to advance the notion that Lauren Rosewarne uses the terminology “any woman who has Created Life” as a satirical reference to whoever it is who is doing the piling-onto-Chrissie-Swan, rather than to all mothers.
it may be the case that she is wrong in thinking that it is mostly mothers doing this criticism. For all we know it could be recently-graduated IT specialists with too much time on their hands. It appears also from her personal history that Ms Rosewarne has perhaps an inappropriate level of anxiety over mummy issues generally. However it seems the perception exists in certain circles that it is indeed a certain demographic of mothers who are the biggest critics on such occasions, and I can probably understand why Ms Rosewarne so fears them
*I would also like to confess that Lauren Rosewarne is one of few people writing on contemporary issues whose articles I invariably enjoy (another example being Jennifer Wilson), and so I feel a bit protective of her!
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LOL!
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Actually, Sam, I want to know why, if such a group does indeed exist, you or anyone else would fear them?
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Because they’re unreasonable!
How very patriarchal!
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Oh, so you want everyone to be reasonable? Good luck with that! 🙂
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Oh so we’re being self-referential now are we? 🙂
Hmph, well I think you should think yourself lucky that this time I didn’t say that I wanted to give her a blowjob.
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Goodness I missed that comment how could that be? Blow away sailor!
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The thread starter itself confuses me a little.
Wilson commences by outlining Rosewarne’s attack on the medieval tendency toward mobbing of an other, a result of the dumbing down of women through patriarchalism, demonstrated in unthinking attacks on Swann. Rosewarne, rather than the dumbed down, long term sociocultural system, is attacked for dreaded (unspecified) “patriarchal” tendencies?
We seem to be back we were a few weeks ago, where any attempt at analysis of a social phenomena ( herd behaviour and pain in the arse uber-parenting by the over virtuous, eg? ) is bizarrely and automatically construed into an attack on “feminism” and “women”.
How are Rosewarne’s comments, which go to the heart of the faux nature of hegemonic “Woman’s Day” diversionist conservative feminism, to be construed as an, “Attack on Women”, when she is clearly trying to get mothers OUT of the MTR fantasy world of assumed virtue ( then complacency) through motherhood, surely the REAL patriarchalist model of social reproduction, throughout.
I personally think it is a tragedy that women seem locked into a hermetically-sealed, antagonistic frame of mind , as a (faux?) essence of /for motherhood.
“Because I am a woman, or a mother, you cant observe this or that, because I’m above accountability for no better reason than my womanhood (or what I imagine my womanhood to be)”?
Puhlease…
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I don’t think stereotyping groups of women or groups of anybody else is “analysing social phenomena,” it’s just stereotyping. I don’t think using stereotypes in an effort to change behaviour is going to succeed. If you want to stop the group Lauren describes from behaving in those ways, the first step is to make sure you don’t stereotype them, if indeed they actually exist in the form she describes. My objection is to the language used.
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It’s a problem. I read a number of Lauren’s reasonable articles on the Drum 2011-12 and they attracted too few comments.
The solution, I suppose, is to be more controversial, at the expense of reasonableness.
“Motherhood is wonderful” – 2 hits;
“Motherhood is evil” – 2000 hits.
And so it always goes.
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Motherhood is wonderful like ‘having a supermodel girlfriend’ is wonderful. There’s a lot of variables. Recent news informs a child was murdered by his own mother because he failed to memorise a tract of their cult (Teh K**n).
My further thought on Ms Swan and that ciggie: 2 little kids and another on the way – when would you need a drag more than then?
Anyone who saw the Hairspray movie in a theatre will recall the instant robust laughter when our hero enters a bar where the stools are all occupied by pregnant women with wine in one hand and a ciggie in the other. hilarity. My mother did it 64 years ago and I’m OK.
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yes
the usual – this bad – thus your are wrong
this is good and should be encouraged – correct response!
It’s the sort of thing you expect Clementine Ford in her often muddled way to be extolling.
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“If Dr Rosewarne really feels she cannot “take on any woman who has Created Life” she is seriously restricting her life experience, and that, I respectfully suggest, is a problem for her rather than the rest of us.”
I read her piece and thought it was good. To me it was about her and not about Christine Swan, whom Dr Loz wrote that she was likable. Yes that ‘Chrissie’ is likable. Dr Lozzy also mention Kochie, who used to be likable. The Governor General is making herself over as Quennie to also be more likable apparently.
The key to the Rosewarne piece is her comment “Mothers scare me” and that her own mother was all business with no tolerance for sooky kids and clearly this results in one of them having the low self esteem which drives her achieving of a Doctorate.
From the comments at The Drum I now know that Ms Swan was in tears on The Project (I view neither show). As Rosewarne wrote “Swan should not have to explain herself”.
IF the smoking mother driven to tears on TV had been from Fitzroy Crossing, the very Drum commenters who ripped Swan a new one, would be ripping one for The Project. There are people who just like to drive everybody else down.
I did love the term ‘sanctimummies’ for the irritating Gen-XYZ 38-y-old intense parenters. One of them sent her Yarraville 3-y-o to my farm because she wanted him “to have a chicken experience”.
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The article mentioned,”one cigarette a day” – the woman is subject to public pillorying by the virtuous for smoking a single cig a day?
Ok, it’s a quick way to regain the habit, as if that’s the real issue, but am not sure that’s what it’s about. I think its about too many people getting their ideas (and mouthiness) from ACA and TDT, in an era when ignorance is inculcated into the public and embarking on an ill-informed and rude species of Salem Witch hunt.
Well done, Dr Rosewarne, for trying to ameliorate the emotionalism and bring a conversation back to a rational level.
Let some of them get back to examining their parenting and underlying victimhood/entitlement attitudes, instead of postponing that decision in favour of cup-cakey hecklings of others, which is a symptom of a deeper, ACTUAL “divisiveness” that ought to be exposed.
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It was a very big ciggy.
And the tobacco was made from a very tall poppy.
The garden it grew in was tended by the “Cyber Stalkers Club of Perfect Motherhood and Self Righteous Petitioners for the Good of All Girlhood and Womanhood”.
The dose rate of manure has been called into question many times.
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Heady stuff indeed, Hypo. From a certain trajectory,even the Gulags can look good.
Not that we need opiates to make things look better, as you say, self righteousness is a far more powerful drug ( not that yours truly ever suffers from it).
Yes, I find the (encouraging of) the “Motherland Front” stuff a bit edgy also, but let’s not forget the Lebensborn.. all’s fair, as they say and it couldn’t possibly have anything to do with the infantile bourgeois cult of self, with its preciousness and denialism and lack of self reflexivity.
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The last perfect mother was mine.And even she has her flaws.
( and no, I am not quoting Jesus or Pell!)
The ‘modern’ group claiming ownership of Motherhood did/do so for pecuniary interests.The tactic of ‘rubbing your face in it’ factor (“we decide who gets to call themselves a mother and how they are to behave”) is just another form of bullying, which I presume is Rosewarne’s central point.It may have got lost in translation, as is often the case in Lauren’s drum stuff.
Unless my wires are crossed, JW has also been on the end of the seething wrath of the group (Drum) which I think Lauren is describing.(the Last Taboo article).
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You are right,Hypo, Jennifer and her blog and some of her followers have been denigrated on the Ellis blog yet again, not by any Drum group, just by one busy bee meanie blogger…who is everywhere, day and night.
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Helvi, gave up on Eliss’ blog, because of problems posting.
It doesn’t surprise me that some there would attack Jennifer Wilson and of course Ellis himself, some of them are so ignorant they would spell cat, d-o-g.
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I tried to post there a few days(+) back and gave up.
The site would not upload the password thing.
I’m kind of glad it played up,now.My comment would have been wasted anyway.
So apart from a voyeuristic drive by to see where they house the mutants, I will hang here instead.
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I still don’t understand why attack me on Ellis’s blog.
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Perhaps it’s the regular troll who visits here, protecting their multi faced pseudos, by attacking from afar?
(Somewhere in the long list of repeat offender trolls who come here, there probably lies a common email address or server base.)
Or maybe they are just a gutless wonder.
Maybe both.
I’d say there is probably a connect between the date/ time they get hassled here, and the date/time they show up and attack you over there.
The troll him/her self probably ruins blogs everywhere in the same fashion.
A sad , lonely and pathetic creature whose closest friends are probably cockroaches.The same can probably be said of their eating habits and personal hygeine.
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Like Hypo says, perhaps they know you can box the f– k out of them, in a head to head contest?
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Simple enough, your security measures are obviously better than Bob’s. Send Ann Brooksbank (his wife) some information, please!
The deleted ones from here spread their bile wherever they can.
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The internet needs a generic site where registered blog owners who have details of genuine trolls, can report trolling.The site could then confirm the trolling and upload their (troll) email details (possibly names) for all the world to see.
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Or you could just not feed ’em. treat ’em a sport, or simply deal with them by properly blocking them. Bob it seems has the extraordinary faith in human nature to think that the words you’re banned will be honoured.
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A good suggestion, Hypo. If that is possible . . . of course, one man’s troll is another man’s knight in shining armour 🙂
On second thoughts, perhaps it is too much like the thought police?
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Surely Ellis can filter out the f/wits?Somehow.
Does he want to?
Or is he having too much fun?
Personally that sort of mindless word mash up, and public auto fellatio behaviour bores me shit-less.
I guess he has made his bed.
I recall someone over at the Drum admitting once that they had used some huge number (over 70 something???) pseudonyms, on one article, on the ABC.
Trolling is a permanent feature of the internet which has completely ruined so many articles, forums and discussions.There is definitely a maggot problem.
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…and those maggots are now hounding this Chrissie woman, whoever she is, she looks like a perfectly nice normal and busy woman, and she must know that smoking is not good for unborn babies. Still, I have never smoked but since I started blogging, I could have easily started ( only kidding)….Bloody hell, nobody is perfect, let the truly faultless cast the first stone…
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Why is anyone bothering to denigrate me on Eliis’s blog?
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…that’s what i said, she is not even writing here; there are nutters and trolls and unhappy people about…
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“Why is anyone {bothering to denigrate me} on Eliis’s blog?”
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A divisiveness that Rosewarne is perpetuating in her scathing description of “mafia mummies”
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Who are the “Maffia Mummies” anyway?
Most of what I’ve seen on this issue after a day or so seems more inclined to tut a little but go on to defend Chrissie. Perhaps it is just because most people seem to like her, and few see any need for the photos to have been made public so I guess we also feel sorry for her on that score.
So all in all Chrissie doesn’t seem to come off all that badly out of this, and I’m starting to wonder whether the outrage at her supposed detractors isn’t largely confected.
Happily the tabloid that has paid a stupendous sum for these pictures is probably wondering whether they’ll be able to use them without alienating their readership.
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I don’t watch her show, because it is one of those shows which thrives on outrage, and I think it is just a variation on a theme of chasing shonky salesman.
She must have an audience if people are out to harangue her so readily.
And she obviously has trodden on some toes, which is mostly a good thing.
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Battalions of women, “mafias”, on a bloodthirsty rampage, casting about for misogyniacal transgressors whilst in a Maenadic frenzy?
Was not Tony Abbott (and Julie Bishop) driven to distraction, upon discovery of Labor’s sinister “Handbag Hit-Squad”, surely a sub-set of the “Mummy Mafia”, unrelenting in pursuit of the fellow’s alleged sexism, which he reckons is just him being a
good bloke?
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One cigarette a day is a minimum of 280 cigarettes the developing child is subjected to during the pregnancy – more than enough to do damage. Her unborn child has a right to not be knowingly put in danger.
And how do we know it was one cigarette a day – after all until the photographer caught her smoking in secret in her car it was NO cigarettes a day.
It’s very sad that Chrissie Swan is addicted to nicotine but she is a mother of two and expecting another and needs to stop trying to pretend be a superwoman and get some serious help to quit.
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You’re probably giving sound medical advice there, since nobody much disputes that cigarettes are unwise during pregnancy. However you do not HAVE a right to pillory Ms Swan, because you clearly don’t know her situation.
If someone can out and said she was going to smoke during pregnancy either out of pure selfishness or because she disputed medical advice then they’ve probably no right to sympathy and I’d tend to agree with your attitude towards them.
But before you assume the worst of Ms Swan why not look more carefully in case we’re dealing with somebody who knows she wants to stop but struggles because it is hard to kick nicotine. This Nancy Reagan “Just say No” bullshit doesn’t fly, and never has. People who are willing to admit their mistakes and learn from them are rare and valuable. Self righteous voices on high horses who can string a few words of bombast together to berate them are a dime a dozen. They need to check their egos at the door and try to be less part of the problem than the solution.
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You gotta admit that there are many BACWAs who claim ownership of motherhood,body image and lifestyle choices.
(Dons hard-hat!)
There’s obviously a lot more to being a mother than the physical process.
Of all the things that deserve to be free of politics, surely it’s motherhood?.
Maybe it’s the fault of the hood, at the end?
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Would someone please tell me what the Acronym BACWA stands for? I have tried looking for it on search engines and not found anything other than Bay Area etc.
Mannie De Saxe
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Don’t fret Mannie you’d never have found it. I think it may just be somebody here that has coined it for Banning And Censoring Wowser Agenda.
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Banning And Censoring Wowserist(?) Agenda(?)
Hypo and DQ know for sure. Why do I have to do everything myself on this blog?
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the BACWA is everywhere and I wonder why it’s antithesis The Hippie Generation ethic has faded – be free to do anything just so long as you don’t hurt anybody. give a flower to a cop etc., and of course their progenitor Mrs Patrick Campbell “as long as they don’t frighten the horses”. goes off chanting Peace Now Freedom Now etc.
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I inherited (usurped) it from DQ.It saves time.
I coined a temporary term of BINTS which floats around here somewhere.
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So, you plagiarised it from DQ…
As for BINTS, were you to live an Arabic society and called people’s wives “BINTS”, you would need very quickly to depart in one piece, before you left with severe anatomical damage.
What was this other thing you came up with, concerning a less appealing pastime involving the licking of reproductive material from someone’s bum?
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I am laying no claim to inventing the elitist practise of ‘felching’, merely alerting others of it’s rapidly expanding network of participants.
There is (apparently) a form which involves animals.A driller(mining) told me about it.
Of course they do read a lot of Picture mags,with all sorts of low brow content.
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Thanks Hypo (pulls queezy face).
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Banning and Censoring Wowser Agenda; and hence BACWAs.
I claim full responsibility for it. Started out as cabwa back in 2011.
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http://www.abbreviations.com/BACWA
There you go! It’s official
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Great,
Now we will have to widen the doorways!
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I think these ‘uber Mums’ she talks about are strawwomen. Just looking at some of the comments around today on Chrissie Swan (poor woman) there are plenty by blokes who think they know best for Ms Swan and her child as well as women – how does LR know they are mothers?. I wonder why LR chose to focus on mothers?
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I did wonder about that.
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I wonder why you (and others) focussed on her, focussing on mothers?
😉
Oh shit!
I wonder why I am focussing on you, focussing on her, focussing on mothers?
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I wonder who wrote the book of love?
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I wah wah wah wah wonder.
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I didn’t know it had been written yet
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Apparently Tony Abbott wrote it between extinguishing bush fires and saving us from climate change crap.
And we all know it must be true.It’s written down.
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Because it bothered me. Why else does anybody focus on anything? 🙂
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Well its sure confused me. No doubt no enlightenment will be forthcoming, to silence the alternative voices and viewpoints.
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JW,
I was focussing on Mindy’s focus.Whose focus are you focusing on with this comment?
It’s just that I’m finding it harder and harder staying focussed!
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I was focussing on yours, Hypo cos I didn’t know you were focussing on Mindy’s. See, this is what starts wars.
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Aha, a fauxcus.
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Oh, very very good! I tips my hat
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Believe it or not, am not unsympathetic to this (Mindy) post.
I presume (Dr) Rosewarne would not have been so rash as to suggest female criticism of Swann without her actually having examples.
But, for the reference to additional criticism coming from the “Kochie” side, that is, in the end a “given” and thanks for the reminder.
There will always be a Sandilands or Jones or some other reactionary to take up, full throat, on these issues with the intention of further muddying the public’s perceptions of them and the commentary following often comes from a tabloid demographic, loudly echoing the ignorance of the dross fed out by the given Megaphone.
I stick by my comment above that Rosewarne is actually trying to get people out of of this empty headed shoot from the lip type of tabloid “criticism”, rather than as a subjective,pathologically driven hit against other women.
She focussed on mothers,or aspects to do with it in our society, because this is in the headlines and an exemplar of what often turns up here, for example, as a clue to how society is operating. There is a question raised and people are interested in working it out, what it means, since it’s been raised in media..
Next week, it will be the unemployed, or ethnic people,or gays or some other new group of scapegoats on the tabloid carousel, as the headlines change.
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This is about bitchiness. That is to say a form of bullying that ought to stop.
Chrissie’s smoking habits are between her, her doctor and those around her.
I don’t think any of us mind somebody, preferably a medical expert, stating the risks. What we should mind is people personalising matters cruelly and unnecessarily, by using holding up a public figure for ridicule.
I suppose I ought to be surprised and appalled that it is other women who are treating Chrissie like this, but sadly I’m not and it is a real pity. What we’re witnessing in terms of some trying to shift social attitudes away from things they disapprove*, isn’t often enough matched with shifting social mores away from the spiteful self righteous attitudes women in particular seem to have to tolerate from one another.
I’m not sure that Lauren Rosewarne wasn’t trying to attack that. And yes it may be divisive, but like any ongoing social discourse there are always going to be parties to the debate with whom we disagree either about their agendas or their approaches….MTR comes to mind.
I do feel that it was a faux pas of Rosewarne to bring feminism into it though. It were as if to say that if women manage to get the patriarchy off their backs then the race is only half run because then they’ve to deal with the preponderance of overbearing women trying to tell them what do do!
It’s enough to make you take up the fags!
*They may even be quite right to disapprove. But they’re doing so in the wrong way.
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“I ought to be surprised and appalled that it is other women who are treating Chrissie like this”
Well it’s not just women, but I don’t think that was what you meant? I agree it would be nice if women could be nicer to each other, but then it would be nice if we could all accept each other’s choices – where that choice didn’t directly affect us adversely. Chrissie Swan smoking in her car doesn’t hurt me, so I’m happy for her to make her own choices. If she wants to vote in a Liberal Government on the other hand…
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Mindy,
Is this not a great opportunity for her to step to one side as the host of her show, and sit beneath the spotlight, while her usual audience and guests discuss passive smoking and the effects on children, smoking in cars etc.
Then this can all be put to bed,
Glass houses and all that?
Front foot.Knock out blow, etc
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I have never actually watched her show, so I don’t know. Maybe, but would a bloke be expected to do the same? Did anyone ever ask Kochie to do that? As far as I can see all he did was whinge that having a 5 days a week show in the morning prime slot meant he had difficulty having his opinion heard.
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I was being ‘partially facetious.
However there may be merit in her seeing just how tough the bullies are, when they need to show up as real people.The problem is she risks more bullying if she comes out swinging.And I do believe that women judge the swans of the world more harshly than men do.And I believe that ‘perfect mothers’ probably make up the lions share.And that is purely based on a very quick glimpse,gathered before the glazing over kicked in.
There is so much of this outraged woman /mother crap around, (it’s an industry) that any real issues are devalued amongst the dross which fights for front position.
How many gigabytes of data,megawatts of power is wasted per annum, I wonder?
Tea(storm)cup
Please feel free to ignore my view if having one is gender based.It seems to be the way it is on the Drum, according to some.
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I suspect there are a vocal few, not mentioning any names, who give everyone else a bad name.
I agree, if she gives this oxygen then people will just find more things to criticise. It would be interesting but essentially pointless to put some of the bullies under the spotlight. The vicious circle would just go on.
Everyone is entitled to their opinion. Everyone else is entitled to think everyone else’s opinion is crap. That’s what makes it fun.
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I agree that everyone is entitled to think everyone else’s opinion is crap, but it stops being fun when so many people seem to be inclined to think that!
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True. I’d be much happier if everyone would only agree with me.
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It’s uncanny that three people who are never wrong have gravitated to the same place/time.And reached the same conclusion!!
Shall we buy lotto ticket between us?
Don’t answer. I know, you know, I am right.
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I’ll agree with you, sweetheart..
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Good one, now we have to split it 4 ways.
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WAIT! Did you say that she smoked in her CAR!
I don’t mind what she does to her own body, but to ruin a perfectly good car by impregnating it with filthy vile smelling cigarette smoke is an injustice up with which we should not put. Okay maybe if it was a Hyundai or some other such inferior model. But never the Kingswood…Okay!
~
On a more serious note thanks for pointing out the baying chorus of the righteous and indignant contained men. And thanks kindly for recognising my intent was benign. I really only smuggled that point in there to critique Roswarne’s slip up as regards feminism by way of comparison with the problem of patriarchy. I was being quite un-ironic in so doing. There’s considerable hypocrisy in any situation where people feel justified in taking it upon themselves to be hurtful to others when the message could so easily have been conveyed without personalising it.
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So are you saying that as a woman there is a “right” way for me to express my opinion because the situation involves another woman?
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Depends what company you’re in, qb 2013.
Even more so if you are a bloke talking about another bloke and the blokes around some where and can pulverise you if you aren;t careful.
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Where as the worst case scenario for the female equivalent scenario ,usually involves a struggling rabbit and really hot water?
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No I’m say that as a person there’s a right way to express an opinion when the situation involves another person. Sometimes the point you want to be making pertains to what you’d do or what you think others should know are the risks from certain things, all of which can be conveyed without pillorying a public figure.
Rosewarne in my view should not have even brought feminism into it since I don’t think being kind or unkind in our speech towards others is in any way a gender biased kind of thing.
Here’s the thing to think about: I’m an pseudonymous person on somebody else’s blog who doesn’t know you from Cain, and your very first approach to me more or less assumes I might be saying something unkind and slightly misogynistic. I think you want to try again with a better set of assumptions. Because I never said any such thing.
What I did make an example of was how this comes out as disunity among the “sisterhood” if you do try and misconstrue it through the prism of the fallacy that every issue involving women is a feminist issue by definition. It were as if women even in their own eyes were incapable of holding a debate as individuals. And I think that’s basically sexist because it paints a stereotypical view of women as weak.
You don’t immediately come off as weak to me, so maybe you simply ought to either know better, or try and think better of others before you make abrasive comments like that again.
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Actually am starting back to Jennifer Wilson’s view, or at least incorporating it, if she is saying that, as a result of the conditions and difficulties facing mums, particularly inexperienced and young ones, these feel the need to vent against “sloppiness” (eg Cigs), as to a vocation they value.
And so the media comes along, misrepresents both sides for a cheap story and the devil take the hindmost.
It is wrong for the media to bait people like this, surely?
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More to the point I think is the fact that it is wrong to use a public figure as bait to create a controversy that would not exist in the case of any similar but anonymous individual.
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BTW, WTF is Chrissy Swann? 🙂
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Festive poultry for the rich?
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That remains the best of the answers to DQ’s question.
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Am amazed.
You DON’T know who Chrissie Swann is??
Nor do I a lot and most others here aren’t interested either, it seems.
However…
It appears that Chrissie Swann is a refugee from Big Brother.
Looking a little like a younger Gina Rinehart, she apparently has proceeded on a perception of authenticity; is more your real life woman than the usual parade of cupcakes on tabloid teev.
So it’s based on (her) personality instead, real or imagined and the (alleged) overthrow of sexual stereotyping, with her forging an emotional link with what we might think of as “Western subs battlers”, who form the audience base.
And typical Westie, she’s been sprung sneaking a cig whilst “in the club” (publicity stunt?), although we are not sure if she was wearing trackies at the time.
To tell the truth, am not sure what station she is on, probably ten, but any thing south of SBS am not really interested in, so can’t go further, without help…
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Not interested in what goes on channel Ten,who bloody cares about Big Brother, when I just saw the last episode of my favourite ABC show The Hour….please BBC make some more, it was perfect, ten out ten for me.
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I don’t know who either of ’em are 🙂
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Sure we get that you look down your nose a bit at commercial media, who doesn’t when most of their content is such crap. But ignorance is still ignorance even if it is blissful.
Bob Ellis enforces a very good rule on his sight in relation to reviewing films; if you haven’t seen it, you have no business commenting. I think that’s fair.
I have seen Swan on TV her show is called Can of Worms. It is entertaining and thoughtful even if they do tend to distil serious issues down to a fairly lowbrow benign kind of level so that everyone can still be all smiley at the end of the debate. And I’ve also googled a few things about the smoking furore before offering any less informed opinion about this.
What gets up my nose is the phenomenon of less informed insensitivity towards her. Some people see a fat opinionated woman whose original claim to fame was in reality TV, and figure her as a fitting target for their bile. I see an intelligent and articulate woman who seems happy in her own skin, knows her limitations and carries herself rather pleasingly. I look at the content of what she says, and I conclude that it might not be a bad thing to give her a fair go.
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Just looking at her picture, I get an idea of a commonsense woman, down to earth and likable..an .occasional cigarette has not harmed anyone, nor has one extra glass of Shiraz when watching The Hour….we all know that anything in excess is a bad thing…
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Yes it’s my old favourite… that’s what too much means, isn’t it?
Sorry if I seemed brusque earlier. I had been dealing with some comments I really felt we’re very judgemental and I really dislike those kinds of attitudes.
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“”…you look down your nose at…commercial media”.
hudgod, which “you” do you mean, there is a veritable stampede of sheepers away from tabloid teev and as you yourself concede, usually for good reason.
Do you not think most of us would have at least tried to sit down and watch shows like Big Brother with an open mind?
Why do you imagine we are here, instead?
I personally have said nothing against Chrissie Swann, as a person; nor have the others, that I can see.
It’s more a problem with media in general and what seems to be wastage on a grand scale in the service of disinformation, in a starving world.
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I stopped looking down my nose at commercial TV yonks ago.I found just looking down my nose was more entertaining.
Whilst not claiming to be a clairvoyant, most of the shows fail me at the promo stage.
I play mainstream voyeur to see people squirm now and then, and to ready myself for public outrage, but FFS every second show is reality TV, and 80% of them are staged.
If a society is a product of what we watch and we get the the worst of OS crap, how can we avoid sliding down the shitter?
Once enough punters have handguns we will be down town Houston Texas in no time.
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Of course I include myself in the cavalcade of Big Brother detractors, and that disqualifies me from commenting on Swan’s involvement with that particular program. All I’m really saying in relation to others here and elsewhere who you may have missed is that although I think some of the outrage against the “Mummy Mafia” may be confected, some of it clearly isn’t as I found out myself this morning. And that was what I was taking a swipe at.
Also if I may…. I find it confusing when you reply “I personally have never said…..”, because I’m pretty sure I didn’t address my comments to you. You’re always more than welcome to chime in because you usually have something constructive to contribute, but it helps if things are kept in their correct context.
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Rhetorical flourish, hudsongodfrey.. as it happens, I’ve come to basically the same conclusions over all this as yourself.
Elsewhere, the Intergalactic Planning Sub-Committee sits in preparedness for consideration of a Volgon submission that an ultraspace bypass be constructed on a direct line that would entail the demolition of an insignificant speck of grime inhabited by egregiously primitive life-forms who regard this dilapidated tenement of a planet, Earth, not just as home,but in their misguided vainglory, some sort of hub of universal civilisation.
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42
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Meet you at the Cafe..
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Milliways?
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Isn’t there a Tea-house at the end of the universe?
Perhaps a Tea Party is in order.Oh shit ‘two’ late.
I’m off for an Intergalactic Gargle Blaster.>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>!
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So long, and thanks for all the fish.
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Elvis died at 42, and his mum.
Does that mean both of them were six year old dogs?
(Nothin’ but “Hound-dogs?)
Are ‘dogs’ the secret to life, the universe and everything?
I mean personally I find the concept entirely believable and very appropriate.
Dog being an anagram of god.
Can dog owners claim religious status and all the tax breaks?
Can they discriminate against non dog-owners and more to the point cat owners,given cats would be the anti-christ.
How many dogs does Abbott own?
( I found a family portrait which I think shows the Abbotts with Christopher Pyne in an angora cardigan here
http://images.smh.com.au/2009/12/05/947771/margieabbott-420×0.jpg )
Does Pell?
Does the Pope?
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Ah, but did he die? I’m sure I saw him recently, doesn’t look a day over 77. 🙂
Pope Sanctimonious I may need a dog or two in Rome, as his little mate Abbott will stay in Australia, at least until he is rolled after losing again in September, if not before.
If Pyne is the pampered poodle, which pooch is Abbott? An overgrown attack chihuahua with delusions of grandeur, perhaps?
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After Gina Rinehart, perhaps we have gone off
“..a fat opinionated woman whose original claim to fame was in reality TV..” .
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No I don’t think so. I think we’ve gone off Gina Rinehart because her remarks have been risible. What Swan has done and is doing is as I said admitting her imperfections and helping others by sharing how hard it really is to stop smoking.
Swan’s reaction may be spin, for all we know, but the real question raised to begin with here was about divisive language and I think also about the willingness of some people to pillory public figures. There’s kind of meanness among Swan’s detractors that makes them look small-minded, and when you think about it that is a problem because it does nothing to help their cause. We actually wind up more endeared to the person who’s doing the wrong thing but trying not to.
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A timely gift.
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Wasn’t it brilliant? Did Freddie die? Is there another series? What will I do on Thursday nights now?
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He was still breathing…according to Dr Gerard he’ll survive, he has to, he was my star of the show where everyone was brilliant…
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Who is Freddie?
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Where’s Wally?
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LOL I didn’t know either.
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Thank you, Jennifer. Embarrassing, but you ‘fessed up.
You have become a shining example to the rest of us backsliders.
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Well I just think it’s a shame that the benefits of smoking have been overshadowed by the drawbacks, through people using tobacco irresponsibly.
A really good cigarette truly is, as Dorian Gray’s nicer friend said, an exquisite pleasure. Unlike cigars, the practice of marketing cigarettes on the basis of the quality of their ingredients seems to have fallen off, But I actually prefer cigarettes, both due to the fact that, while perhaps less refined in taste, they’re not nearly as strong as cigars (smoke one of those bastards and you’ll be able to taste it for days afterwards), and also the act of inhaling brings the added benefits of a mind-sharpening nicotine hit a slightly giddy feeling associated with the carbon monoxide starving your brain of oxygen, and the scintillating feeling of committing an act of self harm that doesn’t leave an inconvenient scar.
The trouble is that the abuse of tobacco has been normalised by people over-indulging in it, and by cigarette companies promoting such reprehensible, anti-social behaviour. Look, if I was drinking to a level that caused me to have to skive of work to indulge, to stink like it constantly, and for it to have a detrimental effect on my health and lifespan, they’d put me away.
What we need to do is to reclaim cigarette smoking as the luxury it is. Emphasise quality and moderation, as is done in the world of fine wine appreciation; jack up the price to, say, $5 per stick so that only the wealthiest or most dysfunctional could smoke at hazardous levels; and affirm the notion that in a secular society, the experience of thoughtfully-enjoyed physical pleasure is the height of meaningful virtue, and the fulfillment of the very purpose of existence!
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Millions of sinful folk have gone into cataleptic withdrawals just on the thought of your solution, Jam.
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It has the added advantage of the crims turning on the rich by way of the smokers, amongst them.(Natural selection in the short term) Which will see more body guards being hired.A positive solution to unemployment, and a way to use up the glut of steroids, which is hitting the street now that the footy clubs are throwing it over the fence.
We could jack up the fine for dropping butts to $1000 and also have a deposit scheme on them making a butt worth $5, helping out the street dwellers,no end.
If we make carrying cigarette lighters and mathces illegal we can have Salvos run ‘light up’ booths in the shopping precincts, where ciggies are custom lit, for the smokers convenience.
You Sammy are a genius.
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Bah, I’d only be a genius if I could pre-empt the depths of cynicism that are required to keep us all on the straight and narrow, Hypo.
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Would that turn you into an evil genius?
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Overshadowed by the drawbacks ahahahahahaha
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Drawback? I have to say I’d prefer o kiss someone’s vagina more than I would a Cohiba.
But I’m all alone tonight, so…
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Oh no! Some green bat-winged creature read my mind. Butchyeah, what he(?) said! For some reason my Cohiba just isn’t quite as fascinating as the alternative…
xx
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Welcome to the hotel trollafornia,
“On a dark desert highway, cool wind in my hair
Warm smell of cohibas, rising up through the air”
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It appears you’ve an attack of the Spambots today!
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BINTs
Bullies Intimidated by Non-extistent Threats
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The mid eastern meaning is somewhat different. I never cease to be amazed at what I learn from this site.
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Hypo, can you please publish an AL?
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Say what?
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Acronym List!
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Actually some of the more obscure ones are hot off the press and are pretty much suitable for ‘in-house only’, used when trolls etc visit.I might get around to doing the list , but I will send it to JW so the regulars who want to know can know, by contacting her.
I think it’s nice to have a little mysterious internal language.
I’m happy to share with the humans who post here.
OM? I have become an elitist idealist.
DHYBIWPFOP
(Don’t hold your breath,I will probably forget or procrastinate)
Did you have any particular ‘A’ you wanted to know?
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Back when they were doing YUPPIES and DINKS I really liked the idea of LOMBARDS, do you know what that one standard for?
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Nope.What be LOMBARDS, HG?
Being a West Aussie (white Aussie etc) with no kids is not exactly an endearing acronym.
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Lots Of Money But A Real Dickhead.
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It’s not like I didn’t try!
http://www.abbreviations.com/AL
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Thanks for the site link….
Hopefully there’ll be a small addition to their lists soon 🙂
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As we can see from Hypo’s link, there are zillions of acronyms. If we want to be understood, rather than just conversing with our in-crowd, we need to set out the full term first and then use the acronym : thus
“Banning and Censoring Wowser Agenda” becomes BACWA
and “Acronyms List” becomes AL,
as distinct from all the other ALs out there.
Some want a private language to show how “in” they are, but I went past that after undergraduate days. I want to be understood.
The unenlightened cannot be enlightened unless they can understand what we are saying. 🙂
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You are so right, DQ, only yesterday Gerard asked what the f**k does POV means… Must be ‘point of view’… after all we are all busting with our points of views these days, aren’t we.I did not know what BACWA meant,and refused to Google.
Signed The Unenlightened
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Doug you’ve been one of the main culprits using BACWA, and I don’t blame you. It saves typing, but also it does so in a rather uniquely modern kind of way, because many acronyms are coined as are what we might call “proper words” where there is need of some term to convey a new and particular meaning.
I suppose LOL and OMG started out as a kind of “in” language but fewer people these days would be unaware of their meaning than of dozens of other jargon terms like hyperspace, torque or the ubiquitous programmatic specificity!
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OH!
We’re enlightening them.Why didn’t someone say?
Is that what they call it over at Tabletalk?
Is there a time frame to this enlightenment?
Glad to hear you gave up the ‘vocal encryptions’ at Grad school DQ
Not all of us are so far ahead of the game.
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Hey, does anyone know what this Gulfia thing resurrecting the ancient Mumbrella thread is supposed to be about?
I find myself transported back nearly a year, to the height of the kids used in advertising aspect of the long argument between pro and anti MTR’s on what could or should constitute child sexualisation.
Hudgod and Ray, and Mindy, are involved in a deep argument over whether ad catalogues and the like deliberately pose children in overtly sexual poses.
For the second time in two days I’d have to agree with Mindy, at least in one aspect: yes of course they DO pose kids in such poses and its silly to deny it.
Yet I’d have to say, given all the junk mail that passes through here, that I never sought out an ad with a kid in it, NO erotic value: relax Mindy, no one remotely like me would have their jollies off on such advertising.
My concern would be, does it encourage socialisation of kids ( and their mums and dads) into limited life choices; are boys and men reinforced to self limiting John Wayne masculinity or women and girls, self limiting cupcake femininity, by a constant flow of low grade media material?
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Spam, I think.
S E C U R I T Y !!!!!!!!!!!!
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BTW The latest Bandaid ad features kids running around in their bathers at the beach.
It annoys the crap out of me.
So can I ask for it to be banned on that score,or do I need to make up some theory that it is unleashing the hounds of paedophilia and turning grown men into child stalkers,first?
Should we just suppress all images of children, everywhere?
Better make all this rhetorical or I will get skunted for running off the topic again.
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Well, equally you could ask why it necessary that so much of media has to be bloody junk of one form or another, but yeah, guess so, Hypo.
Perhaps some shithead is trying to restart strife between Jenny and Melinda Tankard Reist?
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I figure in this day and age,that that sort of stirring would probably leave some sort of digital finger print, somewhere, but I guess anything is possible.
My guess is that it is a troll,
but why does a bloke called Greg Egan get mentioned, in the text I wonder?
Possible translations through the weird mixed up,number infested text =
“It makes me vaguely cites peesnr The e-rotational Greg Egan.Pour repeat what is said above, it is true that Others have e tempting.”
“C7a me vaguely of peesnr e0 cite9 The rotational Greg Egan.Pour re9pe9ter what is said above, it is true that e0 E7A have tempting.”
A search of Greg Egan gives us:
http://www.australianlawyersdirectory.com.au/6049/egan-gregory
from here
http://www.google.com.au/#hl=en&tbo=d&output=search&sclient=psy-ab&q=greg+egan+barrister+brisbane&oq=greg+egan&gs_l=hp.1.6.0l10.8598.11113.1.18265.9.9.0.0.0.0.1759.6466.7-1j3.4.0.les%3B..0.0…1c.1.2.hp.nkiWoOismGE&psj=1&bav=on.2,or.r_gc.r_pw.r_qf.&bvm=bv.42080656,d.dGI&fp=bca179790ae44dcf&biw=1280&bih=855
after initially throwing in the words Greg Egan.to Google.
The Name of the poster links to someone called Gulfia-Gabbasova/
Perhaps we ignore it?
JW might know.
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Okay well done for posting responses on a different thread. It probably won’t be noticed. The hint is Greg Egan, though not the lawyer, but the author of a book called permutation city exploring the themes of the difference between a computer simulation of a person and a “real” person.
Does everybody twig to what’s going on now 🙂
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Real People?
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Yeah I know….Weird!
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I liked Max Headroom
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Where were you on the evening of on the evening of November 22, 1987?
You didn’t watch Eraserhead all the way through 27 times did you? That’s what I’d called really weird!
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You are getting all too cryptic for me, I’m starting to realise that I’m not meant for this blogging world: here it’s all acronyms, on Ellis it’s Broomes and Hildes trolling and on the Drum unhappy nutters with seventy pseudos… 🙂
Signed Unenlightened
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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Max_Headroom_broadcast_signal_intrusion
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0074486/
There you are all enlightened now 🙂
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More ‘dog’ evidence here
http://www.abc.net.au/news/2013-02-08/mining-tax-details-released/4508632
(Scroll halfway down the page. See the heading?)
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Helvi,
you are mostly already enlightened , by the sound of it.
😉
Don’t you remember Max Headroom?
Google it and you may see a clip.
It will probably not hit the spot though.It was a time and place thing.
It came out of the blue.
The show was almost cult like at the time.(For a smallish band of fans)
Like most good things, it did not last long enough.
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Good one Hypo… you took the words right out of my mouth.
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Latest developments: Swan confesses tobacco addiction, snappers allegedly paid $55,000 for incriminating pics.
Is it” real”, or a series of publicity stunts, or what?
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She went on big brother,which was a foot in the door to Can of Worms.
Whether the latest stuff is connected I think the public is entitled to be cynical enough to think it is.
Given every day we get closer to being a wall to wall coal mine, on a boiling planet I think I am going to file it under, “poor girl, but her pain is self inflicted”.
Everyone in Australia knows by now the fair go is dead.We are like pirahna on a rotting carcass, when it comes to this stuff.
Having said that I think she should really minimise harm to her children.And if she smoked one fag a day ( as was claimed originally) she would be a walking miracle.
Smokers are not lepers, and nor are TV hosts heroes.But we could do without the bullshit and spin.It’s not making it any easier for her and her kids.
I guess some of that BS and spin must be her own,too.
None of that of course licenses her loudest critics,whose baseline attack is dubious to say the least, and probably comes from a source of hypocrisy and feigned concern for the kids.
Plus there’s the usual home brand, zombie words from the pencil-dicked, shit breathed,pus-brained trolloids we find three feet thick on the net.
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I’m pretty sure the photos started the story not the other way around.
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http://www.abc.net.au/news/2013-02-12/future-fund-buys-more-tobacco-shares/4514280?section=justin
Puts Swan’s habit into perspective,doesn’t it?
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