Typically the fat owl doesn't bother to do any research or any actual thinking when indulging in a little hysteria, perhaps because the owl prefers his 'tuck' to actual work (he also doesn't mention his stable mate Tim Blair first came up with the angle, but then Akerman isn't above a little professional filching, a veritable Fagin of opinion-making).
Now far be it from me to indulge the stupidities of PETA - I like to shoot things and eat meat - but when Akerman writes about fly strike and merinos, he evidently hasn't bothered to read the likes of the CSIRO's C. Lee and A. D. Fisher's article for the Australian Veterinary Journal, a short abstract of which you can read here. There's plenty more where that came from, but when it comes to a choice between rationality and hysteria, Akerman is always up there with the hysterics (which is why he makes such a perfect alternate Bizarro world equivalent of PETA).
As usual, the fat owl doesn't consider that there might be cost-effective alternatives to mulesing, so long as he can deliver a joke about empty-headed fashionistas and animal liberationists not hugging merinos in inner urban salons and cafes where latte is served (me, I love sheep the way Gene Wilder does, now that's some country loving).
It'd be fun to know when the fat owl was last in country, shearing a sheep, applying the tar, or better still, killing one and carving it up (home butchered lamb, well selected, is by far the tastiest - I was hoeing in only yesterday, while back in the heartland). The fat owl doesn't look like he's moved out of the club in yonks in his search for a roast leg, let alone a choice one.
The fat owl rounds the column out with a joke about the Herald's climate cultists and Balmain residents at the bottom of the fairy garden, after the good news that the king tide due in the harbour failed to match predictions. Presumably the fat owl has attention deficit syndrome and forgot about the king tide that caused a seawall to collapse and exposed the foundations of a Neutral Bay apartment block last December. (see here for a follow up story).
The joke is that Rupert Murdoch spent a lot of time in his Boyer lectures explaining how we needed to be better educated to face the future, and then hands over prime opinion space in The Daily Terror to a fat owl who prefers a cheap cliched joke to a rational thought. Some education, some future. Thanks Rupert, we know who to blame for Akerman (and his political doppelganger Barnaby Joyce) taking on the mantle of super scientists and super experts.
Is there a rational thinking person left at work as The Daily Telegraph churns out its tabloid crap? For god's sake, give me a latte, even though I hate coffee. Better still, throw some rum in that old chum, we're cruising for a bruising and the fat owl makes for an alarmingly happy cheerleader. Yarooh garooar.
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