Saturday, February 14, 2009

Miranda Devine, Clint Eastwood, westerns, cars, Jeremy Clarkson, chuckle headed loons and cheap shots

In honor of Miranda the Devine, and her love of Clint Eastwood, we've named this week in our house Budd Boetticher week, after the bull fighting director of a series of neat little westerns in the nineteen fifties starring Randolph Scott, recently released by Sony on dvd with commentaries by Marty, Clint and others (and nicely capped, it should be said, by Sam Peckinpah's homage in Guns in the Afternoon, though sadly that's not in the package but is on a hard to find dvd).

Of course to like Boetticher, you have to be a buffy buff like John Flaus (who you ask? You philistines, have you never heard of 3RRR?). I wouldn't expect Miranda the Devine to stray into this turf though she purports to like all things Clint. 

One thing's for sure, those shows know that a woman's place is in the kitchen, the bedroom, and the home. And if she ain't doing the cooking, she'd better maintain a respectful silence. Sorry Miranda, but you talk too much, you write too much, you jibber and you jabber. I mean, I can stand a woman if she's like Joan Crawford in Johnny Guitar, but you ain't that woman (now that's my kind of woman, a woman's woman). You just love making a public spectacle of yourself, when you should be shutting your mouth because it's going to be a fine day.

This is all by way of noting that Miranda the Devine just loves Jeremy Clarkson for his disrespectful ways, and his jokes about one eyed Gordon Brown and greenies. In fact most of her column Unafraid of greenies killjoys and meat pies is a cheap recycling of Clarkson jokes (no royalties there old chum). That said, she did tootle off to the show in Sydney (which surely must be a better thing to do than take her sons to a WWF wrestling match), but how do I know she's a fraud?

Not once does she mention the car she drives herself in her column. Sure she mentions Eastwood and Eric Bana's car of choice and the crowd's love of Holdens and Falcons. But not a bleat about her own. WTF? Does she drive an Audi - a favourite target of Clarkson's and rightly so - because when I shacked up with my partner, the one condition was that the Audi had to go. Four rings, and we all know what that means.

The Devine can't drive a Volvo, can she? No, no, not that. Maybe a nice little hairdresser car like a Mazda 5? Not a little beep beep car? Surely not. An old Mercedes? Come on Miranda, you're always full of blather. Tell us! Nope, nah, nada, zip, zilch, silence. In a world where you are your car, it seems Miranda the Devine is a nothing, a poseur, a pretender, a snob without any actual clothes.

How can she write a line like killjoy car haters eat your hearts out and not mention the car she drives? (Okay I drive the Mazda 6 souped up sports edition, and if only I had the money, I'd kit it out so the rice boys of Marrickville would come at the sight of me driving down the street, but sob, yes, I know it's a failure, a pose disaster. I also know it's likely to be the last gas guzzler I drive, even if it delivers good mileage, because times are changing, ever so slowly. I also happen to own a bicycle, which I think was a truly marvellous Victorian invention, even if people like Devine make life hell for cyclists on the roads in Sydney. A little contradictory? Not really, and  you get by in life better if you don't happen to be a bigot or blame 'government' for everything wrong with the world).

So there's the challenge Miranda. I know you like WWF wrestling, and I know you're supposed to like cars. But until you go into details about what you own and how you love it, you're not a petrol head, you're just a mush head, given to the usual cheap shots at all your pet hates - like cyclists and greenies (you really should see a Freudian psychiatrist at some point in your life and let it all hang out, it'll be good for you, really good). From the way you write it seems like a greenie couldn't chuckle along with Chopper Read. What a chuckle headed loon you are.

As one character in a Boetticher western said, Doc, if you'd been tending bar as long as I have you wouldn't expect as much out of the human race. Change that to reading newspaper columnists, and you've got it in one. And if I catch anyone shedding a tear, they'd better have their hands over their balls, because they'll catch a good Joan Crawford kicking.

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