Saturday, March 21, 2009

Neil Breen, those nudie pics again, Janet Albrechtsen, Christopher Pearson, and the end of the zombie model

Sunday's always a quiet day on loon pond, as the loons go about their business on the sabbath communing with nature, or having quiet chats with their assorted gods, and thank the lord for that.

Over there is Janet Albrechtsen, having a quiet word about the vile, despicable Marcus Einfeld and his sentence in her column Personality judge pays the right price.

Except that the subbie seems to have got the header wrong. It's not the right price, not the right price at all. Janet's furious the judge took into account, as a mitigating factor in sentencing Einfeld, the former judge's treatment at the hands of the press.

Your honour, that stinks, she says, and quite right too. Let's cut out that Portia faces life crap about the gentle quality of the mercy having been strained through a colander, like the way the rain droppeth from the heavens, or some such garbage. A personality judge, a human rights campaigner, a results orientated judge like that Einfeld deserves all we can hand out to him. 

I'm thinking of proposing to Janet that we bring back the treatment dished out to that traitor Guy Fawkes, which involved hanging, drawing and quartering, including a little castration and disembowelling while still alive, and then putting the head on a pike to remind all of the deserved fate of perfidious lefties. Well said Janet.

As if The Australian hadn't already had a lengthy say with Chris Merritt's Tough sentence should have been harsher. Well done Chris, it's quite right and proper and exceedingly Christian of you to remind us of the virtues of an exemplary flogging, and some time in the public stocks before moving on to Janet's final solution. Let's make sure justice is truly politicized in this country!

And over there in his very own special corner is Christopher Pearson, this week rabbiting on about indigenous history and the works of Australian anthropologist Bill Stanner, the main point seeming to be to prove that Pearson knows much more than Robert Manne, who wrote the introductory essay to a new book re-printing Stanner's work (Stanner's Aboriginal essays show their age). 

Pearson manages to get through a lot of feckless waffle without once mentioning the Howard government's intervention in the Northern Territory, or straying into the history of the Catholic church's efforts with indigenous people (we've long given up expecting a straight answer on his position on aborting nine year olds carrying twins as the result of rape). If you want an example of a white man writing about other white men writing about "the aboriginal problem" or "the aboriginal question" or "the aboriginal issue", guess this is as good an example of the twentieth century colonial anthropological mind set as it gets in the new century. You'll learn a lot about weltschmerz, and other pretentious drivel worthy of an existentially torn leftie, but blacks looking for genuine reality based insight should go elsewhere (Or maybe they and we should just read Robert Manne).

And over there, why it's Miranda Devine, and she's tackling the ideological promoters of "whole language" teaching methods in The crazy politics of learning to read. Well just as a stopped clock gets the time right twice a day, so we can allow Miranda the Devine to have her moment in the sun valiantly battling those loons without any hectoring from us (but then we grew up in an era when there was no contradiction between learning to read, and developing a love of reading).

So who else is squawking out on the pond? Well there's always Piers Akerman and gadfly Tim Blair, but as usual, the weekend is Blair's chance to prove in long form column that whatever sensa huma he has, it's really strange. Comparing the democratic right to march and the right to public assembly to the right to kill yourself at great expense to the public purse by smoking is such an hilarious comedy routine. But Tim, Christopher Buckley did it so much better and so much funnier than you in Thank You for Smoking. All the same, thank you for trying.

Tim's probably a little disconsolate from having live blogged the Queensland election in a half hearted way, only to have to tell his small band of assembled loons that the socialist ogre Bligh - a woman no less - made it back in with a relatively handsome majority, considering the circumstances, with proceedings ending "kind of quickly", after his prediction, preserved in digital amber, that observers wouldn't know the result on the night.

Ah well better to have tipped in vain than not tippled at all. Guess it's back to having fun with Islamic decapitations.

So who else is out on loon pond, promenading and cawing in our cavalcade of loons?

Well it would have to be the Sunday Terror's pathetic editorial The pics that caused a storm, which purports to explain, justify and apologise all in one for the Terror's publishing of the Pauline Hanson photos. The queasy explanations and half-assed rationalizations are wretched, and meaningless, since unless they are accompanied by editor Neil Breen's resignation, they're just vacuous words on a page.

Instead the Terror bravely turns over a large portion of the letters page to the Hanson controversy, in typical tabloid fashion having its cake and eating it too.

And in classic tabloid fashion, the Terror has turned its full and righteous anger on Jack Johnson, the man who supplied the nude photos, while issuing a full apology to Pauline Hanson. Yep, it's all there in Pauline Hanson nude photos were a con.

There's just one problem here. Jack Johnson might have been a conman, but he didn't publish the photos. The Sunday Terror did, for no good reason. How's this for cheek, after saying Johnson has lost all right to be considered a classic battler. He has also lost any integrity he may have had.

Well if ever there were a pot and a kettle situation here, Neil Breen is in it. Perhaps he can explain to everybody how he thinks he's retained any integrity through this farcical bout of gutter trawling? Which just keeps on giving more copy.

You see it wouldn't have been a good day for the Terror if it couldn't milk the story a little further. That's why we get another page following up the identity of the nude girl If it's not Pauline Hanson, who is the nude girl?

The story goes into two reports commissioned by the Terror involving experts who concluded that the images were of Pauline Hanson, along with other experts who concluded that they were not.

The point being, who cares? It was a grubby, wretched, cynical exercise, and this current bout of breast beating, apologizing, guessing the identity of the doppelganger, publishing readers' letters, and stringing out the fuss is just more of the same.

Yep, Neil Breen, you're by far the loudest, most vulgar and shameless loon on loon pond this week. Integrity? Is that the word meaning two feasts at a rotting carcass are better than one?

That's why it's so cheering to turn to The Age and read Rachel Wells' intense study of the problems of grumpy, grim faced models in Seriously folks, lighten up a little.

After reading it, you might wonder where your brain went, but at the same time you'll be tremendously relieved to read the poignant, exciting and remarkable story of a model who actually curtsied and smiled on the catwalk.

Stop the presses, hold the front page. The 'zombie' look in modeling is now officially dead. Fashion is fun.

Well at least it's better than reading the sanctimonious, pious, hypocritical, meandering thoughts of Neil Breen, dressed up as righteous, reader responsive journalism ...

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