As the latest round in the War Against Jihadi Death Cult Zombies weaves its inevitable way into the mill of sensationalist television news promos, and the ever-escalating one-upmanship of competing media organizations churns out “City Under Siege” headlines and the like, we need to pause and wonder just where we are headed after the first year of Abbott Reality Television.
It is becoming almost impossible to tell the difference between promotional material for Dancing With The Stars or The Block and the latest cynical attempt by the Abbott “government” (I use the word advisedly) to claw back some credibility in the polls. Could it be that petty? Just polls? With this mob, you have to go for the lowest common denominator. Of course it can.
What was, just a few months ago, the highly unpleasant but distant beat of a fanatical jihadist drum, has morphed into an existential Threat To The Homeland. In the words of a 10 News promo on Friday night, Australia now faces “the greatest threat to its national security in history”. If you’re going to go the hog, you may as well go the whole hog. Beat that, ABC, 7, 9 and SBS!
The same in-house promotions units who produce, edit and present titillating commercials for “unmissable”, “must see” episodes of dreary soap operas and second rate cooking shows, are now at work beating-up the latest half-dozen arrests of some religious crazies into a Threat To Our Way Of Life. The more ridiculous, the better.
As we watch men of the Press Gallery in suits with carefully coiffed hair looking staunchly into camera telling of how they are bearing up to the latest threat against their workplace, Parliament House, and vulnerable women (equally coiffed and made-up) delivering breathless on-the-spot reports from suburban streets seething with police in paramilitary jackboots and baseball hats, the Prime Minister deprecatingly tells us that he is not afraid for himself, but for his people.
Journalists love a war. The real ones go to battlefields and take their chances. The pretenders do stand-ups for local TV news bulletins, or beaver away Photoshopping front page newspaper graphics to scare the bejesus out of their suggestible readers.
The boundary between fake reality and Real Reality has blurred to the point of disappearance. It’s hard to tell the difference nowadays, and that is precisely the object of the exercise.
Meanwhile the Budget lies in tatters. Consumer and business confidence is approaching all-time lows. Unemployment is soaring. Indigenous Australians have been deserted again… for a photo op with the SAS. Renewable Energy, surely a growth industry if ever there was one, is under threat. Manufacturing industries are closing down, one after the other, dominoes in some ideological game. Prices for commodities that are actually in glut – electricity and gas – are soaring, not falling. Science is on the skids. Politicians are being sin-binned in lots of a dozen. Memories are failing. Debt is soaring. The dollar is tanking. Promises are discarded like used bus tickets. The government that told us “No surprises, no excuses” blames the previous government for everything instead of facing up to the fact that the people elected them to run the country.
When will the Abbott government start governing and stop spinning? The nation really does need to know when they can expect confidence and governance to return, not when the next fanciful beheading is about to take place. Let the regular authorities look after that in the normal way.
Each step along the way from the first announcement of the “Caliphate” to today, with “terror in our midst”, has both fed off the previous step and provides a platform for the next. Instead of attending to the important and pressing matters of state that affect real millions of peoples’ lives, livelihoods and businesses, a cynical promotional campaign is dumped in our laps, willingly propagated by a media obsessed with outdoing its rivals, using trumped-up drama, and narcissistic over-concentration on its own role in the process.
A Prime Minister who, in train with media finger-waggers and tut-tutters, rebuked his predecessors for junketeering has racked up more miles in the air and dollars in jet fuel attending pointless meetings and ingratiating himself with foreign dignitaries than either of the people he criticised. A couple of fawning op-eds declaring him to be “statesmanlike” seem to be the reason for this. That, and 1 or 2 points in the polls. As Abbott realizes that there are virtually no restraints on the treasure he can waste and the photo-ops he can manufacture, his swaggering, testosterone-pumped ego swells to fill the vacuum.
Meanwhile, the nation drifts, rudderless, drunk with hatred for jihadist nonsense that gets its kicks by baiting fools like Abbott. Abbott and ISIS we made for each other. The viewers watch on, hugely entertained. There’s a new thrill every episode.
Behind it all is the certain knowledge that Reality TV rates. What else would the media do but use the same techniques they use in confecting phoney reality, all the better to cheapen actual reality? Somewhere in the middle the two streams meet and the nation, while remaining essentially ungoverned, is gamed instead.
Once upon a time it used to be called “bread and circuses”. The Abbott government has invented a new twist: “bread and circuses… without the bread”… directionless, spin-obsessed, blame-rich posturing, anchored in the grammar and language of Reality TV, run by a media increasingly relevance-deprived, shrinking in size and dumbing-down in intellect (yes, it’s possible).
All the while the nation sinks further into random aimlessness with no-one at the tiller, except the preening Prime Minister and his hapless sidekicks, urgers and sleeve-tuggers..
We cannot keep indulging in this orgy of spin over substance. You can’t run a country on terrorism for another two years. Someone’s got to do some work. Political commentators routinely emphasize the techniques and tricks of politics as indicators of good governance, ignoring reality. Tricks are an amusement, not the main game. Opinionistas tick-off “promises kept” without the slightest consideration of ramifications suffered. Barrie Cassidy nominates Christopher Pyne as “politician of the week” because his wife finally got her B.A. This has something to do with Pyne being education minister. You figure it out. I couldn’t.
Cassidy also cheer-leads for Scott Morrison to take over Homeland defence in one of the most fawning, embarrassing pieces of political analysis written in living memory. In writing this rubbish, fool Cassidy automatically disqualifies himself from further recognition as a serious commentator. After the Old Parliament House scare and the months off from Insiders to ponder his future, Barrie seems to have said, “Yes please” to the political lobotomy option.
Saturday’s Daily Telegraph urged governments to “CAGE THE COWARDS”, meaning lock up anyone arrested in the last day or so by the “terrorism” circus, without further ado.
The Tele’s logic? Some of the people arrested yesterday had been released without charge. The reason? Police didn’t have any evidence against them. Seems reasonable to release prisoners for that, but not to the Tele.
Months of surveillance by “strike forces” and “task groups”, hundreds of police, helicopters in the wee small hours, searchlights, raised terror threat levels, Glock-toting SWAT teams… and it turns out they didn’t have any evidence against most of the rounded-up. It was a stunt, an expensive, overblown one, but a stunt nevertheless. The Tele’s bluster, urging the abandonment of habeas corpus and the rules of natural justice can’t paper that over. They were arrested, so they must be guilty of something, It’s the oldest copper trick in the world. m’lud. The Tele enthusiastically agrees.
The Daily Telegraph is the same newspaper that has been running an anti-Muslim campaign for the past two months. They sent intrepid investigative war journalist and heroic blogger Tim Blair out to the wilds of… Lakemba. While there, Tim discovered that the non-drinking Muslim community didn’t patronize the local pub. They walked around in funny clothes. The men had scary beards. Some of the shops had… gulp… political and religious books in their window displays. You could hear different languages being spoken. There’s none of your “most Muslims are law-abiding” multicultural subtlety in Blair’s two pieces. It’s racial and cultural mockery all the way down to the Tim’s cave, located below a fetid gutter near you. One can’t help but wonder whether it wasn’t all part of a tawdry pre-promotion designed to soften up their readership before the quasi-military early morning raids began a few weeks later. But they wouldn’t do that would they?
Abbott, said to be “running the country” from his undisclosed, tented location in Arnhem Land, pauses only to incongruously put on a suit in the midst of the red dust to sombrely intone that “chatter” (a favourite word of intelligence agencies in circumstances like this, as it implies both sinister communication and reminds us that Muslims talk funny) has been overheard. He gives a blow-by-blow commentary on operational matters, in stark contrast to the object of Cassidy’s political man-love, Morrison, and his ventriloquist’s dummy, a forgettable and forgotten “3-Star General”.
We have F-18s being fuelled up. SAS boots on the ground at the ready. Muslims vilified and caricatured. Screaming headlines urging the abrogation of Magna Carta. Severed heads. Executioner’s swords unearthed from under backyard lawns. Police, lots of them. Uniforms and braid everywhere. Death cults. Pure Evil. The UN Security Council. Po-faced commentary about “leadership”. Arrests. Move over. I wanna be on TV.
In the lingua franca of Reality TV, it’s an “unmissable” episode of Abbott In Power indistinguishable from the spruiking excess of a promo for Big Brother. As he has always done, Abbott relies on standover tactics, threats of violence and intimidation, spin and deception. He gets others, like the Murdoch press and the truly malignant Ray Hadley to megaphone the really nasty stuff while he tells Australian Muslims he’s their friend. The field is strewn with the political and social corpses of Abbott’s “friends”. Start running if he wants to shake your hand (this means you, Warren Mundine). Abbott cannot lie straight in bed. He’s the Whirling Dervish, seeking to bring those around him down so that he might stand a little taller by comparison. It’s pathetic, but Abbott has always been a small man, obsessed by small things. He’d make sure he got a receipt for a slice of banana cake at the local school fete. He did so for a sliver of Peter Slipper’s wedding cake, then stabbed his friend in the back.
Meanwhile the country wanders aimlessly, stressed, terrorised, depressed, under-employed and essentially ungoverned, too full of intolerance and jingoism to realise how egregiously it has been gamed. Businesses fail, jobs are lost, industries wind up… but Tony, the War Prime Minister, will protect them from street-corner beheadings and jihadis at the gate.
The indigenous Australians he abandoned for a photo op with the SAS sit there in their corrugated lean-tos, puzzled. This was supposed to be their week, but the cameras, microphones and strutting ministers have disappeared. The old tribal men and women mutter to themselves, “Poor fella, my country.”
And they are right.
We are going to a war we cannot win, against an ideology we cannot defeat, for a purpose we cannot explain. There will even be an audience vote this weekend. Sound familar? It is self-justifying and pointless, but hugely distracting and entertaining. Government as Reality TV has arrived.
THE PUB 
Look, look….we better tone (ha! ha!) it down a bit or the “KGB.” (Kickass George Brandis) will come and get us!
I tell you what..it’s pretty bloody bad when you don’t even have to ‘write” the comedy!
What I reckon’s happened, is that Tony left an instruction to his cabinet when he was leaving the country and he told them to keep the terrism thing going and to ; “play it by ear…”…………boom-tish (again!).
jaycee,
Desperate times need desperate strategies!
The HIP Royal Commission (witch hunt) missed hitting any target, Julia Gillard escaped the AWU Affair unscathed, the TURC is a damp squib and shone a bright light on the LNP’s star witnesses, (whistle blowers/heros) not much came of the Thomson Affair & Slipper has slipped & avoided porrige.
Desperately searching for Haniffs to demonise & frighten the punters enough to have them running desperately to the protective bosom of the LNP and totally forgetting the debacle of the failed and discredited Budget that is intended to rob the poor & working class punters blind to prop up the LNP’s wealthy sponsors……………………………..
Doesn’t take many brain cells to work out where this shameful mob are coming from.
Hey!…: “play it by ear”…get it?…HIS EAR!!…big ears!…get it?..exaggerate it!!….hey!…it’s not bad….not bad at all!
Scorpio,
*Greed
needWANNA GreedneedWANNA GreedneedWANNA*Sometimes I really wish they did have to face a true Day of Judgment. I’d have few qualms about seeing this lot cast into the eternal sea of flame, or whatever the flavour of the month happens to be.
Jaycee,
I reckon it is going to be bloody interesting to see if they can keep this up till the next election.
Two more years of it. If these Polls don’t start to move dramatically in the right direction for them, then, there is a good chance they might start to get somewhat desperate and we could really be in for some fun and interesting times.
In all my wildest imaginings, I never thought that Abbott & this Mob could be this bad. Only six Months to go before their next Budget is due.
They don’t look like passing “this one” in their first term of government let alone their first year which has come & gone! 😉
Fiona,
If that place existed, I’d be only too glad to give you a hand to toss this bunch of losers in at the deep end! 😉
Scorps…they are on a “standard pattern” toward some “interesting times”….we are entering the period of “validation”, just come from “accusation”…and will next go to “confrontation”.,,,then to “justification”.
I can hear a call from the boudoir.
Gotta dash~!
The thing that must have them worried is I think people just are not interested. Whose article was it I read this week where the author said the most valuable currency was our attention and it is getting harder and harder to get it.
After the excitement of the nation building and intrigue and the just plain interest in the First Female Prime Minister, and the never ending beat up by the msm, we are just bored with Abbott. It is all so, not even vanilla, more like flour and water pap. And the youth of the nation just think he is an old fogey tosser surrounded by other old fogey tossers.
Abbott is just plain boring.
These proposed terrorist laws: Am I correct in thinking there is provision in them to charge journalists who do anything to expose intelligence or security activities?
Last year, Julia Gillard attempted to pass laws restricting the media’s ability to write crap, abd they accused her and her Government of taking us down a North Korean-type path of censorship. Abbott makes any reporting that might hold our spooks accountable a crime, and yet we hear nothing from the same media.
They must think every Australian voter has the memory of a goldfish.
AJ Canberra,
Don’t we?
Oh a goldfish!
Oh a goldfish!
(need I continue?)
And goodnight from moi, because I don’t want to be taken into “protective custody” on a really wet Melbourne night.
http://www.thelocal.fr/20140924/france-wants-ban-cigarette-packet-logos
Good morning Dawn Patrollers.
Are we seeing signs that a vicious circle has been created?
http://www.smh.com.au/victoria/terror-suspect-numan-haider-heightened-alert-before-afl-grand-final-weekend-20140924-10lk5b.html
http://www.smh.com.au/nsw/second-person-charged-with-screaming-abuse-outside-catholic-school-20140925-10ln9w.html
This opinion piece examines this very issue.
http://www.smh.com.au/federal-politics/political-opinion/after-endeavour-hills-we-must-confront-the-threat-within-ourselves-20140924-10lhg9.html
Baird is keeping this report into road use pricing well under wraps until after the election.
http://www.smh.com.au/nsw/road-pricing-too-touchy-a-subject-for-nsw-election-20140924-10l6oy.html
Brandis thumps the terror tub.
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/sep/24/george-brandis-claims-australia-faces-security-threat-greater-than-cold-war
Katharine Murphy reviews Julia Gillard’s book.
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/sep/24/julia-gillards-memoir-insightful-unflinching-revealing
Greg Jericho gives the big banks a serve,
http://www.theguardian.com/business/grogonomics/2014/sep/24/super-funds-banks-union-gravy-trains
The three worst things the Liberals did yesterday.
http://www.ellistabletalk.com/2014/09/24/the-three-worst-things-the-liberals-did-yesterday-68/
Peter Slipper’s ex-wife lets fly at Abbott.
http://thenewdaily.com.au/news/2014/09/24/slipper-ex-wifes-abbott-tirade/
Mr and Mrs Pyne’s European adventure. Will Labor follow this one through?
http://www.independentaustralia.net/article-display/mr-and-mrs-pynes-economy-european-adventure,6932
Section 2 . . .
Is NSW playing with fire at a bad time here?
http://www.smh.com.au/nsw/nsw-community-relations-overhaul-threatens-harmony-critics-say-20140924-10k6hd.html
The political donations arms race post ICAC.
http://www.smh.com.au/nsw/compliance-of-political-donations-rules-wont-last-20140924-10lev9.html
Surely these increases in prices are creating a housing bubble. The RBA seems ready to act.
http://www.smh.com.au/national/rba-keen-to-rein-in-investors-20140924-3gj4q.html
Didn’t Abbott say we would not go into Syria? Here’s what Mesma’s saying.
http://www.smh.com.au/federal-politics/political-news/bishop-planning-visit-to-iraq-mayhem-20140924-10lfg0.html
Right on cue after this week’s UN climate change summit Mr Mogadon goes in to bat for brown coal.
http://www.smh.com.au/federal-politics/political-news/andrew-robb-goes-into-bat-for-victorias-brown-coal-20140924-10li1i.html
Even the financial planning industry itself reckons Cormann’s FoFA actions are a crock of poop and an attempt at political distraction.
http://www.smh.com.au/business/critics-slam-financial-services-council-proposal-to-set-up-regulatory-body-20140924-10lk4a.html
Kevin Donnelly – What it means to be an Australian.
http://www.smh.com.au/comment/how-to-teach-what-it-means-to-be-australian-20140924-10labb.html
Elizabeth Farrelly – Tenets of democracy get lost in a sea of hate.
http://www.smh.com.au/comment/tenets-of-democracy-get-lost-in-hate-storm-20140924-10lbp4.html
Section 3 . . .
Mark Latham on our march back into Iraq.
http://www.afr.com/p/opinion/china_syndrome_leads_on_to_iraq_d3oSKJ9XY3lUO4C5ahetlK
Comment piece – Political activism is not yet on life support.
http://www.smh.com.au/comment/political-activism-not-yet-on-life-support-20140924-10l7h4.html
In support of the retention of the ABC’s “Lateline” .
http://www.smh.com.au/comment/knives-out-for-abcs-lateline-20140923-10kxij.html
Scott Ludlam says the Senate is being bullied into passing new anti-terror laws.
http://www.smh.com.au/digital-life/consumer-security/parliament-bullied-to-pass-national-security-laws-says-greens-senator-scott-ludlam-20140924-10lir9.html
A little bit of magic from David Pope.
More from Ron Tandberg on Howard’s “embarrassment”.
David Rowe gives us Obama’s wingman.
The issues share a lot with some things going on here, but it’s the quality of the writing and the venue that are surprising. It’s a call to revolution. Good read.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/men/thinking-man/11109845/Why-arent-the-British-middle-classes-staging-a-revolution.html
Janice
We are currently baby sitting a week old lamb that was rejected by her mum. She was the first of tripletts, and the largest. We think it is because she has a brown leg and chest. All the others are white. Hunter keeps wanting Patch to smell his bum but she won’t oblige, he’s quite put out by it. Razz is in her element, takes her back to the time when she had goats, and the two calves she hand reared when we lived in Colac. Son said if we have trouble just to take her back and leave her with the chooks, where she has been staying. I don’t think we’ll need to do that.
Pope http://www.theage.com.au/photogallery/opinion/cartoons/david-pope-20120214-1t3j0.html
Tandberg http://www.theage.com.au/photogallery/opinion/ron-tandberg/20090910-fixc.html
Rowe http://www.afr.com/p/national/cartoon_gallery_david_rowe_1g8WHy9urgOIQrWQ0IrkdO
Good morning BK
I see there is no news this morning, how pleasant. The cartoons tell the whole story. I must say cartoonist are the most honest MSM around. The get it.
Yes gravel, the cartoonists seek out the ample examples of hypcrisy and exploit them to great effect.
“This has been a personal political vendetta. A witch hunt.”
Mrs Lyn Slipper is furious and rightly so.
Saw the lying rodent on lateline giving us a rundown on his fumbling version of history…as if such a stodgy grogan could write anything decent about anyone, he tell us he’s got the good oil on pig-iron bob!….they suit eachother…shit meets shat!
It’s no wonder howard is a “must” on the talk circuit….sort of like a side-show freak-show.
gigilene
The hide of Abbott.
http://www.smh.com.au/federal-politics/tony-abbott-claimed-600-to-attend-peter-slippers-wedding-20131007-2v3yg.html#ixzz3EH1NHb5k
“Ms Bishop also wants to see the “mayhem” of the bloody insurgent war engulfing Iraq with her own eyes…”
Hmmmm – does Mesma enjoy looking at the bloody carnage of war, (as long as she doesn’t get any blood on her Armani suit) or is her real reason for this trip something different? Could Mesma just want to hang around hunky blokes in uniform? Has she already packed her shortest, tightest skirt, her spikiest stiletto heels and her sparkliest brooch in preparation for charming the chaps?
She has done this before, she might want more –
Fools rush in where angels wear appropriate footwear.
Interesting body language. A solemn RAAF chap; possibly offered to assist getting down the ramp and was stared down. Two bemused RAAF chaps, and two concerned suits waiting for the fall (and the resultant paperwork.)
How can Australia, having sent refugees to one sovereign country (Nauru), then step in and re-locate those same refugees who are supposed to now be the responsibility of Nauru, to a third country ? Are we now in the business of “slave-trading”?….Do we have “right of ownership” over these refugees?
When PMJG wanted to send AS to Malaysia it was the greatest evil ever seen in the history of mankind. Now Abbott is sending them to Cambodia and nary a peep is heard.
Gravel,
I am jealous ! Absolutely love little lambs – they’re so easy to raise and make gorgeous pets….and don’t forget not to waste the droppings which are the bestest for the garden.
jaycee
It sounds like slave trading to me. We pay Nauru millions, maybe billions (who knows the cost, it’s an ‘operational matter) to accommodate refugees, then we pay Cambodia more millions to take the same people so we can make room on Nauru for more refugees for which we will pay the Nauruan government more millions…….
Janice
Unfortunately we’ve only got her for the next nine or ten days, while the family has gone on holidays. She just follows us around like a puppy, very cute.
Always keep in mind that Katharine Murphy was one of the hecklers of Gillard. She was in it right up to her neck. She went with the herd, like all the rest of them. For her, slagging Gillard off was fun.
She speaks of how Gillard “stiffed” Andrew Wilkie over Pokies. Was she supposed to have allowed her own party, and hence her government to disintegrate over the issue? Despite not having the numbers in the house (the Independents, Windsor and Oakeshotte were against the reforms), how was she supposed to get the Pokie reforms, as envisioned by Wilkie, through?
Saying the Gillard “stiffed” Wilkie is a typical, thoughtless way of putting it. It shows Katharine Murphy’s true Press Gallery colors coming out: lazy, overblown, inaccurate… ah yes, but “punchy” (whatever that means).
The whole premise of Gillard’s book (as even Murphy concedes) is that Gillard is telling us as close to the unvarnished truth – about events and her own reaction to them – warts and all. Instead of reading this in the spirit in which it was written, Murphy goes for a cheap shot, perhaps for as stupid a reason as “showing balance”. There is always the obligatory “balance” – “on the one hand… on the other hand” – in Murphy’s and her Press Gallery mates’ output. They can’t help themselves because the reason for it is that one side of politics, the Coalition, is so vindictive.
They should learn the lesson of the ABC: that no matter how fawning and compliant you are with Abbott’s day-to-day shifts of belief and his government’s ever-changing “issues of the week”, you’ll still get skewered.
In the case of the ABC the punishment is defunding. In the case of the relevance-challenged general Press Gallery it’s even more irrelevance.
Murphy still believes she can sit in judgement. She is a failed Fairfax journalist who left the company because her belly-button rich, self-obsessed meanderings were not being read in sufficient quantities to justify her salary. She sits in judgement, casually dismissing a wise decision by Gillard not to buck the numbers (which, to be frank, does not require that much wisdom… if you don’t have the numbers you don’t have them) and not to destroy her government for Wilkies wet-dream of king hit gambling reform. Murphy calls this “stiffing” Wilkie, because in her Press Gallery world that’s all they can see: the minute by minute sensations, never the wider view.
I read Murphy’s article, so that other readers need not bother.
Gravel,
You could always refuse to give her back!
thanks BB
I won’t read it. Those press gallery hacks have committed the worst crime of a writer. They are boring; predictable, repetitive, stale and mind-numbingly boring.
Janice
I would happily fight Son and DIL, but I couldn’t bear to look at horrified faces of grandsons if we tried to do that. We can go visit anytime we like, as it is just across the road.
Always loved this poem:
http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poem/172926
So I take it Murphy’s review weighs Gillard’s insights against the fictions about her the media talked themselves into believing at the time?
Gigilene,
Good, but this is my favourite Blake:
http://www.bartleby.com/101/489.html
Fiona, Snap.
Christoper Pyne wins Ernie Award 2014 for his comments on the impact of uni fees on women
http://www.dailylife.com.au/news-and-views/news-features/christoper-pyne-wins-ernie-award-2014-for-his-comments-on-the-impact-of-uni-fees-on-women-20140925-3gjsu.html
fiona
I can understand why. It’s a beautiful poem. But, see, gravel has a lamb not a tiger …
Suddenly, I don’t feel so calm and secure –
Mohammed El-leissy is a Melbourne-based community worker, comedian, and former youth worker at the Islamic Council of Victoria.
http://www.abc.net.au/news/2014-09-24/el-leissy-suddenly-i-dont-feel-so-calm-and-secure/5766754
just had the misfortune of reading Andrew Bolt’s latest piece and all i’ll say is that if criticising and attackinh the government is slandering Australia, then he’s spent the last six years slandering Australia.
attackinh=attacking
A fair summary. “Murpharoo” completely neglects to reflect on her own part in the vilification and heckling of Gillard. She’s airbrushed her own complicity from the history books. Even while ostensibly praising Gillard for honesty, she can’t resist one more slanted heckle from the past: that Gillard “stiffed” Wilkie.
Accusing Gillard of “stiffing” Wilkie is about the most simplistic, incurious and biased way of putting it, typical of the Press Gallery then and now. There is no nuance or context, only action versus reaction.
They see themselves as the judges and jury of politics. Politicians, to them, are kindergarten kids in a sandpit, or finger-painting. Without their support a politician will be mocked and harassed until – inevitably – they are destroyed. It’s a stampeding herd they resemble, not the supposed “Cream” of Australian journalism.
Yet the media in which they work are going broke themselves. Poorly managed, losing customers, staffed by has-beens, trumped up gurus, over-coiffed airheads, and cheap, click bait color writers, newspapers are dying. They don’t realize that genuine balance and fair dealing might have saved them. They took sides from a position of their own demonstrable weakness. That they should have the gall to even criticise others, much less sit in judgement on them, is truly astonishing.
And she had’nt even finished her reading of Julia Gillard’s book. She admitted having read three quarters of it. You’d think she’d have completed her reading before commenting. I suppose we’ll get a further analysis from her. If not in an article then on The Drum.