Bolt's Bile v. Coorey's Decency

NO GARDEN grows without fertilizer. So, in order to stimulate my mental arboretum and find material for this blog, I will admit to sometimes visiting the sites and thoughts or some very mucky individuals. People like Andrew Bolt, for example, who is always good for a laugh, even if it is through gritted teeth. The great Jeremy Sear regularly dissects Bolt’s rancid tripe, and I feel inadequate trying to do what he does so easily and with such acidic aplomb. But this morning after checking the hate-spewer’s blog, my blood is boiling.

What has he done this time? Published an obscene, vicious, nasty, foul and entirely inappropriate attack on a real journalist, the Sydney Morning Herald’s Phillip Coorey.

Let me explain something before I go on. When I could still get out and about, I was no good at tennis, which my ex-partner would force me to play. I have no skills in that sport and, because I am a bit well-padded around the hips (one thing that makes me like and understand what drives Julia), I always felt uncomfortable when he trotted me out at the tennis club. When I fluffed a shot, I could watch his body language tell me that I was useless, an idiot. It was psychological abuse, pure and simple. One thing, though, that I came to understand was that my lack of aptitude for the sport of tennis obliged me to refrain from telling other people what they were doing wrong on the court.

That’s what brings me to Bolt. On every issue I can think of, Bolt is wrong. As a journalist he is as bad at writing and analysis as I was at hitting a yellow ball with a strung racket. Bolt refuses to understand that our planet is on the brink of an ecological abyss. He declines to recognize the manipulative, shameless saturation of the Murdoch press with pro-Carbon sermons inspired (and usually paid for) by Big Carbon and the greenhouse lobby. He sneers at Muslims, scoffs at the Greens and peddles a confrontational style that fills simpletons’ heads with venomous bile which, at this moment when the earth is in crisis, encourages the ignorant to resist any and all measures that might, just might if we act decisively, stabilize the global eco-sphere.

He has no qualifications to criticize decent reporters like Coorey – and he especially has no qualifications to slam the Sydney Morning Herald columnist for his thought this morning. Basically, Coorey is blasting people like Bolt and shock jocks like Neil Mitchell for their gross rudeness to our leaders, Julia most of all.

Coorey understands that, when everything hangs in the balance and direct action is the only remedy for pending disaster, it does nobody any good if the press chorus starts singing out of tune. How can you have a discussion that has a chance of reaching the appropriate conclusion if the ravening jackals of the right-wing media  turn every debate into a competition to see who can heap the most abuse and ridicule on our elected leaders.

Does not the office of Prime Minister demand deference and respect by virtue of its very nature? Bolt builds his profile (and Big Carbon-subsidised income) by being rude to our leaders. So does Mitchell, who owes his ratings to his confrontational style.

That is why we really need the Fairfax press to be preserved. It is perhaps the only news outlet in the country where a recognition of the greater public good trumps the need for ratings and profits. Coorey dares to point this out today – and Bolt, of course, swoops down from the high tower of his hypocrisy to lacerate the SMH star columnist for – wait for it – his lack of rudeness!

Can you believe it! Like most of the quislings for American cultural imperialism, Bolt is taking his cues from the violent thugs of America’s Tea Party movement, which delights in assaulting the mainstream media in the same breath that it advocates homophobia, racism and the religious right. Now that cancer is spreading in Australia, and it is the hate-spewers like Bolt who are its seed cells. If he and his ilk are not silenced, the disease of me-first individualism, of a lack of respect for authorities, will metastasize.

I have a few thoughts about how this can be countered and will blog about this a bit later today.

Meanwhile, Bolt will be fit to criticize a sane, polite, deferential reporter like Coorey when I start giving tennis tips.

In other words, never.

The "Moosing" Of Kristina K

SO, back to what I really wanted to write about this morning.

It seems the cocky NSW Liberals have taken to calling Premier Kristina Keneally "the moose" and this has the Sydney Morning Herald's state parliamentary reporter Sean Nicholls groping for an explanation. Now there is always a reason for a nickname. People do not just pluck random words out of thin air and pin them on other people, especially when they are public figures, and Nicholls tries very hard to come up with a rationale. If you take his word for it, Keneally has been "moosed" because she reminds former British soldier Mark Neeham, who is now a top NSW Liberal, of the one-time and short-lived Canadian Prime Minister Kim Campbell, who was in office for just a few months in the Nineties before losing the election and her seat.

Nicholls really digs to make his case -- digs too hard and far too deep, if you ask me -- by noting that the Canadian PM's official residence is on Sussex Street, which is also the name of the street in Sydney where the Labor Party has its headquarters.

Top marks for effort, Sean, but you did not need to work up such a sweat. The real reason the Liberals are using "moose" and chuckling about it is because it is a flat-out sexist obscenity commonly used to describe female genitalia. Here's one example:

I like girls that can cut a rug...I'm talking no stubble, just a freshly shaved set of moose knuckles.

Or look at how it is used in the caption to this this picture:

It gets worse, much worse.

The Urban Dictionary cites the common use of "moose" as a synonym for the female genitals, which Premier Keneally, being an undoubted woman, obviously has. She is also from North America, although not from Canada (sorry Sean), so if you are a troglodyte, knuckle dragging NSW Liberal whose background is in a macho military force, the moose allusion must have come to mind in a millisecond.

After that the sexual association came next, and even more naturally. The sort of barrack room banter that Liberals obviously trade when they think no one will understand their private jokes also embraces racism. The examples I feel obliged to present below are not pretty. Indeed, they turn my stomach as I copy them from the Urban Dictionary, but NSW voters need to know just what sort of people all the polls say will be running the state in a few short weeks:

Moose Pussy
A.) A large, canyon like vaginal cleft, sometimes the result of copulation with a large rubber fist.Usage: Damn! you could park a hummer in that bitch's moose pussy!

B.) A vagina that is extremely loose, usually on a woman that has been screwed a lot by black people.Useage: Ugh I bet that bitch has a moose pussy, she got fucked by big nig, three times.

The question now is what we can do about this. It seems to me that the women of NSW want to know if the men who are confidently anticipating the regressive havoc they are about to inflict on the state can be trusted, and that starts with the Sydney Morning Herald getting its facts and its explanation straight.

I intend to send Sean Nicholls an advisory note. If you can think of anyone who can raise awareness of this anti-woman filth, please pass a link to them.

If we can start a backlash, generate a storm of protest and get some opinion articles in the press, it might still be possible to save this election for Keneally and the progressive movement.