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.

AS I wrote in the previous post, today has not got off to a good start. I have had to change the sheets I put on the bed only five days ago and because they are big and bulky, that means an extra load of washing, which I try to keep to a minimum. One load a week limits the amount of phosphates I inject into the environment and, because it all ends up flowing into the Bay, into the bio-cycle. Our Bay has been raped -- there is no other word for it -- by a Dutch multinational dredging company and the damage to the seafloor environment has been catastrophic. From Mornington to Williamstown reports are coming of cancer-riddled fish and genetic mutations.

It is obscene even to consider the damage, done for no better reason than corporate profit, that has been inflicted on the magnificent body of water that makes life in Melbourne possible The recent heavy rains have washed all sorts of nasty stuff into the Bay, where that detritus now forms a toxic soup with the polluted sediments stirred up by the dredgers' buckets.

Damn it! This post was going to be filthy conservatives' sexist jokes at the expense of Kristina Keneally but I have let my passions sidetrack my thoughts. Better start again, but before I do, how's this for an example of genetic damage:

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Dawn Of The Damned

COULDN’T sleep, not at all, just a few blanked-out moments when the sense of nameless dread that often comes to me in the night  faded temporarily away. It was just before dawn, only an hour so ago, when I finally slipped over the border into blank oblivion, but it was not to last. Turns out the possums had nominated just that moment to conduct an orgy on the tin roof of the garage, which is just beside my bedroom. I am quite used to the possums, who are much less annoying than the bogan sports buffs who live next door with their drunken father, and I probably would not have registered the commotion if it had not stirred my little cat. Sparkles was on the prowl, jumping around the bedroom, trying to figure out where the possum racket was coming from.

Deluge!!!!

An inept jump from bed to table not only knocked over the half carafe of water I keep beside the pillow, it woke me with a soggy start. You can’t sleep in wet sheets, especially when you can barely get to sleep at all, so I was up in time to hear the magpies welcome the full light of day.

It was a beautiful sound, a warbling symphony, but the mood of cheerful resignation after an uncomfortable night did not last longer than it took me to log onto the internet and start reading the day’s news.

Now I’m angry, seething is a better word, and it is the same old sexism and veiled obscenity of the conservative string pullers that that has me steaming with fury.

I’m going to make a cup of tea and toast some bread, feed Sparkles and then I’ll be back to dissect the filthy, sexism of the NSW conservatives as they gloat over the imminent Murdoch-assisted demise of a good woman, Kristina Keneally.

Read this and prepare to be outraged.

Sear-ing Insight

MY training is in psychology and counselling, but when I read Jeremy Sear's posts I really wish I also had studied the law. The Melbourne barrister has been a fixture of the online progress-o-sphere for many years and has the distinction of having got the better of Tim Blair and Andrew Bolt on many issues. He runs the Pure Poison blog at Crikey and is tireless in his efforts to counteract the oppressive and instinctive gagging of dissent that is the staple of Australia's conservative media establishment. (At a risk of being sexist, he must turn quite a few heads at parties, demos, and other social functions. Smart and a spunk too! Some people have it all. Don't worry, Jeremy, I'm far too old for you!).

 
Anyway, his latest post at An Onymous Lefty is just brilliant. Here's a little excerpt:

The Opposition is banking on Australian voters being unwilling to consider a small drop in their standard of living to reduce the risk of a massive drop in their standard of living later; it’s banking on us being short-sighted and hypocritical. (Hypocritical in the sense of, let the much poorer people in China and India live on even less before we consider tempering our unsustainable consumption.

Jeremy's proactivity in taking on the powers that be was one of my inspirations to finally take the plunge into the world of blogging. What could I, a homebound retiree, contribute? Jeremy provided the answer by example: truth, passion and conviction. I don't kid myself that this little blog will achieve the influence and profile that Jeremy has established and which he builds upon, day by day. But every little helps, and I am proud to count myself on the same side.

His legal training has equipped him to cut straight to the issues, to bare the core of any argument. It is why his blog is on my daily list of sites to check.

It should be on yours too.

Published in the Age

I HAVE just had the following comment published in a comment thread underneath a Peter Hartcher commentary on the vicious, vile, ongoing, Abbott-orchestrated assault on our PM.

When our PM made the decision ten days ago I thought to myself, "How low will the reactionaries go, the deniers and the corporatist lapdogs, and how soon will they start."
I didn't have long to wait.

These assaults on our PM are nothing but sexism and woman-hatred. The outpouring of Tea Party-style hate could easily lead to violence, sooner or later. If our PM introduces the licensing of commentators and a peer-review panel of media professionals (Laura Tingle, Phillip Adams, Virginia Trioli, Mike Carlton, Hartcher, for example) to determine what constitutes "fair free speech" and to stamp out the noxious, inappropriate variety, I would support her 100%.
Alene Composta | Seddon - March 03, 2011, 9:35AM

I was a bit surprised that the moderator cut out my reference to a Saturday afternoon shock jock on 3AW who urged his listeners to imagine our PM "gambolling in her scanties on the shores of Lake Burley Griffin with horny cabinet colleagues" while First Bloke Tim sits at home and puts the roast on steam. The motor mouth's slur was that, because Julia had "lied" to the Australian public -- she didn't, that criticism is purely semantic, as we know --  she would also lie to her partner.

But then I realised that The Age owns 3AW and that while the newspaper's reporters and editors are on the side of the angels mostly (apart from Costello), when it comes to progressive issues the Age is also a corporate entity and must protect its assets.

I am of two minds. I am glad we have the Age in Melbourne, and glad that it is mostly a progressive institution dedicated to stressing the points of view the Murdoch minions demean and suppress.

Should I protest the censorship? Opinions would be welcome.

UPDATE: Shouldn't The Age have inserted a notification that my post had been trimmed? That would seem to be fair and honest.

I HAVE just sent this little note to Tim Flannery:

Dear Dr Flannery,
I recently started blogging and, because I am fearful of what will happen if we don't reduce carbon pollution, I write regularly about this topic. Today an item of mine was reproduced in part on Tim Blair's blog, which is funded by Rupert Murdoch (as you might expect). When I followed the links to his site (a place I usually avoid), I found the most disrespectful and appalling picture of you. Same thing at Bolt's cesspit, too.

My question is why don't you sue? Murdoch has a lot of money and his minions hold you up constantly to ridicule and encourage people to have contempt for everything you stand for. With our country ravaged by floods and fire, your message is vital.

Personally, I think Murdoch's contempt for reason and science and the peer-review process invalidates any claim he has to engage in "free" speech. As Commissioner of the Clime Change Council, perhaps you could suggest restrictions on what Murdoch and his monkeys can say. This would leave us with the Fairfax papers and the ABC, and I do not think you can find better sources of information than them.
Sincerely,
etc etc