She Used Her Head

THE stirring story of an animal rights activist who placed herself between hunter and fowl has summoned my muse.

Duck, ducks!

Geese with guns

Are scoring runs

As peaceful folk

Get faces broke

While saving birds

From lethal turds

Whose slaughter

O’er the water

Leaves feather and beaks

On countless creeks

And a vegan crusader,

A marshland blockader,

Peppered with shot

In her hospital cot

Silence Of The Grave

HAVE you noticed how the nuclear catastrophe in Japan is suddenly missing from the front pages?

How bad must it be if this sort of censorship is now deemed essential for the public good, needed to avoid panic and riotous disorder?. Even the SMH and Age have signed on, no longer daring to mention the coming meltdowns so many scientists were warning about only on Friday. Instead, in a transparent effort to distract the public, the Age now writes not about the threat to humanity but the impact on carrots and comquats.

During World War Two, the last time Japan was perceived as being a threat to Australia (thanks to the racist Billy Hughes) a line was drawn at Brisbane, south of which the monochromatic culture of the old Australia was to be preserved, even by force of arms.

Where have our officials drawn the new "Brisbane Line" that marks where the southbound tide of nuclear fallout will stop?

Stock up on that iodised fish offal. You will need it.

UPDATE: On the ABC this morning Jon Faine's broadcast is beset by static. Gamma radiation hitting the aerial?

LET ME IN!!!!

YES, it is ego, but can I admit to my excitement at Jonathan Holme’s pending expose of the Drum’s cronyism and betrayal, sure as eggs to be aired on Monday night’s Media Watch? What The Drum did to my expose of the NSW Liberals’ moosegate scandal – taking it down after a pitiful few and paltry objections from hidebound traditionalist Mark Colvin -- was nothing less than discrimination. What did I say that went beyond that to which most established figures on the Left have put their names, especially at The Drum?

Tomorrow night, if I might suggest, Holmes needs to drill that carborundum eye deep into Colvin’s intolerance. If the radio presenter cannot name a representative percentage of his AM co-workers who are, like me, victims of genital warts, he stands condemned as the marginliser with a microphone, the enemy of otherness, a self-appointed Commissar of The Pudenda Police. Indeed, in the interests of full disclosure, the ABC must reveal the percentage of its workforce who are members of the genital warts community.

And while he is at it, perhaps he might care to dig deeper into Jonathan Green’s insistence that his site is fair because it has published 4000 articles. But what sort of articles, Jonathan, and who wrote them? According to the Drum’s own manifest of published authors, 1-in-8 articles are the work of just a baker’s dozen of contributors.

Here is how a more replete list of leading lights breaks down:

Bob Ellis  -- 103

Ben Pobje --  58

Helen Razer – 57

Irfan Yusuf – 55

Greg Barns – 43

Kellie Tranter – 37

David Horton – 33

Tim Dunlop --  31

Jeff Sparrow – 29

Lauren Rosewarne – 25

Amin Saikal -- 25

Antsy Lowenstein – 22

Ben Eltham – 19

Scott Bridges – 14

Mark Bahnisch – 13

Melinda Tankard Reist -- 13

Jason Wilson – 12

Marieke Hardy – 10

Catherine Deveny – 8

Ben Sandilands – 8

Mungo MacCallum – 7

Christime Milne – 6

That list makes a total of 628 articles at a cost to the taxpayers of $125,600, allowing that stellar talents like Bob Ellis, Marieke Hardy and Ben Pobje have not negotiated themselves a better screw than the standard $200 a pop.

So why can’t I get just a little piece of that action? Why can’t I be invited to literary festivals, plied with per diems, invited to lecture at journalism schools and given a seat at The Drum’s nightly chat show on ABC-24?

None of the opinionaries listed above differs so much as an atom (sorry to use that word, readers) from the views and insights to be found here, at Verdant Hopes. Not one of those people would disagree that Mr Speedos is a vile creature and that his Catholicism is a big, big problem. There is not one climate denier on that list, nor an opponent of multiculturalism, an admirer of John Howard or a supporter of the ridiculous notion that Australia’s immigration policy be determined by Australia’s elected representatives, rather than undocumented travel agents in Indonesia.

I am one of them, my every opinion in sync with theirs – and even Jonathan Green admits as much, telling Holmes “the  material on her blog was not all that unusual in the online space.” Yet I am banished. Why? Why? Why?

I have tried long and hard to answer that question, to no avail. Jonathan Homes, whose very manner confirms his superior intelligence, might have more luck tomorrow night. What is the common thread that I am missing? Tell me, Jonathan, please tell me.

And if you cannot tell me why I am not allowed to hang with the Drum’s big-bucks whales, surely I could join the swirling tide of port-flowing plankton that surges across the site on a daily basis. Those small fry contribute just an article here and there, vanishing until the next deep thought about, say, why climate denial is a mental illness and those afflicted must be treated. But they are undoubtedly of the left, as am I. I could do that, I really could, take a slap when needed at Abbott or Monckton, or Carter or Murdoch or Pell or Bailleau …  Gaia help me if I seem bitter, but it should be entirely understandable when you consider that, for a few glorious hours, I really was part of the cool kids’ club. No point now in continuing to work on my Tony Abbott piñata, which I was looking forward to presenting Jonathan Green at the next election bash. To attend a party in Jill Singer’s backyard with the cream of Australia’s intelligentsia, well I think I could get myself out of the house for that. And I know Sparkles and Jill would have so much in common.

Could the reason for my exile be that I was never published on Crikey, where the most prolific Drum contributors became so well known to Jonathan Green? It was only natural, of course, that Mark Scott would authorise Green’s hiring, Crikey being such a fair, middle of the road repository for honest, unbiased and accurate reporting. So perhaps Scott told him to bring the entire crew with him and really lift standards at the ABC.

Or could it be that I did not attend that wonderful election night party in 2007, the one that produced an adorable photo of Jonathan Green smashing a John Howard piñata? Sadly, that photo is now vanished from the web.

Or have I been blackballed, as I suspect, for no better reason than my genital warts?

The ABC boasts a billion-dollar annual budget (minus, of course, the $800,000 the Drum has spent on those 4000 examples of fair, straight bat commentary, which Holmes cited), so Holmes should be able to find a little cash to underwrite tomorrow night’s investigation.

I mean, what do we have a national broadcaster for?

Jonathan Holmes, My Champion

IT is well known that animals predict earthquakes and my little Sparkles is particularly gifted in this regard. At about the same time the weight of rising seas triggered the temblor that rocked Japan, I watched in utter fascination as my animal companion cut shark-like figure-of-eights on the lino in front of the fridge. I was able to still her agitation by opening the door and distracting her with an offering of food I knew to be rich in iodine, which calmed and protected her immediately, also serving as the overture to a little face washing and a tranquil nap on the window ledge. I have now set aside several cans of Whiskas for my own health and urge readers to do likewise as the fallout crisis draws near. With the dark curtain of radiant debris descending on the globe, even vegans and vegetarians (like me) will need to embrace iodine-salted fish offal as their lifeline. If you doubt the efficacy of that prescription, ask yourself if you have ever seen a cat with a goiter? If you don’t like the taste, garnish with a little tahini and lemon juice and serve on a peppered cracker. It is quite palatable and, for those on a budget, much more economical than conventional medicine’s corporately produced anti-radiation tablets.

Now it must be said that Seddon remains geologically stable (or so we are told), despite the worst efforts of Big Carbon and the Queen of The Netherlands to alter our Bay’s submarine topography. The flooding of Luna Park in 2005, just across the water from here, was a close call, but things appear to have settled down lately.

Sparkles, however, remains anything but composed. For the past hour she has been once again hyper-active in front of the refrigerator. There have been no further tremors reported from Japan, so the only appropriate explanation must hinge on the photo of Jonathan Holmes, which I keep on the door as a dietary aid.

That subtle, accusatory smile of his speaks more eloquently than any words of the need to ration the Boston buns, make the appropriate choices, if I am to regain my figure. But there is also that twinkle of knowingness and acceptance in Jonathan’s eyes, and such empathy also offers a conditional comfort: If I do make the wrong choices, and they are the sort of wrong choices he also enjoys and which he is prepared to indulge, then I know Jonathan can be counted on to look the other way. Love you, Jonathan, really do!

But back to Sparkles, who is once again telling it like it is. Having shared my dismay at the left’s conscienceless betrayal of this blog, I take Sparkles’ latest frenzy as a prophecy that Media Watch will be taking up the matter of my shameful treatment on Monday night, as indeed it should.

Strictly speaking, this is about much more than media watching. It is about contract law. It is about being stiffed for my $200 publication fee by the national broadcaster. But most of all it is about the disappearance from the Drum of my scoop on the moose slurs directed by machismo, militaristic NSW Liberals against Katrina Keneally. As I pointed out to the Drum editor, the expose was a means to an end. My goal – our goal, I believed -- was to paint the conservatives as the sexist autocrats they are, alert the women of NSW to their moose misogyny and, once the alarum had been taken up by the Fairfax press (as it would certainly have been), to reverse the polls and swing the election back to the progressive side of the aisle.

I said as much in my original post on this blog, and I repeated the game plan in my communications with the Drum’s chieftain and also with his deputy, who did much helpful editing of my original post in order to get it up to ABC standards.

Here is what I wrote to him. The underline is mine:

Dear Jonathan,

would you be interested in a formal version of this post?

It seems to be that if we can link the Liberals to this crotch talk then there is still a chance we can nudge the election toward Labor, or at least do something to limit what looks like it will be catastrophic damage inflicted by voters.

If you prefer to give this assignment to one of your regulars (Kellie Tranter, for example, who writes much better and faster than me, I admit), I would not object.

The important thing is that we do everything we can, use every tool we know, to help Kristina out of the jam some silly moves and a lot of Murdoch venom has put her in.

Yours,

etc

The scheme and the urgency is all there, laid out in our correspondence. As for me, the Drum’s acceptance of my strategy opened up the very real prospect of a new career as a an ABC-validated and authorised opinionsmith.

It was premature, I know, but for a fleeting, glorious moment I imagined myself a bright star in the pantheon of ABC-approved pundits: Bob Ellis, Marieke Hardy, cheated Higgins byelection candidate Clive Hamilton, journalism professor David McKnight, legal eagle and environmental lawyer Kellie Tranter, David Horton, the great and passionate psychologist and climate expert Stephan Lewandowsky . The name of Alene Composta might have joined their lustrous ranks. Can I confess that, just for that intoxicating instant, I was there at the ABC’s version of the Algonquin Round Table, trading bread rolls and bon mots with the Drum’s elite, offering to wash Bob Ellis’ jumper and perhaps even saying nice things about the staff at Melbourne University Press, where my first book would have been in production.

Fat chance of that now that the left’s feckless poobahs have locked me out of their inner circle. When MUP published the latest scholarship on the life of Mick Gatto, I knew, knew to the core of my being, that the publishing house was ready for my book-length thoughts on Kitty Litter as a medium for carbon sequestration. Given that MUP’s publisher is the Drum editor’s life partner what chance do I now have of seeing my book proposals acknowledged and accepted? What chance now of column-ating on a job-share basis with Fairfax, perhaps even going girl-on-girl with Suzy Freeman-Greene or Adele Horin.

The same with Crikey! When my expose was posted on the Drum, Crikey linked to it immediately. Then they removed all mention of it. Gone! Consigned, like me, to the progressive memory hole. Now I admit that I am inclined to paranoia, but the experiences of the past week clearly demonstrate that they are out to get me by ignoring my contributions to the debate.

Don’t get me wrong. It is a wonderful thing for the left that progressive minds have taken control of the means of debate. We -- and by that I mean people like me -- are now so numerous in academia, the media, in schools and amongst Media Watch producers that it is entirely possible for progressive forces to limit rash discourse and reactionary objections to the few issues that the ongoing evolution of the materialist dialectic has yet to fully resolve. This is not deception and certainly not censorship, as the Boltards and Blairites like to bray. Discussion of asylum seeker policies, for example, were gagged by the shaming observation that it was too soon after an unfortuante event  to discuss the factors that have led to the increase in boat arrivals. Now it is too late, and with the Christmas Island freedom fighters magnificently on the loose, it is too soon to discuss that as well. It is not censorship. It is taking responsible control of the conversation and, overwhelmingly, it is a force for good and betterment.

But not when the left turns on one of its own, as it has done to me.

Can I tell you how angry I am? If an ABC courier were to bring over that cheque I would not accept it, even though it would mean a better quality of iodised fish offal.

So send that $200 to the SMH and Age, which need the cash even more than I.

Go get ‘em, Jonathan Homes. I know we can count on you to lay bare the cronyism and moral corruption..

Missing Link

THIS IS the treachery I was talking about: First, the nice letters -- then your link is taken away without explanation.

Dear Arlene

I am very sorry to see what those utter pr*cks, Beck, Blair and Bolt, have done with their repulsive horde of monkeys. Bullies and thugs, the lot of them.

I very much want to write something condemning their behaviour at Pure Poison, but am concerned that to do so would make things worse for you. I suspect you'd rather I didn't provoke the hornet's nest to descend into further abuse.

But you have my support. Being a target of such vicious people is both upsetting and a massive compliment. Imagine being someone who those three approved of. THAT would make a person question themselves. Whereas being someone they feel the need to bully - you must be doing something right.

All the best.

Regards,

Jeremy Sear.

and there is this too.

Hi Alene,

I'm Jeremy Sear's Fiancee'. I noticed that the usual suspects like J F Beck and Tim Blair have been attacking you (no doubt partly because you showed public support for Jeremy). I just wanted to let you know that I thought the post you wrote in response was very brave, and the only reason I'm not posting this on your blog is because I'm conscious that would make things worse.

Also, I'm fairly sure that "Spot the Dog", one of your followers, is J F Beck. I'd suggest you block him if you can. I know you can't stop him from reading, but if he knows that you're on to him, it might give him pause. I can't prove that it's him, but we're fairly sure it is.

I'm sorry you have to go through this. I cop the same thing just because I am Jeremy's Fiancee. Unfortunately these people are terrible bullies. I think your response is the right one. Don't publish the comments and then just ignore them. I can't promise they'll get bored and go away because god knows they haven't let up on Jeremy, but you'll definitely feel better about it.

Sorry to blather, just wanted to let you know that it's not all sucksville out there, and they're a pack of bullies not worth the worry.

Keri

And then, after Jeremy wrote this, "I very much want to write something condemning their behaviour at Pure Poison, but am concerned that to do so would make things worse for you" what do I find?


Jeremy has gone ahead and written about me anyway, questioning my very existence!

You can tell from the note that Jeremy believed in me, a faith that gave strength to my blogging and stiffened my conviction. But it didn't last. By the time he had published that Pure Poison post, this is what he was saying about my blogging. It was an "assinine gotcha".

As Margo learned, they would sell their own mothers.

Me And Margo

I HAVE been thinking a lot about Margo Kingston, how she was “disappeared” and how much she and I have in common.

Surely you remember Margo and the pioneering work she did at the Sydney Morning Herald’s Web Diary, which set the standard for instant online commentatory? She was everywhere, covering every topic, from the Bali bombings to the latest advances in military technology. If you tuned in to Radio National there was a good chance of hearing her analyzing the issues of the day with Phillip Adams. To hear them chat and brandish the rapier banter was a joyful celebration or erudition and acumen, the brightest minds in Australia. Same with the Lateline, where Margo was a fixture,  the ABC’s go-to person for any issue that required deep thought and independent analysis.

And where is Margo today? Gone. Vanished. Flushed away.

She was the voice of progressive reform, in thick with the cream of the media elite. She was one of them, one of us, one for the record.

Mark Scott was editor in chief and helping to make Fairfax what it is today, just as he is now transforming the ABC with features like the Drum. Margo commanded Scott’s entire respect. How could it be otherwise when he made her the public face of his company’s internet efforts?  Her roots with colleagues were deep. There were the common views and deep empathy that united Margo with star columnist Paul McGeough, a bond she told us was cemented amid the revelry of budget night in Canberra and sparked and flamed through any number of mutual interviews.

And what happened? Well, as I have only just discovered, you can only maintain your place in the progressive pulpit while “friends” find you useful. Margo could withstand Tim Blair’s ridicule with an admirable stoicism, but her public profile could not withstand the treachery of her mates, who cast her aside when a feverish urgency once they recognised, or thought they recognised, that she had become a liability. So much for the love they proclaimed..

There was nothing wrong with Margo’s views and insights when she was being prominently featured in the meeja, as she liked to jokingly call it. But when the weight of Blairite abuse and Boltian disdain became an encumbrance, phhhhht, no more Margo. There were years in the limelight and, after that, irrelevance and exile in Byron Bay, where Valentines Day cards from Scott, Adams, McGeough and so many others never find their way into her letter box.

I thought the Left was a synonym of solidarity. Now I know better. The Left are bastards.

Where Do I Go To Get My Humanness Back?

THIS time last week life was full of promise and brimming with friends, including all the news ones I was making through this blog. It seemed to me that, finally, there was a certainty and solidity I cound count on - a community of sympathetic souls who shared the same vision. Tolerance, acceptance, decency, trust.

Amazing, isn't it, how you can be flung so quickly from champagne to plain old pain?

The abuse was to be expected, I suppose, once Bolt and Blair had whipped their bogan brigades into a frenzy of hate and villification. That hurt, and it hurt again and hurt even more just a few minutes ago, when I steeled myself to look in the comments tray and found hundreds - HUNDREDS!!!! -- of messages waiting to be moderated, many questioning my sanity. They had been building up for a week, festering like a pocket of pus under the epidermis of the internet, and when I looked they exploded across the screen and bathed my eyes in rancid poisons.

Even my very existence has been called into question. We all know about the curse of otherness and the permission that grants the bourgeois, brick veneerial bigots to dismiss and degrade anyone who does not share their quarter acre sensibilities. Now I am less than "the other". Call it sub-otherness, if you like. Or if you want to use old fashioned words,  just say that my situation is the result of cowardly treachery by supposed allies.

Now that is low, so low, and while it was to be expected from the rancid right, can I tell you how much more pain was inflicted by the those who swore that we were all comrades marching toward the common goal? For 24 hours this blog was the destination for visitors following links that Jeremy Sear posted at his site. Then the trouble began, the abusive avalanche commenced, and the link was gone.

How can we stand together, Jeremy, if we are not prepared to be hanged together?

I know I said I would not blog again, but I can no longer stand by that promise. I have been betrayed  by so many people. Now I demand that the guilty to explain themselves.