Wednesday 25th of December 2024
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ordinary people ....

ordinary people ....

from politicoz ….

The week reached peak silliness yesterday when it was declared that a function room should have been immediately evacuated when a comedian made a bad joke. It seems everyone has been caught up in the moveable feast of outrage and victimhood.

The press gallery has certainly been stung by recent criticism of how they reported the Gillard speech.

Some commentators, like Laura Tingle today, have offered reasonable explanations for their earlier pieces, though they stand as slight reinterpretations of original versions. Some, like Dennis Shanahan, feel compelled to restate exactly the same arguments - that Gillard was compounding an earlier mistake, cynically defending her numbers by attacking Abbott - but even more forcefully (as if volume was the problem in the first place).

Many journalists have responded to the online furore by implying that it's the social media that are out-of-touch with 'ordinary Australians'; Jonathan Holmes, for example, argues that because politicians speak to 'ordinary people', and press gallery journalists speak to politicians, therefore journalists represent 'ordinary people'. 

The press gallery is entitled to argue that, overall, the Gillard speech will likely have a minimal or negative electoral impact; commentators may even argue for this. They are entitled to concentrate on the legislative impacts rather than emotional resonances of speeches. They are also entitled to get it wrong occasionally.

Members of the public are entitled to express enthusiasm for a Prime Minister who speaks to them, but also to question why traditional media saw things so differently. This back-and-forth is the new paradigm.

Graham Richardson asks, "Who will remember that speech (Gillard's) in the days and weeks to come? The answer is very few indeed. What will be remembered from Tuesday's debate is that Abbott sought to remove Slipper from office while Gillard sought to keep him in a post of which he is totally unworthy." 

And everyone is entitled to ask, in the days and weeks to come, who will remember Richo's column today? 

The social media raged that the Canberra press gallery 'missed the point' on Tuesday by focusing on the drama surrounding the Speaker of the House of Representatives, Peter Slipper, rather than understanding the PM’s speech was a 'defining' moment in history. Well, the speech is out there for all to see and enjoy. But dismissing the events that surrounded it ignores the fact that the words were but part of the political and human drama of a government trying to hold on to its numbers, and MPs trying to protect a fragile human being.

It is churlish, as some have done, to argue that Julia Gillard was merely trying to weatherproof herself against legitimate political attacks. There was some substance to her allegations, not yet adequately refuted by anybody… Rarely have we seen one political leader so dominate another in the Parliament. It was fleeting, but it could have longer-term consequences, no matter that the initial impact was diluted and overshadowed by Slipper's resignation. And just as that resignation blunted Gillard's attacks, so did other events blunt the Coalition's advantages.

 

speaking in tongues...

 

from Bob Ellis...

...

I found it was wrong to suggest a woman had two brilliant lovers in a lifetime, one her husband, and influenced their politics. Assange is finding it wrong to show film of a war crime and so enrage the Pentagon he may do fifty years naked in solitary for it. Slipper is finding it wrong to vividly describe, like many novelists have (Roth, Nabokov, Amis, Bellow), a vagina, and Jones is finding it ruinous to say a man was unsettled by the deeds of his daughter.

This is difficult territory, but it always comes down, I think, to three things: Kennedy books, Mein Kampf,and Jon Stewart. Did Robert Dallek have the right to reveal John Kennedy knowingly passed on non-specific urethritis to Audrey Hepburn, Marilyn Monroe and Grace Kelly? Is this any of his business? Or ours? And does a suburban librarian have the right to lend Mein Kampf to a young man with earrings, tatts and spiky hair? And does Jon Stewart have the right to portray, by eloquent mimicry, George Bush as a moron? Or Bill Leak the right to draw a public figure naked?

It is difficult, as I say, because words do harm, it is part of their function. But once you start stoning to death young men who say ‘Yaweh’, or old men who write, in a private text, ‘unshelled mussel’, or mid-aged men who reveal evil done by great powers, or snoopy historians who find Abe Lincoln had syphilis and his wife died mad of it, you are in the same territory, and the same police state cast of mind, as any South American dictatorship, or any ancient theocracy, or any prurient Scientologist, and you are probably not well in your mind.

If a wrong thing is said, it can be argued. It can be debated. It does not need, and it does not deserve, the cutting out of tongues.

 

devine is not comfortable...

 

With unemployment rising, the non-resources economy flatlining, the mining industry having peaked, carbon tax biting and superannuation under threat, the electorate views dimly the people who are supposed to be running the country running around playing gender politics instead. Especially on the tenth anniversary of the first Bali bombing.

We don’t care if the prime minister is a woman or a man. We just want rational, prudent, even boring government. We want to be “relaxed and comfortable” again. 

http://blogs.news.com.au/dailytelegraph/mirandadevine/index.php/dailytelegraph/comments/gender_card_is_a_loser/

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Yes, the "relaxed and comfortable" government of John W Howard was a hoot of deceit and wars and other crap like that — such as a hit on the workers of this country.  The best way to be relaxed and comfortable was to be dead then...

And with global warming on the horizon (actually it's already here but the mainstream media is making sure it's off the agenda) one could soon be dead by accident of a weather kind... Sure, Miranda does not believe in global warming, thus it does not exist...

Miranda Devine is getting soft in the head. Has she realised there has been a major economic crash around the world and it's still going on — and that it's hard yakka to keep a boat on an even keel... And while she's at it, why does not she blame her mates in Queensland for the closure of coal mines because the Liberal (conservative) government is raising the royalties... NOTHING here due to the carbon tax nor the federal mining tax... But Miranda would find a way to spin this as Canberra's fault...

Meanwhile this could be irrelevant as the Chinese export figures have gone up in the last month and our export are going up too, to the detriment of the planet's health I will add here...