GERARD HENDERSON’S MEDIA WATCH DOG – ISSUE NO. 58
18 JUNE 2010
IN THIS ISSUE
● Why Nancy Wants to Give Professor Singer One
● MWD at the Press Gallery’s Mid Winter Ball – Or Didn’t We Have Fun Laughing at the Less Fortunate?
● What’s On the Menu at The Greens’ All-Green Dinner
● Kerry O’Brien Misses Election Date Scoop
● John Hewson’s Column – Don’t Talk about Elderslie
● Clive Hamilton Opines in The Age About the Danger of Democratic Elections
● Avril Moore Reflects in The Age About Partial Amputation as a Means of Keeping Her Sons Away from Violence
● Five Paws Award – Well Done Jack Waterford
● Greg Barns on the Soviet Secret Police in Tasmania’s Green and Pleasant Land
● Phillip Adams on the late Michael Schildberger (Again)
● Wacko – Yet Another Letter to MWD from Julian Burnside AO QC
NANCY LUSTS FOR PROFESSOR SINGER – OR WHY Q&A CAN BE REALLY EXCITING
The week began with Q&A on Monday. Nancy was just SO EXCITED after watching the program on ABC 1. It was the familiar format. One Labor politician (Peter Garrett). One Coalition politician (Helen Coonan). Two lefties – on this occasion David Marr and Peter Singer. And one other woman – in this case Professor Jayashri Kulkarni.
There were so many current topics that might have been called-up for discussion on 14 June. Including Iran, the Korean Peninsula, President Obama and the oil leak in the Gulf of Mexico, parental leave and so on. However, Q&A presenter Tony Jones and executive producer Peter McEvoy knew what was news last Monday. The first question called by Jones referred to animal rights – as did the last question from the audience. Both were prepared questions which had been cleared by the Q&A production team.
Here’s the final question:
Tony Jones : We will move on. We have a web question from Deirdre Baker in New South Wales. “Peter Singer, in your 2001 article ‘Heavy Petting’ you state that mutually satisfying sexual activity between humans and animals can develop. Please explain.”
And so it came to pass that Dr Singer commented on his previously expressed view that it was quite okay for a dog to, eh, pleasure its female owner – provided both gave informed consent or some such. The reference is to Peter Singer’s 2001 article published in Nerve. Being a thoroughly modern academic, Dr Singer did not assign a gender to the canine in question. [Perhaps he is conscious of the rights of neutered animals. – Ed.]
This exchange certainly excited Nancy. So much so that she wanted to give the Princeton University professor one – as the saying goes. A REALLY BIG ONE. Or perhaps more than one.
The Q&A audience, like Nancy, seemed so excited at so bold a discussion. How daring – and all on taxpayer funded television. But Nancy’s co-owner is old enough to remember that Xaviera Hollander, in her book The Happy Hooker which was first published in 1971, wrote approving about sexual relations between Alsatians and their loving female owners. Ms Hollander was a prostitute [Don’t you mean sex worker? – Ed.] Dr Singer is a professor at Princeton University. So writing on bestiality and all that has gone from the brothel to the academia in just four decades. Progress indeed.
EXCLUSIVE REPORT – MWD AT PRESS GALLERY’S BACHELORS, SPINSTERS AND GROPERS BALL
Media Watch Dog was most grateful to receive an invitation from one of the event’s sponsors to attend the Mid Winter Ball 2010 at the Great Hall Parliament House. It was MWD’s first experience of this much-hyped function – and lotsa fun was had by all, even though some commentators have described this year’s function as lacking spark.
Certainly the occasion did not have the scandal of the 2009 event when a young male Liberal Party backbench staffer went around groping some of the young (barely dressed) female guests. Because of such behaviour, to Nancy this event will always be thought of as the “Press Gallery’s Bachelors, Spinsters and Gropers Ball”.
This year’s event raised some $250,000 which will be distributed to four charities. With some 650 in attendance, a contribution of around $400 by each attendee would have meant that everyone could have stayed at home, prevented additional liver damage, avoided gropers, reduced their carbon footprint and so on – while still supporting what the Irish call “concern”.
On arrival at the designated table, MWD was greeted by an enormous program which featured a photo of Phillip Hudson (president of the Federal Parliamentary Press Gallery) along with a photo of the Mid Winter Ball 2010 committee (featuring Mr Hudson once more plus Malcolm Farr, Steve Lewis, Karen Middleton and Stephanie Peatling. Clearly the cult of (media) personality is alive and well in the Parliamentary Press Gallery.
There was also a large photo of the evening’s entertainers – John Doyle AM (who fronted up as Roy Slaven) and Greig Pickhaver AM (who fronted up as H.G. Nelson). [It’s great that such irreverent types as Mr Doyle AM and Mr Pickhaver AM were gonged in the Queen’s Birthday Honours List. What’s next? An AC for Catherine Deveny, perhaps? – Ed]
It was a wow night. Prime Minister Kevin Rudd’s 12 minute speech included a few jokes interspersed with some threats to the mining industry – along the lines of “Can I say guys, we’ve got a long memory”. And Opposition leader Tony Abbott had a good laugh at the fact that Messrs Doyle and Pickhaver had been gonged in an honours list which is sanctioned by The Palace. However, MWD assessed that Phillip Hudson had the best joke of all – he claimed that the Canberra based members of the Press Gallery have a feeling for the nation unmatched by any other group in the community. Go on.
H.G. Nelson and Roy Slaven, in their somewhat long presentation, had a few jokes. However, as is the fashion of many leftist Australian comedians – including Catherine Deveny – they exhibit “kick-down” humour, primarily directed at the less-educated and the less well-off.
Nelson and Slaven spoke to the well-heeled and well-educated blokes in their black-tie gear, and the well-heeled and well-educated sheilas in their sassy frocks, with humour directed at the Rugby League code. League, traditionally, was the rugby code of choice for the working classes in New South Wales and Queensland. Slaven referred to League players as “pack-raping people”. It seems that rape has become a joke now – except for its victims, of course.
Slaven went on to declare that if it wasn’t for Rugby League, our jails would be even fuller. Get it? – the joke was that League makes violence lawful. Then Slaven mocked League fans for reading “simple books” of the-cat-sat-on-the-mat genre. Pretty funny, eh? Well, some of the Press Gallery and the assembled guests seemed to think so. There was also much mocking of the obese – along with a predictable leftie rant about the advertising of food on the commercial airspace.
The evening had commenced with a “The Year That Was” video put together by Chris Legge of SBS TV. His initial target was disgraced former Treasury public servant Godwin Grech. To those who have observed Mr Grech, he seems anything but in good physical and mental health. All the reason, then, for the mentally and physically fit audience at the Press Gallery bash to mock him. There’s no target like a soft target, it seems.
The evening concluded with some fine singing – featuring clear diction – by Press Gallery members in “The House Howlers” choir. They laughed at virtually everyone – except, of course, members of the Press Gallery and other journalists.
This year’s Mid Winter Ball auction on ebay offered barefoot bowling and dinner for four with the Prime Minister and the Treasurer, a personal surfing lesson (plus breakfast for six) with the Opposition leader Tony Abbott, dinner for six with Julia Gillard at a Canberra restaurant and dinner with the Australian Greens at Parliament House. The Abbott event attracted the most bids – followed by Rudd, Gillard and the Greens. The Abbott auction was won by the left-wing action group Get Up! Get Up! seems to believe that the Opposition leader will be embarrassed by having to spend time with the former refugee whom it has nominated to the event. They seem to be confusing Tony Abbott with John Howard – but we shall see.
Nancy was keen to put in a bid for the gig with Senator Bob Brown and four other Greens senators – until she came across a copy of the proposed menu. Here it is, truly a scoop for MWD readers:
Green Dinner With The Greens – Parliament House, Canberra
Entrée: Sliced Turnip with Green Mango and Red Chilli Sauce.
Main Course: Cucumber and Green Leaves with gado-gado sauce.
Dessert: Lentil “Doughnut” with Macerated Strawberries.
Drinks: Tap Water
Dress: Hemp (preferably Khadi), loin cloth plus sandals.
Time: Arrive – 8 pm. (Bicycle) Carriages 8.30 pm.
BYO Candles. Please leave spinning wheels at the door.
Nancy reckons that it would be more fun at home scratching fleas than partaking of dinner with Saint Bob and his secular apostles.
STOP PRESS
– Red Kerry, Boring For Aunty, Misses Election Story
Did you watch Kerry O’Brien’s live interview with Kevin Rudd on last night’s 7.30 Report? It was your classic O’Brien interview – with Red Kerry asking long questions, sometimes read from notes, and expecting the Prime Minister to respond to the interviewer’s agenda. It was only at the end that something unexpected happened. Mr Rudd volunteered the information that an election was not due until around March or April 2011. Let’s go to the transcript to document how the live interview ended with a Rudd bang followed by an O’Brien wimper:
Kerry O’Brien : And very briefly, coming back to those polls. If the trend in those polls is not reversed in coming weeks, or at least arrested, will you consider putting your party ahead of your own personal ambitions and resign?
Kevin Rudd : Can I say to you, Kerry, this business of reform is a tough business. It’s a hard business. It’s never some sort of even and smooth trajectory. I expect that we’re going to continue to take a whacking in the polls for some little time to come yet
Kerry O’Brien : But you’ve got an election looming, you’ve got an election coming.
Kevin Rudd : Yeah, well we have an election due by whatever it is, March or April next year and we only have three year terms. You’ve got to use the time effectively. You can’t just dodge hard questions like tax reform. You’ve got to engage in it and that’s what the business of being an effective government of the country is like together with the other stuff that we have done.
Kerry O’Brien : Okay, I won’t ask you to go through the list again.
Kevin Rudd : – keeping the economy strong, unemployment at 5.2 per cent. That’s as important as the other matters we’re engaged in right now.
Kerry O’Brien : Kevin Rudd, thanks for talking to us.
Kevin Rudd : I appreciate it.
What a waste of time. First up, Kerry O’Brien asked the quite useless “will you resign” question. Did he really expect the Prime Minister to respond in the affirmative? And then, lo and behold, Red Kerry was dealing with a news story. At last. Technically an election can be held as late as 16 April 2011 but it has been expected that Australia will go to the polls no later than mid-December 2010 – since this would be around three years since the 2007 poll.
So this was real news. And what did Kerry O’Brien do? Answer – nothing. He concluded the interview and introduced the final segment in the regular Thursday evening slot by John Clarke and Bryan Dawe – when the comedians invariably ridicule Labor or the Coalition, but never the Greens, from the left.
The Clarke/Dawe segment is both old and tired. Moreover, it is not clear what it says about the ABC’s supposedly leading current affairs program. Is the 7.30 Report current affairs? Or is the 7.30 Report comedy? Or is it just predictably boring – consisting mainly of unimportant “magazine style” stories?
The point is that – when confronted with actual news – the 7.30 Report presenter and producer could have decided to drop the Clarke/Dawe segment and could have used the remaining two minutes of the program to ask the Prime Minister what he meant when he said that the election could be held as late as March or April next year. But no.
This is not the first occasion this year when Red Kerry has not followed up a story. In April the ABC spent lotsa money sending Mr O’Brien to Washington for an interview with Barack Obama despite the fact that the talented Lisa Millar is based in the United States and could have handled this gig for the taxpayer funded public broadcaster.
The interview, which aired on 14 April, was predictably predictable – until President Obama said that “if over a billion Chinese citizens have the same living patterns as Australians and Americans do right now, then all of us are in for a very miserable time, the planet just can’t sustain it”.
Interesting point, don’t you think? Here the President of the United States seemed to be saying that Chinese should never enjoy the living patterns that citizens of the developed Western nations currently enjoy. So what did Kerry O’Brien do? Well, “Red” Kerry just looked down to his notes and asked a question about carbon trading. It was as newsy as the Clarke/Dawe routine each Thursday.
– John Hewson On John Hewson
What a stunning column by former Liberal Party leader – and contemporary Liberal Party critic – John (“call me Doctor”) Hewson in today’s Australian Financial Review.
In his self-serving column on the administration of receivership and liquidation, Dr Hewson declared:
…having been significantly involved in these processes over nearly 30 years, attempting to turn companies around, buying and selling distressed assets or businesses, putting companies into administration, or otherwise being involved in receiverships and liquidations, I am appalled at where we have arrived. The key players – administrators, receivers and liquidators – now virtually have a vested interest in company failures.
Unfortunately John Hewson did not use the space available to him to explain the circumstances surrounding the collapse of Elderslie Finance Corporation, of which he was chairman until shortly before it went belly up. (Re which see Issue 3 and “Elderslie liquidator targets Hewson”, Sydney Morning Herald, 12-13 June 2010.) What a pity. Perhaps next time.
NANCY’S PICKS OF THE WEEK
Clive Hamilton and Avril Moore Star in “The Guardian on the Yarra”
Nancy is an avid reader of The-Guardian-on-the-Yarra because it’s invariably left-wing Opinion Page invariably provides good copy for mad quotes for MWD. According to Nancy’s count, in recent weeks The Age has run four columns on the Israel/Palestine question – all, of course, critical of Israel to a greater or lesser extent.
First up there was an article critical of the Netanyahu government by Haaretz columnist Bradley Burston (2 June), followed by an article by well known Australian critic of Israel Peter Rodgers (3 June), followed by an article by Australian Palestinian writer Samah Sabawi (8 June) followed by an article by The-Guardian-on-the-Yarra’s very own Daniel Flitton (11 June). Enough said.
This week Nancy’s attention was focused on two you-beaut pieces.
• On Monday 14 June, The Age ran an article by Professor Clive (“occasionally call me Jacob”) Hamilton – see Issue 48. Dr Hamilton took aim at the Australian mining industry’s opposition to the Resource Super Profits Tax – declaring:
So here’s the situation. A small group of obscenely rich people are acting in concert to bring down an elected government that wants to tax super profits. They want to install a new government sympathetic to their interests.
Clive – or was it Jacob? – apparently believes that there is something wrong in democratic argument which might influence the outcome of a democratic election. Fancy that. He is a social science academic. Clive Hamilton went on to depict the actions of mining industry executives as (i) “a scandalous attack on working people” and (ii) “holding the country to ransom”. He also mentioned that neither Kevin Rudd nor Wayne Swan would return his phone calls. Gosh.
The learned professor (quite correctly) critcised the likes of Andrew Forrest and Clive Palmer for labelling the Rudd Government as communist. But he failed to mention that he has linked those who failed to line up with the catastrophists on climate change as being akin to those who wanted to appease the Nazis in the late 1930s (The Weekend Australian, 5-6 June 2010). Dr Hamilton also failed to mention that he has called for a suspension of democratic forms to handle climate change. This suggests that, in Clive Hamilton Land, it’s okay for greenies to suspend representative government but it’s not okay for miners to campaign in the lead-up to the election.
• Then on Tuesday 15 June The Age ran an article by Melbourne-based academic Avril Moore who used the death of two Australian servicemen in Afghanistan to rant against the Australian Defence Force – but not, of course, members of the al Qaeda inspired homicide/suicide bomb squads.
Ms Moore told Age readers that she had two sons around the age of the recently deceased ADF members – and continued:
In John Irving’s semi-autobiographical novel, A Prayer for Owen Meany, set during the Vietnam War, Owen, in an act of love, removes the right index or ”trigger” finger of his best friend John who has been conscripted, thus ensuring he fails his physical. Would I deliberately injure one of my children to stop them from joining up? Possibly. How many years do you get for grievous bodily harm?
Good question. Nancy’s answer – probably not enough in this particular case.
NANCY’S FIVE PAWS AWARD
Jack Waterford Reflects On Jack Waterford and The Age
This week’s winner of MWD’s most prestigious award is Canberra Times editor-at-large Jack Waterford. Yesterday he wrote a piece describing how, in spite of an Irish Catholic background and a radical past, he had never supported the violence prone Provisional Irish Republican Army. Well done.
Also Nancy was influenced by Mr Waterford’s fine review of Ben Hills’ Breaking News: The Golden Age of Graham Perkin in The Canberra Times on 29 May 2010 where he queried some of the author’s hyperbole and made the following point about what Nancy describes as “The Guardian on the Yarra”. As Jack Waterford commented:
The Age is, perhaps properly, very parochial, very Melbourne and very up itself. It was before Perkin; it was, in a different way, with Perkin; and has been, in different ways, after Perkin…. Perkin would be appalled to think himself responsible for what The Age critics think a tendency to luvviness, soft leftism and pandering to the café scene.
Quite so. Five Paws.
THE MOST EXAGGERATED PIECE OF HYPERBOLE IN HUMAN HISTORY – A NEW FEATURE
Greg Barns Sees the KGB in Hobart Town
Last Friday the ABC announced that The Collectors, presented by Hobart based comedian and broadcaster Andy Muirhead, had been taken off air and that he was on leave without pay. Mr Muirhead has been charged with accessing child pornography. MWD makes no comment on this allegation which will work its way through the legal system.
However, MWD was quite taken by a defence of Andy Muirhead written by Hobart lawyer Greg Barns which was published on the ABC’s Drum Unleashed website on 15 June. Declared Barns:
By making Muirhead swiftly disappear from its airwaves, website and publicity machine in a manner that fairly harked back to the days when the KGB used to do similar things to those in the Kremlin who deviated from the norm or fell out of favour with the regime, the ABC is giving the impression that Muirhead is guilty of the offences with which he has been charged.
What a load of taxpayer funded tripe. Here is Greg Barns claiming that the ABC’s decision to stand down Mr Muirhead, pending the outcome of legal proceedings is just like the Stanlist terror tactics of murder, torture and the gulag engaged by the KGB secret police in the communist totalitarian dictatorship that was the Soviet Union. Greg – get off the grass and make space for Nancy.
PHILLIP ADAMS – MEA CULPA (OF SORTS)
Last Tuesday Phillip Adams apologised on Late Night Live for making “lighthearted references” to the late Michael Schildberger (See Issue 57). Let’s go to the audio tape:
…the other night, talking about Alan Reid, I made light-hearted references to Michael Schildberger, a broadcaster of distinction that I have known for many years – is he still with us : “Is he still with us – ha, ha?” Little did I know that Michael died a few hours earlier and it must have sounded crass. But it was an unhappy accident.
The comment at issue was made by Phillip Adams shortly after 10 pm on Thursday 10 June. Michael Schildberger died on 2 June – some eight days (not eight hours) before Phillip Adams made his comment. Mr Schildberger’s death was reported in the print media on 3 June – and an obituary appeared in The Age on the morning of the day before Phillip Adams’ comments went to air. MWD is pleased to have helped clear this up.
History Corner has been held over due to an over-supply of material. But there is a Correspondence section, thank God – and Julian (AO, QC).
CORRESPONDENCE
JULIAN BURNSIDE (QC & AO) WRITES TO MWD – YET AGAIN
It’s great to know that Julian Burnside is a dedicated follower of Media Watch Dog.
In Issue 57, MWD was happy to publish a letter from JB – who signed off as Julian Burnside.
This week, MWD publishes a follow-up missive from JB – this one signed off as Julian Burnside QC AO. [This is quite wrong, your man Burnside should be an AC, at least – Ed.]
This correspondence is published in the public’s right-to-know, the national interest and to fill space. Here we go:
Julian Burnside to Gerard Henderson, 7.15 pm, 14 June 2010
Dear GH
Facts:
I mention Evatt as the author of a book, to explain the title of a speech about injustice within the law. Beyond that, I did not mention Evatt.
You write a piece which includes the headings ” Julian Burnside QC’s Woeful History (etc)” and “Julian Burnside QC White-Washes Leftist Hero Bert Evatt”
Your email seeks to argue that there is some plausible link between the speech I gave and the contents of your critique. Given your response, discussing the matter further seems pointless. People I have spoken to who attended the speech are astonished that you thought it was a discussion of Evatt, and are somewhat bemused by your little piece.
I am perfectly happy for you to take shots at me all you like, but to use such an implausible starting point for criticism looks like desperation at best, and intellectual impairment at worst.
In case you seek to cite your emails and my response as proof of something, I say simply that your response is ludicrous.
Very best wishes
Julian
Julian Burnside AO QC
Gerard Henderson to Julian Burnside, 2.15 pm, 15 June 2010
Dear JB (AO QC)
I refer to your email of yesterday.
I have a lot of fun writing Media Watch Dog each Friday – and it’s great to know that some of your contacts are “bemused” by it.
I am, however, quite disturbed by your suggestion that I am suffering from “intellectual impairment”. This does not bother me personally. But it seems somewhat unfair to those who suffer from mental disability and who, by the way, do not like allegations about mental health being used as weapons in political debate.
I note that you have previously said that I am “just not very bright” [New Matilda, 15 November 2007]. Now you claim that I am “mentally impaired”. What’s next?
By the way, there is considerable evidence that Dr Evatt – whose work you cite in the title of your recent speech – was suffering from mental impairment although it was accepted that he was bright.
Keep moral high, and keep those emails coming. As far as I am concerned, this particular correspondence is closed.
Best wishes
Gerard
Gerard Henderson
(Neither “AO nor QC” – but “Father in the Navy” and “Sister in the Waxworks”, which are quite impressive qualifications for the “not very bright” and/or “intellectually impaired”)
Until next time.