No Matter How Far They Go, The Mainstream Media Will Never Campaign To Have The Chaser Taken Off The Air

By Darryl Mason

The Chaser's Julian Morrow made a promise on May 28, after the first episode of the new series of the mainstream media's reliable 'Public Outrage!' content provider, and comments generator, went to air :

"We care about complaint numbers far more than ratings. We were disappointed there were so few complaints this week, so we'll try to make it worse next week,'' Morrow said.

The Chaser kept its promise :



The complaints are pouring into the ABC, but more importantly, so are the comments to mainstream media blogs, your says and discussion boards. There must be 3000 comments already across a dozen or so Murdoch media blogs and news stories.

The Chaser made fun of dying children, or at least made fun of the way dying children are marketed by charities and top rating commercial television shows. Who the fuck doesn't have an opinion on that?

The Chaser's 'Make A Realistic Wish' Outrage! will soar to the top of Most Read stories across all the mainstream media online news sites, generating hundreds of thousands of extra page views, and by the time the Public Outrage! dies down, a few million in total page views that never would have existed had not The Chaser asked what's the point of helping dying children? "They're only going to die anyway."

A one minute skit from The Chaser produces a free video story, and copious online news stories mostly built out of comments made online by parents of dying children and furious others demanding the ABC cancel The Chaser by dinner time. This is not a costly piece of investigative journalism. It's all free. But it's exactly the kind of free Public Outrage! news story the mainstream media, tabloid and 'serious', are quickly becoming addicted to.

A few million extra page views, thanks to The Chaser, for online mainstream media new sites, translates into, at least, thousands of dollars worth of extra ad revenue.

The figures get bigger when you take it to the commercial television networks who will fill a few minutes of the evening news with this story, which will also soak up a solid five to eight minutes of the evening current affairs shows. Again, free Public Outrage! content.

It will be interesting to see who actually interviews dying children first to see what they think of The Chaser's demand they be more realistic about their dying wishes. Maybe A Current Affair can follow Julian Morrow around with a couple of cancer kids until he breaks down and weeps an apology.

If The Chaser can be relied upon to keep delivering totally free Public Outrage! stories every week for the rest of their last series, and no doubt they can (and if they don't, there will be enough material for some confected Public Outrage! anyway), mainstream media news sites, and blogs, can expect increased ad revenue because advertisers know The Chaser-related stories will pull the online eyeballs that they want to reach. It's not often a newspaper or news site can count on a popular story being served up to them for free, every Wednesday night.

Interestingly, if say the Daily Telegraph, an obvious online ad revenue beneficiary from The Chasers's totally free Public Outrage! stories, decided to go hard and stop at nothing until The Chaser was pulled off air, and got the rest of the series canned, they would be kissing goodbye to thousands of dollars worth of extra page view/ad revenue, plus all those stories that feed the endless demand for new semi-news related content.

(Note : I'm basing those very loose ad revenue estimates on what those kind of page view numbers would generate for the average independent blog carrying Google ads. I'd expect the money generated by The Chaser's free Public Outrage! stories to be substantially greater).

Clearly it would not be in the interest of any of the mainstream media online news sites, or the evening news or current affairs shows, to actually have The Chaser pulled off the air, no matter how far they go.

So in the time they have left, eight to ten weeks, in this final series, The Chaser can do anything they want, within legal restrictions. They could do some of the most dark and demented satire Australian TV viewers have ever seen. They could really break out of their own worn-out format and do something utterly unhinged.



The Chaser is clearly invaluable to all the Australian media. What they do generates public discussion and debate, filling newspaper pages, dreary day empty evening news spots, comment boards, and all those hours of talkback radio.

The first episode of the new series of The Chaser also provided hundreds of thousands of extra page views and free Public Outrage! content and online comment for the commercial TV networks and the Fairfax and Murodch media :

The public broadcaster received complaints about almost every segment of the satirical ABC show, which set its sights on making fun of the Cronulla Sharks group sex scandal.

The Chaser's War On Everything spokesman said complaint words used included: ``Disgusting, cruel, offensive, pathetic, revolting and disgraceful''.

It also showed the incident in which the boys flew a blimp into protected airspace above the Vatican, a cameo by TV talk show host Kerri-Anne Kennerley in a romantic tryst with Morrow.

Morrow also featured in a skit where a mannequin dressed as Governor General Quentin Bryce was thrown over a wall of the all-male Melbourne Club.

Some said a Footprints sketch was offensive to Christians, while a Wipeout Palestine segment and Billy Connolly sketch were also complained about.

Many more took to websites to express their disappointment with the show which has been off-air for 18 months.

John Surname speaks out in defence of The Chaser.

While I don't doubt that many, many people were seriously offended and upset by the 'Make A Realistic Wish Foundation' bit, you also have to wonder, in these remaining days of anonymous commenting, just how busy the PR units of rival networks are in creating or at least adding to the avalanche of comments demanding The Chaser be taken off the air, immediately. Consider this :

An average national audience of 1.54 million watched the show last night.

It smashed its commercial rivals Criminal Minds, The Mentalist and Law and Order: SVU.

It's not just that The Chaser completely dominates its prime time position, advertisers are reluctant to pay what they once did for 30 seconds in Law & Order because they know nearly all of their key target audience of 16 to 35 year olds are watching The Chaser.

The commercial networks, however, could go hard against The Chaser and air something that would pull away probably half of The Chaser's audience. The latest episode of The Daily Show for example. Or The Trailer Park Boys. But to air those shows in prime time, the commercial networks would have to become as subversive as The Chaser, and they won't be doing that anytime soon.


Now, of course, Prime Minister Rudd is getting in on the Public Outrage! about The Chaser.

If Rudd gets really outraged, maybe not so many people will notice the Defence Minister has also quit today.


UPDATE : Incredible, Channel Nine News ran with The Chaser story as its lead. The resignation of the defence minister ranked second in importance.
.

"Float The Goat"

This is just one of the reasons why Australians have a soft spot for New Zealanders :

A motor vehicle company in New Zealand announced it was giving away a free goat with every ute sold.

Its public relations man was quoted in the papers as saying, with sheep numbers in decline in New Zealand, it was time to "float the goat".

He talked up their weed-eating abilities and also guaranteed there was zero risk of getting goat flu.

A hugely entertaining week of New Zealand Is Weird stories here.

Yeah, But That's Different....

According to Mumbrella, Channel Nine morning news chose not to report on the Air France mid-air explosion because the same news bulletin was going to be shown on Qantas flights :

A spokesman for Nine sent a brief email to Mumbrella saying: “We never report news involving plane incidents on Qantas inflight news bulletins.”

And yet they have no problem showing terrifying footage of house fires on the evening news to an audience primarily sitting around in houses.

"So The Fat Four Eyes Says To Skinny Four Eyes..."

By Darryl Mason


Are we a racist nation?

That depends. Are you a wog?

Do you eat weird foreign food that dickhead bogans haven't yet realised tastes pretty fucking good?

Do you tend to work harder and longer than most white people of your age group in jobs most of them think are beneath them?

Do you have family traditions of language, song, art and story that go back dozens or even hundreds of generations?

Do you think Australia is the best country on Earth but populated by white people who have no idea just how incredibly lucky they are to live in such a land of opportunity?

Do you see cartoons in newspapers, or catch moments on The Footy Show, or read comments on blogs, or hear bitter old people bitching on talkback radio about what's wrong with "people like them", that debase your ancient racial heritage and think, 'What the fuck? These people have shit for brains. Fuck this for a joke.'

Then yes, Australia probably is a racist nation.

It was a weird juxtaposition to hear Sol Formerly Of Telstra talk about how racist and backward we are as a nation, to be met with widespread shouts of indignant outrage about how very unracist we are, just before 'Chk Chk Clare' got instantly famous for her "There Were These Two Wogs Fighting" tale which, of course was, yeah, maybe racist but that's okay because it was funny, so....

David Penberthy at The Punch thinks Australia is most definitely a racist nation.

The Professional Idiot, naturally, reacts with all the hilarious petulance we've come to expect of those of Dutch descent, and shouts, "No We're Not!"

But the old Australian attitudes towards people who don't look like they'd give up their life to fight in a war because The Queen demanded they do so are changing. You remove most of the bullying from society and most of the racism goes along with it.

As Scott at Grods points out in an excellent essay, 'On Racism', anti-bullying education in Australian schools is making a fundamental difference to how young Australians now view casual racism.

I've noticed Scott doesn't look he's copped much racial abuse in his life, but he does wear glasses, so I wrote this comment :

As a member of the bespectacled, Scott, how would you feel today in the following circumstances :

- A taxi driver asks you to show him on the map where you want to go, but it’s a bit dark, hard to see, you hear the taxi driver mumble under his breath, “Fucking Four Eyes are blind as bats.”

- You exit a building, slip on the stairs, two women nearby laugh to each other, “Those Four Eyes are always so clumsy.”

- You walk into a library, a passer-by shouts derisively, “Hey Four Eyes! You want a wheelbarrow for all your books?”

- You run through the rain, get in a lift, someone cackles, “You really need little wipers on those Coke bottle bottoms, don’t you?”

- You go a fancy dinner for work, the obnoxious office joker keeps coming up to you all night long, holding up three fingers, then two, then four, always asking the same question, “How many fingers am I holding up?” then laughing like a fuckwit while the people you were talking to slink away.

- You go to a restaurant, the waiter sets up the specials board six feet back from your table, he looks at you squinting through your glasses, the waiter says, “Oh, you’re one of them….I’ll bring it closer to you.”

Racism, like bullying, like picking on people who look different to most other people around them, is something most people grow out of, particularly when they're not witnessing it or hearing it from their parents, and the most prominent people in their culture.

I do find it fascinating, though, that those who are the fastest to shout "We Are Not Racist!" are usually those who also thought, still think, going to war and laying waste to races of people is a good, practical idea.

Racism, like bullying, like a belief in war, is immaturity at its most basic.

When the vast majority of Australians give up all three of those beliefs and attitudes, we become a mature nation.


.

Please Give Generously

If only it was the Rudd government filling headlines for throttling the throats of each other, The Professional Idiot could have got 10 or 20 blog posts and thousands of comments out of it, but alas, it was Liberal Vs Liberal biffo and violence and so, he's got nothing :

Journalism : It's This Close To Being Totally Gay

David Penberthy, editor of The Punch, the new Rupert Murdoch media aggregator site, describes a working day at the coalface of modern journalism :

The working day in journalism has so many pockets of variety and reflection that it’s almost too effeminate to describe - coffee runs with colleagues, flicking through magazines, clicking away on websites from here and abroad, going to the roof with a cuppa and a red pen to work on a draft.

Flicking through magazines and having cuppas in the sun is the hardcore pace of modern Murdoch tabloid journalism?

Sounds more like professional blogging.

And this even more frank admission :

Journalists have a saying which is actually more of a truism - that the job is so much fun you would do it for free.

I wouldn't say that truism too loud around Rupert, he's looking for all the free journalists he can get right now.

Rupert Murdoch thinks free journalists and free writers will save his worldwide media empire. Free writers and charging people to read them.

That's the new business model.

Despite The Liberal Party Fight Club, The Left Still Have A Lot To Answer For

By Darryl Mason

Whale-fancying, tree-fondling, raw nut loaf enjoying(-ing) Lefties cannot hide behind their soy carob lattes and hemp curtains any longer. Many important questions have been posed, there must be answers :

What is it with the Left and violence?

What is it with the Left and vomitously vindictive snobbery?

What is it with the left and not being normal????

What is it with the left and censorship?

What is it with the Left and their purely derivative style?

What is it with the Left and Jew-hating, full stop?

What is it with the left and sticking their noses in other peoples lives?

What is it with the left and a complete failure to be witty?

What is it with the left and zero comprehension skills?

What is it with the left and denying undeniable fact?

What is it with the left and excuses?

What is it with the Left and crazies?

And the biggie :

What is it with the left and their total lack of compassion for people and their self centred destructive tendencies that ignore basic principles in relationships, economics, physics, climate etc?

Indeed.

If Rupert Murdoch's hilarious delusions about reader-must-pay content actually becomes reality, one day soon you may have to cough up a few C(arbon)s to read such important political discourse.

John Surname poses a far more relevant question :

What is it with The Right and “what is it with The Left and…”?

To clear up the important differences between whatever the fuck is supposed to constitute being of The Left or The Right in Australia today, if you don't know what a true Leftie is, you're probably one of them.

A Poultry Kind Of Psychopathy

Nationals senator Barnaby Joyce is now the politician most likely to supply Canberra's press gallery with something highly quotable, and funny. He struck gold this morning when commenting on Kevin Rudd :

"The guy's a psycho chook.

"Who in their right mind gets onto a plane and because he doesn't get the right colour birdseed has a spack attack?''

I don't think I've heard 'spack attack' used by an adult since Kylie Mole went off the air, and Barnaby Joyce totally owns 'Psycho Chook' as far as Google is concerned.

Howard-era Liberal Party lingerer, Tony Abbott, also had a bit of a go at Rudd :

"People who know him have always thought that the Milky Bar Kid image was a bit confected," he said.

Get it? Oh, come on! That's genius. Milky Bar, confected, confectionery....nothing?

Ah, forget it. Abbott's multi-layered humour is obviously too deep for the average Ostrahyun.

"Seriously Dude, They Gave Me A Freaking Grant To Watch All 400 Episodes Of The Simpsons!"



By Darryl Mason

It took more than 120 hours of valuable research time to come up with the data for this headline grabbing study but the researchers could have found all the exact same data in half a second by simply searching the words 'The Simpsons smoking' :

One of the most popular television shows in history contains a "large number" of tobacco-related scenes, say researchers who watched 400 episodes of the cartoon for science.

"We recorded 795 instances of smoking or references to smoking," says Dr Guy Eslick, a fellow of the International Union Against Cancer and honorary associate of the University of Sydney's School of Public Health.

"The most notable characters who smoked were Marge Simpson's sisters Patty and Selma, Krusty the Clown and Bart's school teacher Mrs Krabappel."

Actually, according to this list, the first result when you Google 'The Simpsons smoking', Homer Simpson is seen smoking or referring to smoking 25 times, while Mrs Krabapple and cigarettes appear only 23 times.

"Even instances of smoking being reflected in a negative way, particularly among young characters, could have an impact on promoting children to smoke cigarettes," Dr Eslick said.

The study concludes: "Viewing The Simpsons characters smoking may prompt children to consider smoking at an early age".

Interestingly, "795 instances of smoking or references to smoking," is almost exactly the same number you get if you count every mention, reference or allusion to smoking and tobacco in this list.

But this news story claims the researchers only watched the first 18 seasons for their project, yet they came up with almost the same number of smoking references as this recently updated archive, which includes smoking references in seasons 19, 20 and 21.

Imagine that. They could have saved all that precious research time simply by Googling 'The Simpsons Smoking'. It's the Very First Link!

Did the researchers find that archive and then decide to go ahead and watch 400 episodes of The Simpsons anyway?

400 episodes of The Simpsons, running at about 21 minutes each, works out to be about 120 solid hours. Which is the equivalent of getting one researcher to do nothing but watch The Simpsons seven hours a day, five days a week, for almost three solid weeks.

I'd like to take this opportunity to offer my value-price services to any researchers needing to know how many unhealthy meals Tony Soprano grunts his way through in The Sopranos, or how many times made up swear words are used in all seasons of Battlestar Galactica.

I think the more interesting research results would have come from studying what happens to someone who does nothing but watch The Simpsons all day, five days a week, for three weeks.

I know from personal experience back in the early '90s, that even two or three days of solid Simpsons marathon viewing sessions can seriously distort your perceptions of the non-cartoon reality. It's certainly not as colourful.





.

Is There A YoLib MC In The House?

What will save the Australian Young Liberals from sliding further into irrelevancy?

PG-friendly, swears-free hip hop of course.

Learn from your American brothers, snap that mike and bust some young conservative rhymes, err...Yo!

Junkie Depopulation Looms

Drug traffickers love war, and recession.

Local illegal drug production usually increases in countries where war and major conflicts close down peacetime economies, and new markets for those drugs open up in countries where recession has stripped away wealth and assets and dignity.

Just as Australia grinds into recession, Afghanistan heroin appears, cheap, potent and about to flood the streets of Sydney and Melbourne, for starters.

This is the end product of Afghanistan's record opium crops of 2007, Even in the midst of war, or because of it, Afghanistan produces more than 90% of the world's opium supply.

A Cause :

There are 157,000 hectares (100 metres squared) of opium fields in Afghanistan producing 7,700 tonnes...of opium and the export value of opium, morphine and heroin at border prices in neighbouring countries for Afghan traffickers was worth $3.4bn last year.

An Effect :

Heroin is back on the streets of Sydney, sparking fears society will soon have to brace itself for the return of daily overdoses.

The Daily Telegraph can reveal the deadly and highly addictive drug is re-emerging and its use increasing after almost a 10-year drought.

Paramedics and emergency department doctors are beginning to treat an increasing number of addicts who have overdosed on heroin.

Unfortunately, high potency Afghan heroin is already finding a fresh market amongst the newly jobless, and homeless. Drug use and abuse booms during hard times.

Apparently, some Sydney junkies are now taking to mixing ice with their smack, and hospital staff are finding overdose victims hard to deal with, some needing three times the normal dose of the anti-opioid Narcan to come down, or back.


.

If You Park That Thing In My Driveway, I Can't Be Held Responsible For What I Might Do To It

Jeremy Clarkson explains the Australian "Civil War" over Fords Vs Holdens for his readers in the UK :

In Oz, everyone is either a supporter of Holden, part of General Motors, or a supporter of Ford.

Oh sure, there are solicitors and accountants who will claim they are above such nonsense, but when pressed they will say: “Of course, I’m a GM man by birth and I would never allow a Ford onto my drive because” — and at this point they start to get a bit red in the face — “they are all raving poofters and” — by this stage they will be banging the table — “I hate them. I would gladly lay down my life and the lives of my children for Holden and I will kill anyone with a hammer if they disagree.”

That's pretty much how I remember it in suburban Sydney in the 1970s. In my neighbourhood, if you dared to drive a Ford and support Manly, well, you were downright radical. Dangerous, even.

It's A Shame Someone Had To Die For This Scene To Become Reality, But...



It's the stuff that living nightmares are made of. The living nightmare where you're the one inside the coffin, screaming to be let out, and only hearing horn hoots, bells and the sound of big red noses being squeaked in reply.

An amazing gallery of mourning clowns can be seen here.

One Prime Minister Discount Bus Pass, Please

According to the 'Do Nothing/Do Something' Climate Change exhibition at the Australian Museum in Sydney - the first museum exhibit I've ever seen that gives a museumy look back at future events that may or may not happen - some time in the next couple of decades the prime minister of Australia will ride a bus to work, soaking up the praises of passers-by for his Greenist infrastructure policies :



Note the prime minister is sporting Hippie Hair and is also wearing a Red t-shirt.

More from inside the Do Nothing/Do Something exhibit here soon.

"An Enormous Disservice To Science"

This is the kind of review you get when you base a book around Andrew Bolt-approved conspiracy theories about global warming :

The writings are always earnest, often involve conspiracy theories and are scientifically worthless.

Plimer sets out to refute the scientific consensus that human emissions of CO2 have changed the climate. He states in his acknowledgments that the book evolved from a dinner in London with three young lawyers who believed the consensus. As Plimer writes: "Although these three had more than adequate intellectual material to destroy the popular paradigm, they had neither the scientific knowledge nor the scientific training to pull it apart stitch by stitch. This was done at dinner."

This is a remarkable claim. If Plimer is right and he is able to show that the work of literally thousands of oceanographers, solar physicists, biologists, atmospheric scientists, geologists, and snow and ice researchers during the past 100 years is fundamentally flawed, then it would rank as one of the greatest discoveries of the century and would almost certainly earn him a Nobel prize. This is the scale of Plimer's claim.

If Plimer can do what he claims, and can prove that human emissions of CO2 have no effect on the climate, then he owes it to the scientific community and, in fact, humanity, to publish his arguments in a refereed journal.

The arguments that Plimer advances in the 503 pages and 2311 footnotes in Heaven and Earth are nonsense. The book is largely a collection of contrarian ideas and conspiracy theories that are rife in the blogosphere. The writing is rambling and repetitive; the arguments flawed and illogical.

Plimer believes "global warming" occurring on Mars, Triton, Jupiter and Pluto proves human emissions of CO2 don't affect Earth's climate.

He believes global warming does not lead to biological stress. He believes volcanoes emit significant quantities of chlorofluorocarbons. He believes the sun formed on the collapsed core of a supernova. All these ideas are so wrong as to be laughable: they do not offer an "alternative scientific perspective".

Plimer has done an enormous disservice to science, and the dedicated scientists who are trying to understand climate and the influence of humans, by publishing this book. It is not "merely" atmospheric scientists that would have to be wrong for Plimer to be right. It would require a rewriting of biology, geology, physics, oceanography, astronomy and statistics.

Now that would be a book of reality-shattering consequence.

Sales of Ian Pilmer's 'Heaven & Earth' appear to have peaked at just under 4000 copies, including sales to libraries and universities. Andrew Bolt claimed the book had shifted 25.000 copies.

Bolt promoted the shit out of 'Heaven & Earth' on his '1 million hits a month!' blog and it received at least a dozen big raves by columnists for The Australian, Daily Telegraph and Herald Sun. The message from them all was clear and hysterical, there's a Great Greeny Global Warming Conspiracy underway and this book exposes it! You Must Read This Book!

But even with all that free promotion and praise, 'Heaven & Earth' sold only moderately well. As a loose comparison, my first novel, Max & Murray, sold about the same number of copies, in the same time period, but without appearances all over the ABC and the dozens of pages of hype in The Australian.

Pilmer's book sales clearly show the supposedly vast unrepresented masses who don't think global warming poses a threat to Australian industry, tourism or general livelihood is not anywhere near as great as Bolt likes to lead his readers to believe. This is why the Liberal Party doesn't want to fight an election on Global Warming Reality, they know the actual levels of dissent amongst the Australian public doesn't match the reality claimed by the likes of Andrew Bolt, Tim Blair and Piers Akerman. All three are Murdoch employees who repeatedly fail to acknowledge that their own boss, Rupert Murdoch, is the most influential promoter of the 'Global Warming Myths' they claim will lead this country to greater economic ruin than we are currently experiencing.

Victorian Fires' Intensity Equal to 1500 Atomic Bombs




By Darryl Mason

The Royal Commission into the Victorian Bushfires will hopefully lead to changes in fire management and disaster planning that will lessen the likelihood of so many Australians dying in our next, inevitable, encounter with an apocalyptic firestorm.

We are still yet to learn more about those Black Saturday rumours that claimed residents of Marysville and Kinglake were not put under a mandatory evacuation because CFA planners were more worried about evacacuees crashing their cars trying to escape (blocking roads for rescue vehicles, causing a multitude of car accidents, becoming trapped on roads swept by fire) than they were about people staying put and taking their chances. Staying put was how most Australians living in the bush have long dealt with bushfires. Not anymore.

But fire behaviour experts testifying at the commission have also made clear that the weather conditions of Black Saturday, or way the fires spread, so quickly, were anything but commonplace events. These were bushfires of unimaginable intensity and ferocity :

Black Saturday fires burned so fiercely they produced energy the equivalent of 1500 atomic bombs the size of the Hiroshima explosion - enough to power Victoria for a year - the bushfires royal commission heard yesterday.

A fire behaviour expert, Dr Kevin Tolhurst, said the best firefighting equipment could be used in direct attacks only on fires that burnt up to 4000 kilowatts a metre. He later told the Herald that some fires on February 7 burned at an intensity of 150,000 kilowatts.

Dr Tolhurst, senior lecturer in fire ecology and management at Melbourne University, also said fires could burn in an area for much longer than people are led to believe from fire-safety information, which suggested a fire-front would pass in about 10 minutes.

He said this timeframe was true of fronts, but not of "fire-activity areas" dotted with spot fires, where the area could remain dangerous to life from radiant heat for an hour or more.

Dr Tolhurst said the average rate at which fires moved on Black Saturday was about 12 kmh, but it travelled for short bursts at up to 60 kmh. Fireballs did exist, he said: "What a lot of people have seen have been fair-dinkum fireflares or fireballs."

He said these were created because the fuel on the day was so dry and the temperatures so high that burning plants gave off volatile gases quickly.

For now, the most compelling explanations for the outbreaks of the fires centre around a fallen power line, at least two alleged incidents of fires being set by CFA volunteers and a lightning strike.

ABC News keeps a dedicated page for updates from the Royal Commission here.

February 9 : A Holocaust Of Fire, Cyclone Of Flames, Burn Hundreds To Death

This Is Australia, We Burn

Wreckage - The Most Haunting Images Of The Victorian Bushfires

The Myths Of Marysville - They Died In The Church, On Their Knees, In Prayer

Shut It Down And Burn It Up, He's Onto Us

Tim Andrews, somehow involved with offshore promotions to increase membership to the Young Liberals through conservative T & A uncovers another rotten Lefty conspiracy :

"It is also well-documented that there has been a concerted effort by the left in recent months to publish offensive comments on right-leaning blogs, and then attack the blog for their own comments. I do not intend to give them this opportunity."

This is now the standard boilerplate for all conservative bloggers.

It's not us, it's them.

Sunday night, Sydney Harbour, shaky ferry :










.

2009: 'We Have To Know Who You Are' - Mandatory Online ID, Free Speech & Comment Anonymity

We Have To Know Who You Are

By Darryl Mason

There was a can of Dulux paint on a white rectangle stand in the Museum of Contemporary Art. It looked like it had been left there by whoever rolled on the wall's most recent coat of paint. But no.

The Can was Art.

It had a guard.

The crowd gathered in a wing of the MCA to hear, because most couldn't see, a seated debate on Blogging Versus Journalism, with mandatory humming microphone, were hardly likely to start kicking over artworks and trashing installations, but the Can of Paint had its own security guard. Apparently they were worried about the exhibit being "Jostled".

As the afternoon debate wore on, more guards arrived to erect a little security zone around the Can of Paint.

It was hard to concentrate on the debate itself. The action around the Can of Paint was fascinating, sometimes downright hypnotic.

As debater Margo Kingston explained how she had been "broken" by her correspondent work covering the first rise of Pauline Hanson, a gaggle of Japanese tourists walked past the debate and headed for the Can.

They drawn to it, like I was.

One of the younger tourists couldn't resist. He reached for the Can. Two security guards intervened, silently. The tourists left.

The debate continued. Margo Kingston revealed that the Sydney Morning Herald's Paul McGeogh had either got her into journalism or got her into blogging, it might have been both. She said McGeogh was in the room. Which one is he? There's easy a dozen aging men in the room who could pass for McGeogh. I depleted the targets in a visual search of the crowd by only looking for McGeoghs who looked like they seen some of the most goddawful fucking shit no-one could ever imagine in some foreign hell war zone, but there were at least six who could have passed for...there was more action at the Can of Paint.

Another clutter of tourists who were also totally ignorant of the hundred or so people and five debaters they were all quietly listening to, headed for the Dulux. This is the problem of holding a debate in an open, functioning wing of a popular museum dead centre in a major tourist zone.

The atmosphere was all wrong. It was too clinical, the room was too white, all the bloggers should have been standing, it would have been better in a pub, you needed at least one big drink to get through 90 minutes of it. Maybe it needed an element of bingo or something. Every time a debater finished a statement, they called out a number.

And it was all so polite. The heated argument count was zero. Debaters Tim Blair and Antony Lowenstein met before the debate and greeted each other pleasantly.

What? No chair throwing?

I thought there was supposed to be at least half-a-bogan amongst the debaters to get some trouble started, to fire it all up. Alas, no.

It grew increasingly difficult to concentrate on the quiet debate.

I kept getting distracted thinking about what would have happened if Channel Nine and the Murdoch media already had a pay-per-story or video viewing debit system in place, as their owners dream they one day will, all through the hilarious Chk Chk Boom! Suckers!' fakery.

What would happen now the story has been revealed as fake if hundreds of thousands of paying users had coughed about four or five digital dollars each to watch a couple of Clare "Two Wogs Fighting" videos and read a half dozen stories over a few days?

The story wasn't real. Consumers would have paid for fictitious news. How would the media companies repay all they had cheated with this fluff? How often could they get away with it? Would a future where fake news stories are more popular than real ones, and more essentially profitable, come into reality?

If they sell you news and it turns out to be fake, or worse, it turns out they knew at some point before they stopped selling it that the story was not what it seemed, or what was originally pitched through headlines, will everyone who paid actually want a refund, even if its offered? Will they care if the fluff is entertaining and distracting enough?

Debater Tim Blair, of the Daily Telegraph, raised the intensity level of the debate to just above tepid when he took a ridiculous blog killing idea out for a bit of a spin in front of whoever all those people were.

He sounded enthusiastic about the day when all comments on blogs will herald the name of the person who posted it.

In short, the age of anonymous commenting comes to an end, on all blogs, not just his own.

It's a strange thing for someone working at a media organisation that is now relying on the thousands of mostly anonymous-posted comments that appear each day across its blogs, its news stories, to keep the online business model healthy to come out and champion. Online news sites needs comments, lots of them, and most of them are anonymous.

And it was slightly surreal that someone already caught up in a dodgy blog comments-related controversy was actually saying doing away with anonymous commenting would solve many of the problems bloggers face with the comments that sometimes pour into, or out of, their blogs.

Some problems might be solved for Blair with mandatory online ID.

Maybe. Then again, maybe not.

If there was an online equivalent of the photo ID, at a guess, I'd say there'd be about 60% less comments on news stories at all of Murdoch's online media. About the same across most of its blogs, probably 80% less comments overall at Andrew Bolt's, and that's not good news. Heavy comment volumes help pay the bills.

Imagine if all those Liberal Party staffers had to hail Peter Costello and rail against Malcolm Turnbull under their real names?

People thoroughly enjoy anonymous commenting. Obviously. It's why it's so popular.

People love making up a fake online identity and calling themselves a twisted moniker of a childhood superhero or their pet's name, or something ordinary like WB, for example, or something weird but catchy like Startled Rabbit In The Headlights. There usually is no consequence for comments made that are not under your own name.

It becomes a different game altogether in a reality of mandatory online ID when every time you read something at 1am, hammered, and you cut loose at some blog about it, go off, your full name permanently imprinted in online archives above some crazed screed, mostly regrettable virtriol, demented thoughts and nerve-shredding opinions, occasional but plentiful abuse. All of it under your own name, accessible by Google.

Commenting at blogs, and now commenting under certain news stories, is popular because it can be done anonymously, without leaving too much of a trace behind. Take away the anonymity, and the comment counts will plunge, instantly.

Every blogger with a healthy roll call of anonymous commenters knows that.

Anonymity sparks not only creativity, but honesty. People lose passion when what they've got to say has to be said under their own name, forever.

And mandatory online ID would mean that holding fake online identities for the purpose of commenting regularly across blogs you love, and those that really make you swear, out loud, but you can't stop reading, that would no longer be legal.

But why should a thought, a bunch of fascinating facts, a torrent of grinding aggro, or a brain steaming opinion, have to be attached to a person's name or identity anyway?

I'm not sure that most people over 40 comprehend how many in the generation growing up online view the ability to comment anonymously, under an alias, or a festival of fictitious avatars.

They're not hiding. It doesn't matter.

It's not who said That Great Thing that is important anymore, if it ever was at all. The identity can never be fully trusted anyway, so it doesn't matter who posted the comment that makes a hundred other regular commenters at a blog or forum flip out and go nuts..

The only thing that matters is what has been said.

The most wild, but true, fact wins.

The funniest line wins.

The most spectacular leaking of explosive secret government documents wins.

The sharpest observation wins.

The clearest 30 word explanation of the most complex news stories or world events wins.

The most apoplectic but hilarious tirade of abuse wins.

Ideas win.

Not personalities, or even a person, certainly not a name.

It's the words, the ideas, that matter.

Nothing more.

All of that, most of that, it goes when mandatory ID is required to step into blog clubs to air your views, or to even add a mild voice of dissent to the online groupthink roar about the latest shocking news event.

Killing Anonymity Kills Comments.

It's that simple.

Before I left the museum I decided to try and get a photo of the Can of Paint on a White Stand with a Security Guard.

But the Security Guard said no.

I left, I didn't want any trouble.

I Hope Kerry O'Brien Really Did Say That, Because It's True

By Darryl Mason

Australia's most boring, dreariest columnist, Gerard Henderson, suddenly comes up with something to quicken the stale blood of all Australian conservatives obsessed with Lefty Commo Green Solar Nazi Pink Batt Obamaist Peter Costello-hating bias at the ABC, in all its most insidious forms.

Particularly that of Big Red himself, Kerry O'Brien :

Coalition Staffer: “Kerry , you realise…I respect Peter [Costello] a lot.”

O’Brien: “Well good luck to you then - I don’t. He doesn’t like politics; he has always been the first one out of here (Canberra) on Thursday. Peter Costello does not have the nation’s interests at heart. He is only in it for himself, always has been, always will be. He needs to get out.” (Note : O'Brien is out late, hammered on tequila, telling them what he thinks)

Coalition Staffer: “I actually really respect some of the reforms of the Hawke-Keating era.”

O’Brien: “Howard and Costello never recognised the importance of their reforms. Costello simply rode on the consequences of the Keating and Hawke wave of economic reform.”

Liberal Party staffers leaking on a journalist. Interesting.

Gerard Henderson only revealed the conversation notes of a close friend for the most hilarious and bitchiest of reasons :

....normally....(I) would not publish the note of a conversation conducted in private on a dark Canberra night or morning. But this is what the 7.30 Report’s political editor Michael Brissenden did concerning a conversation he and two others had with Peter Costello in 2005. Mr Brissenden’s release of the details of this off-the-record conversation a couple of years later was specifically approved by Kerry O’Brien.

Rowwrrr! Take that you unrepentant Whitlam groupie, you.

What really gnaws at the mind of Gerard Henderson is that hundreds of thousands of addicted 7.30 Report viewers will agree just about 100% with what Big Red told the coalition staffers that tequila-drenched post Budget morning. And oh, oh, how it eats at poor Gerard.

The Professional Idiot meanwhile must repute any and all genuine and accurate slayings of his precious Peter. The Idiot appears to have given up his dream-duty of hosting MediaWatch, and is eying up The Chair of Chairs at the ABC, that of The 7.30 Report. But first he and Henderson must drive Big Red from his perch, it's not going to be easy. The Idiot :

Gerard Henderson reveals something on his blog that makes me uneasy,

No, not the rumoured 'FaceBook Style Raunch' photo set Gerard took of himself to help drive recruitment to the Liberal Party. The Professional Idiot is uneasy because Kerry O'Brien apparently expresses 'bias' when he's half-blasted in a pub after a long day.

These freaks of conformity don't even want people to have 'bias' after hours.

Friend : Kerry! What sort of wine should we have with dinner?

Big Red : I'm sorry, the ABC charter does not allow me to express a preference for either the white or the red. Let me list in detail both the positives and negatives present in making such a choice, but I cannot guide you in anyway as you choose....

Friend : Just grab a damned bottle of the red.

The more I think about the possibility of The Professional Idiot hosting Media Watch or, even more fantastically, The 7.30 Report, the funnier it seems. It can only be topped by imagining Gerard Henderson hosting either shows. Obviously the novelty value would wear out fast.

Clare Werbeloff Had The Right Words At The Right Time In The Right Place

But Is She For Real?

UPDATE : No, She's Not

By Darryl Mason

What, a shock :

Internet sensation Clare Werbeloff, instantly famous for her eyewitness account of a Kings Cross shooting last weekend, has admitted she fabricated the story.

The Sunday Telegraph can reveal the 19-year-old told investigating police that she "made the whole thing up".

"We've spoken to her, but she's not a witness to the shooting," a senior Kings Cross officer said.

"She's told police that she didn't actually see it."

As Ms Werbeloff's newly hired agent, Adam Abrams, confirmed, "She was not a witness. She saw the camera, ran over to it and told this story."

Did she run over from a nearby PR agency?

Interesting. She didn't lie to the police, she only lied to a freelance cameraman near the scene of the shooting, who then sold the footage to Channel Nine.

This might spark an interesting social experiment with the media. People running up to freelance television cameramen at police-heavy scenes and giving totally quotable witness reports to events they didn't see unfold.

Is the "Two Wogs Fighting" mini-saga the kind of News Event the mainstream media is expecting us to start paying to read and view online?

Is this the business model that will save journalism?

Now the media will blame Whoever She Is for forcing them to whip this fakery into a Big Story.

No doubt, 'Clare' and her friends think all the media time devoted to her non-witness comments is fucking hilarious. And it is.

Particularly all the journalists who have proudly declared themselves to be raging against political correctness because, like 'Clare', they too are "part-bogan".

The Herald Sun's Andrew Bolt, again showing why he never stops earning the title of The Professional Idiot, fell deep under the hypnotic spell of hypnotically non-PC Clare :

Clare Werbeloff prefers accuracy to manners in describing a shooting - and that includes doing the voices, too.

It’s made her instantly famous, thanks largely to Tim Blair.

Yes, The Daily Telegraph's Tim Blair was particularly excited when he thought 'Clare' really had witnessed what she claimed she had :

"This is excellent."

Tim Blair also once believed that Iraq had nuclear weapons and couldn't wait to attack London. He also believes global warming poses about the same threat to human life as swine flu : zero.

Now Blair knows he, like so many others, got royally P'knd by Clare's very entertaining sham, he's not a happy blogger, and he's sniffing at some kind of conspiracy as a distraction :

Creative Clare....obviously had a source for certain elements of her account.

Blair's solution? Get Clare's friend :

Her friend “Swanny” – who, you’ll recall, also “witnessed” the shooting – might be able to help here.

Why bother? He didn't lie to police either.

The Chk Chk Boom! Chick was worth some 190 comments at Blair's blog, and thousands of page views, when his readers thought her words were real, and what a gormless parade of 20th century insight it provided, filled with high schoolish-gleeful debate about "Wogs" and "Niggers".

When Clare was real, Andrew Bolt helped promote "the club mix" of "Two Wogs Fighting", and claimed :

The police, on the other hand, have suddenly gone blind.

Clare prefers accuracy over manners and the police are "blind".

How much will Rupert want us to pay for that kind of guff?


The thing, most of those in the mainstream media who hyped "Two Wogs Fighting" the hardest won't even care that it's all as fake as the now classic Sunday Telegraph EXCLUSIVE about Pauline Hanson's tits. The Sunday Telegraph editor who said he would quit if the photos turned out to be fake never did.

Channel Nine won't apologise, neither will the rest of the media that treated "Two Wogs Fighting" so seriously, and pumped it to the world. Look at this, this is Australia!

They won't have editorial meetings where they resolve, "to never let this happen again."

Instead, it will be "Next!"

Of course, whoever 'Clare' is will not be forgotten, somebody has to wear the blame for making the media look like morons, again, and if there's more ratings and hits in it, she will be hounded and harassed.

Tooheys did quite well out of it, however.

That big ad in the background of a extremely popular YouTube clip viewed a few hundred thousand times, and seen by millions elsewhere online and on international TV, was a free advertising coup, accident or otherwise.

And regardless of what newspapers or current affairs show claim, this story was broken by an independent news blogger, Mumbrella.


Yesterday....


This is Clare "Two Wogs Fighting" Werbeloff :



But is this 'Clare' as well? Working at a PR agency, located just up the road from where the shooting and her stardom began? A PR agency specialising in marketing to youth through viral videos?



Mumbrella lists the reasons why the the Two Wogs Fighting girl might be a cleverly improvised piece of viral marketing.

Channel Nine News insists Chk Chk Boom! Clare is for real, a freelance cameraman said so :

"I think she came up to me and then I said 'Do you know what happened?' and she said 'Yes' and she just spontaneously came up with what you saw on the vision there," Greg said.

"I think she was a young girl that had had a few drinks… it wasn't a beat up.

"She didn't stand there [in front of the beer ad] specifically ... I framed it so that the police car was in the back [of the shot].

"You've got to understand that you're at a shooting, you're there to get the action at the time and usually get a grab afterwards."

Besides Greg's account, there are a few more reasons why this is one of the sillier conspiracy theories to do the rounds of the blogosphere.

It seems highly unlikely (as Mumbrella acknowledged) that The Projects could have reacted quickly enough to turn a random, late-night shooting into a marketing stunt.

Unless they are very good at what they do, and can improvise at a moment's notice.

The suspicion cast upon anything that suddenly becomes popular in viral culture is both good - to flush out the fakes - and cynical, but it is necessary.

PR fakery and press-release journalism fills our newspapers and the evening news, an online generation grows up suspicious of the fact that they are constantly being marketed to, and manipulated. They revel in the fact that, unlike their parents, they are very well aware that marketeers are aiming to influence them, everywhere they go online. It's a game to bust the fakes and they usually win.

You can lobby to have Clare Werbeloff join the ABC's Q & A panel as a social commentator in the Q & A comments section here.

Going Down, Fonzi Style

By Darryl Mason

A Pure Poison commenter asks :



Yes, they can.

Two fine examples in just one day.

Miranda Devine :

"...what it feels to be male, to have testosterone surging through young bodies, building huge muscles and attack instincts for which society has little use any more."

Disturbing.

Andrew Bolt, who most of you already know as The Professional Idiot, wants to see an end to the Loud Aussie Abroad tradition of telling the locals to "Get Fucked" :

"It strikes me that our public manners in fact no longer meet the standard required in most other countries, and improving them might make us a lot safer when we travel."

It's a slippery slope for Bolt. Next he'll be telling his readers they have to respect all their religions, too.

That should go down well.

Some more Devine to finish :

Popular culture today presents a narrative in which the liberalisation of sex has travelledd on an inevitable continuum from the 1960s to some Brave New World free-for-all where Huxleyan teens engage in clinical couplings in which the only things to be negotiated are safety and consent.

She takes the mainstream media reality, or popular culture, she believes in far too seriously.

Sorry, What Was That Bob?

During a panel discussion on Q & A last night about group sex and the NRL, Bob Ellis dropped this clanger on Tony Abbott.

Bob Ellis : "You have at least the record of a rugby tour, comrade."

Tony Abbott fear grinned for a few seconds, and the conversation moved, awkwardly, onwards.

UPDATE : From the Q & A transcript :

TONY ABBOTT: I thought you were going to say raise the age of consent for going on a rugby tour. Maybe only let 40 year olds go on rugby tours.

BOB ELLIS: You have a track record of at least a rugby tour, comrade.

Ellis was not making a lot of sense :

BOB ELLIS: The logic of this whole argument is surely to raise the age of consent because most of these people are saying, "Look, she's only 19. How did she know what was going to happen?" I mean, if you're going to go that far, you're either going to say how important it is or, if you're not going to go that far, you're going to say how unimportant it is.

Err, yeah?

Or he was making too much sense....

BOB ELLIS: But Roy Master's view of it is that it is, for better or for worse, common practice."

There you go. You really do learn something new everyday. I didn't know using the older, more famous one as reassuring bait to lure in a teenager and then stand by while the girl is, arguably, being raped, or at least seriously and severely abused, by up to dozen football players, watching each other masturbate, that this was common practice amongst rugby league teams.

"...and if this one man (Mathew Johns) is guilty and should be punished, there are thousands so placed...."

Thousands of rugby league players have done this kind, have they?

And then no sense at all. Ellis' mind is just about fried :

"....and I think there is a question not just of consent, but of complaint. If there was not consent on the night there should have been complaint the following the morning or complaint a week later. And if the complaint takes seven years...

TONY JONES: Well, there was complaint, as it happens, within days to the police.

BOB ELLIS: Yes. Okay. All right.

TONY JONES: So let me hear from Penny Wong...

PENNY WONG: I'm sorry.

BOB ELLIS: Okay. I withdraw that.

Fade out.

Conservative T & A Heats Up Young Liberals

By Darryl Mason

This sultry sex bomb was once used, successfully, to recruit new male members to the Australian Young Liberals :



But this is 21st Century and the Young Liberals know Maggie doesn't have the chub factor she once did for Australian male conservatives. God knows why.

The Young Liberals' Tim Andrews understands that while Maggie is hot, she's just not hot enough to bring in the new recruits, and after hanging out at young Republicans piss-up-and-tits-out parties in Washington DC he decided it was time to see how a 'Hot Chicks Love Conservatives, No Really, They Do' recruitment drive might work in Australia. So he gathered together a collection of FaceBook Photos They May One Day Regret images of young Australian student female conservatives and libertarians under the title :

Why The Right Will Triumph in Australia: Hot Girls

Below is Tim Andrews with John Howard, who Dame Elizabeth Murdoch now calls The Man Who Destroyed The Liberal Party.




Here's Tim Andrews' explanation for why he ditched Margaret "You Look Like You've Done Something Naughty, Young Man, And You Have, Haven't You?" Thatcher and based his recruitment drive around female university Liberal Club students instead (excerpts) :

It is only natural for those of us on the conservative/libertarian side of the political fence to feel a bit glum at the moment. Big government everywhere seems on the rise. Here in Australia the fiscal vandalism of the Rudd Government is unparalleled in our history. Things seem bleak indeed.

However – there is reason for hope! For optimism! Definite proof that here in Australia we shall triumph!

How do I know this? Easy – the Babe Theory Of Politics. To put it simply – we have all the hot girls.

It's actually the Babe Theory Of Rock.

If guys rock up to a pub and find a young, unknown band carving away and see twenty girls steaming up the dance floor and going nuts for the band, some of these guys will leave raving about how awesome the band was and will return for the next gig and bring their mates along. This is why so many girls who look great, cheer louldy and like to dance find it so easy to get on the guest list at early gigs by unknown bands. The guys come because there are girls, then, hopefully, start liking what they hear, and a few more hardcore fans are born.

Tim Andrews' idea, presumably, is that lonely, young conservative males will see the photos and think, 'For the love of Howard! Look at all these babes, I'm signing up tomorrow!'

It'll probably work.


Andrews finishes his pitch for young conservative males to sign up with this :

I rest my case. Join the Liberal Students here.

(BTW: I know there are many other hot Liberal girls out there – so be ready for part 2!)

Some of the comments from his blog :

Gabe Says:
Tim, you are fucking disgusting.

Ross Grove Says:

On select occasions I have reason to call you a genius. This is one of them. Thank you for making the right sexy again.

Stephen Conroy Says:

The two Andrews have given this some attention today, Andrews. I wonder if Bolt really is as “shocked” as he makes out. I bet he beats off to these pics when YouPorn is down.

Tim Andrews Says:
You will be pleased to know that all persons featured on the page did agree to being published here (of course, not that it matters the photos being public domain and all).

Tim Andrews wanted to attract media attention with his 'Conservative Girls Are Hot' campaign and he has.

The Australian :

...there's still something really creepy about the whole thing.

Whoops.

Tim Andrews' Twitter response to The Australian :



Great idea. Burn the Murdoch media, fuckit, when did the Murdoch media ever do anything for the Liberal Party?

40-something Murdoch media column filler Tim Blair approves of photos of young female conservative students lying on their beds in high heels showing some leg :

conservatism is lookin’ good

Andrew Bolt doesn't disapprove, but who can be sure :

The young Liberals are in trouble if they think boasting about the hotness of their female officials is the best way to recruit. Or they’re not, perhaps.

A Blair & Bolt frequent commenter has a thought :




Apparently, Helen Coonan was on Sky News and she thought it was a bit of a laugh and said she wished she was young enough to make Tim Andrews' 'Hot Conservative Girls' list.

But boring, old school Australian conservatives are not impressed. Malcolm Turnbull refused to speak to the media about it, and NSW Liberal leader Barry O'Farrell said he found Tim Andrews' emergency recruitment drive "disappointing and unacceptable."

Pru Goward thinks it's damaging to the Liberal Party brand :

The former Federal Sex Discrimination Commissioner Pru Goward says she is disappointed that photos of scantily clad Young Liberal women have been posted on a website in a bid to encourage more men to join the organisation.

Some are wearing bikinis, one is in suspenders and another is lying on a bed.

"I'm disappointed that he's misjudged the importance of a political party like ours that for so long has defended the dignity of men and women," (Pru Goward) said.

Maybe the Young Liberals should have stuck with safe, reliable old Maggie ....photoshopped into a bikini, of course.

UPDATE : Tim Andrews is officially sorry, and sooking a bit. One of his readers tells him to Man The Fuck Up. Well, tells him to be at least as manly as John Howard :

1. Captain Whacky Says:
   

   Dry your eyes princess. Some rabid, pinko, back to the trees, enviro-femo nazis don’t like your post so you take it down?!?!?

   Man up for godsake. You have folded faster than superman on laundry day. “Oh noes! Thomeone dothen’t like what I pothted…oh noeth whateves thall I do?”

   You capitulated sonny-jim, What would Howard do? Hmmm? Hmmm? Did he carry on like a little girl with a skinned knee when people disagreed with him? No He took it on the jaw and said “Please sir may I have another”.

The Enviro Femo Nazis from the treetops claim another scalp.

Note : The photos of the student leaders and 'Hot Young Conservatives' have now been deleted from this post.

You Can Piss In The Street, But Make Sure You're Dressed Sharp

By Darryl Mason

I wonder if Miranda Devine extends the same level of boys-will-be-boys tolerance to the homeless?

No one enjoys the smell of urine in the street but (Willie) Mason's discreet call of nature was hardly a capital offence in the scheme of things and at least he was wearing a nice suit.

And I had no idea that widespread outrage about a 30 year old man leading a gang bang, or more accurately a Gang Wank, on a 19 year old girl involving at least eight men, leaving her unable to walk without help, was all part of a Feminist Conspiracy To Stop Men Violently Fondling Each Other In Public. Thank the smooth, waxed, hairless chests of manly men who chase footballs that Miranda Devine is around to set me straight.

And this is great :

In sanctioned team violence on the football field, young men can test their courage and express what it feels to be male, to have testosterone surging through young bodies, building huge muscles and attack instincts for which society has little use any more. It is teaching them, not to be violent but how to control their violent urges.

That must be why I'm so violent, because I spent more time in the library than groping other boys on a muddy football field. I played a bit of rugby league at school but found it boring, tediously pointless.

The library nerds, like me, knew the more interesting girls were not watching boys play football, but were always to be found where the books were plentiful and the chairs were comfortable. Library nerds also knew that we didn't have to cop an elbow in the jaw, or have a shin shattered, to impress these girls. You just had to listen more than you talked.

Miranda Devine can see the connection between "sanctioned team violence" and grown men standing around wanking as they watch their mates wanking, but she's too cowardly to go anywhere near that bell ringer.

From A Warm, Cosy Home Sydney, Devine Calls Devastated Queensland Cyclone Survivors "Whingers"

Miranda Devine Claims Anti-Iraq War Crowd Find Car Bombings "Satisfying", But Can't Find One Single Person Who Said So

I'm Heading For My Pandemic Bunker, Australian Swine Flu Cases Have Soared 300%

Dramatic breaking news from the never hysterical Rupert Murdoch online media portal, news.com.au :



Good God! Triple! Within a matter of days. This is out of control. Is it now time to salt the corpses of your neighbours for post-pandemic survival rations? Before any of us do anything that drastic, let's go to the story :

Australia now has three confirmed cases of swine flu.

Oh.

Well, the headline was true. There was one confirmed case of an Australian becoming infected with HumanBirdPig Flu, and now there's two more.

So yes, HumanBirdPig Flu cases in Australia have tripled, they have, in fact, soared 300%.

Headline hit baiting at its best.

UPDATE : Just a quick note to point out that I'm not mocking the people who are sick with swine flu, but the senational nature of the reporting. This can be an extremely nasty flu, and small children in particular who get it are going to feel extremely unwell, and going on what has happened elsewhere in the world, some of those children will die from the virus.

As I mentioned a couple of weeks ago, I believe that hundreds if not thousands of Australians have already caught ManBirdPig Flu, but wrote off the symptoms as 'normal' influenza, or a particularly nasty case of the flu they catch most years, and didn't seek medical attention.

The majority of Australians do not go to the doctor or hospital when they catch the influenza strains that pass amongst us every year around this time.

This means that a few dozen who had ManBirdPig Flu did not feel ill enough to stay home or go to a doctor, and ended up spreading it amongst friends and family and fellow commuters.

Short of a major mutation and/or a further melding of this virus with other influenza viruses, like H5N1 (bird flu), I don't think ManBirdPig Flu is going to wipe out hundreds of thousands of people here. But it will probably claim a few hundred lives, or more, before our immune systems learn how to fight it, and adapt to its presence in the flutopia of viruses and bacteria our bodies are continually at war against.

UPDATE : According to a "sensitive but unclassified" May 19 report from the US Centre For Disease Control, 64% of all confirmed or probable ManBirdPig Flu cases in the US occurred in people aged 5 - 24 years old. This is a New Flu that attacks the immune systems of the young and healthy.

Don't Despair, Dance!

Okay, who's been eating those most magical of mushrooms at Brekky Central?



That's seriously fucked up.

I can't wait for the Pandemic Flu Go Go Dancers.

The Chaser has a zippy new website up, in preps for their return to the ABC next week.

Not a lot of new stuff on it yet, but you can get Osama Bin Laden to send a personal message to a friend or enemy, and you can declare your own jihad on just about anything you want.

It's going to be interesting to see what they came up with. Easy to recognise on the streets of Australia, The Chaser team were forced to shoot dozens of new skits and pranks in locations scattered around the world.

Bring The Chaos.

Rudd : I Will Not Say What You Want Me To Say No Matter How Many Times You Ask Me To Say It

By Darryl Mason

Why won't Kevin Rudd go on TV or radio and say the words "$300 billion", in reference to a possible future Australian debt?

Because Rudd knows that the Liberals are going to use any video or audio clip of Rudd saying "$300 billion" in their attack ads in the next election campaign, and he's not going to give that word bomb to them to use against him.

Tony Jones on Lateline almost managed to crack Rudd open on Monday night. Almost. He gave it a good go, but relented when time was running out. Jones should have taken the approach of the BBC's Jeremy Paxman and asked the question he wanted the answer to at least 14 times in a row.



Still, even then, if Jones asked Rudd "can you say $300 billion debt" 14 times, or more, Rudd wouldn't have said those words.

He learned a lot from the mess John Howard made of election promises about "keeping interest rates low" and "keeping interest rates at record lows".

Trying to pre-empt a Liberal Party attack ad this far out from an election is a pathetic, trivial thing for the prime minister to be worrying about when the economy is rupturing, but Rudd is a political animal, first and foremost.

The Liberal Party, even Malcolm Turnbull, a once formidable manipulator of minds and emotions, still don't seem to understand this essential psychological fact about Kevin Rudd : He was, is and will remain, a mind fucker. He hasn't stopped fucking with the minds of the Liberal Party since he took over the Labor Party leadership in late 2006. And short of a stroke, he won't be stopping the head games anytime soon.

UPDATE : Not only can Rudd say "$300 billion" he can also say "$200 billion", but he still didn't say those monumental levels of debt in any kind of sentence that the Liberals can make sure come back and haunt him, or harass him, leading into the next election, though no doubt they will surely try :

HOST: And Paul Keating had a problem with the R word. Do you have a problem with the B word, billion, I notice and this was on Lateline, you wouldn’t say $200 billion and you still haven’t said it. You say 200 and 300.

PM: That’s exactly right, $200 billion, $300 billion, all I was explaining to you is the actual comparisons which exist between it and the performance of other relevant economies around the world.