In the Daily Telegraph’s tim Blair’s original, brief little reference to Sarah Palin’s expensive speech to “tea party” conservatives the other day, he noticeably refused to acknowledge the controversy – of which he must have been aware – regarding her writing her talking points (yes, her talking points, all three of them) on her hand. I thought that a little odd, given tim’s regular mockery of Obama for, like every other President for many years, using a teleprompter, you might expect that it would get a mention for the sake of consistency, or at least making a flimsy excuse for it – but nothing.
Until this morning. Palin’s tried to deflect the criticism of her hypocrisy (mocking Obama’s use of notes while using them herself) and her stupidity (she needed a reminder that her talking points were energy, taxes and “reassure Americans”?), by making a joke out of it, writing “Hi Mom” on her hand. The wingnuts are choosing to believe that this witty rejoinder somehow undoes the damage, and NOW tim feels he can mention it.
Oddly enough, he still hasn’t felt up to talking about Obama’s decimation of the House Republicans the other week. You know – the one where he was slaughtering them so badly, off the cuff, that Fox News had to cut away.
Andrew Bolt defends Lord Monckton from a broadcaster that has given Monckton “quite a lot of coverage around Australia” because its Media Watch program dared to point out the talk radio myth that the media was ignoring Monckton, and because it showed how broadcast media weren’t critically evaluating Monckton’s claims. It’s yet another descent into anti-ABC farce featuring Bolt’s well-honed tactics of misrepresenting arguments and drawing on irrelevant data and pseudoscientific claims, as Monckton becomes the proxy for Bolt’s conservative victimhood complex:
Tim Blair, mocking a climate scientist’s apparent consideration of suicide, describing the much more tragic plight of those like himself:
Imagine how they would have coped if they’d been condemned as the equivalent of Holocaust deniers or deranged flat-earthers or bribe-receiving frauds. It’s a wonder that any of us realists are still alive or have jobs.
“Realists”? “Realists”? Is that what they’re calling themselves now? Seriously? Read More »
You know what never gets old? Making jokes about people’s sexuality. It’s such an effective way to win an argument that I’m often amazed that we don’t hear it used more often. I mean it’s all well and good to call lefties a bunch of pinkos, but it’s so much funnier when the person you want to deride really is gay. Of course you can’t just come out and say it, it needs to be carefully slipped in, as expertly demonstrated by Piers Akerman.
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Is there anything in journalism more odious than the puff piece in your proprietor’s interests? The abasement of a professional’s reputation, and a publication’s dignity, at the master’s behest. It’s both slightly dishonest – it’s advertisement masquerading as reportage – and nauseatingly immodest.
The following effort by Terry McCrann in the Herald Sun last week, boasting about News Ltd’s Fox News, is a sad example:
Fox on the run keeps News Corp ahead of pack
THE Fox News Channel has not just exposed the biased hopelessness of the US mainstream – more accurately, in the words of Bernie Goldberg, lamestream – media. It’s grown into a fabulously lush business.
I suppose once you’ve abandoned your self-worth, indulging in pissweak puns would barely trouble you.
So you’d keep doing it.
The profitability is extraordinary, and even more impressively, effectively predates the surge in FNC’s ratings that is driving the lamestream media almost literally nuts.
This intemperate tongue-bath is, note, in the “Financial” section of the paper. Its author’s eagerness to cheerlead for his employer is embarrassing.
Did I please you, boss?
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Here’s this week’s open thread, where you can discuss anything that doesn’t fit in the discussions under individual posts.
Open threads are linked in the sidebar all week.
Defender of political correctness, Tim Blair, has joined Andrew Bolt in denouncing The Age’s use of of an unflattering photo of Viscount Christopher Monckton on their website.
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Quick question: say you’re a newspaper polemicist, and you’re known for making a big deal out of a violent offender’s religion if it happens to be A Particular One You Have Concerns About, and you’re commenting on a recent violent incident of a very similar sort but involving someone not of That Religion, and in your commentary you’re therefore not going to speculate about connections between that offender’s beliefs and his acts because it’s not That Particular Religion – might it not be wise to avoid making punning references to that Particular unrelated Religion when writing your only coverage of the incident? Would that not just highlight your hypocrisy on the issue?
It’s time for another thread to kick off the weekend. I’m about to head off from work a little early, so I won’t be doing any frantic pressing of F5 on the Media Watch Dog homepage this afternoon – I’ll catch up on Gerard and Nancy’s latest hijinks a little later. As I noted in my earlier post, the Insiders panel this week is Lenore Taylor, Mischa Shubert and Andrew Bolt. Barrie will chat with Tony Abbott, and Mike Bowers will do Talking Pictures with Warren Brown of the Daily Telegraph. Full line-ups for the other gabfests should show up over at Your Sunday Morning TV a little later. Enjoy.
UPDATE: Lateline:
First Friday Fight Club for the year. We have Labor’s Chris Bowen vs the Liberal’s Scott Morrison. Leigh Sales in in the chair. ABC1 1045pm
ABC’s Insiders returns to our screens this Sunday. It’s an election year and there are major policy issues to be dealt with such as the final attempt to pass an emissions trading scheme. So our national broadcaster’s flagship political discussion program should be aiming to bring us insightful, intelligent and honest analysis of the issues and the politics, right?
Insiders ABC 1 9am Sunday, on the panel The Australian’s Lenore Taylor, The Age’s Mischa Schubert and The Herald Sun’s Andrew Bolt.
Yes, Insiders has booked the mainstream media’s denialist-in-chief for Episode 1. That’s Andrew “disgracefully one-sided coverage” Bolt. Andrew “I wonder if Australian viewers would like an alternative to no-argument Left politics on their televisions” Bolt.
Viewers could benefit from three commentators who can analyse and explain complex issues, give a perspective that draws on evidence, and debate the strengths and weaknesses of different political positions. Unfortunately, having one person on the panel who instead argues via talking points that are short, simple and catchy while at the same time being irrelevant, distorted or utterly wrong (e.g., “the world hasn’t warmed since 2001″) derails the whole process. The level of debate tends to come down to the lowest common denominator among the participants in that debate. And despite railing against the “mainstream media”, Andrew Bolt continues to get a gig as their Lowest Common Denominator.
Chances are I’ll do what I did many times last year – skip the show itself and follow the discussion of #insiders on Twitter. I’ve become used to seeing better intellectual arguments – including ones from a conservative perspective – from the people who weigh in about the issues raised in the show online than I have from the pundits who regularly occupy the Grumpy Chair. And if you want an example of how a nuanced, complex and yet important topic can be boiled down into five inaccurate bullet points from Andrew Bolt that distract people from the real issues, I’ve got an example over the fold.
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