Terry McCrann angrily types that “Sunday December 12 2010 is a date which will live on in stupidity.”
Why? Well, Treasurer Wayne Swan released his fairly mild rebuke to the banks, and the Climate Minister Greg Combet decided not to make Australia a global pariah by signing us up to the fairly mild Cancun agreement – along with most of the rest of the developed world.
Or, in McCrann-land:
In sum, we didn’t just have two cabinet ministers embrace stupidity on the same day. But embrace it on a truly breathtaking scale.
Further, what each proposes is in its way a direct assault on the nation. Swan and Combet individually, and the Gillard Government collectively, stand accused of betraying the national interest and every single Australian.
The rest of the rant is filled with childish puns (“Cantcun”), insults and ludicrous hyperbole (they’re going to “effectively close Australia down”).
It’s an interesting piece of polemic, because it doesn’t even try to persuade – you’re either on board with his team already, or you’re “stupid”.
He’s an angry man, our Terry.
14 Comments
He’s an angry man, our Terry.
…which is why Bolt continually quotes him with approval. Brains not needed in this little universe…
What an incredible article. No actual reasons are offered at any stage. He just repeats over and over again that Combet and Gillard have ruined everything. They just have.
Being an exponent of insane raging drivel doesn’t help further Mr McCrann’s credibility.
Are Australians…who by so many world standards have things pretty bloody good, not even a wee bit tired of being manipulated by the politics of fear and loathing?
I mean, I can almost understand being dulled into a trance by having talkback on in the background…but who could read this stuff and actually think it’s sensible?
I was getting lunch in a cafe without a decent paper (or even The Australian) and actually read this piece in dead tree format, eyes widening as I got further down the page.
Unless McCrann’s a protected species, I find it really hard to understand how this made it through the editorial process. Not even a token attempt at sober analysis, just rant, rave and high-handed accusation. A genuinely weird piece, like Hunter S. Thompson without the humour.
AB’s attack on KRUDD!![1] for today is similarly unhinged. An egyptian interviewer had a dig at our foreign minister – SACK HIM!
I sincerely hope that some cables eventually show up that point to the obvious disingenuousness of the libs’ claim that they didn’t
want toknow anything about the AWB bribes. That would make all the nonsense worthwhile.[1] !!!
Fortunately, I don’t think that Terry considering me stupid is going to trouble me much. In fact, given that it indicates that I disagree with him, I can wear that as a badge of honour.
This is interesting. The most obvious problem here is that nobody’s talking about marriage, or child-abuse, they’re talking about s-x between consenting adults:
http://blogs.news.com.au/heraldsun/andrewbolt/index.php/heraldsun/comments/if_gays_may_marry_why_not_a_brother_and_sister_too/
Here’s the most intelligent reporting I’ve been able to google on the proposed swiss amendment (which will probably fail):
http://despardes.com/?p=19175
Now here’s where this gets really silly. AB cries
What pillar? For example – Israel, the netherlands, france, belgium and japan don’t outlaw s-x between close family members. Either they never have, or it was repealed back in the 19th century. Yes, folks, the NETHERLANDS – that declining, mistreated pillar of all that western civilisation represents, hasn’t had an incest prohibition since the 19th century.
The reasoning in switzerland is that the only prosecutions from the application of the incest law also involve the abuse of minors. The upper-house’s view is the law is redundant and symbolic.
I’m inclined to agree. I personally have no INTEREST in pursuing a s-xual relationship with any of my relatives (*blerk*), but in an age of sensible s-x education and birth control … it’s hard to think of any seriously rational reason to outlaw it, as unlikely as it seems anyway.
And col – “it’s horrible, and look what it might lead to” is not rational. I happen to feel the same way about ugly/stupid people doing it. Or people whom I’d like to be doing it with doing it with somebody else.
I think if the moralists would like to really address the ills of society that destroy families, they’d be better served by going after the ones that actually show up on the radar. The awkward ones, that conservatives like to foist off onto church-run support services and proceed to ignore. Alcohol, gambling, violence.
It’s probably a relief for McCrann that today’s “newspaper” is tomorrow’s fish and chips wrapper.
McCrann has been predicting the collaspse of the Australian economy with every decision made by the Rudd/Gillard Govts since early 2008, sadly for Terry not one of his predictions has come true. The shriller his chicken little calls become the more the opposite happens, maybe he his the economic version of the Bolt effect.
A telling feature of the mcCrann rant was that of the 44 ostensible sentences, 11 (Ss3;4;8;9;11;15;18;19;27;29 & 33) lacked a principle clause, meaning that they were actually sentence fragments.
There has been a tendency in recent years for students to “form” sentences by joining random ideas with periods and McCrann’s stream of consciousness spray seems much in this style. Then again, perhaps he simply never nearned syntax and his sub-editor couldn’t be bothered editing his rant.
Out of interest, I looked up his puerile punning to see if his claim the now even more appropriately tagged – Cantcun was actually tagged this way by anyone who wasn’t another intellectually bankrupt ranter, and after five pages of browsing could find no such reference. One of them directly opposed McCrann’s connotation: Climate talks: We must not allow Cancun to turn into Can’tCun and similarly:
And again:
In short, apart from fellow nutbags, and alternatively, people who support the mainstream science and wished to see Cancun succeed, it has not been “tagged” in the way McCrann suggests. Even worse, with Copenfloppen, there are just 204 references to that and aside from McCrann himself, many of them are hostile to McCrann’s position.
McCrann is simply pretending to membership of a substantial community that doesn’t exist outside his febrile imagination.
“McCrann is simply pretending to membership of a substantial community that doesn’t exist outside his febrile imagination.”
(Cant)cun
And he obviously doesn’t speak the language….
Even Irwin Setlzer makes more sense than TM. And that’s saying something.
To be denigrated by McCrann, (Alan) Bond booster extraordinaire back in the day, is to be garlanded with lillies.
The aftermath of the McCrann blast – After work yesterday I stopped in for a couple of beers on theway home and some of the local “the govt should cut taxes to help my small business because we are the backbone of the country” conservative club members were there as well. One of them blurted out “Terry McCran had a great article in the Hearld sun yesterday”. In the interests of fostering an informed discussion on the merits of McCrann’s article I replied, “That article was nothing more than a shrill, name calling piece of unsubstantiated, scare mongering giberish”. Then followed a robust discussion on pros and cons of McCrann’s journalistic talents with some strategic questioning from moi to find out what they thought was so good about the article. Eventually the answer came with one CC member saying, “well he correctly called Swan and Combet stupid!” and I replied, “so all he did was confirm your own preconcieved opinions”. A sheepish answer of ‘yes’ followed by silence and Podrick badly trying to hide a self satisfied smirk behind sipping a beer.