Saturday, March 26, 2005
A WORLD OF IDEAS
Phillip Adams interviews US comedian Rich Hall:
Adams: Can Americans laugh or poke fun at religion?
Hall: Americans … are, ah … well, you know what they say about George Bush is, that it was … ah … you know, guns, gays and God that got him into office.
Articulate fellow, isn’t he? Interesting that Adams has never met an American who can laugh at religion; I’m sure there must be one or two of them. By the way, Chimpler W. Hallibushton’s opponent supported a gay marriage ban in Massachusetts, and offered these comments on God and guns:
“Faith has given me values and hope to live by, from Vietnam to this day, from Sunday to Sunday.”
“I’ve been a hunter since I was about 12 years old, and I went through the whole progression, you know, BB gun to .22s to .30-.30, you name it.”
Didn’t do John Kerry much good. We now return to our festival of dumb bigotry at Radio National:
Hall: And ah … when I say God I mean from a very fundamentalist point of view. Ah … born again, Bible beatin’ Baptists, who have a tremendous, a tremendous amount of power when it comes to electing a president. And they’re forgotten, you know … everyone forgot that … ah … there are a lot of people in America, in that sort of hidden section that people, you know, the fly-over area between LA and New York, who … ah … go out and vote for whatever reasons – because they heard right-wing talk show hosts tell how, you know, how idiotic the whole liberal media is, you know; because … ah … they don’t want gay marriages; because they want to keep their guns; or, because … ah … God is still on their side.
It was an ambush. They were hiding, listening to coded right-wing messages emerging from sinister communication devices in their underground cells. Then, when nobody was looking and when it was least expected, they came out and wielded that tremendous power, against which there was no possible defence.
They voted.
Damn them all to hell. Maybe this hidden fly-over area, where everyone seems to be, you know, practicing democracy, could be put under … ah … some sort of, you know, UN administration, so its tremendous power could be … ah … used as an energy substitute for oil. You know.
Hall: And … ah … I find the word “fundamental” extremely scary. I find fundamental Muslims and fundamental Christians, you know, both, you know, extremely scary. Because the word “fundamental” means you know a little bit about something.
It does? Well, you learn something new every day. Adams’ program is promoted thusly: “From razor-sharp analysis of current events to the hottest debates in politics, science, philosophy and culture, Late Night Live opens up a world of ideas, putting you firmly in the big picture.” Read on as Adams puts you in the big picture regarding George W. Bush:
Adams: I would have thought he’s been in a vegetative state now long enough to pull the life support from him.
Terri Schiavo hasn’t been on life support; not that Phillip’s topical little joke is any less razor-sharp for this. Earlier in the show Adams seemed fascinated by a tune Hall has been performing since 2003: Let’s Get Together and Kill George Bush. Now conversation turns to Bush’s attempt to keep Schiavo alive:
Hall: Well, you know … he’s busy doin’ that … ah … busy keepin’ that … I think he’s passed a law yesterday to keep them from pullin’ the life support on him …
Adams: (laughter)
Hall: It was applied to someone else, but we all know what he meant. Ah … here’s a guy who cuts his holiday short to go back and try an’ put this bill into effect that will effectively keep someone who wants to die from dying for whatever reason … basically to placate his electorate. I don’t know. There’s something very scary about religion in America.
Adams: Very. Very.
Rich Hall knows that Schiavo wants to die. A more informed or alert interviewer may have asked: “How do you know this, Mr. Comedian Man?” But Adams is very uninformed and very stupid. Very. Very.
(Edited transcript via Alan R.M. Jones; Real Media link here, Windows here)
UPDATE. Melbourne Age editor Andrew “The Mancunian Candidate” Jaspan isn’t treated with nearly as much respect during his appearance on Radio National. He should book a slot with Adams.
Friday, March 25, 2005
COWARDLY LIONS
The Brisbane Lions attempted during the final match of 2004 to become the AFL’s most reviled team. That bid has intensified with the first match of 2005:
Anger mounted yesterday over rough-house tactics used against injured St Kilda star Nick Riewoldt.
His mother was in tears a day after the bone-jarring incident.
Fiona Riewoldt said the family had been shaken by the drama, which has rocked the AFL.
Footy fans were outraged at the attack by two Brisbane Lions defenders on the Saints captain as he clutched his shoulder in agony during the season opener at the Gabba.
The Age’s Greg Baum is prone to moralising, but he’s on the money here:
The Brisbane Lions hit and hurt a man when he was down. That is unacceptable even in boxing, which is all about hitting to hurt. In football, where the hitting and hurting supposedly is no more than a means to an end, it is an outrage. If it is not acted upon as one, then football has progressed nowhere in 15 years.
Charges against Mal Michael and Chris Scott could follow a match review meeting on Monday. Wayne Wood wants them charged with assault; there is a precedent for this, involving Brisbane coach Leigh Matthews, who is dismissive of the current controversy:
“It’s ridiculous,” Matthews said. “Players bounce off each other all the time, and it’s not as if they ran from 100 metres away to get him. They would have known he was sore, but they would not have known he had a broken collarbone.”
Matthews has an ally in Robert Walls, which won’t surprise those who saw Walls play. I’m more inclined to Tim Lane’s view, at the same link.
PALESTINIAN FASHION ACCESSORIES
Lots of coverage by the ABC of demonstrations outside the Baxter Detention Centre, but so far I haven’t seen an image of the demonstration leaders, as shown on last night’s Nine news.
They were dressed in a similar style to this.
NO DEBATE NEEDED
Andrew Bolt reviews this week’s ABC presentation on global dimming, and reveals further evidence of faith-based green extremism:
When ABC radio host Jon Faine this week decided at last to let a global warming sceptic debate a global warming prophet on his Conversation Hour, his co-presenter, TV weatherman and green guru Rob Gell, freaked.
Talking to a doubter, even a scientist, would be like inviting on a “Holocaust denier”, Gell protested. Or as he said on radio: “If you were discussing pedophilia, you wouldn’t bring in a pedophile to discuss the issue.”
No, but if you were discussing hypocrisy, you’d definitely bring in Rob Gell. I interviewed Gell in 1989 about his then-current choice of personal transport – a smokin’-hot BMW M5. Way to save the planet, Rob!
PHIFTIES PHLAG PHACT PHOOLS PHIL
Phillip Adams identifies another evil US plot:
Let’s see the Oscars for what they are – symbols of US hegemony and, as such, about as desirable, attractive and threatening as that other US critter, the cane toad.
The cane toad was introduced to Australia from Hawaii in 1935. Hawaii didn’t become the 50th star on the US flag until 1959.
UPDATE. Category: Ignorance. Professor Bunyip weighs in.
ISSUE NOT IGNORED
“Ignore an issue and it fades,” announces the Sydney Morning Herald’s Alan Ramsey. “Look at Iraq. People are still dying there, every day, Iraqi and American alike. Yet who cares? Not many.”
Look at Ramsey (actual size). He’s still making profound errors, every week, Wednesday and Saturday alike. Yet who cares? Not his editors. Ignore an issue and it fades.
Of course, some observers have been paying a great deal of attention to Iraq. And to the UN’s oil-for-food and food-for-sex scandals, about which Ramsey’s paper hasn’t exactly been screaming. Former Australian foreign minister Gareth Evans is among those hopeful of becoming the next UN High Commissioner for Refugees; meanwhile, it’s business as usual for our dovey pals abroad:
The reputation of United Nations peacekeeping missions suffered a humiliating blow yesterday as an internal report identified repeated patterns of sexual abuse and rape perpetrated by soldiers supposed to be restoring the international rule of law.
The highly critical study, published by Jordan’s ambassador to the UN assembly, was endorsed by the organisation’s embattled secretary general, Kofi Annan, who condemned such “abhorrent acts” as a “violation of the fundamental duty of care”.
The embarrassment caused by the misconduct of UN forces in devastated communities around the world - including Haiti, Sierra Leone, Bosnia, Cambodia , East Timor and the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) - has become an increasingly high profile, political problem.
Allegations have recently surfaced that troops sent to police Liberia were regularly having sex with girls aged as young as 12, sometimes in the mission’s administrative buildings.
In the DRC, peacekeepers were said to have offered abandoned orphans small gifts - as little as two eggs from their rations, says the report - for sexual encounters.
More on eggs-for-sex here. No wonder Kofi Annan is depressed.
CHINESE HATE RICE
Condoleezza Rice, that is. Comments on a Chinese website:
“How come the United States selects a female chimpanzee as Secretary of State?”
“This black woman thinks rather a lot of herself.”
“She’s so ugly she’s losing face. Even a dog would be put off its dinner while she’s being fed.”
Wow. It’s like Democratic Underground is running things over there.
SAFE AT ANY FEED
Ralph Nader supports Terri Schiavo’s right to be fed:
Benefits of doubts should be given to life, not hastened death. This case is rife with doubt. Justice demands that Terri be permitted to live.
Sounds reasonable. What harm could there be in feeding somebody?
(Via J.F. Beck)
UPDATE. More from Debra Saunders and John Podhoretz.
UPDATE II. Still more from Currency Lad, including this:
Live Aid Organisers Were Having Us All On: “Lack of food and water ‘usually a peaceful death’.”
UPDATE III. And Frank Salvato:
Terri Schiavo is going to die. Not because she has a terminal disease. Not because she was convicted of a crime punishable by death, although she did received a death sentence. She is not going to die because she has no one who loves her or because no one will care for her. Terri Schiavo is going to die because a judge from Florida’s 6th Circuit Court ordered that she not be fed.
DIAL 911
It’s the Michael Moore bandit:
Academy Award winner Michael Moore’s fame has reached a new level in Monroe, where police are using his name as the moniker for a man suspected in a string of bank heists.
Police dubbed their suspect the “Michael Moore Bandit” because of similarities between the pair’s grooming and dressing habits.
Both men are overweight, middle-aged and have scruffy beards and a penchant for baseball caps, flannel shirts and blue jeans.
In a fitting tribute to the “Bowling for Columbine” director, the robber does not use a gun for his crimes.
But he does pass notes implying he has a gun … a misrepresentation Moore himself would be proud of. Pictures of the fat bastard here.
(Via Joe Jr)
Wednesday, March 23, 2005
CONVERSATION BROADCAST
Watch journalist of the year Paul McGeough reel as George Negus pummels him with pillow after pillow of downy soft marshmallow-level questions and brutal fluffy kitten retorts:
GEORGE NEGUS: So it’s fair to say that having an election doesn’t necessarily bring you democracy and freedom?
PAUL McGEOUGH: No, elections are very important as a measure of the thirst, of the hunger of the people, for something, but whether the community around them and whether their community leaders or those such as the Americans who are trying to drive their community leaders can make them deliver is another thing. I mean, it’s striking that the election was on January 30 and we saw such a huge and courageous turnout by the Iraqi people, but look at the performance of their leader since then.
GEORGE NEGUS: And no government.
PAUL McGEOUGH: We still don’t have a government.
GEORGE NEGUS: No government. So-called democracy, I guess you could call it.
Paul and George can’t imagine anything worse than “no government”. There must be government, immediately and perpetually, or we may as well all kill ourselves. Who will organise a system of arts grants? Where is funding for Iraqi jugglers?
GEORGE NEGUS: All the talk at the moment is about this thing called - it’s a term that you’ve used - the Arab spring. Do you think there is an Arab spring or is it possibly even a false dawn?
PAUL McGEOUGH: Well, one of the big problems that I have with affairs as they’re covered these days is that everything has to be given a label - the Rose Revolution, the Purple Revolution, the Cedar Revolution, the Arab spring and the false dawn. It’s too early to be using any of these terms.
Says the man who predicted civil war more than two years ago.
PAUL McGEOUGH: We’re dealing with people’s lives, we’re dealing with the circumstances in which they live and the reality in the Middle East and in Iraq in particular, is that there still hasn’t been enough of an advance to say that life is better. I mean Westerners are shocked when Iraqis, ordinary Iraqis will say to you, “God, I wish we had Saddam back.”
GEORGE NEGUS: Really? How often do you hear that?
PAUL McGEOUGH: You can hear it several times a week.
During story conferences at the Sydney Morning Herald.
GEORGE NEGUS: What do they mean when they say it?
PAUL McGEOUGH: They mean that, for all his faults, there was law and order, there was security.
GEORGE NEGUS: There was some form of normal life.
PAUL McGEOUGH: Their lives ... People live in very small circles. We do it ourselves here. We live in a space that we carve out for ourselves. If you can’t get electricity at the rate you used to get, if you can’t get petrol at the price you used to get it, if you can’t walk down the street with a sense of safety and confidence that you used to do it, you get worried, you get anxious.
There was no worry or anxiety under Saddam. Abu Ghraib was a petting zoo; Uday and Qusay hosted If You Say So, a four-hour reality program celebrating the Hussein brothers’ acts of kindness (“What’s that, young lady? You want to be raped and killed? Well, if you say so!”); and Kurds laughed and frolicked in the afterlife.
GEORGE NEGUS: Picking up that point most people are saying now to the anti-war sceptics that you’ve got to give credit where credit’s due. That you say it was a fluke of timing that things are happening the way they are in the Middle East at the moment but all the pro-Bush people are saying let’s be real about this, back off, the sceptics, let’s give credit where credit’s due. Maybe George Bush was right by invading Iraq.
PAUL McGEOUGH: For which reasons? The reasons he gave at the time he did it or the reasons he’s giving now?
GEORGE NEGUS: It depends what day of the week you ask, that’s for sure. But is it the case that the fact that the election occurred in Iraq and the fact that these other things have been occurring in other parts of the Middle East, how much do you attribute that - as other people do - to the fact that Bush may have been right in the first place by invading?
PAUL McGEOUGH: There’s two ways to look at it, one is if you look at it as the package of events that have happened in the last few weeks, and say this coincides with Bush’s rhetoric, therefore Bush was right, you could get away with that argument if you want to. But if you take the package of events as they’ve unfolded - in Lebanon the unrest started and the street demonstrations started because of a murder. Bush didn’t commit the murder, nobody’s suggesting that.
Maybe Iyad Allawi did it. Speaking of Allawi, will George mention McGeough’s famous scoop?
GEORGE NEGUS: So you don’t buy the line that this is all the end result of the invasion?
PAUL McGEOUGH: No, I think it’s far too early to say that.
But it’s evidently not too early to give Al-Jazzera credit.
GEORGE NEGUS: Let me put a few things to you. I just did a bit of a search myself before we came in. “Three cheers for the Bush doctrine.” Bush himself, “The thaw has begun.” “Give credit where credit is due.” And this one, this very, very delicious one, I think, from an American journalist, “The most difficult sentence in the English language to utter right now is that George Bush was right.” But this is the one that intrigued me and, because you’ve worked there so long, I thought you might want to respond to this. Walid Jumblatt, the Druze leader in Lebanon, right? “It is strange for me to say it but this process of change has started because of the American invasion of Iraq.” Now, this is coming from a local.
PAUL McGEOUGH: Sure. A Lebanese local, as opposed to an Iraqi local.
GEORGE NEGUS: True.
PAUL McGEOUGH: Yes, some people will say things like that but it’s - you know, you need what I’ve described as the 10-year test. Others have talked about the 10-year test too in terms of whether democracy will be delivered. So it’s about the ability of the process that some people believe is already in play to deliver a democracy.
“It’s about the ability of the process that some people believe is already in play to deliver a democracy.” Don’t you hate it when journalists speak like politicians? And for the same weaselly reasons?
GEORGE NEGUS: But it’s astounding that a guy like Jumblatt, who was very, very sceptical about the whole idea of the invasion of Iraq by the Americans, is now saying this thing is flowing on from that. Everything that’s going on is flowing on from that. So there are people on the ground saying maybe it was. They have to swallow their pride and say maybe Bush was right.
PAUL McGEOUGH: Sure, and it will be debated for a long time. It will be debated forever because we won’t know the answer.
Jumblatt seems to know.
GEORGE NEGUS: Is it time, though, to sort of give credit where credit’s due? Maybe at the very least the sceptics could be saying maybe the acceleration process is there. Maybe this thing will start to occur a lot quicker than we thought.
PAUL McGEOUGH: Yes, definitely something is happening in terms of how people perceive their rights and, in a sense this is the biggest difficulty for me as I watch events unfold.
I bet it is.
PAUL McGEOUGH: People are being told that they have rights and are responding accordingly, but the point of anxiety for me is you still don’t have any proof that their leaders - this is the monarchies, the autocrats, the dictators and the systems that they’ve put in place - will allow them to realise those rights and to live by them and to act according to them.
GEORGE NEGUS: So much so that you’ve even suggested recently in one of your pieces that you think there’s still a real possibility of civil war in Iraq.
PAUL McGEOUGH: Yes, my inclination on Iraq at this stage still is a gut feel that things will get better in Iraq but they may not get better this side of a civil war.
“Gut feel” is the standard of proof for something to run in the SMH, over and over and over again.
GEORGE NEGUS: And if the Americans were to pull out?
PAUL McGEOUGH: The biggest problem in Iraq is Iraq has become two debates. I’ve almost lost interest now in debating whether or not the Americans should have invaded. That messes up trying to get to the answers of what to do about Iraq. Now, you can’t… When you look at Iraq now and say what shall we do about Iraq now, you can’t start with oh, well, the Americans shouldn’t have invaded. They did. Facts on the ground are facts on the ground, you’ve got to deal with them. But trying to find a way through that maze at the moment is still a nightmare. And you know who it’s a nightmare for most? The Iraqi people.
Keep talking things down, Paul. Austin Bay has a few thoughts on this.
GEORGE NEGUS: Point taken. Paul, good to talk to you. You’re probably mad enough to go back there, so all the best when you do.
PAUL McGEOUGH: Thank you. Thank you, George.
Thank you, Bastards Inc.
GOOD DOG HUNTING
Want to win $1.25 million? Then simply locate a dog with stripes. It’s that easy! Well, apart from certain “extinction” issues.
Also in this week’s Bulletin: big fast Australian footballers. Why are they big? How fast are they? What the hell am I talking about? Click and read.
UPDATE. Oh no! Number trouble is apparent. Checks and corrections will be made.
LATHAM SPEAKS
A former political figure tells his story:
Recluse former Labor leader Mark Latham will challenge his party’s account of his election loss in a book to be published this year.
Mr Latham will set out his version of the campaign in a book by journalist Bernard Lagan to be called The Loner: Inside a Labor Tragedy.
Big question: will be the book be withdrawn by Christmas? It might not be, if they can come up with a better title. Suggestions:
Ladder of Opportunity, My Arse!
May I Remind You That I am Working Class?
Ease the Pancreatitis
Home Hairstyling Tips for the Busy Man
It’s Time – to Make a Statement About the Tsunami
UPDATE. Commenter Dann: “C’mon guys, lay off his family!”
SILVER LINING LOCATED
“It’s a horrible story,” writes Daily Kos of Terri Shiavo’s impending death by starvation, “but there’s a silver lining in it all.”
That silver lining? Republicans would be embarrassed by a memo that identified the Shiavo case as a wonderful tool to use against Democrats. And they should be embarrassed … but not nearly so much as Daily Kos. Or this exultant fellow, who seems to think the starvation of brain-damaged Schiavo is revenge against the occupant of the White House. You might have stolen two elections, pResident Hitlerburton W. Chimpowitz, but a woman in Florida has had her feeding tube removed! WE WIN!
Troubling, too, is Tim Dunlop’s view that murderers executed in Texas under then-Governor Bush were less deserving of termination:
Where was the culture of life as he signed each execution warrant? It seems to me that there is a reasonable case that every one of those subjects of Governor Bush’s death warrants had a better claim to the “culture of life” (that is, life)—on a purely physical human level—than a poor woman whose cerebral cortex has liquified.
“Shame on all those seeking political advantage,” concludes Tim, having apparently just done so. The rest of his post, however, contains some worthwhile thoughts. Speaking of which, check Professor Bunyip:
Here’s our chance, brothers and sisters and comrades! Here’s our chance to scream about Tom DeLay’s scandals and rant about his hypocrisy. And best of all, we can do it while we pretend to care, to really care. At that’s why we want her dead. Because we care so very bloody much …
It’s all very confusing—and entirely beside the point, because the issue couldn’t be more simple: Is the feeding Schiavo has received until now a medical treatment? Her heart beats and would continue so long as she is nourished, which makes her exactly the same in that most basic detail as every other one of us. Yes, we’ll almost certainly never know where Terri Schiavo stands on Iraq’s liberation, whether she would side with her executioners or rescuers, or even if she is aware of the fly in the corner of her room. But her capacity to harbour still a flicker of the life force, even a semblance of a flicker, to smile and grimace and inhabit the form of humanity, well that defines precisely what she is and remains: Human, human still—and made more so by the love of the thwarted and now powerless parents, whose anguish the compassionards dismiss with a caring shrug.
Let the poor woman be fed. Let her not become a mere pawn in our incessant and obsessive attempts to control her life for our and not her benefit.
UPDATE. “In honour of World Water Day the WHO could at least have insisted Terri Schiavo be given a sip.”
HAPPY EASTER
Easter is almost upon us, bringing the traditional fun of religious observation, chocolate, and savage rabbit beatings:
A church trying to teach about the crucifixion of Jesus performed an Easter show with actors whipping the Easter bunny and breaking eggs, upsetting several parents and young children.
People who attended Saturday’s performance at Glassport’s memorial stadium quoted performers as saying, “There is no Easter bunny,” and described the show as being a demonstration of how Jesus was crucified.
Only a demonstration? This year I expect actual bunny murders. Children need to learn.
ACCURSED SYDNEY
You want to wake up in a city that never sleeps? Try Sydney, the city that won’t let you sleep. Two days of house-rattling, pram-stealing storms are making everybody insane. Oh, I can cope with the horizontal rain and the impossibility of lighting a cigarette outdoors and the attempts to use an umbrella that turn into epic Matrix-like struggles against unseen forces too large and malevolent to be contained, but the noise … it’s like living in some on-location Hammer film shot on the grisly Yorkshire Moors.
The Day of Reckoning approaches. The wind tells me so.