Tuesday, September 27, 2005
DOMINO THEORY
Bob Ellis thinks Fats Domino was left to drown in New Orleans.
YOU STAY HERE AND GUARD THE CATS
Matt Taibbi’s New Orleans rescue adventure—co-starring Sean Penn and Douglas Brinkley—begins in a Houston bar:
I’m in the lounge of the Four Seasons with Sean Penn and other assorted media creatures, debating the merits of rescuing animals instead of humans in a disaster area. To my left is the eminent historian Douglas Brinkley, a friendly academic whose careful diction reminds me of Bob Woodward’s. Brinkley is my contact in Houston. He’s friends with Penn, and when he evacuated his home in New Orleans earlier in the week, he left his cats and his maid behind in the flood zone. Now he and Penn are talking about commandeering private jets, helicopters and weapons for a grand mission into hell that begins tomorrow.
Two points of interest here. One: Brinkley has a maid. Two: he left her behind in the flood zone. Remember Penn’s claim that “we were pulling drowning people out of the water” and Brinkley’s description of Penn as an “American hero” for “rescuing up to 40 people”? Here’s Taibbi’s description, direct from Penn’s little boat:
In the end, we spend the whole day out on the water—until sundown, anyway—and bring about nine or ten residents back to shore. One of our passengers is a schizophrenic whom Sean jumped in the water to save when the kick from the rotors of a hovering helicopter forced her underwater.
No word on whether Brinkley’s maid got out. She isn’t mentioned after the second paragraph.
Monday, September 26, 2005
BOOT PEOPLE
“If a person was about to be killed,” writes Margonaut Marilyn Shepherd, “I would bring them out of the country in a boot.”
You know, it’s just as well Margo employs two full-time comment editors, otherwise blunders like that might actually be published. So also might these, from a single comments stream:
His appalling racist comments about Asian immigration in 1988, although I was only 11 years old at the time I still remember it very clearly because my best friend was a young man by the name John Huang a recently arrived immigrant from Taiwan.
Are we waiting for Australian’s to be killed?
What a loverly dreamery world Craig lives in.
In my eyes Margo has a huge and generous heart and her words and ideas are aimed designed to build a inclusive and magnificent cathedral.
Future must be entrusted to voices of Craig Wartons.
I find whats happening in politics very disturbing.
I find what’s happening in Margotopia very disturbing. How much is she paying these illiterate bolderers?
COL CLOBBERS COBBER IN SOHO SLUGFEST!
Standard Australian journalistic practice makes news in NYC. Be interesting to learn who the unnamed “Aussie hack from a News Corp. paper” might be …
WHEEL GOOD RESEARCH
Own a 4WD? You a bad person:
A new study has found that city owners of large four-wheel-drive vehicles are less community minded than other drivers, less charitable, more likely to be homophobic and have a low opinion of indigenous culture.
The study, crafted by the leftoid Australia Institute, also found that owners of vehicles which deliver propulsion via all four wheels “are more likely to use force to get their way” and have “a lower regard for the welfare system than the general population”. In related news, 100% of Australia Institute studies are composed by idiots.
Via Evil Pundit. By the way, if you’re worried about falling into the wrong vehicular demographic, you can always buy a Honda Jazz.
RISK MANAGED
Kim Beazley’s approval rating is down to 37%—his lowest ever. Still, his rival has recovered from worse numbers. In other polling news:
* 70% of voters agree with the view that supporting American foreign policy makes Australia a bigger target for terrorism.
* But John Howard’s approval rating has improved by two points to 53%.
Interesting, that. Apparently we’re not easily frightened, and will back the right cause even if we believe certain risks will increase.
NEILSTRADAMUS
Neil Young recorded this 25 years ago:
Got people here
down on their knees and prayin’
Hawks and doves
are circlin’ in the rainGot rock and roll,
got country music playin’
If you hate us, you just
don’t know what you’re sayin’Ready to go, willin’ to stay and pay
U.S.A., U.S.A.
So my sweet love can dance
another free day
U.S.A., U.S.A
Young can see into the future! His strange Canadian powers must be harnessed.
MAN APPEASES EARTH GODDESS, HOPES TO BE SPARED
Environmaniac Tim Flannery actually mentioned “Gaia” five minutes ago during his appearance on Lateline. You could hear people being sick in the studio. Or maybe that was me.
UPDATE. Oddly, Flannery pronounced the word as “gayer”, when all good dirt-worshippers know it’s guy-uh. That’ll be a challenge for the transcribers.
DOME DEATHS DOWN
The New Orleans Times-Picayune reports:
Following days of internationally reported killings, rapes and gang violence inside the Dome, the doctor from FEMA - Beron doesn’t remember his name - came prepared for a grisly scene: He brought a refrigerated 18-wheeler and three doctors to process bodies.
“I’ve got a report of 200 bodies in the Dome,” Beron recalls the doctor saying.
The real total was six, Beron said.
Of those, four died of natural causes, one overdosed and another jumped to his death in an apparent suicide …
Four weeks after the storm, few of the widely reported atrocities have been backed with evidence. The piles of bodies never materialized, and soldiers, police officers and rescue personnel on the front lines say that although anarchy reigned at times and people suffered unimaginable indignities, most of the worst crimes reported at the time never happened.
I blame George W. Bush.
UPDATE. Mike G in comments: “BUSH-HATERS LIED! PEOPLE UN-DIED!”
LESSON IN SPORTS WRITING
From reader Geoffrey Gold, a comprehensive account of yesterday’s Indonesian soccer final between teams from Jakarta and Jayapura:
Entertaining and attacking game—two goals each—and surprisingly won in extra time by Jayapura.
The Jakarta fans went mental and spent the next hour rioting.
There. All you need to know.
NARRATIVE CONTROLLED
Ramzy Baroud offers a concise explanation of the Mother Sheehan phenomenon:
Unlike the disapproving, yet largely hushed, or perhaps overlooked millions, the 48-year-old mother, Sheehan, hauled anguish beyond words and camped near Bush’s Texas ranch. Initially, the White House completely ignored her pleas, simply devising alternative routes so that Bush wouldn’t run into ‘Camp Casey.’ When Sheehan finally forced her story on to the media, Bush took notice, dispatching some of his officials to pacify the devastated mother with yet more empty rhetoric. She refused to leave. Her insistence drew nationwide attention, quickly crossing the line dividing the alternative media from that of the mainstream. Right-wing apologists swiftly inundated the media, desperately trying to control a narrative, so instinctively woven by an ordinary woman so incessant on challenging the meaning, or lack thereof, in her son’s death.
While the clichéd understanding of the media’s role in the US is that it is an open, unhindered and evenly representative forum, the sad, albeit unsurprising truth is that the US mainstream media has always been a one-sided, drum-beating, chest-pounding, war-mongering medium where self-serving politicians and businessmen often come together in sinful matrimony. It has, however, so unfairly, tainted the image of the American people, as irrational minds, blindly ‘marching in support’ behind the president, the troops, American Ideals’ and so forth, as if the appalling values that molded the thinking of Bush’s ideologues has also influenced the aspirations of ordinary Americans everywhere.
The author, a “veteran Arab American journalist”, teaches mass communication at Australia’s Curtin University of Technology (Malaysia).
Sunday, September 25, 2005
TINY GAP BETWEEN VICTORY AND DEFEAT
Ray Kennedy’s remarkable photograph shows just how close the West Coast Eagles may have come to winning this year’s AFL Grand Final:
Television replays don’t show this very clearly, but prior to Leo Barry cutting across in front of the pack at least one West Coast player (Judd?) seems to have been perfectly positioned to mark. He would have taken a kick for goal (after the siren, to win the game) from only 20 metres or so. My, my. Incidentally, Sydney’s total was the lowest winning score since Carlton defeated Essendon in 1968, and the fifth-lowest winning score since the end of WWI. Yet the match was still enthralling. Additional Grand Final images here, here, here, and here.
UPDATE. Jeremy Cooper and Tony the Teacher point out that the Eagle in question is youngster Mark Seaby, who didn’t have a great game. At least he’s got a great “what if” story to tell in twenty years.
UPDATE II. Simon reports: “At the time most the crowd struggled to see what had happened. I was in the Great Southern Stand and there was literally two or three seconds where most of the ground was silent, waiting to see who ended up with it.”
HISTORY REVISED
Asked last week if he’d been “caught on the hop” by Mark Latham’s announcement last year that Labor would seek to withdraw Australian troops from Iraq by Christmas, Kevin Rudd avoided a direct response:
KEVIN RUDD: You know as well as I do, Kerry, when you’re dealing with complex questions of national security and you have a shadow cabinet that is functioning, a range of views are going to be put. There’s an outcome and the leader had a view.
KERRY O’BRIEN: And I think you were caught on the hop.
KEVIN RUDD: I am not about to breach that principle.
In fact, according to Alan R.M. Jones, who taped the 7.30 Report interview, Rudd’s smirking reply to that last question was as follows:
And you can draw your own conclusion. I am not about to breach that principle.
Hmm. Why would the ABC delete that line from its transcript? A line that could be seen as sly confirmation that shadow cabinet never approved Latham’s policy switch? Over to you, Media Watch! (Remember, too, this earlier example of ABC transcript-altering.)
WHAT HAPPENED TO HOPE?
The New York Times last week:
Many New Yorkers said yesterday that Ms. Sheehan gave them back hope that was lost when war was declared on Iraq.
The Washington Post today:
For Many, Anger Has Grown Since Start of War
It sure has. Particularly among pro-war types:
Tempers flared near a tent erected by supporters of Cindy Sheehan, the mother of a soldier killed in Iraq who camped outside Bush’s Texas ranch this summer. Six parents came by to cut their children’s photos from a poster showing the faces of the first 1,000 Americans to die in the Iraq conflict.
“My son wouldn’t want his face here,” said Charlotte Smette of Makoti, N.D., trembling in her husband’s arms with angry tears. Around his neck, Doug Smette wore a wooden cross and the dog tags of his son, Keith, who was killed in Iraq on Jan. 24, 2004.
A few feet away, protesters had laid out rows of empty boots embellished with small U.S. flags and white candles next to a tableau of small white crosses.
“This, to me, is disrespectful,” said John Wroblewski of Jefferson Township, N.J., whose son, John, served in the Marines and was killed in a firefight in Iraq.
Disrespect for dead US servicemen? From Mother Sheehan’s concern elves? Unthinkable.
SENTENCED TO ENGLAND
A cricket conversation with his US lawyer might lead to a way out for Ad-Elaide Al-Qaeda boy David Hicks:
“He told me he’d never felt very partisan about the Ashes and wouldn’t mind much if England took the series because his mum had never claimed Aussie nationality and still carried a UK passport,” Major Mori told Britain’s The Observer.
“My jaw hit the floor. I asked him, ‘Do you realise that may mean you’re legally a Brit?’ We both knew that the implications of that could be stunning.”
Presumably his legal team will now seek to have Hicks delivered to Britain, which has so far secured the return of nine Guantanamo Bay residents. This would represent a reversal of earlier policies which saw Britain sending its criminals to Australia.
UPDATE. Norm Geras, from Dave’s future home, reports on a wild GWB slur. Worse than Stalin, Hitler, and Saddam!