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Last updated on August 9th, 2017 at 05:06 am
Fairfax columnist Alex Mitchell—who believes a Jew-hating jihadi killbot is our finest citizen—identifies the major election issue of 2007 (no link available):
Voters have any number of reasons to be angry with the Howard government: the lies about weapons of mass destruction, the 10-year neglect of climate change initiatives, the grovelling to President George Bush, the anti-worker WorkChoices laws, the continued illegal incarceration of David Hicks at Guantanamo, the philistine contempt for the arts and film industry, the unnoticed $300 million worth of AWB bribes to Saddam Hussein, the trilling voice of Alexander Downer, the grim face of Philip Ruddock, the pieties of Kevin Andrews and the snarls of Tony Abbott.
However, what is more likely to influence voters at the next federal election is the political axing of the award-winning ABC-TV program The Glass House, brilliantly hosted by Wil Anderson, Corinne Grant and Dave Hughes.
That load of Alex ran under the headline: “Final act of bastardry”. The laugh’s on him; by the time the next election is held, all Glass House fans will have committed suicide! No votes from dead people, mate, except in certain Labor pre-selection races. Melinda Buttle, our primary source for Glass House despair, has additional details:
The Glass House was more than a TV show it was a modern Australian icon. The Glass House was part of our pop culture and allowed us as a nation to share our concerns in the way Australian’s do best, over a laugh. Therefore, ABC by default you have damaged the cultural fabric of Australia.
I find it ridiculous that you have cancelled what must surely be your most popular program (ed: it wasn’t). Logic leads me to believe that there must be some form of political or social agenda that underpins the removal of this wonderful program.
Actually, all it took was a couple of emails to my friends on the ABC board.
(Joking! It was just one email.)
- Good lord. I haven’t heard such hysterical moaning about a cancellation of a tv show since… Well, I don’t think I’ve heard anything this extreme, not even when Twin Peaks came to its too-abrupt end. (Or when Friends was given the long-overdue boot.) This Glass House program sounds like a slightly upscale Wayne’s World (the fake show, not the actual sketch or movie), something that should be on 2am on a community cable channel—at least from the description I’ve been reading, not Sixty Minutes. (And that show can be dropped off a short pier too as far as I’m concerned.)
Can’t the fans of the show collect enough money to get it a slot on the local community cable channels in your area or something? Do you have local community cable channels in Australia? (Checks Google.) Why yes, it seems that you do. (Warning, music plays.) If this show is so important, why aren’t lefties gathering together their funds?
Posted by Andrea Harris, Administrator on 2006 11 05 at 01:56 PM • permalink
- Look, they can submit a film! This took me less than five minutes to find out. What a bunch of useless hysterics. I can see it now: when the glowball warmenating floods start rising everyone else will be running around putting up sandbags except the lefties—they’ll be running around screeching in panic until the fall into the flood and drown.Posted by Andrea Harris, Administrator on 2006 11 05 at 01:59 PM • permalink
- 4. Andrea
glowball warmenating
I still maintain it’s global womanising.
Posted by flying pigs over mecca on 2006 11 05 at 02:03 PM • permalink
- Ive been reading your blog for at least 3 years, Tim, and one thing I have noticed is a REALLY big sense of entitlement from the “arts” community. Here in the US we have our share of parasites looking to pick the taxpayers pocket to make their crappy art but is looks like Oz takes the cake when it comes to untalented hacks wanting their piece of the pie.
- #6 debi,
Yeah, the Aussies are pretty generous but the Irish, guilt ridden over hounding James Joyce to France, don’t even collect taxes on artist’s earnings.
That doesn’t stop certain Pop Stars from gaming the system anyway.
- ”…what must surely be your most popular program…”
Betcha she doesn’t know anybody who voted for Dick Nixon, either.
Posted by Don’t Bogart that Midget, Comrade! on 2006 11 05 at 03:24 PM • permalink
- … you have cancelled what must surely be your most popular program …
The level of delusion in these people is just astounding. I mean, occasionally I can understand why leftoids seem to be so reality-challenged, since on some subjects you actually have to seek out the correct information. But this is a friggin’ TV show…surely there have been plenty of articles over the three years of its run indicating that the ratings weren’t exactly top-notch. Hell, I’m sure even The Age and the SMH must have mentioned it at least once.
- no link available
I’m not surprised….if I was the Fairfax CEO, I certainly wouldn’t want people to know I employed lunatics like this.
Posted by Quentin George on 2006 11 05 at 04:14 PM • permalink
- I had never heard of The Glass House before I read here of the hysterical carryings on when it was cancelled.
A modern Australian icon? Sorry, never heard of it.
Part of our pop culture? Sorry, never heard of it.
The cultural fabric of Australia? Nope. Never heard of it.
Now, The Naked Vicar show, there was a cultural icon.
- The Glass (Shit)House is an icon? Well, bugger me. I don’t even know anyone who will admit to seeing it.Posted by Nilknarf Arbed on 2006 11 05 at 05:08 PM • permalink
- Walking to the coffee shop yesterday morning, I turned a corner and saw a police car in the street.
Fearing the worst, I ran up.
‘Youth suicide?’ I breathlessly asked the cop. ‘Dissassociated, unemployed teenagers, driven to ultimate despair by the axing of The Glass House?’
‘Grandma locked herself out of the house. Now fuck off,’ the cop snarled, ‘before I arrest you for public idiocy.’Posted by SwinishCapitalist on 2006 11 05 at 05:28 PM • permalink
Can’t the fans of the show collect enough money to get it a slot on the local community cable channels in your area or something? Do you have local community cable channels in Australia? (Checks Google.) Why yes, it seems that you do. (Warning, music plays.) If this show is so important, why aren’t lefties gathering together their funds?
So THAT’s what Aurora is for!? I always thought it was just a dumping ground for crap that even the ABC and SBS wouldn’t show. But, then again, that’s probably the standard definition of “community television”! Now that Austar/Foxtel have rejuggled the channel numbers, Aurora is even harder to find – I don’t seem to come across it in my channel flick-throughs any more.
Posted by AlburyShifton on 2006 11 05 at 05:52 PM • permalink
- #3
Can’t the fans of the show collect enough money to get it a slot on the local community cable channels in your area or something?
Andrea – you’re forgetting the golden rule of being a lefty – everybody has to pay for my luxuries/entertainment/causes.
I can whinge and moan all I want and the taxpayer should provide the cure because there is no way I’ll dip into my back pocket.
- All together now one more time:
What is it with these people, that they assume they hold the one true wisdom and everything that goes against their precious beliefs is evil.
They look down their nosese at the masses with paternalist contempt.
I spit in their general direction.
Posted by Wimpy Canadian on 2006 11 05 at 06:34 PM • permalink
- I won’t join in GlassHouse bashing per se. I mean, it wasn’t great lately, but it wasn’t terrible either IMO, and I didn’t hate it.
But I wish these melodramatic sooks would just suck it up and get over it. For god’s sake, it was a TV show, and TV shows generally only last a few years before being replaced. Glasshouse ran for 5 seasons after all – which is a creditable run. So get over it, lefties!
And as for this “End of Democracy as we know it” malarky, have these idiots never heard of “The Chaser”? It’s another ABC comedy series, it’s run equally caustic skits on the government, and it’s still running strong. Perhaps because it’s fresher and funnier?
- #5 MuzzieZapper, I like global wwomenizing too, but it doesn’t rhyme with bloviatingPosted by Wimpy Canadian on 2006 11 05 at 06:41 PM • permalink
- I didn’t give a shit about Glass House getting chopped at first — who could be bothered watching such second-rate shit? But now, as I’m finding all these wailing, despairing, tearful Lefties … hmmmm … I’m starting to think it was an excellent decision. I wish I had called for it before it happened. Well done ABC. You’ve pissed off a very nice crowd.
- More like Glass Jaw election.
I hope Alex Mitchell is a member of the Labor party. His brand of petulant whining will appeal to the inner city latte left (already in safe labor seats) while driving reasonable people to the Liberals.
Posted by niobium2000 on 2006 11 05 at 07:10 PM • permalink
(Joking! It was just one email.)
Given how the lefties tend to lack a sense of humor, be on the look out for rumors that Tim Blair is Lord Karl’s personal emissary to Australia.
Posted by The_Real_JeffS on 2006 11 05 at 07:49 PM • permalink
- Dear lord, what a towering example of idiocy. Does the Left have any perspective left in the tank?Posted by James Waterton on 2006 11 05 at 08:16 PM • permalink
- People may scoff at Alex Mitchell, but I think we will soon discover the $27,500 awarded to him by the NSW Labor Government to study the history of the NSW press gallery as part of the Sesquicentenary of Responsible Government in NSW was a fantastic investment and there was nothing shady about it at all.Posted by Margos Maid on 2006 11 05 at 08:25 PM • permalink
- Just to give some idea of the Glass House “humour”, on the first anniversary of the September 11 attacks the three geniuses (and guests who I can’t recall now) thought it would be hilarious to make jokes about it-eg Corinne Grant borrowed from Chomsky and said that more people die in Africa every day and promptly burst in giggles. I never watched it again after that episode.
- The problem for the left at the moment is that there are so many important issues bugging them that it is impossible to get around to all of them.Posted by Margos Maid on 2006 11 05 at 08:53 PM • permalink
- It makes me very sad to know that a television show is given this kind of importance in someone’s life? That’s a sickness I’m glad I managed to avoid.
I have a friend who, because of her childhood experiences, sees everything as if it’s a movie or a television show. In treatment now for 18 months, she’s beginning to see Reality without needing to reference the Fantasy she lived with for so long.
I like her better now that’s she’s sane.
- If you include ham-fisted, consistently one-sided political attacks in a “comedy” show—which The Glasshouse did—you’re going to piss off half your audience. Doesn’t seem to be a very sensible way of doing business, even show business. Interesting development at the coal face last night: All round laughs, especially from those inclined to the left, at the Sydney global warming protest in temperatures 5 degrees below average. The scepticism is far wider than the gorbal wormerisers imagine. And likely to intensify now that opportunists in the corporations have jumped on the bandwagon.
- The cast knew about the cancellation of the show 5 weeks ago. Link here.Posted by Patrick Henry on 2006 11 05 at 09:02 PM • permalink
- The glass house had developed itself as far it was going to go in the five seasons it had. The only way after that was downhill – history is always the same on shows like that. Maybe the ABC is starting to follow the Japanese where they generally finish a series or show when it is at or near its peak and doesn’t end up dying a horrible death as we have seen so often in the past.
- Just been over to the shows website, and surpisingly they didn’t publish my contribution to their guestbook, welcoming the long overdue demise of this turgid waste of electrons. Only weepy, waily gnashy teeth items are being posted, in a futile attempt to get a Lazarus going on TGHs rotting corpse.
Now lefties aren’t known for fisddling polls and ignoring opinions with which they disagree, so perhaps there is something sinister afoot.
- I have never been able to watch TGH or other recent ABC “comedy” and have trouble watching even a promo for the shows without experiencing adverse health symptoms.
Last night, we old skeeters watched the ABC celebrate 50 years of TV.
As ABC consumers since its steam radio days, we have watched it through all of those 50 years. Our main aim in watching last night was to see if, as we suspected, it’s comedy shows had deteriorated appallingly or if we had just grown old and harder to amuse.
It was good to find that we still got a chuckle out of some of the old shows.
- Hmmm.
The Glass House was part of our pop culture and allowed us as a nation to share our concerns in the way Australian’s do best, over a laugh.
And here I thought you Aussies shared your concerns over a beer!
Well now I know better. The next time an Aussie tries to get me to buy him or her a beer I’ll just share a laugh with them.
j/k
Posted by memomachine on 2006 11 05 at 09:51 PM • permalink
- By my rekoning, and that of the company I work for (we’re ‘in the game’ so to speak), the next Federal election is due about this time next year.
Either way, whats the bet that ‘one email’ had quite a few references to The Dark Lord Karl Rove and our good friend Wronwright?
That should have been enough to force the hand of even the most die hard glasshead at Aunty…
Posted by The_Wizard_of_WOZ on 2006 11 05 at 10:42 PM • permalink
- The Glass House was part of our pop culture
Haven’t these loons noticed that ‘pop’ is the opposite of ‘permanent’?
I have an original French Joke for the GH replacement, which for balance will have to lean to the right, Right?
WHY are the French planning three new, equidistant Replica Eiffel Towers in Paris?
ANSWER: Notre Dame will need four minarets
- 42. north01
Just to give some idea of the Glass House “humour”, on the first anniversary of the September 11 attacks the three geniuses (and guests who I can’t recall now) thought it would be hilarious to make jokes about it-eg Corinne Grant borrowed from Chomsky and said that more people die in Africa every day and promptly burst in giggles.
So freaking what? More people die in Japan every day, but their lefty worldview doesn’t blame whitey for that.
Posted by flying pigs over mecca on 2006 11 06 at 01:13 AM • permalink
- (Ahh, I should point out that I was referring to Glasshouse’s worldview, not the Japanese one.)Posted by flying pigs over mecca on 2006 11 06 at 01:20 AM • permalink
- Daily Telegraph reports NSW Minister suspended three months for speeding, which means to been chauffeur driven for three months.Posted by stackja1945 on 2006 11 06 at 05:43 AM • permalink
Ok, bye everyone, thanks heaps, I’m never going to post here again
Good. I always had the suspicion 1.618 was Anthony Lowenstein letting his inner female out. (cringes)
Posted by wronwright on 2006 11 06 at 06:06 AM • permalink
- I, for one, am concerned about 1.618’s health. Annoying as she might have been, we’ve seen and tolerated far worse…just look at what a TV show’s axing does to ostensibly sane people…hope she doesn’t take this too hard.
Call me sentimental.
Posted by MentalFloss on 2006 11 06 at 09:21 PM • permalink
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If they think there’s such a demand for political commentary on television there’s nothing stopping them from pitching another one to the ABC (and I still think, Tim, that you should be one fo the hosts if so).