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Last updated on July 16th, 2017 at 10:13 am
Seething soon-to-be-ex-Media Watch executive producer Tim Palmer, abusive and tense in recent dealings with The Australian, has a history of anxiety:
Thanks to stress, a three-year stint in Jerusalem, Tim Palmer has seen his blood pressure climb 20 point. And he’s gone from non-smoker to 30 a day. “During intifada my wife and I had this fantastic flat in Beirut but none of our friends from Australia came to visit us. Nobody.”
Can’t imagine why.
UPDATE. Mr Creosote comments:
Hey, go easy on poor Mr Palmer. Think of how rough it’s been for him.
Imagine spending years working in a job where the place is governed by warlords and the only daily certainty is the unfathomable, byzantine struggle between factions and ever-shifting alliances. Ancient hatreds flow beneath you like a subterranean river. Hatreds so old, no one can remember what started it all. The place is awash with rumours, lies, revenge, envy, lust, deceit. Everyone is on the make and desperate to leave.
The government is hopeless, essential services are breaking down and every driver on the roads is trying to kill you.
The Jews control everything. A dastardly foreign power is thought by many to really control the country, deposing obstreperous Prime Ministers at will.
The locals continually treat you with mistrust. Some outright hate you. You spend all your time in the company of those that fawn over your ever word.
Vast holes scar the city centre where buildings once stood. Ethnic minorities have formed enclaves, and armed gangs roam the streets, looting and raping at will. The police are lazy, corrupt and never to be seen. Aircraft are heard overhead at all hours of the day and night.
Then one day, his boss calls him in and tells him he is being transferred from Sydney to Beirut. That must have been terribly traumatic and stressful.
Wait till Jack from Montreal sees this.
Posted by wronwright on 2007 09 30 at 02:47 AM • permalink
Would have thought Palmer had a gaggle of Jew-hating friends who would relish the chance to show their solidarity with Islamists. Maybe they just like to talk the talk and are actually terrified of falling victim to them.
Observation about Sydney’s Jew-hating supporters of Hezbollah, al Qaeda and Hamas. They are more likely to live in a part of Sydney with a large Jewish population than a part of Sydney with a large Muslim population. Just like the Greens, who prefer places that have been paved over than places which have trees.
“And when we returned to Australia, our friends all moved abroad. Everybody.”
Posted by SwinishCapitalist on 2007 09 30 at 03:14 AM • permalink
#7, You’re spot on with that, Contrail.
It is a matter of talking the talk but not walking the walk. But what got me is that he wondered why no one came to visit him during the intifada!
Is Tim Palmer just plain stupid or mentally numb, or is it something more? Does he live in a parallel, media-enhanced universe – a Disneyesque world in which nothing is quite real?
He should get out more. Even in Beirut, I’m sure he was cushioned in some expat enclave or other.
Right up there with, “I’m homeless and live in a sewer outlet, and my tourrettes makes conversations difficult, even if the stink from my lice matted hair and poo encrusted undies didn’t drive people away. Why does no-one visit me”?, school of thinking.
9. Bwaha I like it.
Posted by thefrollickingmole on 2007 09 30 at 03:54 AM • permalink
Continue on to the next paragraph, “Roxane, his wife, is an interior decorator who works with danger…” If I told about what I do for a living, trucking along a twisty two lane mountain road every day, can I expect moans of passion from the ladies? Nooooooo. All I get is ho-hum. Hey, I smoke too!
Posted by dean martin on 2007 09 30 at 05:11 AM • permalink
Hey, go easy on poor Mr Palmer. Think of how rough it’s been for him.
Imagine spending years working in a job where the place is governed by warlords and the only daily certainty is the unfathomable, byzantine struggle between factions and ever-shifting alliances. Ancient hatreds flow beneath you like a subterranean river. Hatreds so old, no one can remember what started it all. The place is awash with rumours, lies, revenge, envy, lust, deceit. Everyone is on the make and desperate to leave.
The government is hopeless, essential services are breaking down and every driver on the roads is trying to kill you.
The Jews control everything. A dastardly foreign power is thought by many to really control the country, deposing obstreperous Prime Ministers at will.
The locals continually treat you with mistrust. Some outright hate you. You spend all your time in the company of those that fawn over your ever word.
Vast holes scar the city centre where buildings once stood. Ethnic minorities have formed enclaves, and armed gangs roam the streets, looting and raping at will. The police are lazy, corrupt and never to be seen. Aircraft are heard overhead at all hours of the day and night.
Then one day, his boss calls him in and tells him he is being transferred from Sydney to Beirut. That must have been terribly traumatic and stressful.
Posted by mr creosote on 2007 09 30 at 05:28 AM • permalink
- Wasn’t the intifada a long way south of Beirut? In another country altogether?
An examination of ABC reportage from the ME will show craven attempts to remain “even handed” and never criticise those who might harm you. If you are kidnapped, you better to be able to point to your reports as being “not critical of” those who have failed to lay any workable foundation for the (mythical?) two state solution. Not sure who I am referring to? Good. Brown and Hardyakker are pretty soft with their terminology.
Much, much better than the report on your toilet schedule, creosote.
Posted by SwinishCapitalist on 2007 09 30 at 07:26 AM • permalink
So the MW Executive Producer once lived in Beirut where he presumably had numerous contacts and he still declined to investigate the Lebanese ambulance story?
Alexander Downer made mention of it on 30 August 2006 and Fingers and Mon still didn’t think it was worth investigating. So what material bumped it out of the following MW episode?
See here under 4 September 2006 – an episode dominated by an attack on Tim’s colleague, Piers Akerman.
Posted by Margos Maid on 2007 09 30 at 08:25 AM • permalink
If there is an award for a “Best Comment” on Tim’s blog, then surely Mr Creosote’s at #15 has to be in the running.
Beautifully crafted, sir. You had me sucked in until the closing paragraph, and then the light shone upon me.
I am so going to steal this.
Posted by Pedro the Ignorant on 2007 09 30 at 09:09 AM • permalink
#22: Why, thank you Pedro, I am most flattered.
I hope everyone realises that paragraph one refers to the ABC offices at Ultimo (which I have been inside of, and I can verify that they are quite labarynthesque and that the air smells of sulfur and brimstone – which is of course a tautology).
Posted by mr creosote on 2007 09 30 at 09:33 AM • permalink
So here he is, living in a place all of his friends support (in theory), and nobody comes to visit.
Yet, if he’d spent a couple of months in Orlando, Florida, USA (a place you can bet all of his pals would have a laundry list of stuff to bitch about), he’d have people lined up to come sleep in the guest room for a week or so.
This sums up all that is wrong with the ABC, their Middle East correspondent does not even realise that Lebanon and the Palesinian Territoties are not the same country, despite living there. How are we supposed to expect accurate reporting from the likes of him? Why didn’t his coverage represent what he would have seen in Beirut? Fine food and mini-skirts, how do you blame the Jews for that?
I also have an apartment in Lebanon, a beautiful place, and I never had any trouble with mates visiting. Close to the beach, the snow, great restaurants and hot chicks, keeping them away was more of a hassle. Maybe the difference is that I really do have mates, not accquaintances that are happy to find reasons to avoid me.
#14, I was all set to moan with passion at your twisty-road manoeuverings but at the mention of you smoking i had to chuck it in and don the gas mask.
Bummer.
Posted by carpefraise on 2007 09 30 at 10:32 PM • permalink
#15, beautiful work mr creosote.
I wonder which suburbs are inhabited by the people who lobbied, respectively, the Marrickville and Leichardt councils to become sister cities with Bethlehem and Hebron?
Posted by carpefraise on 2007 09 30 at 10:35 PM • permalink
#32: Carpefraise, the best place I can send you is here, although I shudder to do so. It’s some wankers PhD thesis on Leichhardt lefties in the 1970’s.
I skimmed through it and found this:
From the mid to late 1960s there were major population shifts within the suburbs of Balmain, Leichhardt etc. As the population declined, the traditional blue collar working class was replaced by white collar workers and semi-professionals. This was reflected in the 1970s by the moving in to the ALP branches of teachers, university students and academics, white collar public servants and other professionals (such as lawyers).
Between 1961 and 1981, blue collar members as a proportion of ALP membership fell from well over half to just over a quarter.
The one very dramatic change in the composition of the ALP since 1961 was accounted for by teachers. Primary, secondary and technical teachers accounted for just under 4% of the membership in 1961 while in 1981 this was close to 20%.
Teachers. So now you know.
Posted by mr creosote on 2007 09 30 at 11:33 PM • permalink
Dear Tim Palmer,
I regret to inform you, I’m unable to accept your submission on Anxiety Issues for the new 1.618 Weekly. Thank you for your interest, and we do encourage you try again soon.
Please inform Monica we don’t need a spell checker, the postion has been filled.
Cheers,
1.618