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Last updated on August 5th, 2017 at 03:42 pm
Jane Wheatley of the London Times attempts to profile John Howard:
A short, grey man in his sixties with a whiny voice, Howard lacks any sort of contemporary charisma, yet in Returned & Services League clubs in country towns he can sit and talk sport and sheep and weather and, like his heroine Margaret Thatcher, he remembers people’s names.
Alas, Jane herself does not remember much at all, assuming she ever knew much to begin with:
[Howard] became a Liberal MP in 1974 and was rapidly promoted in the right-wing Menzies government …
Sir Robert Menzies retired from politics in 1966. John Howard became an opposition MP in 1974. Wheatley continues:
He bounced back as leader just in time to defeat the Labor Prime Minister Paul Keating in the 1996 election, pronouncing himself “Lazarus with a triple bypass”.
Howard made that comment seven years prior to his election in 1996.
(Via Peter Kerr)
- The MSM’s crack fact-checkers strike again. (Crack pipe, that is.)Posted by andycanuck on 2007 05 15 at 12:26 PM • permalink
- Aaahh, but the truth is more imporatant than the facts, donchaknow.Posted by Tex Lovera on 2007 05 15 at 12:30 PM • permalink
- errr, “important”, that is. PIMF!Posted by Tex Lovera on 2007 05 15 at 12:31 PM • permalink
- Rescued from the editor’s delete file:
The Ferrari-driving Mr Howard also appeared on popular game-show ‘Pick-a-Box’ shortly after invading Iraq. His long-time Treasurer, Sir Phillip Lynch, launched a leadership challenge against the Prime Minister because of longstanding tensions dating back to the so-called ‘Kirribilli Agreement’. The pact, named after the Australian Prime Minister’s official Canberra residence, was made in 1976. Despite numerous attempts by the Times to arrange an interview, the aloof Sir Phillip was unavailable for comment.
- Today I learned that “Menzies” is not the Australian spelling of “Menses”Posted by Col. Milquetoast on 2007 05 15 at 03:25 PM • permalink
- #8
Jerry Falwell has died.
Only Pat Robertson, Texe Marr and Benny Hinn to go…
Posted by AlburyShifton on 2007 05 15 at 03:35 PM • permalink
- Hey, it’s the 21st Century !
Accuracy is no longer of import, even for the Times of London.Posted by Harry Bergeron on 2007 05 15 at 03:35 PM • permalink
- OT
Fred Thompson reply to Fat Ass Mikey Moore
Looks like Fred has found the Soviet Sub, code named the Red October, but really the CCCP Mikal Moore.
- A short, grey man in his sixties with a whiny voice…
Excuse me Jane, that’s me you’re talking about. (Minus twenty years.)
and like his heroine Margaret Thatcher, he remembers people’s names
So he’s, er, following her bad example?Posted by SwinishCapitalist on 2007 05 15 at 05:38 PM • permalink
- Excellent link BTW, El Cid.Posted by SwinishCapitalist on 2007 05 15 at 05:55 PM • permalink
- Has the Times sacked their proofreaders/factcheckers and outsourced the job to China?
The directors of the firm hired to continue the credits after the other people had been sacked, with it to be known that they have just been sacked. The credits have been completed in an entirely different style at great expense and at the last minute.
Posted by Spiny Norman on 2007 05 15 at 05:56 PM • permalink
- #4 contemporary charisma: Might we interpret that as “metrosexual hipness”?
Yes we might, Rebecca.
Compare the iconic Keating with his Italian suits and obscure affection for carriage clocks and Mahler. The ALP beer-lovers in the MSM never really called him on ‘the Paris option’.
He no doubt secretly admires Napoleon and De Gaulle, just as he does 1930s NSW dictators, and Indonesian ones too.
But his ‘contemporary coarseness’ covered for his niche antiquarianism.
Howard loves cricket and all sport as a spectator an wears country hats, but that in our media is called ‘picket fence 1950s’.
- Tim, Tim, Tim!
You misunderstand – this was not meant to document Mr. Howard’s career, but to dramatise it. Like the Bastard Boys, it is obviously seeking to capture a narrative or parable which eludes those of us obsessed with the everyday facts.
And with a name like Wheatley one must expect a flair for the colourful story.
- Well, let’s think about who has contemporary charisma. Leonardi DiCarpi, Paris Hilton, Madonna. Russell Crowe, and on and on and on. Does *anyone* seriously want a person like these running their country?Posted by JorgXMcKie on 2007 05 15 at 06:58 PM • permalink
- Did you have a nice sleep yesterday 1.6?
I think we can all guess the subject matter of your dreams.Posted by SwinishCapitalist on 2007 05 15 at 07:22 PM • permalink
- She missed the bit about Howard throwing Iraqi orphans off the boatPosted by Margos Maid on 2007 05 15 at 07:24 PM • permalink
- #26 and we haven’t even started on how he fitted up David Hicks. Is there anything he won’t do?Posted by anonymous guest on 2007 05 15 at 07:27 PM • permalink
- Gawd, but you people just make me tired with all this insistence on facts facts facts! The author’s prose is obviously styled for dramatic affect, not this objective reporting you keep yammering about, which is just boring and no one wants to read. ‘Sides, who wants to look at unattractive old guys when you can have good-looking guys who understand the importance of applying a little moisturizer on a daily basis.
You guys are just out of it. Not cool at all.
- OT:
Rudd snubs Llama!
“I think it’s pretty weak of Foreign Minister Downer to have somehow have fabricated this excuse that he is somehow too busy to have met the Dalai,” Mr Rudd told ABC Radio five years ago.
Mr Rudd now says he will not meet the Dalai Lama when he visits Australia to hold several public speaking events from June 6 to 16.
- Jane’s goin’ Sweeney on his ass!
It bears striking similarities to my profile of Kevin Rudd.
“Rudd lacks any manly qualities; like his hero Karl Marx, he has an effete manner, a mincing gait and pursed lips.”
Posted by Pig Head Sucker on 2007 05 15 at 08:02 PM • permalink
- Compere: “Ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls, distinguished dignitaries i present the PM of Australia to address this, the 75th session of the united nations”
PM of Australia: “Matt Damon….”
Posted by thefrollickingmole on 2007 05 15 at 08:09 PM • permalink
- BTW whatever happened to Bitchin’ Monaro? I always thought it got the balance between soft-core porn and politics just right.Posted by Pig Head Sucker on 2007 05 15 at 08:09 PM • permalink
- I confess I never used to like John Howard. Not at all.
Then I came to understand that he was doing what he thought was best for the country, and that many of his actions were taken in the context of today’s complex and globalised real world.
Some of his decisions would have been very difficult to make, but he gritted his teeth and made them while knowing that they would make him and his Government unpopular in many circles.
Don’t agree with everything he’s done but I do give him credit for genuinely caring about the country and its people, and having some vision. Not like some others I could name.
Pity that Jane Wheatley of the London Times didn’t made such a slapdash effort at understanding the man.
- A (not-so-) elder Statesman, who was Australia’s youngest Treasurer at the age of 37 as opposed to a recycled Civil Servant of the Quentin Crisp variety.
- Jane Wheatley is a disaffected aging woman with the usual axes to grind and the usual preoccupations and the usual fascinations with everything that is not Western and male and Christian and progressive:
On the plane I read bits of Karen Armstrong’s book on Islam so illuminating after a whistle-stop tour of visible history and finished Sebastian Faulks’s On Green Dolphin Street, weeping luxuriously.
She’s nuts.
- I have never forgiven Howard for his “Peace in Our Time” speech or for short sheeting my bed at Lake Inverness in 1703.Posted by Infidel Tiger on 2007 05 15 at 09:34 PM • permalink
- George Orwell had great insight when he wrote books such as 1984 and Animal Farm. He was certainly right in 1944 when he wrote “history is written by the winners.” That’s the way it had been for thousands of years.
But not now. History is being written by left-wing losers such as Wheatley. Wheatley will defend her sloppy research by saying that had Menzies and Howard had been historical contemporaries, Howard would have been promoted in the manner she described. And that makes it a fact. And if Howard had not already used the Lazarus remark in 1989, he would surely have used it in 1996. At the very least he must have thought it when he won the election, so it’s a fact too.
Phillip Adams does it all the time. The Australian left has done it for decades. We have seen it globally in the infamous plastic turkey.
- #30 Yes he did, and since that was one of the few occasions I’d been allowed out with the TARDIS, I confess to supplying the moa.
And you know what?
It tasted fanbloodytastic!
Posted by Nilknarf Arbed on 2007 05 15 at 09:45 PM • permalink
- #48: Rather like chicken, I suppose? Well, as long as it didn’t go to waste. The last time I borrowed the Tardis, I ran over one of these. Damned gamey, I say.
- #12- How come you’ve overlooked Creflo and Taffi Dollar? Are you a racist, or think they should survive on the strength of their wacky names? (Personally I think Creflo shold change his first name to Gimme; Taffi must spend a lot of time down the pit).
- Record levels of investment in the Australian minerals and energy sector.
A new survey says consumer confidence is at its highest levels since the study began in 1975.
Inflation heading south of two per cent.
Unemployment the lowest in more than 30 years.
Hey, I know: let’s punish the government.
- Was there also a comment from ex-President Dewey?Posted by andycanuck on 2007 05 15 at 11:11 PM • permalink
- What a dimwit. Somebody fire her.Posted by Do not beat around the Dubya on 2007 05 15 at 11:29 PM • permalink
many Australians have squirmed in embarrassment as their country appears to have turned in on itself, rejecting liberal reforms and social change, cosying up to America and volunteering troops for Iraq.
I haven’t noticed much evidence of embarrassment. Including in the streets of London.
- Posted by Contrail on 2007 05 15 at 09:44 PM • permalink
The Australian left has done it for decades. We have seen it globally in the infamous plastic turkey.
Not to mention the “Deputy Sheriff” label which has stuck to John Howard like glue, even though he never described himself as such.
A correspondent – can’t remember who now but it was probably someone from the ABC – first used it and, no matter how many times since John Howard and others have denied that he said it, the truth has been usefully and continually ignored.
… their country appears to have turned in on itself
What the hell does this mean?
… rejecting liberal reforms and social change
Such as?
… cosying up to America
WTF? Excuse me? Australians are embarrassed about standing by an old friend? Show me one.
…and volunteering troops for Iraq.
Ah yes. Here’s the rub. Iraq. Pro-America.
Well fuck you Jane. No embarrassment going on here other than among people like you. It’s them who make me squirm.
- The only people more embarrassed than me are English dentists and cricketers.Posted by Infidel Tiger on 2007 05 15 at 11:47 PM • permalink
- May I suggest The Times instructs it’s readers to write a letter to the voters of Australia informing us of our embarrassment.Posted by Infidel Tiger on 2007 05 15 at 11:50 PM • permalink
rejecting liberal reforms and social change
Social change is really working well for Eurabia, isn’t it?
Posted by flying pigs over mecca on 2007 05 16 at 01:53 AM • permalink
- OT Outrage over Virginia Tech computer game
A Sydney youth who has created an uproar with an online game based on the Virginia Tech massacre, says he will remove the game if he receives $US2000 in “donations”.
Add another $US1000 and he promises to apologise.
The game, called V-Tech Rampage, offers “three levels of stealth and murder” and is set on a facsimile of the Virginia Tech campus.
Posted by flying pigs over mecca on 2007 05 16 at 02:08 AM • permalink
- My comments:
1. Why is she writing this column about Howard at all? Is she expert on cricket or Australia?
2. I thought Tony Blair was named just the other day by the Zimbabwean FM as ‘the worst thing that ever happened to Africa’. If ‘my enemy is my friend’ shouldn’t Jane therefore give Blair 10/10?
3. I have met Howard personally and he is not tall but I also wouldn’t describe him as short. Grey he is not. Perhaps he is not flamboyant in the Keating mould but he was elected 4 times as the anti-Keating. That should tell Jane enough of how over 50% of Australians regard flamboyance.
4. Howard banned the cricket tour to Zimbabwe as a formal gesture to remove the possibility of the ICC having to pay compensation to Zimbabwe. There is no way he did it as a solo or even for that matter constitutional act. He has not constitutional power to prevent the tour. Most cricketers wanted him to ban it and he has.
5. Come to that, I don’t think Blair has the power to ban an English tour of Zimbabwe either.
6. What is it with journo’s and the working class? I thought they were Marxists? How come they always talk of the workers as trolls?
7. Who is Kathy Marks and what a load of crap she is quoted as saying. Australia has the second highest per capita refugee intake in the world. We have one of the least biased migration quotas in the world and one of the highest per capita migrant intakes.
- Perhaps he is not flamboyant in the Keating mould
If “flamboyant” is a euphemism for shirt lifting, vegemite drilling, eight day clock polisher, then you’re spot on.
Posted by Infidel Tiger on 2007 05 16 at 02:27 AM • permalink
- OT (again) Junk food ad ban not on: Abbott:
“Bans are things that governments do when they want to look good rather than actually do good.”
So can we have our guns back, please?
Posted by flying pigs over mecca on 2007 05 16 at 03:16 AM • permalink
- #71 -3
I am 5’9” -average height (God knows what that is in cm),and the PM is the same height as me
I briefed his predecessor but one a couple of times about 16 years ago, and without the hairdo he is a shrimp -the breath was a killer, though, I certainly got to understand the difference between charisma and miasma
Cheers
RodC
- #74 – Not too many kiddies I know earn a wage or do the household shopping. If your little tacker resembles Augustus Gloop it’s because you’re a shithouse parent. Send the fat sack of crap down a coal mine if his/her disgusting Michelin Man physique troubles you. Failing that, push him out on to the street as a traffic calming device.
The one thing we need banned, government’s won’t touch – FUCKWITS.
Posted by Infidel Tiger on 2007 05 16 at 03:24 AM • permalink
- #70. Tact – that’s what’s running the world – tact.Posted by carpefraise on 2007 05 16 at 04:14 AM • permalink
- #49 Paco, everything tastes like chicken. At least everything I’ve ever ordered from Prehistoric And Contemporary Organisms, inc does.
Croc? Tastes like chicken.
Buffalo? Tastes like chicken.
Wichetty grubs? Taste like chicken.
Diced brontoburgers? Taste like chicken.
Chicken? Tastes like beef.Posted by Nilknarf Arbed on 2007 05 16 at 05:01 AM • permalink
- #79, 80 egg. She looks like what you’d get if you crossed Margo Kingston with a woman.Posted by flying pigs over mecca on 2007 05 16 at 05:39 AM • permalink
- #76 IT. Not sure from the tone of your comment, but to emphasise: I wasn’t advocating a ban on junk food advertising.Posted by flying pigs over mecca on 2007 05 16 at 05:42 AM • permalink
- #79 – delectable, well yes, in the ‘poor cousin to a bashed crab’ sense of the word. Excuse me if I avert my eyes.Posted by SwinishCapitalist on 2007 05 16 at 07:53 AM • permalink
- #84
Politically they are losers, most recently in France. The right is in power, the left is fabricating the “history”. Once upon a time those in power also got to write the history.The left has achieved its Fabian aims of dominating education and media but has yet to translate that into permanent power. That is because when the left does achieve power, it makes a complete mess of it.
take NSW and its water crisis. Its genesis was s in the Wran years when that arsehole stripped water authorities of money put aside for dams, his famous hollow logs. Carr added to the problem by turning all possible dam sites into national parks. labor figured that when the shit hit the fan, it would be farmers, country people and those from the leafy suburbs who would suffer – conservative voters. But no water also means factories and mines close, swing voters in the mortgage belt watch their gardens wilt and soaring food prices hit the poorest hardest – they are Labor voters. You can see the dawning panic on the faces of Labor in Victoria, which did exacting what Wran and Carr did.
- Contemporary charisma is:
a) a pair of man boobs, one nut and a penchant for a bit of biffo?
b) a Brazillian wax, torn mini and no underwear?
c) your 22-position-sex romp shot on a Nokia, “stolen” and posted on a pay-only site?
d) offsetting your trip to London to attend a Monbiot-inspired memorial dinner for the death of planet earth?
e) boffing a Bangkok hooker but understanding the power/gender/metrosexual elements of exploitation?
f) spending more on hairspray and sunglasses than the debt of most countries you believe should be dropped?
g) all of the above?Send answers to John Pilger, whom as a result of earning 300,000 business class air miles per year is exempt.
- #83 – Never fear, my comment was directed at the cotton wool clad nanny statist’s. By fuck I hate them more than being stuck next to David Koch in a alcohol free zone.Posted by Infidel Tiger on 2007 05 16 at 08:58 PM • permalink
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