Over the past week or so I've needed cheering up, and this morning a bit of sunny, patronising tosh brought forth the laughter that, for an influenza sufferer like me, brings on hacking coughs. After I'd finished coughing I still appreciated what I assumed was a joke.One of the great lodes of comedy is the collision between high-minded idealism and everyday reality. Charlie Chaplin built a career on it and so have plenty of others.
'Cause the high heel he used to be has been ground down And he listens for the footsteps that would follow him around ...- Elvis Costello Man out of time
People are hungry for information about different aspects of public policy and what it means for the country. Three experienced journalists from three of the country's major news organisations freely admit that's all very well, but we're going to write about whatever distracts our tiny little minds and you can all go to hell.According to 'Sweet' Barrie Cassidy:
Here is my suggestion for a positive model for reforming the way that the media reports on politics.
We could talk about this public funding of elections thing, I suppose; how it's both outrageous and at the same time just what you'd expect
Two disgracefully beef-witted articles by experienced journalists about their 'profession' almost but did not quite succeed in detracting me from completing articles and other activities.The first one was Sweet Barrie Cassidy, showing us how journalists no longer pride themselves on their resistance to bullshit but the sheer quantity of it that they swallow:
When Margo Kingston from Australians for Honest Politics (and now Macquarie University) asked me to write something on George Brandis, I thought I'd draw on his extensive background as a champion of free speech.
This is the point where companies are starting to make investment decisions about the next financial year, and to make long-term decisions for the rest of the decade. We're at the point where the Coalition should start looking like a confident alternative government, rather than like a bunch of chancers riding their luck. Late last year, The Australian's Paul Kelly declared that the Coalition had fifty fully-costed policies ready to go: it's increasingly clear this isn't the case, and could w
We do not educate women to higher degree level to deny them a career. If we want women of that calibre to have families, and we should, well we have to give them a fair dinkum chance to do so. That is what this scheme [Coalition policy] of paid parental leave is all about.- Tony Abbott, 7 May 2013, defending Liberal policy on paid parental leave
Recent articles by Josh Bornstein and Erik Jensen on the downfall of Kevin Rudd have told us much about Rudd as an individual, and about how the ALP works both with and against such an individual.