I proposed to the cool cats at Catalyst that I do a weekly pastiche of the
They've responded by asking me to do something a bit broader, which in any case should be available at the Catalyst website each week.
The following is what I would have posted. Admire my PVO-like centrism! Laugh at my witty in-jokes!
****
Welcome, inner-city sandalista comrades, to the first (and
hopefully not the last) post of “Hellisian Fields”, a suppository of the wisdom
that Gerard Henderson and Bob Ellis post each week, respectively, on “Media Watch Dog”
(which, as the author Henderson reminds us in each edition, was begun one year
before the ABC’s “Media Watch” program) and “Table Talk: Bob Ellis on Film and Theatre”,
in which the eponymous author more often than not strays from his brief and
instead gives us his, ah, unique (and
probably defamatory) insights on politics, with more than a touch of reductio ad Hitlerum.
The week got off to a bang., Mr Ellis was fervently putting
word to screen, in a screed that continued from previously on the theme of Adam Goodes’
worthiness as Australian of the Year. Wrote Mr Ellis:
It would be good to know
how many Indigenous notables were offered the prize of Australian of the Year
and, not wanting to be so acclaimed on what their people now know as Invasion
Day, turned it down.
Notwithstanding his attempt at divisiveness, and he even
refers to the selection of Goodes as ‘divisive’ on what should be a harmonious
day, three of the five Indigenous notables he names as examples in the next
paragraph have already won Australian of the Year.
Is Adam Goodes the youngest recipient of the award, Mr Ellis
asks? Nope, swimmer Shane Gould got the gong at 16 years of age, less than half
the age Adam Goodes is now. Among sportspeople who won the award, of whom there
are 14 awardees, Goodes is older than the average age of 31-and-a-bit-years-old.
Mr Henderson (for a mister he is!), meanwhile, was not as
attentive towards Australia Day. His only concern was “The Lair of Liverpool”
(Mark Latham) and an op-ed Latham apparently wrote for the Australian Financial Review titled “Why I back losers”. Mr
Henderson (for a mister he is!) took this (I think) to be a subtle dig at what
Mark Textor recently called “a
fine publication”. Mr Henderson’s bon
mot of choice was a sarcastic, “brilliant”.
The
canning of SPC Ardmona was an issue (sorry, “problem” as the esteemed Dr
Castillo, formerly of RMIT, would want me to say) that grabbed the attention of both subjects of
this blog. Mr Henderson (for a mister he is!) highlighted its importance in
relation to a critique of a critique by Erik Jensen, editor of the nascent Saturday Paper. Mr Henderson (for a
mister he is!), as expert as he is on the antagonistic Democratic Labor Party
of Bob Santamaria’s era, believed Jensen had made a mistake of how the DLP
would have responded to the whole iss… sorry, problem. Wrote Mr Henderson:
Erik Jensen, following David Marr, uses the term “DLP”
as a soft way of alleging improper and irrational Catholic influence and
reminding an audience of Tony Abbott’s social conservatism which apparently so
upsets him.
The whole Henderson-Marr argument is as messy as the
canned produce that SPC will produce for not that much longer, but suffice to
say Mr Henderson knows more about Catholic influence in Australian politics
than anyone else will care to admit, or to admit caring about.
Mr Ellis devoted significantly more copy to the SPC
problem. Using the same analogy he did when the vexed Holden affair came up
late last year, Ellis suggested that for the price of a drink that Helen Razer
believes is no longer an indicator of the middle class anyway (i.e. the latte,
or the cappuccino, according to Mr Ellis), taxpayers could prevent both
Shepparton from ‘going to the wall’ and Victorian Premier Denis Napthine losing
power in November. The inability to take action and instead stick to ‘fundamentalist
lunacy’ by ‘purblind fanatics’ is termed the ‘Abbott-Friedman-Hayek’
doctrine by Mr Ellis.
Mr Ellis proposes, then, that a ‘government of all the
talents’–a reference either to William Grenville or Gordon Brown–be formed by
Bill Shorten, Bob Katter, Ian Macfarlane,
Malcolm Turnbull and Adam Bandt “and test its numbers on the floor of the
House”. Given that the acronym for Mr Ellis’ formulation is GOAT, Internet
slang for “greatest of all time”, then surely those names provide a clue to Mr
Ellis’ faves in the House.
Asylum seekers were also at the forefront, or the coalface,
or something, of the minds of both Mr Ellis and Mr Henderson (for a mister he
is!). The scuttlebutt
that Navy officers maltreated asylum seekers moved Mr Ellis to call last
week the
worst in Tony Abbott’s prime ministership. Abbott has a long way to go yet,
indeed. Mr Ellis goes on to lambast the Foreign Minister and call the
Immigration Minister’s intelligence and/or sanity into question. This leads
into a discussion (a separate article, would you believe) of how Minister
Morrison is a “Christian terrorist”, even though, by Mr Ellis’ own admission,
the word “terrorist” has no meaning. In an Orwellian masterstroke, he then
calls for ‘terrorist’ to be ‘expunged from the language’.
Mr Ellis’ inspiration for this think piece was, by the way,
the films ‘Olympus Has Fallen’ and ‘White House Down’. Discuss.
Mr Ellis thought to come up with a neologism, ‘scottmobbledigook’,
which came to his mind after listening to Tony Eastley interview Morrison
(which Mr Ellis helpfully
transcribes) on AM. Evidently ‘stonewalling’
is not sufficiently a new enough term to denote exactly what Morrison can
apparently do pretty well: give as little specific information as possible so
that none apart from the Government is kept in the loop.
Mr Henderson (for a mister he is!) was more, ah, direct with
his take on the affair. Responding to Jenna Price in The Canberra Times, who threatened to send tampons to Scott
Morrison, he asked whether she had sent tampons to the Rudd/Gillard/Rudd
governments. Public disclosure, you know.
Most memorably, Mr Ellis launches on what is, apparently, his
79th iteration of a defence of Craig Thomson. Even though
Thomson and his legal team might have responded with “Thanks, but no thanks”,
Mr Ellis gives us an informative insight into the record-keeping methods of
brothels–following which is a non
sequitur directed at Christopher Pyne.
“It isn’t Dreyfus”, Mr Ellis admits, but it sure beats ‘Leave
Britney alone’. Either way, Craig Thomson will continue to provide plenty of
copy, and not just for Mr Ellis.
And so it goes. Keep morale high, comrades.
No comments:
Post a Comment