Imperial Fruit: Bananas, Costs and Climate Change

The curved course of the ubiquitous banana has often been the peel…

The problems with a principled stand

In the past couple of weeks, the conservative parties have retained government…

Government approves Santos Barossa pipeline and sea dumping

The Australia Institute Media Release Environment Minister Tanya Plibersek’s Department has approved a…

If The Jackboots Actually Fit …

By Jane Salmon If The Jackboots Actually Fit … Why Does Labor Keep…

Distinctions Without Difference: The Security Council on Gaza…

The UN Security Council presents one of the great contradictions of power…

How the supermarkets lost their way in Oz

By Callen Sorensen Karklis Many Australians are heard saying that they’re feeling the…

Purgatorial Torments: Assange and the UK High Court

What is it about British justice that has a certain rankness to…

Why A Punch In The Face May Be…

Now I'm not one who believes in violence as a solution to…

«
»
Facebook

Tag Archives: Tim Mathieson

Am I not pretty enough?

When I recently saw a photograph of Julie Bishop’s boyfriend David Panton sitting next to her in the official delegates section on the floor of the United Nations General Assembly, I wondered what the reaction would have been if that was Tim Mathieson sitting next to Julia Gillard. Imagine the outrage, the questions, the accusations.

For some reason, Julie Bishop has been treated entirely differently to Julia Gillard in so many ways.

When Ms Gillard did a photo shoot for an article in the Weekend Australian, Julie Bishop accused her of behaving like a “fashion model or TV star” rather than a politician, adding that posing for magazine covers was “not my style”.

who weeklyIn the last two years, Bishop has appeared in Who Weekly, The Australian Women’s Weekly, Harper’s Bazaar and Marie Claire talking about her portfolio as well as fashion and fitness.

Unlike Gillard she has not been criticised for her magazine profile or her cultivation of social media and the blogosphere.

When Scott Morrison talks about childcare funding there is no Sophie Mirabella screeching from the other side to the childless Bishop “You won’t need his taxpayer-funded nanny, will you?”

There is no Bill Heffernan suggesting she is unfit to lead Australia because she is “deliberately barren” or George Brandis labelling her as “one-dimensional” because of her decision not to have children.

Bishop has largely avoided scrutiny of her time as a lawyer and her treatment of dying litigants as well as her very brief tenure as shadow treasurer.

She has never been grilled by radio shock jocks on the private lives and business dealings of her various partners.

Rather than having Germaine Greer telling her she has a fat ass and Anita Quigley telling her to “get a stylist her own age”, Bishop is always described as “stylish”.

Julie-Bishop-5

 

When, as deputy, Julie Bishop stabbed a first-term sitting Prime Minister in the back she was just doing her duty. Perhaps it was acceptable because she didn’t have the temerity to think she could be leader. Why would she when she is “living the dream” as Foreign Minister.

 

Did Julia Gillard cop the abuse because she was the first female PM? Was it because of the nastiness of the Abbott era unleashing the hounds? Was it due to the vitriolic campaign by conservative commentators and the Murdoch press?

Or was she just not pretty enough?

julia

Someone has well and truly lost the plot

That fine custodian of moral virtue, Piers Ackerman, is mostly known for his frothing-at-the-mouth appearances on ABC Insiders most Sunday mornings and as a journalist for The Australian and a couple of other magnificent Murdoch journals. The Australian, we are reminded, is the masthead of Murdoch’s media empire in our country. It espouses to be the pinnacle of decency in the Australian media landscape. I found this summary of its wonderfulness:

The Australian is this country’s leading news brand. The editorial values focus on leading and shaping public opinion on the issues that affect Australia, its residents and the Australian business environment. Led by a team of highly credible and experienced journalists, editorial themes cover economic, political and social issues.

Unparalleled national and international news and business sections are supplemented by indepth business to business sections such as; Australian IT (the largest newspaper IT section in the world), Higher Education, Media, Aviation, Thoroughbreds. As well, lifestyle, arts and sports sections balance the read for our independent thinking and influential readership.

The Australian brand is globally recognised as a leader in media innovation. The brand has evolved into a multi-platform offering for both its consumers and its advertisers by taking full advantage of the many techonologies available in the marketplace. From a refreshed, smart broadsheet layout to full gloss executive lifestyle magazines. From an up-to-date by the minute guide to news around the world via The Australian website to the fully interactive iPad application, online and iPad editions are refreshed throughout the day.

The Australian newspaper is published Monday to Friday.

A word from our Editor-in-Chief

The Australian was born in July 1964 as a bold venture in national journalism, vowing to provide “the impartial information and the independent thinking that are essential to the further advance of our country”.

Today, it retains that sense of adventure, covering the affairs of an island continent, with reporters across the country and foreign bureaus throughout the region and around the world. It is read by Australians from Broome to Burnie to Cooktown, and is published at six print sites around the country.

As the national broadsheet, our core areas are federal politics, international affairs, business, sport, the arts, technology and education. To do our job, we must stand above other sources of news and information.

We strive to be first with the big national stories. We aim for factual reporting and penetrating analysis. We seek to take our readers beyond the “spin” of the political, business and sport press release machinery.

Chris Mitchell

Keep this piece of propaganda in the back of your mind: to provide “the impartial information and the independent thinking that are essential to the further advance of our country”.

Two newspapers in The Australian’s stable are The Daily Telegraph and Sunday Telegraph, where Piers Ackerman is given the freedom to provide “the impartial information and the independent thinking that are essential to the further advance of our country”. They promote Piers as being:

… one of The Daily Telegraph and Sunday Telegraph’s best-read columnists since 1993. One of the nation’s most respected journalists he has worked in New York, London, Washington and Los Angeles.

Well someone has well and truly lost the plot.

Here is Ackerman’s latest piece from The Australian, “Piers Akerman hits back at his critics following the ABC Insiders program”. I have highlighted those sections that do not to provide “the impartial information and the independent thinking that are essential to the further advance of our country”.

The chattering classes whipped themselves into a lather Sunday afternoon claiming that I raised questions about First Bloke Tim Mathieson’s sexuality on the ABC Insiders program that morning.

Rubbish. The ABC’s producers had conservative Perth shock jock Howard Sattler’s repugnant interview with Prime Minister Julia Gillard listed as an item for Insider host Barrie Cassidy’s discussion to open up the question of whether she had been exposed to sexism during her career.

Do the sneering Left and the Twitterati really believe that it is possible to discuss the Sattler interview without touching on its subject matter?

What seems to have enraged the Left-wing blogosphere is that I said the Parliamentary press gallery had been asking the same sort of questions when Gillard and Mathieson’s relationship first came to light as Sattler had raised last week.

That seems to have infuriated my fellow panellists, former Fairfax journalist Lenore Taylor, now writing for some Leftwing online site and my News Limited colleague Malcolm Farr, who with Cassidy denied ever hearing such a thing.

I have never made any suggestions Mathieson’s sexuality. I don’t deal in tawdry topics.

Mathieson is in fact a very good friend with one of my long-standing mates and over the past several years we have been scheduled to meet for a weekend lunch, with or without his Significant Other, but diary conflicts have prevented such a felicitous engagement.

Yet there is no greater rumour mill in the nation than the federal press gallery – which in recent weeks has been relentlessly asking (I shan’t say what because I don’t engage in rumour mongering).

As I said the Sattler interview was unacceptable, that should have signalled my view clearly.

Quite frankly, I can’t understand why the Left gets itself so wound up about sexuality and gender issues when it publicly preaches these matters are irrelevant.

That’s my position and always has been. What people do in private is up to them.

What angers me more than the phony outrage of the aged feminists and class-and-gender war warriors is that the Sattler interview was deemed worthy of comment when there are so many more pressing national issues.

Not least the fact that the Australian navy and customs ships are too busy ferrying illegal people smuggler boats to Christmas Island to pick up the drowned bodies of those who were unsuccessful in making Labor’s lethal voyage.

Or the fact that the Prince-in-waiting Kevin Rudd is equally to blame for Labor’s blow-out Budgets, waste and failed policies as Gillard, the woman most ALP MPs hope he rolls.

Outrage from the Left – don’t make me laugh. Campbell Newman and his immediate family were subjected to a barrage of falsehoods concocted by Labor during the recent election and some of those who endorsed the rubbish have now found refuge in the Prime Minister’s office, just as the phony race riot of Australia Day 2012 was concocted there.

As I said at the end of the show, addressing Gillard (who wasn’t watching), I intended no offense.

I meant it. Just as I now say I will never be intimidated by the baying of Labor’s politically correct lickspittles who were ever so silent when this government was trying to muzzle the news media during its current term.

I repeat, I don’t draw up Insiders’ agenda, the ABC did because a conservative shock jock had made a fool of himself and been sacked.

They ignored the offensive nature of the charge in their attempt to further gore their quarry.

Many of you will find nothing wrong with that. He is simply sharing his opinions, even though they don’t provide “the impartial information and the independent thinking that are essential to the further advance of our country”. I think, more than anything, he’s letting us know that he doesn’t like the Left or any class or group likely to fall into the Left category.

But he doesn’t leave it alone. His article was reproduced on The Telegraph under ‘Sexuality rubbish a tawdry affair’ where readers were offered the opportunity to debate the article with Piers himself. There one can see first hand that Ackerman has no intention of providing “the impartial information and the independent thinking that are essential to the further advance of our country”. I produce some examples below:

In response to:

Piers,
I believe your wife is a female…correct? Well, does that make her a lesbian? THINK !!….that’s if your narrow-minded, blinkered, one-eyed, right-wing extremist attitudes allow you to.

Ackerman wrote:

THIS must be the stupidest comment ever submitted, Chris. This is the sort of logic that brought the destruction of border protection, the installation of pink batts, the Budget surplus we never had and Gonski, you must be channeling the brains trust of the ALP.

I agree with Ackerman that it was a stupid comment, but don’t you just love how he turns it into some Labor bashing?

Someone wrote:

Did you ask Tony why his sister is gay? Did you ask Alan Jones whether he is gay? Are you gay? Never seen you with a woman and has never been discussed. Don’t care what you do or Alan Jones and rest of you so called commentators. When did journalists become commentators? Your a journalist. Come out to the country sometime and look at real people with real issues. and yes there are gays in the country maybe you will fit in. Wasn’t that personal maybe that’s what the PM thought?

Ackerman, quick to blame the Lefties responded with:

Being a homosexual or a heterosexual has never been a big deal with me, Bathurst, but it seems to excite the Lefties no end. I have always been interested in the issues the ABC would prefer not to deal with – such as Labor’s failure.

Ackerman, so far, hasn’t answered many comments but when he does the majority of them are used as a vehicle to provide “the impartial information and the independent thinking that are essential to the further advance of our country”, which in his opinion is to demean anyone on the Left that breathes. Here are more of his rants:

And as for your pathetic smear, go and get your shilling from the ALP, they run the only smear operation I am aware of.

Interesting, Andrea. The first woman in parliament was elected by conservatives. The first female office bearer was conservative. Elected and appointed on merit. People aren’t afraid of women. They don’t like Quota Queens though and they distrust Labor losers like Gillard, Kirner, Bligh and Lawrence. With good cause.

Carol – if Anne Summers is not an aged feminist, I am a carrot. I would have thought that applying age as a descriptor might have excused her peculiarly bilious form of feminism. If you suggest not, I guess mit is just pure nastiness on her part.

Mark, why wouldn’t everyone feel entitled to feel superior to those on the Left when the evidence of the Left’s disastrous policies and philosophies is abundantly evident.

So The Australian vows to provide “the impartial information and the independent thinking that are essential to the further advance of our country”. Yet they put Piers Ackerman to work on the farm. Goodness me, someone has well and truly lost the plot then.

Like what we do at The AIMN?

You’ll like it even more knowing that your donation will help us to keep up the good fight.

Chuck in a few bucks and see just how far it goes!

Your contribution to help with the running costs of this site will be gratefully accepted.

You can donate through PayPal or credit card via the button below, or donate via bank transfer: BSB: 062500; A/c no: 10495969

Donate Button

Andrew Bolt: more than just the village idiot

I’ve never seen Andrew Bolt as anything but a village idiot. The label, first applied by Mike Carlton a couple of years ago has stuck with me. It fits Bolt, just nicely.

I wonder at times if Bolt really takes himself seriously. If he does, then what parallel universe does he dwell in?

I’m yet to meet a person who likes him, let alone harbour an ounce of respect. Indeed, he has a history of inciting hate, much of which comes back at him. But as his employer keeps reminding us, Bolt is one of the country’s most influential media identities. It bothers me though, that they keep this idiot on the loose.

The man is also a hypocrite, engaging in the same behaviors he condemns others for. His idiocy must prevent him from recognising his own hypocrisy, and unfortunately in remains unchecked. Both his idiocy and hypocrisy have reached ‘red alert’.

Yesterday Andrew wrote a few nice words about Denise Allen. From what I know of Denise she’s a likeable person who plays with a straight bat, and for once found myself nodding in agreement with Andrew’s poison pen. However, the niceties were dispensed with and his usual bile took over and it became evident that he was actually hanging Denise out to dry. This is from his article:

Here are some recent thoughts of Nice Denise, the social justice campaigner.

On Margie Abbott, wife of the Opposition Leader:

Your husband, along with his bunch of feral shadow ministers and many on his backbench, have turned the political discourse in this country into the obnoxious, wretched, ugliness it is today.

Are you proud of him? I’m sure you are. You must be, because you have now come out and said what a wonderful, loving, decent man he is! To say that — you must agree with everything he says and does! Otherwise you would have the courage to say there are some things you don’t agree with him on….

Quite frankly, it disgusts me..

He may love you and the girls and his mother – and Peta Credlin – but that’s where his affinity with women ends.

So get over yourself, Margie Abbott.

Your husband is one of the most vicious Opposition leaders in this country’s history — and as he would say: “It’s just politics!”

It’s about time the decent women and men of this nation fought back against your husband’s ugly persona.

So … if you can’t take the heat, get out of the kitchen!

If your husband will let you, that is.

On Peta Credlin, Abbott’s chief of staff:

But when you roll out such personal information – information usually kept private between a woman and her partner, and perhaps few sympathetic confidantes – you, Ms Credlin, should be rightly condemned for using your IVF procedures as a blatant political tool. For using this emotive issue to sway the public into sympathetically thinking your boss doesn’t “have a problem with women”…

Which makes you a pretty unpleasant person in yourself. You will go to any length and stoop down into the lowest gutter to get your rotten boss over the line at the next election….

Even using your own personal tragedy as a lever for sympathy. What a disgraceful woman you are.

On political journalists:

Like jackals baying for blood, these neo-hacks ram their personal opinions down the throats of either the unsuspecting (often so aghast they are shell-shocked), or of the insatiable – the scandal hungry – devouring biased information as if it was their last meal…

I cannot remember a time when the mainstream media have been more in the gutter and more hateful than it is now — and they have the hide to disparage politicians for not being ‘honourable”.

Once I thought someone spiteful, personally abusive and shrill had no future in politics. But today I suspect Nice Denise will fit right in with Gillard Labor.

Oh, and if you are surprised a professional conscience could be so nasty, I must remind you again of the words of Bertrand Russell:

Much that passes as idealism is disguised hatred or disguised love of power.

Not a warranted attack on Denise, one could argue, given that it comes from the self elected champion of free speech. That was an epic hypocrisy moment: inviting condemnation of Denise for exercising her right to free speech. Obviously Bolt doesn’t encourage it for those who dwell beyond the political divide.

Hypocrisy moment number two is monumental. Denise was attacked for speaking her mind, yet the comments he passed for publication are freely allowed to be savage against Denise. Here are some examples:

What a nasty piece of work Denise Allen is. Labor Party dopes like her are full of rage because nobody listens to them any more. It never crosses their tiny minds that they are simply hopeless and are seen as such.

amf
Tue 26 Feb 13 (02:26pm)

Another unemployable desperate to get her snout back in the public trough.

Sirocco of Canberra
Tue 26 Feb 13 (02:30pm)

Thank you Andrew, for the warning. Nice Denise appears to be just another Chronic Malcontent, for which the Left is justly infamous.

Sunray of nswcentral coast
Tue 26 Feb 13 (02:30pm)

Unhinged…

Kick (Reply)
Tue 26 Feb 13 (02:31pm)

What a nasty, vicious ill informed low life she sounds like. Head up her derriere when not looking in the mirror praising herself for own self importance. Future labor PM in the making??

Bazza of Berwick
Tue 26 Feb 13 (02:34pm)

Typical leftist – a seething cauldron of lava like vomit full of hate and envy and loathing; full of self assuredness that their feelings are completely justified – if only they could work out why they feel that way. How horrible it must be to be born with a lifelong supply of crazy pills!

Baron of Brunswick
Tue 26 Feb 13 (02:35pm)

What a wonderful lady she isn’t. I can’t wait for a change in government and with that hopefully a broom is swept through many of the Left’s thinktanks (ie all funding cut) so that her and her ilk can go crawl back down the sh..holes from where they came

Sammy of Adelaide
Tue 26 Feb 13 (02:40pm)

The lady seems very disturbed and is showing the true nature or her bilious personality. It is very unappealing and should cause her shame.

KenL
Tue 26 Feb 13 (02:42pm)

What a nasty piece of work is MS. Allen,I don’t know this female but after reading her BS I feel I could slap her across the chops.

Lyn the Lib of Gold Coast
Tue 26 Feb 13 (02:46pm)

I can’t see the problem. Labor has always attracted the mentally unstable.Thanks to the computor age this is now being exposed.Poor darlings are so mentally unstable they actually thought that the social media would work to their benefit, instead it is exposing them for what they really are. A bunch of sociopatic misfits all out to destroy what they consider the enemy.

holty of sth pacific
Tue 26 Feb 13 (02:51pm)

Just another one wanting to suckle at the public teat. How can the papers allow such vitriol without being challenged

mark of melb
Tue 26 Feb 13 (02:51pm)

What a potty mouthed individual. She will fit in well in “New Labor”. Disgusting language such as I have just read from this woman (certainly not a LADY) makes it clear what she thinks of the world and its inhabitants.

David S of Up-North
Tue 26 Feb 13 (02:57pm)

I hope she reads this and sees herself as we see her.

I feel sorry for her children, that this is the legacy she will leave her descendants when they discover her on WHO DO YOU THINK YOU ARE.

If you are what you eat, then I’d very much suggest you swap diets.

pennyoz
Tue 26 Feb 13 (03:03pm)

What a vile excuse for a human being. She is obviously a prime Labor candidate. Anyone with such hatred of men; such hatred of families and such hatred of all things non-Labor will no doubt aspire to be the next (far distant) female Labor leader.

She will no doubt be welcomed with open arms by all her Labor peers.

Dee
Tue 26 Feb 13 (03:03pm)

Wow! What a piece of work…..
Beggars belief that this person thinks she has anything at all to contribute to the debate. She is overflowing with bile and resentment, and in typical labor fashion can only retaliate with attack and misinformation.

Grounded in Reality of Qld
Tue 26 Feb 13 (03:07pm)

Does anybody else see the hypocrisy there?

Among other things, Bolt was smarting that Denise had dared to ridicule Margie Abbott, wife of the Canberra clown who masquerades as Leader of the Opposition. This leads us to hypocrisy moment number three: Bolt’s own attacks on Julia Gillard’s partner, Tim Mathieson, to which Denise’s ridicule of Madam Abbott pale limply in comparison. Denise wrote one article on Margie Abbott. Bolt, on the other hand, has been prolific in his ridicule and condemnation of Mr Mathieson. Here are the links to some of his articles:

If Margie Abbott were as idle as Tim Mathieson, how the Left would jeer

First bloke’s work dilemma

Column – Tim trapped on the sofa by sexism at the Lodge

Mathieson must pay for Gillard’s extremism

Meet the First Bloke

If I were to include in this post every denigrating comment that Bolt has made about Mr Mathieson (in the above articles) I’d be guilty of keeping you up all night, either from reading too much or suffering horrific night-terrors. Visit the links to his vile pages if you wish and see for yourself this consummate hypocrite at work. See too, how his denigration inspires his fan base of Neanderthals to feed on the carcass of his unfortunate victim.

Hypocrisy moment number four. This one too is monumental. Show me a site where Bolt has attacked anybody who has written anything the least bit abusive against a left-wing politician or their partner. Has he jumped heroically to slap down his constipated colleague and viral Gillard basher, Piers Ackerman, or that toxic bubble-headed buffoon Alan Jones, for example? Of course he hasn’t. He’s too much of a hypocrite. And too much of an idiot to see it anyway.

If he’s prepared to publicly humiliate Denise Allen over her writings – on her own blog to her own readers – what must he think about these disgusting tirades that have gained national prominence:

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=hsaVpepMyA8]

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=ap0aPcstix0]

Andrew Bolt – village idiot, village hypocrite – would make a perfect case study for anybody wanting to examine the reasoning behind the pathetic levels the mainstream media has slumped to in this country.

The man is pathetic. Sadly, he gets away with it.

Like what we do at The AIMN?

You’ll like it even more knowing that your donation will help us to keep up the good fight.

Chuck in a few bucks and see just how far it goes!

Your contribution to help with the running costs of this site will be gratefully accepted.

You can donate through PayPal or credit card via the button below, or donate via bank transfer: BSB: 062500; A/c no: 10495969

Donate Button