Elites, the ABC, and hyena vomit
It was with some disbelief that I watched ABC TV coverage of One Nation leader Pauline Hanson’s quick trip to the Great Barrier Reef last week.
Accompanied by that renowned and reasoning mind, Malcolm Roberts, Hanson’s trip was designed to prove that claims of coral bleaching are highly exaggerated, stupid. Look: it’s perfectly fine.
The two senators’ (yes, they are senators in our government and we laugh at the US for Trump) claims are based on Hanson ripping out a few stems of healthy coral and waving them triumphantly at the slavering cameras. That she was diving some thousand kilometres north of where the most serious bleaching occurs hardly seemed to matter.
However, the point of this post is not to argue against gross stupidity, always a thankless task. Gross stupidity should be ignored, in my opinion, as it will not respond to anything that does not wholly support its position. You cannot change grossly stupid people. You may well interpret this as an elitist comment, and I don’t effing care. By my definition intelligence requires a capacity to listen, weigh evidence, and if necessary be capable of change. It is enabled and enhanced by education, but has nothing at all to do with higher degrees. One of the most grossly stupid people I’ve ever met sailed through university at the age of sixteen.
In our current zeitgeist anyone possessed of a modicum of smarts is verbally abused, even by our millionaire Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull (see, money doesn’t make you elite either, apparently) as being elite. Unless of course you’re a sportsperson, when being elite is a good thing. For the rest of us, the PM, following Donald Trump, has redefined the meaning of elite to describe anyone who doesn’t agree with him.
Be that as it may, what I want to know is, what were the ABC’s motives in giving this pathetic piece of theatrical trash a whole swag of time on the 7.30 Report? Reason tells me the show is watched largely by elites who will become enraged and complain, turn off the telly, bang their heads on the coffee table in frustrated despair before turning off the telly, or, if they have a gun, shoot out their screens which would have been my preferred method of dealing with yet another inundation of grossly stupid, unchallenged, bereft of facts and reason hyena vomit. Except I don’t have a gun.
I think I have a partial answer to my own question. The master plan is to make the ABC intolerable for anyone who does not agree with the government and other lunatics. Then it will be entirely co-opted as an arm of government propaganda, which it very nearly is. I am convinced of this after the recent removal of absolutely ace broadcaster Jonathan Green from Sunday mornings, along with the most original voice in media, First Dog on the Moon. To be replaced by the utterly colourless, utterly boring, utterly talentless but CONSERVATIVE, Tom Switzer.
How is it that conservatives, neo liberals and fascists are so astoundingly humourless and bereft of creativity? Rhetorical question.
Obviously, what is required here is a moneyed elite or elites who are prepared to fund alternative media that will contest the mind destroying drivel now served up nightly by the ABC. A home for the talent the LNP government is, like all good fascists, doing its best to silence. I do not believe in gods, but I am praying for this outcome.
In the meantime, we should all unceasingly point out to whoever will listen that fact-less hyena vomit is not balance, or anything like balance. It is fact-less hyena vomit. It is making this country exceedingly dumb. And there is nothing fascists like more than a dumbed down population over whom they have absolute control.
By the way, here’s the latest on the coral bleaching. Not from hyenas.
This article was originally published on No Place For Sheep.
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Return to home pageYes Jennifer, what a joke, Mal complaining about ‘elites’ , and how sad it is to lose Jonathan Green, and to ‘gain’ Tom Switzer.
( I first wrote Tim Wilson, no wonder, they all look alike and sound the same.)
Not North but South. To the North her wish is being realised. No ‘colours’ no brown, black or yellow. Only ‘white’. This global warming nonsense has a real upside.
Is it not possible that the exercise had the climate change as a sideline?
Perhaps hanson et al were induced to visit Great Keppel to tell the world the resort was open and their reef was free from bleach?
As for the ABC not very many would miss it because they don’t watch the shows till they get to the commercial second stream channels.
Great article and spot on Jennifer, and yes the dumbing down is THE objective .. observing amerika over the last few decades has shown me how well it works, as a means of public control .. maybe it wouldn’t be so bad if the ‘elite’ had any good ideas, but unfortunately as you so aptly pointed out, that is not the case ..
Wanted; A Saviour ! An articulate, non-religious person of humanitarian nature .. please send CV in the form of a descriptive outlook to world issues and their solutions to AIM for all to see ..
wam, I don’t watch commercial channels, and as I’m weaning myself from their ABC, I got stuck on SBS as I always watch their evening news, so it was finding out about David Wenham’s background, and going to our Deep Dark North with Ray Martin and some celebrities…
David Oldfield seems pretty staid in his One Nation views….very, black and white… 🙂
I’m not really a moneyed elite, but I would be more than happy to contribute to a crowd funding exercise that would develop a channel that would deliver honest news free from bias and government propaganda.
PAULINE HANSON: Let me say the major political parties have been dominated and controlled by the Greens for too many, many years.
PAULINE HANSON: We are being controlled by the UN and these agreements that have been done for people’s… Um, self-interest and where they are driving our nation, as a sovereignty, and the economics of the whole lot.
Wish she would make her mind up.
Jennifer
‘small point , the section of reef she visited was off the coast of Rockhampton in central Queensland, about 1,000 kilometres south from where a serious bleaching event occurred near Lizard Island.
On the ABC: I have written to the ABC asking them to take care that they are not comforting an IPA conspiracy against them.This small extreme right wing group are popping up on both ABC television and radio in increasing numbers.
I reminded the ABC that the IPA include in their manifesto “Break up the ABC and put out to tender each individual function”.
I have also suggested that the ABC could do us all a favour if they did a Four Corners expose of the IPA : who are they, where do they get their funding, is it healthy for our democracy for the IPA to be targeting political seats with their foot soldiers like James Paterson and Tim Wilson.
Take care
Elite, not too many of us on $200,000 p.a. for the next 6 years, she is the elitist and she obviously still has a chip on her shoulder concerning the time her (boyfriend, husband?) left her with her children. She worked bloody hard to escape poverty and good on her for that, but she doesn’t need to take that attitude out on helpless Aussie workers, she should take it out on the bloke who deserted her.
Come to think of it if he were me, I’d desert her too, I’m buggered if I could live with such a demanding person.
Hyena vomit: Jacquie Lambie on the environment and carbon pricing:
“What we will not abide by is a toxic economic dictatorship led by a minority.” July 20, 2013 criticising environmentalists who were opposing a proposed Tasmanian mine.
“We have had enough of people like you trying to shut down our livelihoods and drive our children out of Tasmania.” Letter in the Burnie advocate criticising a Tarkine forest campaigner.
“Who decided that animal rights had become more important than human rights?”
“I support tearing up the carbon tax to a certain degree but some of that carbon tax is quite good. So, you know what, tearing something up and restarting again takes longer. We probably need to start that carbon tax at maybe three or four per cent.” – 7:30 report, September 2013 (NFI pops to mind)
“Oh yeah, no, the carbon tax needs to go. It’s been an absolute mess since that was introduced. It is absolutely killing the nation.” – ABC July 2014
“Whether it’s a carbon tax that is a fixed charge on energy – or an ETS that is a floating price on energy use … I don’t believe that just making Australian pensioners, businesses and families pay more for their energy … will stop world Climate change.” Senator Jacqui Lambie. Current website
Dear Jacquie,
The price of electricity is 51% due to network charges. Despite the clear reality of falling demand, the network companies insisted that demand was rising, and they carried on investing billions of dollars into the grid. Every dollar of that investment is now being recovered from consumers, via our power bills. Every dollar, plus 10 per cent: a guaranteed return granted to them by the Australian Energy Regulator. Not a bad return.
The CPI went up about 0.7% due to the carbon tax. By contrast, the introduction of the GST resulted in a 2.5% rise in the CPI in 2000 and the sky didn’t fall in.
If you want to reduce electricity prices, make them GST free as an essential item. Businesses can already claim it back.
When Mr Bandt asked Mr Frydenberg about the government’s plan to transition away from coal, the minister mockingly apologised to the Greens deputy leader for having accused him of sipping lattes while putting his sandals up on a table in Brunswick.
“I take this opportunity to apologise to the member for Melbourne,” he said.
“Because I found out he’s not a latte man, he’s a mocha man.”
Cringes all round, but not that Mr Frydenberg noticed as he continued his personal attack.
“And they weren’t sandals, they were thinking man’s sandals – you put your Birkenstocks up on the table,” he said in reference to the popular footwear.
Mr Bandt subsequently said Mr Frydenberg had no plan and no answer so was happy to “go the questioner”.
“For this government, ‘plan’ is just another four-letter word,” he said.
http://thenewdaily.com.au/news/national/2016/11/29/malcolm-turnbull-barnaby-joyce-parliament-pressure/?utm_source=Responsys&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=20161130_TND
I have been weaning myself from the ABC, my preferred news channel for several decades, since its news and public affairs began to be populated by IPA tools dispensing IPA propaganda.
I go to youtube for world news, and have been wondering why we in Australia don’t have broadcasters like The Young Turks and Democracy Now (USA).
Do our broadcasting laws (laugh, laugh) prevent the establishment of an independent broadcaster? Or is Murdoch it?
I would happily subscribe to an independent channel using real journalists, as opposed to Michelle Guthrie’s handpicked liars, or disinformation from the likes of Leigh Sales (LNP apologist).
The claim by Guthrie that the ABC needs to be more entertaining and more relevant to a larger audience seems to be coming to fruition.
The entertainment is provided by trying to pick the truth from the lies broadcast by the ABC, and ‘verified’ by ‘experts’ such as Chris Ulhman on the South Australian energy outage during the storm.
Im sure the ABC audience grew by 74, for a half an hour, when those people who voted for Malcolm Roberts, all switched to the ABC to watch him and the other numb nut Hanson disprove the death of the Great Barrier Reef, just before they switched back to watch the mind numbing reality TV crap on the other stations.
You must not damage, collect or otherwise take coral, including dead coral, and protected shell species (that is giant triton shell, helmet shell, giant clam) in the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park unless you have a Marine Parks permit.
Did whatshername have a permit to damage and remove the coral she held up as a trophy?
I’d love an Aussie TYT. We need one. I read the comments on Roberts FB page. It was a mistake.
The IPA and Murdoch “personalities” regularly get a gig on ABCTV even though both loath the ABC. The ABC has just had a new CEO installed that had worked for News (very) Ltd. The extreme Right will only be satisfied when there is no alternative to their view. In truth, for most of the population there already is no alternative as the viewing/listening figures show the ABC has minor scores. STILL the Right is incensed at there being a POTENTIAL alternative. The Labor party will let them do it without a peep. There is more comment in a one week’s commentary in AIMN than a year of Labor talk. The ABC will (has?) become irrelevant. Some of its staff will have been complicit in this. Murdoch and Macquarie have backed the conservatives and have received handsome support in return. The Murdoch press has gone on about elites on both sides of the Pacific for ever. They’re talking about people like me who are dealing with REALITY, not the alternative that George Bush and Rupert Murdoch invented some time ago, as explained by Don of the “known unknowns”. Most will continue in that realm, and powerless PMs like Mal will continue moving his mouth emitting Tony’s words about elites, almost convincing himself that he’s Malcolm, except for that arm going up the back of his coat…
What Ms Guthrie intends is that anyone wishing to maintain a position at the ABC must ensure that it is a supine one. The lurch-to-the-right, soft-interview, populist pap subject matter have become the default positions for managers, programmers, presenters all scared shitless that their turn to be turfed is just around the corner. We’re pretty much rooted, folks.
Good observations on the ABC, Hanson, the IPA and their lack of serious engagement with environmental, economic, and social issues. I anticipate my depression in 10/20 years when the reef has gone.
Not accidental but the manifestation of a sick controlling pathology. You can starve people of life through denial of food or symbollcally through denial of information required by people to plan their lives…disempowering them.
Here is another example of the mentality involved. See how reactive it is:
http://www.smh.com.au/business/workplace-relations/baird-government-replaces-local-employees-with-457-visa-workers-20161130-gt0p95.html
Wonderful realistic thread folks. Almost NO pollyanna attitudes, everybody expecting the worst of our government and opposition, the media and other societal institutions so that we won’t be disappointed, our expectations merely routinely confirmed. Perhaps we should try to maintain a sense of humour in the midst of depression induced by a correctly ascertained situational analysis, because that’s the only realistic way of keeping detached while still observing. No dashed hopes but remaining aware of others’ thoughts as they head in similar directions. Remain cynical until wonderfully surprised. However, this won’t happen much because of society’s basic motivations and reward systems will bring about a form of homeostasis, never straying far from what we do. For most this feels safer. Conservative homeostasis. Those in charge know what they’re doing. Read your Daily Murdoch. Pop a Xanax….
Deadly stuff, Alan Baird.
Sorry Alan your assessment may have flaws???
When writing about this government, it is usual to ignore the negatives and only describe their better points. Consequently it could be argued that we are all pollyanna’s.
For example, apart from you, there is no reference to the rabbott and only one bush.
What a massive positive serve, informing us that the diludbransims have eliminated the front line women and their lattes by switching coffee allegiance. Although you wouldn’t expect frydface to understand brandt is probably a double decafe latte with mocha sprinkles.