Media Archive
We don’t need right-wing comedy
Be clear: comedy can be about politics, but the moment it is for politics rather than for humour, the comedy dies.
4/5/2018
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ABC Hysterics Miss The Organisational Point
The Commonwealth needs to sh*t or get off the pot. Either do something that will make a difference to the ABC's perpetual propaganda, or spend your time somewhere else. Pretending to act may be this government's core competency everywhere except within 100km of Christmas Island, but all it does is piss away political capital for no benefit.
13/7/2014
1
Quadrant Online: Well Said – And Saying Well Isn’t Enough
My latest piece up at Quadrant Online, arguing that well written, rational pieces supporting classical liberal institutions like free speech won't make a jot of difference.
10/2/2013
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Decay of the Fashionable Left
Nothing explains the decay of the fashionable left better than this. Juvenile, permanently oppositional, trashing every truly radical, liberating change for the better from the past 500 years, medievalist at heart. I hesitate to use the terms Left and Right anymore – alignments and beliefs have clearly changed. Cassandra Wilkinson talks about free and unfree, […]
25/9/2012
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In Praise Of Ridicule Repost
After the attacks on US embassies on September 11 – purportedly in response to a video, but apparently pre-organised – and the following blasphemy riots across the West, I’m reposting this meditation on Molly Norris from earlier this year. Free speech, comedy, parody, ridicule and even error need defending more than ever. September and […]
16/9/2012
2
Silent and Weak
In the wake of worldwide Islamist riots, the US government responds by arresting a videomaker just after midnight (‘taken in for questioning’, not arrested). For making a film. A legal film, in a nation with a Constitutional guarantee of free speech. Tacky, wrong, misleading. But a film. Yeah, formally taken in for questioning for violating […]
16/9/2012
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Ergas’ Analysis Shows Up The Dilettantes
Henry Ergas nails, with forensic thoroughness, the nonsense that passes for regulation review at the Federal level. In truth, it’s a nonsense at all levels of government, but the Feds are the paradigm case under the current government. The way in which he does it – seriously, looking to the long term – calls to […]
10/9/2012
0
Play The Bully Card, Then Bully
Ahhh, yes, it’s always the Centre-Right that teeters on the edge of incivility and the resort to threat and violence, isn’t it? When you define as bullying the attempt to hold accountable a politician in power, because bullying is bad, especially of a woman, and then resort to it in the same tweet, it kinda […]
5/9/2012
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Media Conflicts of Interest – Quadrant Online
Undeclared bias is a problem in reporting, but the answer isn’t the limitation on speech the Left is demanding. The solution is to help media consumers choose between outlets by requiring the same transparency of journalists that journalists demand of politicians. Recent attacks on media freedom from the Left – Finkelstein, Bendigo MP Steve Gibbons, fellow Labor […]
5/9/2012
0
Going Soft – PM’s Media Move
Just sat through an appalling soft-ball interview between PM Julia Gillard and the stand-in JJJ breakfast host Lewi (podcast may be available later here). In itself this isn’t notable. Any time a Green-Left politician hits JJJ it’s a love fest. No, I noticed because, like Wayne Swan’s move to play the old class envy card […]
5/9/2012
0
New Media Shames Old
The last 15 years of media appear to be a story of print’s decline and broadcasting fragmentation. But that’s just the sort of creative destruction you expect in a mature industry with a big technological component. A deeper change is the emergence of an alternative accountability media. This change has fully revealed the way the […]
4/9/2012
0
Dissent Is Only Good If You’re Winning
The New Left is overplaying the outrage game so badly that in years to come it will be a study in propaganda failure. Away from the shaping and scolding of their teachers, one can imagine the teen contempt students would have for the constant shock, outrage, inhalations and fake swooning our opinionistas pass off as […]
30/8/2012
0
ABC: Criticise Any Government But Ours
So the ABC is whingeing about their news site being blocked by India on the grounds it may stir up public unrest (read, ethnic violence). I await with unrealistic expectation that the ABC will defend other Australians’ rights to speak in a way that embarrasses the Australian government. And I await the equally important statement […]
25/8/2012
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Self Defeat – The Essential Finkelstein
One of the joys of watching policy development is how it completely ignores the infinite flexibility of the people it seeks to regulate. Every policy should go through a rigorous Response Scenario attack from the most creative public-private team imaginable. Just to work out what the best-and-brightest would do to subvert the policy goal. And […]
25/8/2012
0
Who Else Said ‘Gloves Off’ for the Media?
Our Prime Minister and her caucus are putting themselves in dubious company with the demand that it is time for "gloves off" in dealing with the media
22/8/2012
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