Wednesday, February 08, 2012

And so to John Birmingham, not that we're worried about the company he keeps ...


(Above: for no particular reason, we thought we'd start with Titian today, found here).

It became perfectly clear that John Birmingham isn't a reader of The Australian - perhaps he was scared off by the paywall - in the course of scribbling furiously about sexism and Julia Gillard in You talk about sexism, Bob Brown? Look in the mirror:

And he'd already missed the correct 'Albrechtsen' spelling in his pervious par, and he a writer too. Tear him apart Dame Slap, let the inner feral rogue android flow.

Birmingham is in fine Ernst Hemingway form in the piece, in the school of "if you can't stand the heat, get out of the kitchen bitch", or "harden the fuck up bitch and grow some balls", and stop your whingeing and sobbing. If there's one thing we all can't stand, it's seeing Kim Hughes cry ...

Meanwhile, the pond can rest content with any typos that flow on these pages henceforth. See a typo, go talk to the hand or John Birmingham.

And speaking of the correct role for women, as always the Daily Terror was to hand with an exemplary splash:


Never mind the ugly side of the tabloid universe.

And speaking of the ugly side, naturally Piers "Akker Dakker" Akerman was on fire, and right on the side of John Birmingham, with Not sexist to criticise dud PM.

Why he even referenced John Birmingham and made a joke:

Writing in today’s Sydney Morning Herald, John Birmingham, not a noted conservative, listed a number of Gillard’s critics including Laura Tingle, Marianne Dickie, Judith Sloan, Janet Albrechtson, Bronwyn Hinz, Michelle Grattan, Katharine Murphy, Lenore Taylor, Shelley Gare, Miranda Devine, Annabel Crabb, Cynthia Banham, Anne Summers, Amanda Vanstone, Brigitte Dwyer or Caroline Fleay. None of them are blokes, or if they are, they maintain they are not.

Suck it up, Laura Tingle and Anne Summers and Annabel Crabb, lumped together with MIranda the Devine and Janet Albrechtson. After all, the only distinguishing or key feature in all that they do and write is that they're women. Bloody women ... unless they happen to be blokes ...

Ah that Akker Dakker, always a wag and always willing to stretch the concept of gender, and it's the pond's duty to remind you that Akker Dakker isn't a cross-dresser, or if he is, he maintains he is not. But if you substitute tosser, you might find it harder to accept the denials ...

Hang on, hang on a tic. The pond dutifully copied down Akker Dakker, yet the fiend has maintained Birmingham's sloppy mis-spelling of Albrechtson.

Is there no honour or care or diligence amongst thieves, bandits and the commentariat? Go on Dame Slap, give him a kick in his blokey gonads ...

Akker Dakker was very concerned that any labels waved around might be a slimy attempt to avoid scrutiny, as opposed to the feral, braying sprays he routinely delivers.

One thing's for sure. If you write an intelligent political commentary which contains criticism and perhaps praise of any political leader, Gillard or Brown or Abbott, you're on another planet than Akerman. His form is encapsulated in the header Labor will crash, no matter who's driving.

Yep, Labor could be run by Jesus Christ himself, and it would be off the Akker Dakker highway licketty split. After all Jesus was a socialist.

Now if only Akker Dakker could be persuaded to join Newt Gingrich in a bold bid to colonise the moon.

Meanwhile, does Birmingham ever wonder about the company he keeps? If not in the matter of sexism, then at least in the matter of spelling ...

All the same, you have to admire the persistency of Akker Dakker, once more banging the drum about the alleged Heiner conspiracy, Senators receive Heiner allegations, and producing some of the most amazing arguments in the process:

Senior parliamentary officers say it is open for Ms Bryce to request a copy of the papers, indeed, arguably, she is duty bound to do so urgently given the serious nature of the charges and the fact that every senator is now in receipt of allegations which question her integrity and fitness to hold office.

It would also appear that the Senate will have to “send” a message to the House of Representatives about the material as it also contains adverse allegations about a member of the Lower House, Rudd.

Yes it seems that it's too hard for anyone to drop a bundle on Bryce, so she must scurry about herself to find a copy. Why not send a copy via registered post to the GG Akker Dakker? The receiving officer's signature will suffice. Surely you must have the readies.

It seems the conspiracy runs very deep indeed:

Parliamentary sources say that they are reviewing the Hollingworth resignation and the handling of allegations made against the former (now deceased) High Court Justice Lionel Murphy to prepare advice for the Gillard Labor-minority government.

What on earth does that mean? Lionel Murphy died in October 1986. And now parliamentary sources say they are preparing advice in relation to Lionel Murphy, who somehow can be linked in the same par to the resignation of Peter Hollingworth in May 2003?

This move dramatically increases the pressure on the government and the Opposition. Members of the public know more about the Heiner Affair than MPs wish, now there is no reason for Senators to plead ignorance.

The allegations are extremely serious and must be tested or the taint will cripple the machinery of government.

Uh huh. Akker Dakker has been bunging on about the Heiner conspiracy like a dunny door in a gale for an eternity, because it's the holy grail for conspiracy theorists, one that will bring down and ruin an entire generation of Labor politicians, including former chairman Rudd and the current GG in relation to procedural matters.

This has already been looked at by a parliamentary committee which tabled its report (here), with specific recommendations made in chapters 2 and 3 (here and here as pdfs), and yet the nothing arose from that stacked inquiry, and the real problem continues, which is that instead of investigating the crime that sparked the entire fracas, it has become a cause celebre amongst conspiracists, designed to deliver payback and a witch hunt to sundry figures in the Labor party.

When somehow Lionel Murphy, dead in 1986, gets gets mentioned in relation to a pack rape crime allegedly committed during a supervised outing of JOYC inmates in 1988, you know you're off in la la land.

Does Birmingham ever wonder about the company he keeps?

Meanwhile, it being Akker Dakker day, we should close by noting his valiant bit of abuse in Kiddie porn horror.

Akker Dakker spends his column shrieking about the horror of kiddie porn, while at the same time quoting Assistant Commissioner Neil Gaughan of the federal police saying there might have been no increase in the number of adults sexually assaulting children, and that's been no empirical evidence of an increase in child abuse, but there has been an increase in arrests, from 136 to 180 in relation to child porn offences, but this might be the result of the fuzz gettinn their act together.

Unsurprisingly child porn photos are now ending up in the intertubes. Unsurprising because these days everything, even the rabid, frothing rantings of Akker Dakker, end up on the intertubes.

From Gaughan's cautious assessment of the meaning of the figures, and the implications in relation to child porn, Akker Dakker jumps immediately to talk of monsters of cyber space and closes with this little flurry:

Meanwhile, the Australian arts community and so-called progressives are still ambivalent about the sexualisation of the young and innocent.

Their images are art when made by celebrity photographers but porn when manufactured in the back alleys of Asian crime capitals.


First of all, it takes only a moment's personal recollection to be reminded that children are indeed sexual, and sexually aware, and it is mind-boggingly stupid, in the modern puritanical way, to talk about the sexualisation of the young, as if sexualisation is brought down by the chimney by the stork when puberty strikes, usually in the early teens.

Secondly, it is entirely possible to produce images and art involving nudity, and the young, which aren't an attempt - in tabloid Terror style - to ram sexuality down the throat of the young or the old.

The Terror is a rag that routinely flaunts images of women for salacious intent, not that there's necessarily anything wrong with that. It's the sheer staggering scale of the hypocrisy that's eye-catching, since it seems there's absolutely nothing wrong with the sexualisation of the old (who might, for all the pond knows, be innocent) by the Daily Terror.

More to the point, this kind of festering moral panic about child porn has led to a situation where simple nudity is now perceived as perverted, and the taking of photos on beaches and in other public places a thought crime, and the representation of children in art automatically a form of sexualising child pornography.

Heaven help the average nudist in Akerman's twisted, warped world, which is on occasions a bit like taking a time trip back to the Salem witch trials.

But it did remind the pond of a tidy quote which ran when former chairman Rudd and doubtless Piers Akerman - eek, they're one, joined together at the hip - railed against Bill Henson:

Coming of age is the subject matter of the bildungsroman; most of our art is concerned with it one way or another. The chief inspiration for any artist is her childhood and youth, yet even when young people give their own account of their experiences, the result is deemed indecent. In Florida last year, teenagers who made videos of their own sexual activity were charged with "producing, directing or promoting a photograph featuring the sexual conduct of a child".

Meanwhile the models on our catwalks are, or pretend to be, gangling adolescents. Every year, fashion magazines produce a new crop of schoolgirl models. Mothers may look at pictures like Henson's and howl with fear; but the man who rejects them with exaggerated horror is appalled not by the works themselves but by his own response to them. Innocence is not an option. (Would Australia's PM ban Botticelli?)

Roll that one around on your tongue a little and savour the meaning:

...the man who rejects them with exaggerated horror is appalled not by the works themselves but by his own response to them. Innocence is not an option.

Then think of former chairman Rudd, and Akker Dakker. Though not necessarily in that order.

Oh okay, the pond knows what you're looking for. The 109 photos featured in the Daily Terror's coverage of the Lingerie Football League, wherein women are made to dress in skimpy gear while men are allowed to run around in full kit. Or perhaps a bit of consciousness raising about the PETA celebrities who prefer to go naked than wear fur. Or photos of Dita Von Teese, or snaps of Coco's World, or the Most Desirable Women of 2012.

And so on and so forth in the galleries section of the Daily Terror here, but be warned the magic gallery tree moves regularly, and who knows what you might find as new galleries arrive. You might find a shock horror gallery dedicated to the east coast girl competition of 2011, or a report on classy Chloe Glassie, 13 year old model of the year, just by clicking here.

Does John Birmingham ever wonder about the company he keeps, or Akker Dakker wonder how he's right on side with former chairman Rudd? Or vice versa?

Who knows, but heck, don't think about them at all. Think Velazquez, or thousands of other artists instead:


3 comments:

  1. Oh Ackerdacker... I couldn't be stuffed reading him, even second hand. Much rather look at the naked chick by Titian. Mind you she hasn't got much tit, has she? And what's it with the girl with her head in the trunk? Very strange picture. But much, much more appealing than Acker and all the horrible lot...

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  2. Ah yes, Bob's regular media critique. This one cut a bit close to the bone, didn't it? I bet the Fairfax journos were expecting another "hate media" attack and a chance to take aim at the Oz. Luckily those geniuses in the Gallery trotted out their womenfolk as a defence: "plenty of female journos have attacked Julia, you can't be female and sexist, therefore sexism does not exist". Excellent work, carte blanche for the same old business. Carry on calling Julia 'Julia' - affectionately of course - and Tony - Mr Abbott.

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  3. Listen to Alan Jones and Piers Ackerman, on radio 2GB today, discussing the Heiner Affair and the implications of the Rofe Audit.

    http://www.2gb.com/index2.php?option=com_newsmanager&task=view&id=11586

    ReplyDelete

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