Under the provision of the Copyright laws known as “fair dealing”, Crikey cannot reprint the entire obituary of journalist P.P. McGuinness, written by former Prime Minister Paul Keating, which was published in this morning’s edition of the Australian Financial Review. According to the Copyright Act 1968 – Section 40 we are entitled only to publish 10% of Mr Keating’s touching obsequial footnote. Here it is:
He was a fraud. He was not just a fraud, he was a liar and a fraud.
McGuinness’s journalism did not add up to a row of beans. He held more political, philosophic and economic positions than would have the Kama Sutra had it been a philosophic text.
It was a prejudiced, capricious and intellectually corrupt mind that was all over the shop depending on what suited his miserable purposes at the time.
Like a drunken skater, he had slid across the rink to the neo-conservative Right, fulminating for all his worth against the so-called “elites”. The people who, to McGuinness’s frustration, simply maintained their moral indignation, while he and his mates in the government, the real elites, held all the power in the land.
McGuinness was a shocker. In journalistic terms, he had the morals of an alley cat.
The quality of the Australian press will rise simply because his vituperation and contumely will have been excised from it.
I don’t subscribe to AFR so thanks for that 10%, Keating appears to be getting better with age!
It all depends what you mean by better. Keating is a disgrace, he would not know a good journalist if he fell over one and his vituperation just gets worse. Something about ‘speaking ill of the dead’. Would he have said that to Paddy’s face?
I disagree JG-I reckon Keating would make a great regular columnist for any newspaper brave enough to take him on. Don’t always agree with him but he really gets the blood racing.
Keating is a bitter and twisted man with an ego that apparently even he must have difficulty living with. He would be far better off living in another country.
Don’t you just love ’em……the ” initials only” correspondents as per KH & JG below. C’mon, girls and/or boys, show your faces!! Or maybe you’re the spooks who described Sir Paddy as ‘brilliant’….something he would crow about at the drop of a hat.