Fair and balanced
Gary Gaunt writes: Re. “Election IOU: how will Rupert call in Abbott’s debt to him?” (yesterday). I enjoy my Crikey for the balance. The balance has been getting a bit cranky. If you are going to beat up Rupert for supporting Tony, how about balancing it with a beat-up on Rupert supporting Rudd and the evidence that he benefited thusly?
Are we owed an apology from Rupert for his lack of perspicacity re: Rudd, or is it “just whatever it takes”?
Punishing savers
Gary Woodman writes: Re. “Koukoulas: double data shot may shake and stir” (Tuesday). That Stephen Koukoulas is a real wonk. He talks about encouraging borrowing (to boost bank profits) and discouraging saving (by people with the temerity to think past the next election). Punishing savers is an interesting technique now embraced by the Treasurer, who intends to raid savings by means of a “deposit levy”. One has to think that old-fashioned money, created by actual work and actually creating things, is now obsolete, replaced by finger twiddling on computer keyboards creating electronic money in a torrent of zeroes. What could go wrong?
Koukoulas didn’t mention housing, but it seems clear that he prefers the world’s most expensive real estate to make buying a home totally unaffordable for young people or anyone not willing to take on a lifetime of debt.
To further punish savers, watch for the incoming government, of whichever stench, to bury their snouts in our super.
No crime here
Katherine Stuart writes: Re. “On the trail with Craig Thomson, the David of Dobell” (Friday). I take issue with Margot Saville’s off-the-cuff-and-for-the-boys cynical comment in her article: “if we locked up every man who’d been to Miss Behaving, the jails would be fuller than Villawood”. Well, great, thanks very much for adding a bit more to normalising the idea of engaging the services of a prostitute — like being a refugee, perhaps? It’s offensive on two counts.
The News Corp shock jocks
Kent Williams writes: Re. “Murdoch’s might: how much do News Corp papers influence elections?” (Wednesday). The article by Henry Belot last Wednesday would have been far more incisive and enlightening if the editorial record and the general thrust of Murdoch’s papers dated from Bruce Guthrie’s sacking in November 2008 rather than venturing back to 1975.
At that time in 2008 we had six Labor state governments and Kevin Rudd at the federal level riding high in the opinion polls. Today Labor has power in two states, the two smallest in population and influence, and both are discredited and hanging on by a thread. On September 8, 2013, the Coalition will most likely receive a huge majority and control of the Senate.
News Corp not only has 63% of print media sales, but this Fox News style emboldens others including “shock jocks” to push further to the right being more outrageous and offensive (“ditch the witch”) knowing that there is no substantial media to hold them to account.
Correction
Crikey writes: Re. “Inside the Greens circus, minus Bob and the freaks” (Wednesday). In Wednesday’s article Crikey mistakenly reported that Greens Senate candidate Simon Sheikh’s brother had died in childhood. It was his sister. The same article referred to Sheikh’s wife, Anna Rose, as the co-ordinator of the Australian Youth Climate Coalition. Rose no longer holds that post. The article has been corrected online.
Oh please think before you fire reflexively Katherine Stuart.
Think that your immediate censoriouness may harm the cause. After all, of the say 15 per cent of the population who might be interested you are going to have to rely on the instinctive sympathy of no more than about 30 per cent of them. It’s the automatic misinterpretations, or hunting-down-verbal-sin and insensitivity. that are so off-putting.
Why, for example, do you not accept a perfectly reasonable interpretation of Margot Savile’s “Villawood” reference as merely providing a vivid way of saying “somewhere where we would agree too many people are locked up”?
And why the “normalising” used pejoratively? What if Ms Savile’s implied assertion that a very large number of men, far more than one would suspect, have at sometime sought or used the services of a prostitute IS TRUE? How would you criticise her for saying e.g. “One problem with conducting a campaign against Craig Thomson based on his having paid for sex with prostitutes is that there are very many more men – voters – who have visited prostitutes than anyone normally supposes”.?
Interesting, however, to consider what women can say which men should avoid. E.g. if a running mate for the Senate with someone with Craig Thomson’s said “Is that the worst you can say about him [of course it isn’t I note by way of concessional aside: WJ] that he paid for sex with prostitutes” a female might be regarded as a feisty political battler but a man might be reminded that it was what a lot of people thought but would make him suspect of old-fashioned male insensitivity and worse.
Hmmmm, I don’t think Murdoch’s papers had spent the previous three years beating up John Howard, calling him illegitimate, a liar etc. Murdoch’s last minute support for Rudd was a world away from the glad-handing that has accompanied every Abbott visit and utterance these last few weeks, years, days…
I think it’s safe to say that we’ve now reached the point where more ink has been used to false-equivocate the Murdoch media’s support for Rudd in ’07 with the bloodthirsty, factually-bereft, propaganda campaign that’s running for the last four years than was actually used to support Rudd in ’07.