Given we live in a time whose maxim is “everything happens so much”, it’s almost impressive to see how many stories can be spun from almost literally nothing happening.
Case in point: last week, The Herald Sun reported that new Greens Senator Lidia Thorpe had said a new name could be considered for Victoria:
‘Anything that’s named after someone who’s caused harm or murdered people, then I think we should take their name down,’ she said.
Except, as Thorpe pointed out, this was not some bold platform she was using to convince freedom-hating greenies in the leftie people’s feelocracy of Victoria to elect her as Richard Di Natale’s replacement.
She’d simply been called by Herald Sun reporters and asked her opinion.
Nevertheless, the article, grounded in Thorpe’s apparent suggestion, allowed the state Labor and Liberal leaders to caterwaul about how they’d never heard such a stupid idea.
Following this, Paul Murray — who has never struck us as much of a “read beyond the headline” kinda guy — used the piece for a head-shaking “get a load of this” aside in his Sky News show (which Sky then broke out as a separate headline).
And then, as a neat little synecdoche of much of what is rotten and broken in Australian media, Today asked far-right Senator Pauline Hanson on for her views on the matter, as if we couldn’t guess.
Host Karl Stefanovic, ever the paragon of journalistic neutrality, asked what Hanson made of “these attempts to rewrite our history” and then wheezed like a smoker’s dying breath with laughter as Hanson quoted some unnamed Aboriginal elders she knows who apparently call Thorpe “Lidiot”.
Of course, none of this will be unfamiliar to anyone who has read our ongoing “Holy War” series. Once News Corp spots an ideological enemy, there is no development, no angle on them, that will be left unexplored. And as this example shows, it billows out into the rest of the media, until it passes for an actual national discourse.
Thorpe is an Indigenous woman from Victoria representing the Greens, a combination of words that News Corp editors wake up screaming after their worst sleep paralysis. So don’t expect this to be the last of it.
We asked the Hun if they thought Thorpe’s characterisation of their story as a “set up” was fair, but they didn’t get back to us before deadline.
I hope Lidia has learned a big lesson in how to handle HUN reporters, just tell them nothing they can use, preferably ignore them outright
Any and all reporters in my book.
Nah, Murdoch ones are special.
I got hopping mad to see Speers giving another one a go on Insiders yesterday.
Yep – having once been burned in a beat-up by Peter Lloyd of the ABC during my working life, my first instinct would be distrust. They have to earn it. I had dealings with Ginny Stein (also ABC) too, and she I would trust for accuracy and balance.
It would be interesting to know who else the Hun hack approached for comment. Lidia needs to remember what I was taught during my media training, which is the media only reports conflict and drama. The other stuff doesn’t sell.
On the basis of that beat up alone I’d be inclined to support the Greens, although given their lack of strategic nous that might be difficult to sustain.
Perhaps the perception of lack of strategic nous is related to their failure to carry out enough market research, utilise focus groups and buy the favour of the media..
Listen up Earthians….
Its always macabre fun watching the Greens eventually consume their own young as all extreme Leftists eventually do.
Funny how Meghan Markle’s black African ancestors (being about a third of her white ancestors) render her ‘mixed race’, whereas we are importantly told that “Thorpe is an Indigenous woman from Victoria representing the Greens”.
I would have thought that Thorpe would not be on this good Earth without a majority of white ancestors, all immigrants to this land since 1788. I often wonder how people who attach such importance to their genetic heritage as central to their being, only seem to attribute such to an Indigenous portion and completely ignore or deny the non-indigenous portion.
The bizarre notion that your whole identity is defined by which fashionable segments of your genes you wish to highlight is a touchstone of the mental midgets who define people by the colour of their skin; oblivious to the content of their character.
YOLLOB…I thoroughly endorse the sentiments in your final paragraph!
For the life of me, I just don’t get this ‘racist’ thingy. When is EVERYONE going to accept the notion that ALL people, without exception, belong to the genus homo sapiens? They all have exactly the same genes, bits and pieces as each other. Some have different features, colour, culture etc., but all still remain a member of the HUMAN race.
Otherwise we have to say that a black bear is different from a brown bear, so one of them is superior/inferior from the other, when genetically they are exactly the same.
Its all madness!! Especially so when some members of the human race think they, or others, are superior/inferior because of the colour of their skin. Think about it!!!
David Reich’s book “Ancient DNA and the New Science of the Human Past” throws a lot of light on this issue and highlights the dangers of both politically correct orthodoxy and racial stereotyping.
I do think though that disadvantage resulting from discrimination can persist through subsequent generations without being strictly linked to either genotype or phenotype.
Yollob, I am not quite sure how to respond to your abysmal ignorance. Clearly you have issues with your identity and are having trouble coming to terms with the horrific truths being exposed about yourself and many of your fellow Australians. I know it must be hard to acknowledge that your ancestors were possibly involved in genocide. It must be even harder for you to acknowledge the strength and superiority of the culture that was here before the invasion by the brutal and primitive English people with their unfounded belief in their superiority, despite the wretchedly short time frame of their so called ‘civilisation’. But at least you could try and understand.
Don’t worry about me Penny……I am pretty sure that when my grandfather was taught by Indigenes how to swim in the Mary River in the 1870’s, his fondness for the memory did not provoke him to genocide.
Your sweet innocence is touching about a culture which would have ‘married’ you at puberty to an old man of your clan, or seen you dragged off as war booty or traded to settle a debt to a rival clan on the other side of the river.
You’ve clearly never lived in an Australian country town, or a Southern US state, where your elective identity isn’t an issue if you have ‘one drop’ of non-Caucasian blood.
But continue, Prince Mishkin.
Well Jeff I have lived in Bourke.
In Bourke, all the mainstreet shops are shuttered with heavy steel roller shutters after dark, and night life is non-existent.
In Bourke, I have seen little kids of colour in pajamas running around at 930pm, and when questioned about not being home in bed; being treated to a string of abusive language which would make a wharfie blush.
You can have a similar experiences in Brewarrina, Walgett and all the way out to Broken Hill.
Thanks YOLLOB for injecting a bit of realism into these closed minds that are strong on virtue signals and symbolism but seemingly indifferent to fixing the shocking condition of our indigenous population,
Paul Murray has never struck me as a “read” kind of guy, never mind reading beyond headlines.