Greens political party ranger Last week we lamented our reliance on Greens shitposting for weird political content. And they appeared to be happy to oblige us — producing this eye-catching monstrosity:
As an example of the deliberately bad political posting, this mock-up of the new members of Parliament is mildly amusing. As a reminder that the new cohort of Australia’s most progressive party contains two fewer people of colour than a kids show from the early ’90s, it’s either a lot funnier, or a lot less funny.
I Grant you Though it deprives us of reading the kind of insight that equates teal voters in Australia to Trump voters (which is true, as long as you ignore almost literally everything that defines and motivates each group), the news that Stan Grant has been appointed the new host of ABC’s flagship bad show Q+A is a good move, given its primary way of drumming up attention is through outrage. Grant passed that test earlier this year during a fill-in stint, turfing out a questioner some 20 minutes after the fact for apparently “advocating violence” in a question that, while based on a shaky premise, didn’t involve a clear call to violence.
And speaking of things people didn’t say, the potential for media attention won’t stop there. Remember back in 2017, when Grant wrote a piece interrogating how Australia commemorates the more horrifying ends of its history, inspired by debates in the UK and US about the statues that stay up and those that might come down? He explicitly did not call for Australia to pull down any memorials.
As an Indigenous man writing for the ABC, can we assume his work was critiqued in good faith by the conservative media? The Daily Telegraph cited the Taliban, Andrew Bolt checked in with Mao, NSW Liberal MP Peter Phelps went to Stalin, and Alan Jones made loaded asides about Grant going the way of Yassmin Abdel-Magied. So we’ve got a lot of good and worthwhile stuff to look forward to discussing during his tenure.
Howard said: “There’s only one place I know” The new John Howard library in UNSW Canberra celebrates his many achievements in government — including a section of his great leadership on gun control. This is one area in which we in the bunker would agree Howard deserves a great deal of credit. But if the fact that this is housed in Australia’s military academy isn’t enough, the exhibit itself is sponsored by weapons manufacturer Raytheon.
We note the exhibit also features a reference to the deployment of Australian troops in East Timor in 1999. We look forward to a further exhibit crediting the work Howard did in helping to rebuild our devestated and impoverished neighbour — perhaps Woodside could sponsor?
Propaganda watch RT, the Kremlin-backed and certifiably insane TV network formerly called Russia Today, is setting up its first Africa bureau. The propaganda outfit has been subject to bans in the European Union, the US and Australia, but President Vladimir Putin seeks to entrench support in a continent that’s largely refrained from criticising his invasion of Ukraine. An earlier, pre-invasion plan centred on a Nairobi office, but that appears to have stalled. The office will be headed by Paula Slier, a South African broadcaster who ran RT’s Jerusalem bureau, and will put RT in competition with both the BBC and the China Global Television Network.
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QandA has never strayed too far outside the bounds of dominant discourses, and will be kept even more on the straight and narrow by Stan Grant, he who actually ejects someone for asking a question that doesn’t fit with Stan’s blinkered and simplistic view of world affairs.
QandA, like most of the ABC, has been gradually neutered down to bland, coffee-table inanities. The only reason to watch it occasionally is to remind oneself that it’s not worth wasting one’s time on.
Stan Grant is a Fellow of the Australia Strategic Policy Institute, an organisation funded by the Defence Dept and defence contractors such as Lockheed Martin, BAE Systems, Northrop Grumman, Thales Group and Raytheon Technologies.
This should be disclosed at the beginning of every appearance by Mr Grant, so those listening to his opinions can have full transparency on his associations with the merchants of death.
https://s3-ap-southeast-2.amazonaws.com/ad-aspi/2021-09/ASPI-Funding-2020_2021.pdf?VersionId=tJxiJj2k0UALZCiXY18AOYodZMHFDKHv
He’s also a God bothering lnp poster boy who can’t shut his mouth to give his #$%^ a chance if his life depended on it. The abc is stuffed, thanks ita.
Yeah. Interesting. I thought he was a grub who left his wife and kids for another. No faithfulness or honour there.
And only proclaimed his melanin content once he discovered that it could be monetised.
Whatever his beliefs, I find Grants interview style unwatchably annoying. How could you expect a narcissist to successfully interview people? I admit to having watched with some schadenfreude the ABC twitter post getting comprehensively ratioed. It is becoming progressively harder to avoid the theory that the ABC is doing this deliberately. Whether for outrage attention seeking, or to destroy a programme is not clear.
Charlie, can I cavil with the oft repeated praise of Howard for his ‘leadership’ on gun control. He ‘led’ on gun control only because he know it was overwhelmingly popular. On other issues he cowardly let other spearhead controversial political perversions. It started with him silently listening to Hanson’s disgusting first speech, making no rebuttal, but quietly pondering how he could appropriate Hanson’s followers. He hid behind Reith on children overboard, Tampa (having successfully making Australia xenophobic, exclusionary, selfish and dumb in an attempt to appeal to Hanson’s constituency) and Reith’s fight with the fight with wharfies. He hid behind Costello on GST. Howard was a gutless wonder who deliberately changed Australian for the worst by demonising desperate asylum seekers. He remains the most socially destructive Tory PM ever.
To say nothing of the way he’s economically laced future federal budgets with the time-bombs of middle class welfare (income tax cuts, franking credits, capital gains tax discounts, etc), which make life very difficult for subsequent governments who don’t enjoy the incredibly good economic fortune he experienced (global economic boom time, voracious Chinese appetite for our minerals, the sugar hit to the Australian economy from Keating’s deregulation of the financial markets, etc). Oh, ‘but he put the federal government budget into the black’, but any fool business or government can run a surplus in good times by not investing in the future, deferring all maintenance until the next guy comes on duty, and flogging off the company assets to mates at fire-sale rates.
So many evils, so little time. I agree with all your additions.
Dumbo also sold all our gold reserves for a knock down price and somehow ended up running the future fund and nine ‘entertainment ‘.
Helped start the massively successful war on terror by misleading parliament. Should be an ICAC department devoted to Howard and lord downer, IMHO.
I don’t know what 90s TV show is referred to, but the Greens’ parliamentary lineup seems pretty diverse to me.
Shoulda gone to specsavers.
Token hire, much?
Nice ‘Highway 61 Revisited’ reference. Have you been listening to your Dad’s records?
Those who ignore the past… isn’t it past your bedtime?