Talkin’ ’bout boys
What are they doing to poor Greg Sheridan over at The Australian? He’s supposed to be the paper’s foreign editor. Presumably he just wants to write about Indonesia’s domestic politics, or be worryingly indulgent towards far-right governments in Europe. So why do they keep asking him to weigh in on other matters? Last week he had to resort to four goddamn paragraphs of reminiscences about Billy Joel to hit the sprawling word count in his piece about how Taylor Swift “confounds the progressive left”.
Now he has to talk about the “woke madness” of the “campaign” to abolish boys schools (by which he means there was a column about it in the Australian Financial Review). It’s another scenic stroll of a piece recalling his time at an all boys Christian brothers school, where he learnt the kind of timeless instruction that the left doesn’t want boys to hear, and that couldn’t possibly have been imparted had there been any girls around:
The brothers taught that when walking down the street with a girl the bloke should try to walk between the girl and the road. That’s so any danger coming from the road, such as a car crashing off the street, hits the bloke first.
Always Pyne time
Here’s our impression of former senior government figure Christopher Pyne answering a phone: “Hello, I’ll do it.” The great fixer has never encountered a camera he wouldn’t address with a few witty anecdotes. Now he’s swung by pulse-of-the-nation comedy panel show The Hundred with Andy Lee to discuss his one-time record-setting number of evictions from Parliament, something that panellist Mike Goldstein points out makes him officially more annoying than Pauline Hanson.
Politics: it’s basically all a bit of a lark, isn’t it? In case it comes up, Pyne has since lost his crown to Nick Champion — the only MP, as Bernard Keane once pointed out, who Bronwyn Bishop could expel without any accusation of bias — who managed a remarkable 105 ejections in his time in federal Parliament.
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Picture the scene: you’re minding your own business, checking your emails one morning, only to find the former prime minister has sent you a message about the current foreign minister, asking you to “Give me some topics, some background on this motherfucker”. That’s what Czech environmentalist Jan Rovenský woke up to this week. Former Czech prime minister Andrej Babiš emailed him (thinking he was emailing an aide of the same name) asking, in a less than entirely coherent fashion, for dirt on Czech Foreign Minister Jan Lipavský:
Write me the Israel story, how he turned his back on our people, how he went to Doha, how he goes everywhere, campaigning, mail-in voting.
He also asked for info on Lipavský’s children. Anyone who has followed Babiš’ time in public life will know him as a “colourful figure”. An agribusiness billionaire turned politician, he was the richest and oldest person to become prime minister in Czech history, in 2017, as well as the first to be charged with a crime while in office when he was charged with fraud that same year — though he’s always insisted the charges were politically motivated; he has been acquitted twice since. Still, it feels on brand that this apparently isn’t even the first time it’s happened.
“It’s not the first time that Andrej Babiš has accidentally sent me an email, apparently addressed to my namesake, who is his spin doctor,” Rovenský wrote (in Czech, obviously…) on Facebook. “I never published any of them. I usually either politely ignored them or pointed out the sender’s mistake … But to drag your opponents’ children and wives into this is totally over the line.”
Trump Watch
Among the many things that will happen as the world’s least anticipated rematch between Donald Trump and Joe Biden pulls closer, our favourite to keep an eye on is the resumption of books by or about people who used to work with Trump — kicked off by Jim Sciutto’s The Return of the Great Powers — telling us things that veer from shocking to entirely believable in about half a second.
It will surprise no-one who watched Trump on the world stage to hear that he lavished as much praise on dictators off camera as he did in public. Apparently several of Trump’s former advisers told Sciutto that Trump called Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán “fantastic”, Chinese President Xi Jinping “brilliant”, and even North Korean leader Kim Jong-un an “okay guy”.
To top it all off, the former and possible future president of the world’s most powerful country liked to pull the go-to move for a contrarian 16-year-old halfway through his second beer: “Well, but Hitler did some good things,” Trump reportedly said to John Kelly, his chief of staff from 2017 to 2019. Now brace yourself, but according to Kelly this admiration was not backed up by a rock-solid understanding of Third Reich internal politics:
[Trump] would ask about the loyalty issues … when I pointed out to him the German generals as a group were not loyal to [Hitler], and in fact tried to assassinate him a few times, he didn’t know that.
John Kelly is almost as wrong as Trump. As a group, the German generals (of the regular army) of the 1930s and early 1940s were rigidly professional and loyal to the their government and country. Some were enthusiastic about the politics of their new government, and that number expanded rapidly as they were re-armed and even more with the early astonishing victories they won in WWII. Many others served loyally but with varying degrees of reluctance as a matter of duty and honour. The ones who acted against the government were a small and unrepresentative minority, and beyond them were a few more generals who turned a blind eye to such actions. The best known of the German officers in the 20th July plot in 1944 was Claus von Stauffenberg, not a general, his rank was Oberst (Colonel).
Down-voted for presenting facts that contradict something in the article; why’s that?
Also, John Kelly has done nobody any favours by encouraging Trump to consider the generals of the US military as a potential threat. Trump has already said retired US general Mark Milley, previously chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, should be executed. How likely is he, if he is president at the end of the year and that looks odds-on, to purge the generals of anyone who does not grovel to him, much as Stalin did in the late 1930s? Trump’s creatures are purging the RNC right now.
Given Trump’s hostility to China maybe someone will explain to him how well purging the officer core worked for Stalin when invading Finland and then facing the 1941 German invasion.
Stalin decapitated his own army for fear of a coup. 1000 generals were executed in that purge. Hard to comprehend.
It would be interesting to see someone attempt that explanation. My guess is any talk of Finland or a German invasion would go right over Trump’s head, but he would notice that, after the massacre of so many of their number, Stalin’s generals did not succeed, or even attempt to, get rid of him. So, from Trump’s perspective, a very good outcome when you just focus on the important stuff!
Maybe Trump could get some tips from his old pal in the Kremlin on how to go about it; Putin is fond of Stalin, has a no-nonsense way with potential rivals and should be willing.
The States being awash with firearms I put my faith in the aggrieved guy with a 50cal sniper rifle who can hit a dime at 2km.
A minor correction from pedant’s corner: Trump can’t be President until he is sworn in on 20 January 2025.
Live not by Love Alone: Trump thinks he is president now and will be forever!
If only, as well as believing he was re-elected in 2020, he and all his supporters had some respect for the constitution, he would not stand again this year because of the two-term limit set by the 22nd amendment. “No person shall be elected to the office of the President more than twice…” It would be interesting if he was forced to choose: either concede the 2020 election and agree he was not elected, or else be ineligible to stand again. But one way around, I suppose, is to follow the example of George Dubya, and instead of being elected, become president through appointment by the Supreme Court. They’re a very helpful crew, those justices.
In the US I believe they call ex-Presidents ‘President’.
Even worse, Mr President.
Trump models his leadership style on post-colonial African “strong men”, obviously without attribution because his tens of millions of faithful don’t do irony. I used to laugh at Alan Coren’s spoof 1970s diaries of Amin; I’m not laughing now.
Many of the leading German generals were also hugely rewarded by Hitler with gifts of cash and landed estates in occupied Poland, not to mention accelerated promotion opportunities – one of many facts omitted from their postwar memoirs.
Rommel was a Field Marshall, almost certainly involved in the plot against Hitler, as were some of his senior staff, well above the rank of Colonel. Other Generals were also involved, some were tried and executed, some suicided.
No evidence at all that Rommel was involved in the plot against Hitler although he MAY have had some knowledge of it. Also, if he had beaten Montgomery at Alamein and occupied Egypt, he already had an SS officer stationed in his HQ who would have liquidated all the Jews in the Middle East. Rommel is only remembered as a “decent” German general because he lost.
Of about 1,000 German generals in 1944, maybe 20 were involved in resistance.
It’s generally understood – interpret that as you wish – that credible allegations were made against Rommel, and that rather than bring him to trial, it was preferred that he kill himself. He chose to co-operate, and did so.
“Generally understood” isn’t evidence.
In relation to Greg Sheridan, an all-boys school would be perfect training ground for The Oz. Circle jerks being common to both.
The expression “takes the biscuit” has a whole different meaning in that context.
One thing I miss, with the loss of The Drum from my tv screen each week day, is Greg Sheridan. I always groaned loudly when he appeared, as I cannot recall ever agreeing with him, but soon he’d have me laughing cheerfully at his absurd opinions.
I personally am grateful or the loss of The Drum that had on its panel an odd assortment of neo-conservative, neo-liberal free marketeers, former failed Liberal leaders and candidate – in politics and in marriage – politically conservative, arrogant, Right wing ideologues (like Greg), self-appointed spokespeople for “Country” Australia (hint: more conservatives) and privileged, White-hating, university educated First Nations “representatives” – all of them living in their own little world and their own echo chamber with a view to spruiking their views and resenting any challenges to them.
I am personally gonna write to and thank the ABC Board for their decision to pull the Drum. May it never come back.
What a miserable life you must lead to only listen to people you agree with. That was the point of the Drum, offering different opinions. I miss it and have heard no reasonable reason offered for why it was scrapped. I can only assumed it was those Zionist lobby groups objecting as they do to Palestinian views offered.
No. The Drum had been going downhill, if it was ever uphill, for many years. It was all the carping, the negativity, the heat shed, the arrogance by wives or ex-wives of former Liberal Premiers who can’t hold their drink and get away with it. Aunty gave these odious life-forms a free pass. I listen to people I disagree with often. I live with them even. It just wasn’t productive. 3 or 4 topics covered only in an hour and all you get are the smart arse one liners. I hope Q&A doesn’t follow the same trend. Stan Grant leaving was a good move.
Sheridan is Generation Cretaceous and his views only matter to his Generation Jurassic boss. My Gen Z son went to a Sydney GPS school that recently proposed co-education. His view: “Why did they only get onto this after I left?”
I love the irony that Sheridan represents. He represents the Tory type conservative, a dinosaur out of place in an ever-evolving society. And it’s that ever-evolving thing (and a destroyed childhood) what gives me my eternal pathological hatred of conservatism. The irony is that the back-in-the-day when social conservatism dominated, we could all voice opinions, no matter how outrageous, and conservatives would say, I respect your right to say that even if I don’t agree with you.
That’s all gone now with progressivism. Say the wrong thing and your cancelled. A true conservative or even a socially progressive person would have you cancelled behind the scenes and you would never know why. At least now it’s the cancelling is overt I guess. And like the conservative saying goes, its just a phase we are going through.
I still hate everything and everyone conservative, though. Irony. We live it.
you’re, not your.
“Back-in-the-day when social conservatism dominated, we could all voice opinions, no matter how outrageous . . .”?
What day was that?
Of course, when social conservatism dominated, you knew full well what you could say and what you couldn’t. The cancellation came before the deed (see the Hays Code, for an example). Or the censorship was self-imposed via fear of peer-pressure. Or only rich-white establishment men owned the means of communication and so there were never any ‘diverse’ voices loud enough to cancel.
People lived in the closets not because social conservatism respected their “right to say [or do whatever] even if I don’t agree with you”. They lived in the closet because of the existential fear of the consequences of coming out.
Social conservatism censored and cancelled at source.
Good argument. Thanks. I guess I lived a sheltered life in the regions and was part of the oppressive forces by virtue of being white middle class heteronormative with nary a thought for those not.
Things Trump Does Not Know – this is too alarming to contemplate.