5 - # of Straya threads or # of times Melbourne has been crowned world's best city

[Axver]

You were watching ACA?

 

[Vlad n U 2]

Nah, just heard the ad and read about its contents afterwards.

 

[Axver]

Oh good, I needn't worry about your sanity.

I can probably guess at the content of the story.

 

[Axver]

Oh look, another reminder Barnaby is a boorish lout unfit to have leadership aspirations: Barnaby Joyce: I hope we don't become too politically correct after Briggs, Dutton affairs

The "informality and directness" quote seems to suggest he thinks inappropriate sexual comments are "informality" and crudely insulting somebody is "directness". Charming man.

 

[Vlad n U 2]

They really do not care for changing their tune. Holding on so steadfastly to the past.

 

[Kieran McConville]

I think Warren Who might be running out the clock on Barnaby Joyce, although that the man is seriously a contender for leadership of the Nationals at some future point says pretty much everything about that party.

There's every chance that Tony Windsor takes back that seat at the next election.

 

[Axver]

5 - # of Straya threads or # of times Melbourne has been crowned world's best...

In a surprise to nobody, Hamish McLachlan has read the Chris Gayle playbook and put it into action.

 

[Kieran McConville]

It's a sign of how out of the loop I am that almost nothing in your sentence there registers with me.

Ok, some of it might.

 

[cobl04]

I assume we all read Malcolm Knox's piece, one of the worst things ever committed to paper.

 

[Axver]

I assume we all read Malcolm Knox's piece, one of the worst things ever committed to paper.

Was that the one written in some faux "West Indian" slang? I couldn't even finish it.

 

[cobl04]

5 - # of Straya threads or # of times Melbourne has been crowned world's best...

Yeah. Astonishingly condescending and casually racist. Not sure why he came up with it or how it got past an editor.

 

[Axver]

When I began reading it, I thought he was going to stop after a couple of paragraphs and use it to say "if you don't want me to speak to you in this rude and condescending manner, why did you speak to a woman in that rude and condescending manner?"

But the point never came and he just kept digging.

 

[Axver]

Can we all agree that Mark Latham is a disgusting human being and everybody who employs him are also disgusting human beings?

 

[Vlad n U 2]

Yeah, of course, but what happened this time?

 

[cobl04]

MMM lol who else have given him a podcast or a radio show or something.

It really makes me angry because 9, AFR and MMM all know he's fucking garbage but because he gets people talking they don't give a shit about their duty of care, their duty to not be fucking cunts by hiring a fucking cunt.

 

[Axver]

Oh more Rosie Batty bashing. Seriously Mark, Rosie Batty? You could go after any person, and you choose easily one of the bravest and most courageous women in Australia? You are a filthy and low person and I now wish I'd heckled you the one time I saw you speak.

On a potentially more controversial note for this thread: what's up with this cult of Stan Grant that seems to have developed over the last year or so? I don't find his articles that remarkable and I haven't forgotten that he contributed to the resignation of Mary Kostakidis, this country's greatest newsreader (plus he was just shit on SBS World News and only served to highlight how good Kostakidis was).

 

[Vlad n U 2]

Somewhat amusing that at some point, some bright spark decided to drag him back from humiliating obscurity? I seriously don't believe he was this prominently irritating 5 years ago.

Oh more Rosie Batty bashing. Seriously Mark, Rosie Batty? You could go after any person, and you choose easily one of the bravest and most courageous women in Australia? You are a filthy and low person and I now wish I'd heckled you the one time I saw you speak.

I've noticed an awful lot of hostility towards Rosie Batty from certain sections of society, mainly Liberal/right wing white men.

On a potentially more controversial note for this thread: what's up with this cult of Stan Grant that seems to have developed over the last year or so? I don't find his articles that remarkable and I haven't forgotten that he contributed to the resignation of Mary Kostakidis, this country's greatest newsreader (plus he was just shit on SBS World News and only served to highlight how good Kostakidis was).

I don't know a great deal about him other than his articles and when he owned Rita Panahi in a debate last year. Go on.

 

[cobl04]

Hmm? His article on Goodes last year is one of the best things I've ever read. Don't know much about him aside from him being a respected Indigenous journalist, of which there are far too few. And the Ethics Centre (whose credibility had been questioned by hosting a melted butter Hird interivew) just released a clip of him talking about racism in Australia. I'll watch it tomorrow.

 

[cobl04]

Somewhat amusing that at some point, some bright spark decided to drag him back from humiliating obscurity? I seriously don't believe he was this prominently irritating 5 years ago.



I've noticed an awful lot of hostility towards Rosie Batty from certain sections of society, mainly Liberal/right wing white men.



I don't know a great deal about him other than his articles and when he owned Rita Panahi in a debate last year. Go on.

It's insane to think that he was an ALP prime ministerial candidate. So interesting how much his character has been revealed. Most people would think/expect that of a Liberal person but it's come from a Labour person and he's 10000x more vile than any reasonable Lib I can think of.

ALP men too, Vlad.

Link to him owning Rita?!

 

[Axver]

Somewhat amusing that at some point, some bright spark decided to drag him back from humiliating obscurity? I seriously don't believe he was this prominently irritating 5 years ago.



I've noticed an awful lot of hostility towards Rosie Batty from certain sections of society, mainly Liberal/right wing white men.

I must be lucky: Latham is the only person I've noticed speak against Batty. I can't even fathom what goes through the mind of somebody who wants to criticise a woman who lost her son to domestic violence and then has the fortitude to harness her grief to try to make sure nobody else has to suffer that.

As for Latham himself, he seemed to be doing OK as the columnist who occasionally said something a bit outrageous but not straight-up offensive, then a few years ago he said one straight-up offensive thing and realised that it got him more hits so he just went crazy. It's like one big midlife crisis that keeps getting worse and worse.

I don't know a great deal about him other than his articles and when he owned Rita Panahi in a debate last year. Go on.

My first encounter with Stan Grant was in 2006 when SBS decided that their nightly news should go for an hour and have a co-host - i.e. him - join Mary Kostakidis. Now, I think Kostakidis should be shown to all beginning newsreaders as the example of what to do, like how Richie Benaud defines good sport commentary. It surely says something that in my first year of uni, my housemate and I watched her nightly; what teenage guys would make a point of watching the SBS news bulletin every night? (Plus Lee Lin Chin was on weekends.) So along comes Stan Grant and he just wasn't the newsreader she was. We couldn't understand why they hadn't paired Kostakidis with Anton Enus, the very good newsreader from the late bulletin. And then during 2007 Kostakidis suddenly disappeared and hasn't been on telly since... turned out it was a contractual dispute, that she was meant to have some editorial control and be the primary newsreader, and it was leaked that she accused Grant of bullying. All accusations because it was settled out of court, but in my mind he's just "the crappy newsreader who contributed to Kostakidis's departure".

 

[Vlad n U 2]

I still remember watching the 2004 election, hoping he would win - see at the tender age of 9 I already had an unsinkable hatred for the Libs.

ALP men too, Vlad.

Link to him owning Rita?!

Yeah, no doubt ALP men would fit into that.

Also, you're in luck, I just found it and it was posted only two days ago!

 

[Axver]

I still remember watching the 2004 election, hoping he would win - see at the tender age of 9 I already had an unsinkable hatred for the Libs.

To be fair, I don't think the Mark Latham of 2004 is really the same man as the Mark Latham of 2016. Yes, he was a little crazy, and hindsight would suggest he could've been an even more unhinged PM than Rudd, but most of his more deplorable - as opposed to comical or mildly ridiculous - qualities have come out in the wake of his departure from the ALP leadership and his increasing alienation from 2010s progressivism. How much of his bastardry is innate, and how much of it is in response to the bitter frustration of failure and a sense that he should've been the prime ministerial "champion of the working classes" rather than Rudd?

 

[cobl04]

Also, you're in luck, I just found it and it was posted only two days ago!

Ahh. Same thing that the clip I was just talking about is from. Care to give me a x:xx time? Don't want to sit through it all. Is that Jack Thompson next to Rita?

 

[intedomine]

I remember when Stan Grant hosted Real Life (today tonight's immediate predecessor) on 7 back in 1992! And then he disappeared for about 10-15 years - had some sort of affair with Tracey Holmes or something.

He has always come across as quite the professional to me, quite like him.


Sent from a barge floating through the docks of Dublin

 

[Vlad n U 2]

Ahh. Same thing that the clip I was just talking about is from. Care to give me a x:xx time? Don't want to sit through it all. Is that Jack Thompson next to Rita?

The whole thing is worth watching, I don't specifically remember which part, maybe somewhere in the middle? Yes, that's Jack Thompson, although he took a different view from Panahi despite arguing for the same side.

 

[Axver]

Andrews backs republic push: over to you Malcolm

You know, I am 100% behind Australia becoming a republic (and New Zealand too), but to suggest we're not independent now is a little disingenuous.

Incidentally, this Australia Day seems to have attracted a rather interesting and substantial groundswell of discontent about what Australia is, what it stands for, and where it's going.

 

[cobl04]

The same argument comes up every year and I hope it continues to. I don't think the date will ever be changed because if it does the backlash will be enormous. But I'd love a politician to have the balls to do it.

 

[Axver]

The one thing very few people seem to bother discussing is why we actually need a national day in the first place. Our independence day is already a public holiday - New Year's Day - so with no other date truly capturing the public imagination, do we really need to shoehorn one in?

Just make Don Bradman's birthday a holiday to make up for the loss of a national day and we're cool.

 

[Kieran McConville]

If John Howard had had his way, insulting Don Bradman would have been a little like dissing The Prophet, peace be upon him.

I'm all for a Bradman Day as long as it's a holiday and set to always fall without fail on a Monday.

To be quite blunt, and speaking for myself only, I think I might have become some sort of cynical monarchist-by-convenience. The royal family aren't doing me any harm, I quite like the powerless but all-supreme head of state setup (the governor general being our local placeholder), and I don't know about the likely alternatives. Also, indeed, to the extent that Australia is not completely sovereign and independent, it is due to agreements it has entered into, or economic forces in the wider world. Not, to a historical tie with Great Britain.

 

[Kieran McConville]

We should probably have a Chips Rafferty Day too. Again, a Monday holiday, preferably somewhere late in the year during that public-holiday-drought after July or so.