There is a creeping desperation engulfing many journalists as they realise that more than a week after the election they still have no fucking idea what will happen, who is in charge, or if they'll be able to remember all the names of the independents. Like someone who has lost their balance in the vicinity of a rancid koi pond, they will grasp at anything that will momentarily postpone their inevitable plunge into the murky sludge, chip packets and transparent fish of national irrelevance.
Take for example yesterday's obsession with the utterly meaningless 'seesawing race' of the two-party preferred vote. The whole thing smacked of reporting for reporting sake. Yesterday's stories completely ignored the fact that a whole eight seats were removed from the 2PP count yesterday by the AEC for procedural reasons. So sure, the Coalition was leading on votes, BUT ONLY IF YOU DON'T COUNT ALL OF THE VOTES. Jesus Christ, how about you actually ring someone at the AEC and ask them, instead of just opening the front page of their website and then running to your editor, yelling like a child who just shat in the potty unassisted for the first time?
The AEC is of course, pressured to release 2PP preferred figures even when they know they mean nothing. This is a close election, it will literally be weeks until the correct 2PP is known. We will either have a Government or another election by then so it will make no difference at all. Are we really going to see daily updates in News Ltd for the next three weeks?
Some blame must go to the parties who like to talk this shit up when it's in their favour, like Gillard did the day after the election, and like Julie Bishop did yesterday when she basically claimed the Coalition had won the election. They know that 2PP means nothing and is constitutionally irrelevant. It comes down to numbers in the house, always has, always will. Poor old Antony Green had to come out on his day off and attempt to explain this to people. Let the man sleep for fuck's sake.
In the mean time, while we don't know what's going to happen, how about we just MOVE THE FUCK ON? Did you hear that Rob Palmer won Dancing with the Stars? Who the fuck is that?
Tuesday, August 31, 2010
Sunday, August 29, 2010
Borhung
After little more than a week, the media has already decided that hung parliaments are boring. They said the parliament was 'well hung' in the first five minutes, had a giggle, and now they're out of material. They cannot quite believe that the independents have not yet made a decision. How are they supposed to continue on with their simplistic, piss-weak political 'narrative' pieces if there's no ending to the story?
The opinion writers at the Australian are over it already. "Fuck it, let's just have another election" is the message from the Oz, most notably from that Noddy-haired douche bag Shanahan. Presumably this means the Gillard Government will fall over line, punch drunk, crawling over the floor to the nearest glass of hemlock, but that's another story…sorry…'narrative'. The level of boredom amongst most of the media is palpable.
Initially it was fine. The chaotic 'lack of decision' atmosphere allowed them to run 'New Era of Politics' and 'Rejection of Blah Blah' rubbish to fill in the gaps between celebrity elimination-based game shows. Two or three days in however, things started to get distinctly uninteresting. Watching three old guys they've never heard of sit in a room talking about policy just doesn’t have any cut through. Where’s the arrogant triumphalism of the winners? Where's the wrist-slashing, tear-the-soul-out-of-the-party infighting of the losers? That's why we have elections as far as they're concerned; to watch the bloody aftermath and speculate about bullshit of which they have no idea.
Instead the only material they have to work with is Bob Katter's akubra-seen-from-space, Barnaby Joyce being 'disappeared' by Arthur Sinodinos, and Bill Heffernan admitting to being the Devil to an MP's wife whom he thought was a small child.
Oh sure, that sounds pretty good as a sentence, but try and write a 600 word piece on it while insinuating that Tony Abbott is the only viable Prime Minister. Absolute murder.
The opinion writers at the Australian are over it already. "Fuck it, let's just have another election" is the message from the Oz, most notably from that Noddy-haired douche bag Shanahan. Presumably this means the Gillard Government will fall over line, punch drunk, crawling over the floor to the nearest glass of hemlock, but that's another story…sorry…'narrative'. The level of boredom amongst most of the media is palpable.
Initially it was fine. The chaotic 'lack of decision' atmosphere allowed them to run 'New Era of Politics' and 'Rejection of Blah Blah' rubbish to fill in the gaps between celebrity elimination-based game shows. Two or three days in however, things started to get distinctly uninteresting. Watching three old guys they've never heard of sit in a room talking about policy just doesn’t have any cut through. Where’s the arrogant triumphalism of the winners? Where's the wrist-slashing, tear-the-soul-out-of-the-party infighting of the losers? That's why we have elections as far as they're concerned; to watch the bloody aftermath and speculate about bullshit of which they have no idea.
Instead the only material they have to work with is Bob Katter's akubra-seen-from-space, Barnaby Joyce being 'disappeared' by Arthur Sinodinos, and Bill Heffernan admitting to being the Devil to an MP's wife whom he thought was a small child.
Oh sure, that sounds pretty good as a sentence, but try and write a 600 word piece on it while insinuating that Tony Abbott is the only viable Prime Minister. Absolute murder.
Friday, August 27, 2010
Field of Delusions
If there is one thing that the 2010 Federal Election did not have enough of, other than content, it was truly moronic things said by Senator Stephen Fielding. Aside from a bewildering ad preaching Family First as 'common sense without the violence' (like saying rational thinking without the crack smoking), and claiming that The Greens want 'injecting rooms on every corner' while attempting to explain dry, complex preference deals, Steve Fielding just didn't say enough dumb shit for my liking.
But you can't keep a good simpleton down and, true to form, Fielding has come out and unleashed another gem of political idiocy. He has threatened to block supply when: there's no supply to block, he doesn't have the numbers to block it if there was AND he's just been voted out of parliament. What a mandate!
This is Lyndon Larouche scale political delusion. Obviously he wants to take his ball and go home, except it's not his ball, nobody invited him to play and he's a no-friends fuck-tard whom everyone hates.
Of course, Fielding is still a Senator until July, 10 months to bask in his 2 percent vote haul from six years ago. He still believes he has time to hold someone to ransom … anyone really, as long as it’s for something ridiculous.
"Will someone please be my electoral hostage? Why can’t I jeopardise the nation's very economic stability to reintroduce some arcane religious law banning the petting of cats in mixed company?”
“Why won’t you let me live? Please let me live. Let me live by making your life harder.”
And before all the major party hangers-on agree with me and bitch at how such a moron could have stumbled into an almost balance of power situation, remember that it was the Labor Party who put him there with a preference deal that has bitten everyone right between the cheeks.
Stephen Fielding may be a national disgrace, but putting the man in the Senate was an international embarrassment.
But you can't keep a good simpleton down and, true to form, Fielding has come out and unleashed another gem of political idiocy. He has threatened to block supply when: there's no supply to block, he doesn't have the numbers to block it if there was AND he's just been voted out of parliament. What a mandate!
This is Lyndon Larouche scale political delusion. Obviously he wants to take his ball and go home, except it's not his ball, nobody invited him to play and he's a no-friends fuck-tard whom everyone hates.
Of course, Fielding is still a Senator until July, 10 months to bask in his 2 percent vote haul from six years ago. He still believes he has time to hold someone to ransom … anyone really, as long as it’s for something ridiculous.
"Will someone please be my electoral hostage? Why can’t I jeopardise the nation's very economic stability to reintroduce some arcane religious law banning the petting of cats in mixed company?”
“Why won’t you let me live? Please let me live. Let me live by making your life harder.”
And before all the major party hangers-on agree with me and bitch at how such a moron could have stumbled into an almost balance of power situation, remember that it was the Labor Party who put him there with a preference deal that has bitten everyone right between the cheeks.
Stephen Fielding may be a national disgrace, but putting the man in the Senate was an international embarrassment.
Wednesday, August 25, 2010
Arbibtruary
As faceless men go, he is the most faceless of all. His eyebrows have already disappeared, sucked into the vortex of his ruthless and soulless ambition. His nose, mouth and eyes will soon follow and he will become literally vacuus vultus – empty face. He is Mark Arbib, and he is the reason the impending apocalypse can be described as 'not all bad.'
Arbib represents the disconnection between the Australian populace and the political machine. He is utterly contemptible and unelectable however, he is a powerbroker, a chooser of Prime Ministers and a Senator. Like a vicious joke where you begin laughing but end up convulsed with grief. It's well known in politics that if want to put a snivelling cunt, an evil bastard or an unreconstructed socialist into parliament, you put them at the top of a major party's senate ticket. That is how such unrepresentative swill make their way into parliament.
What do these people achieve in parliament? The answer is nothing. They do not usually take ministries, they do not usually spearhead legislation, they sit in dark rooms and plan the next knifing, to be followed by the ascendancy of the person whom they have the most dirt on. When Julia Gillard pulled Arbib from Q and A on Monday the ABC picked the best possible replacement – an empty chair. Because that's what Mark Arbib is: empty…an empty chair.
A hung parliament is the only time in which power is removed from people like Arbib, so for now he will wither. He will however, survive. Just as cockroaches will survive the blessed nuclear apocalypse, so will Arbib survive this 'stable' minority government. He will emerge, sustained by the evacuated faeces of the dead, to once again take the shadowy throne of hackery.
These men will never go away, not when it is so easy to number that one box above the line and so hard to care enough to do anything else. Enjoy the brief loosening of their chokehold, before they once again tighten their grip, and suck the life out of puppies everywhere.
Arbib represents the disconnection between the Australian populace and the political machine. He is utterly contemptible and unelectable however, he is a powerbroker, a chooser of Prime Ministers and a Senator. Like a vicious joke where you begin laughing but end up convulsed with grief. It's well known in politics that if want to put a snivelling cunt, an evil bastard or an unreconstructed socialist into parliament, you put them at the top of a major party's senate ticket. That is how such unrepresentative swill make their way into parliament.
What do these people achieve in parliament? The answer is nothing. They do not usually take ministries, they do not usually spearhead legislation, they sit in dark rooms and plan the next knifing, to be followed by the ascendancy of the person whom they have the most dirt on. When Julia Gillard pulled Arbib from Q and A on Monday the ABC picked the best possible replacement – an empty chair. Because that's what Mark Arbib is: empty…an empty chair.
A hung parliament is the only time in which power is removed from people like Arbib, so for now he will wither. He will however, survive. Just as cockroaches will survive the blessed nuclear apocalypse, so will Arbib survive this 'stable' minority government. He will emerge, sustained by the evacuated faeces of the dead, to once again take the shadowy throne of hackery.
These men will never go away, not when it is so easy to number that one box above the line and so hard to care enough to do anything else. Enjoy the brief loosening of their chokehold, before they once again tighten their grip, and suck the life out of puppies everywhere.
Monday, August 23, 2010
A Conga Line of Suckholes
As the parties prepare for the suck-up of all suck-ups, and the independents begin listing demands to turn back boats full of Filipinos (bananas that is), install an ETS (Excessive Tariffs and Socialism) or a CPRS (Cash and Pork Barrelling for Regional Shitholes), many are saying that Saturday's non-result is good for democracy.
I don't know about good. Interesting for democracy? Maybe. Annoying for democracy? Definitely. Proof that the politics of campaigns has become so confused that no one knows what anyone stands for anymore? Abso-fucking-lutely.
The fact that people could not find difference between Julia Gillard and Tony Abbott is a searing indictment on the leaders, how the media reported the campaign and how the public informed themselves. It's like the leaders shat in the same hole and the media picked through random turds to throw at you in the newsbreak between Dancing with the Stars and Australia's Next Top Boot Scooter. The people decided to make no decision and now we are faced with the possible nightmare situation where this election will not fucking end.
Independent Robert Oakeshott has suggested a Government of National Unity. The fact that people think that will work shows just how the parties have succeeded in suppressing their ideology from the public. If the parties have no ideology there is no passion, and if there is no passion we get the sort of brain-mush creating bland-a-thons we have just witnessed. But people abhor ideology in politics, because it would force them to think about their own. A self-interested electorate produces self-interested political parties, and that is what we have.
Do not expect a workable anything out of whatever ragtag administration is produced out of this clusterfuck. It will only be a matter of time before Bob Katter realises that whoever he's in bed with will not reintroduce agricultural trade tariffs, or legislate a xenophobic banana policy and that will be it: election time again.
Another race to the bottom, in a bottomless pit of meaningless shit.
I don't know about good. Interesting for democracy? Maybe. Annoying for democracy? Definitely. Proof that the politics of campaigns has become so confused that no one knows what anyone stands for anymore? Abso-fucking-lutely.
The fact that people could not find difference between Julia Gillard and Tony Abbott is a searing indictment on the leaders, how the media reported the campaign and how the public informed themselves. It's like the leaders shat in the same hole and the media picked through random turds to throw at you in the newsbreak between Dancing with the Stars and Australia's Next Top Boot Scooter. The people decided to make no decision and now we are faced with the possible nightmare situation where this election will not fucking end.
Independent Robert Oakeshott has suggested a Government of National Unity. The fact that people think that will work shows just how the parties have succeeded in suppressing their ideology from the public. If the parties have no ideology there is no passion, and if there is no passion we get the sort of brain-mush creating bland-a-thons we have just witnessed. But people abhor ideology in politics, because it would force them to think about their own. A self-interested electorate produces self-interested political parties, and that is what we have.
Do not expect a workable anything out of whatever ragtag administration is produced out of this clusterfuck. It will only be a matter of time before Bob Katter realises that whoever he's in bed with will not reintroduce agricultural trade tariffs, or legislate a xenophobic banana policy and that will be it: election time again.
Another race to the bottom, in a bottomless pit of meaningless shit.
Sunday, August 22, 2010
The Government We Deserve
We've got it. After all the bullshit we finally got the government we deserve: no government at all.
What other result could we have had after a campaign like that? I say, without hyperbole, that this campaign was the most negative, bland, disingenuous, insider gang-bang of self-important fuck-tards in the history of democracy. Okay, so maybe that is hyperbole but fuck it, it's warranted.
I have punched more walls in the past two weeks than I did in my entire tenure at high school.
The electorate has delivered a message so confused that only one thing is sure – no one was really paying attention anyway. And why would they? This election would have disillusioned even the most hard-bitten party hack. Mark Arbib is sobbing into his bag of flavourless energy gel he uses for sustenance in place of food. Nick Minchin is being packed away in some closet in South Australia, even his soulless internal circuitry can not handle the tide of existential sadness.
Only Mark Latham, freshly off the meds (or on them, who can tell?) was smiling on Sunday morning, and even then that was probably because he had just witnessed a massacre of all those who had crossed him. The first step to being king shit of fuck mountain, I can almost guarantee he will run as an independent at the next election.
The next election will be sooner than you think as well, because whoever manages to pull government out of this immense stinking bog will be able to achieve absolutely nothing. If it's Gillard, she will face conservative independents in the lower house, and the Greens in the senate. If it's Abbott, Bob Brown will continuously shit in his lunch and Bob Katter will not let him sleep until Northern Queensland has returned to a system of agrarian socialism.
Nothing will happen, everything will stay the same, we will remain in stasis, and the people will be happy. "Shut-up, leave me alone and tell me when Masterchef starts again." That's the message from the electorate.
And they will reap what they sow.
What other result could we have had after a campaign like that? I say, without hyperbole, that this campaign was the most negative, bland, disingenuous, insider gang-bang of self-important fuck-tards in the history of democracy. Okay, so maybe that is hyperbole but fuck it, it's warranted.
I have punched more walls in the past two weeks than I did in my entire tenure at high school.
The electorate has delivered a message so confused that only one thing is sure – no one was really paying attention anyway. And why would they? This election would have disillusioned even the most hard-bitten party hack. Mark Arbib is sobbing into his bag of flavourless energy gel he uses for sustenance in place of food. Nick Minchin is being packed away in some closet in South Australia, even his soulless internal circuitry can not handle the tide of existential sadness.
Only Mark Latham, freshly off the meds (or on them, who can tell?) was smiling on Sunday morning, and even then that was probably because he had just witnessed a massacre of all those who had crossed him. The first step to being king shit of fuck mountain, I can almost guarantee he will run as an independent at the next election.
The next election will be sooner than you think as well, because whoever manages to pull government out of this immense stinking bog will be able to achieve absolutely nothing. If it's Gillard, she will face conservative independents in the lower house, and the Greens in the senate. If it's Abbott, Bob Brown will continuously shit in his lunch and Bob Katter will not let him sleep until Northern Queensland has returned to a system of agrarian socialism.
Nothing will happen, everything will stay the same, we will remain in stasis, and the people will be happy. "Shut-up, leave me alone and tell me when Masterchef starts again." That's the message from the electorate.
And they will reap what they sow.
Wednesday, August 18, 2010
It's Everyone's Fault
Mark Latham is insane [please note that Mark Latham is not actually insane].
But as I said: insane. If you were going to donkey vote, would you really leave it blank? In encouraging electors to leave their ballot blank he has shown to be completely bereft of imagination. The ‘ultimate protest vote’, is he kidding? Has this man never heard of a C & B? An intricate doodle of the candidates playing sausage and clam? A write-in vote for…I don’t know…Mark Latham?
For all the sneering press and crazy-eyed-lunging-at-the-PM grandstanding, Latham’s special report was a boring pile of old toss. He pined for times when politics meant something. Like in 2004, when it was exactly the same as it is now.
Oddly he didn’t really blame the media, presumably because he now believes himself to be one of them. In the end he took the easy route and just blamed the major parties. Well woop-ti-fucking-doo. Because the parties control everything don’t they? They want campaigns to be like this, because soul destroying six week trudges through fields of bullshit is exactly why they got into politics.
It’s easy to blame the major parties, and the media, for the lack of policy information in election campaigns, because they are the ones who deliver the verbal excrement. But what of the individuals who lap it up like some sort of deranged, coprophagic animal with a $500000 mortgage? Why would the parties behave like this, why would the media report like this, if there was not an audience for it?
Are they doing it because they hate us? No, they are doing it because they understand people and their pathetic, small minded culture. This is the strategy that works, and you can’t blame them for using it.
The fact of the matter is that the first party to run a positive, fact-based, intelligent campaign with well articulated policy would be blown out of the water by the next boat that pitches up in Australian waters full of people who have the audacity to want a better life.
It’s the major parties’ fault, it’s the media’s fault and it’s your fault.
We’re all fucked, God is dead and we’re alone. Leaving your ballot blank will not change that.
But as I said: insane. If you were going to donkey vote, would you really leave it blank? In encouraging electors to leave their ballot blank he has shown to be completely bereft of imagination. The ‘ultimate protest vote’, is he kidding? Has this man never heard of a C & B? An intricate doodle of the candidates playing sausage and clam? A write-in vote for…I don’t know…Mark Latham?
For all the sneering press and crazy-eyed-lunging-at-the-PM grandstanding, Latham’s special report was a boring pile of old toss. He pined for times when politics meant something. Like in 2004, when it was exactly the same as it is now.
Oddly he didn’t really blame the media, presumably because he now believes himself to be one of them. In the end he took the easy route and just blamed the major parties. Well woop-ti-fucking-doo. Because the parties control everything don’t they? They want campaigns to be like this, because soul destroying six week trudges through fields of bullshit is exactly why they got into politics.
It’s easy to blame the major parties, and the media, for the lack of policy information in election campaigns, because they are the ones who deliver the verbal excrement. But what of the individuals who lap it up like some sort of deranged, coprophagic animal with a $500000 mortgage? Why would the parties behave like this, why would the media report like this, if there was not an audience for it?
Are they doing it because they hate us? No, they are doing it because they understand people and their pathetic, small minded culture. This is the strategy that works, and you can’t blame them for using it.
The fact of the matter is that the first party to run a positive, fact-based, intelligent campaign with well articulated policy would be blown out of the water by the next boat that pitches up in Australian waters full of people who have the audacity to want a better life.
It’s the major parties’ fault, it’s the media’s fault and it’s your fault.
We’re all fucked, God is dead and we’re alone. Leaving your ballot blank will not change that.
Sunday, August 15, 2010
The Millstone of Civic Duty
Get ready.
It’s the final week.
Just think, in seven days you can go back to not caring. All of a sudden people will stop telling you that boats are arriving, so you’ll stop complaining about the boats arriving. People will no longer tell you that immigration rates are too high, so you’ll stop thinking that Australia is being flooded with whatever supposed social detritus you hate this week. You won’t have to pretend to watch the 7:30 Report anymore.
In one week we will move into Australia’s favour part of the election cycle: the part that is furthest away from the next election. You will stop feeling pressured to make decisions about things you don’t care about, you will not have to know anything, anymore.
You will have put your vote to auction: going once, going twice, sold! – To the party with the best grasp of how to interpret results from a marginal electorate focus group full of swinging vote arsehats.
People like me will go away. We’ll stop starting Facebook arguments when you say something ridiculous. We’ll stop sending links you to news stories that you would never read anyway. We’ll stop giving you that strange look when you ask if the election has happened yet. For two and a half years we’ll be back in our box. Where we belong.
Masterchef will be back. You’ll get to see people cook things, and then see fat people in cravats eat them. That bald Greek guy will tell you to buy things from Coles. And you will. There’ll be dancing shows, and that one where they sing. People will cry, lose weight and win Hyundais through deception.
But then that time will come again. People will start telling you things. That guy Antony Green will appear again, what's with that guy? Those ads will come on TV again. Is it State or Federal this time? Who cares? It will be annoying, and someone else will have to take the kids to their football/rugby/just get them out of the house/soccer that Saturday morning. I’ll make them pay for asking my opinion. Why can’t they just stop the boats and leave me alone?
Isn’t democracy a bitch?
It’s the final week.
Just think, in seven days you can go back to not caring. All of a sudden people will stop telling you that boats are arriving, so you’ll stop complaining about the boats arriving. People will no longer tell you that immigration rates are too high, so you’ll stop thinking that Australia is being flooded with whatever supposed social detritus you hate this week. You won’t have to pretend to watch the 7:30 Report anymore.
In one week we will move into Australia’s favour part of the election cycle: the part that is furthest away from the next election. You will stop feeling pressured to make decisions about things you don’t care about, you will not have to know anything, anymore.
You will have put your vote to auction: going once, going twice, sold! – To the party with the best grasp of how to interpret results from a marginal electorate focus group full of swinging vote arsehats.
People like me will go away. We’ll stop starting Facebook arguments when you say something ridiculous. We’ll stop sending links you to news stories that you would never read anyway. We’ll stop giving you that strange look when you ask if the election has happened yet. For two and a half years we’ll be back in our box. Where we belong.
Masterchef will be back. You’ll get to see people cook things, and then see fat people in cravats eat them. That bald Greek guy will tell you to buy things from Coles. And you will. There’ll be dancing shows, and that one where they sing. People will cry, lose weight and win Hyundais through deception.
But then that time will come again. People will start telling you things. That guy Antony Green will appear again, what's with that guy? Those ads will come on TV again. Is it State or Federal this time? Who cares? It will be annoying, and someone else will have to take the kids to their football/rugby/just get them out of the house/soccer that Saturday morning. I’ll make them pay for asking my opinion. Why can’t they just stop the boats and leave me alone?
Isn’t democracy a bitch?
Tuesday, August 10, 2010
Q's Without A's
12 days to go. How can there still be 12 days to go? It feels like they are repeating themselves already.
"I'm the most unrelenting and heartless on humanitarian issues that have no affect on the average voter, and in fact represents a broader insecurity that their well-funded, insular lifestyle is thoroughly undeserved."
"No I'M the most unrelenting and heartless on humanitarian issues that have no affect on the average voter, and in fact represents a broader insecurity that their well-funded, insular lifestyle is thoroughly undeserved…..and I hate women."
Over and over again with the same dross, like a three week projectile vomit of tepid scheme water. Only Q and A on the ABC has produced anything resembling decent performance from someone who counts. Even then most of them were akin to inoffensive dog shit – white, brittle and completely devoid of character. Not that I can watch Q and A anyway, as I can not stand the smug, self-important audience members who think that just because they can ask a loaded political question without stumbling, Tony Jones might give them a collegial wristy after the show.
SBS's Insight is no better, and in fact is much worse. Where Q and A merely allows the idiots to ask questions, Insight actually asks their opinion. It does so while discussing issues so intractable that you already know what people are going to say. It is a complete waste of time and is just plain infuriating. If I hear one more supposedly spontaneous round of applause for a comment so pathetically mundane that it could have appeared in an Australia Democrats advertising campaign, I will take out my machete and go a-hacking. Hands are a privilege, not a right. Tell it to someone who cares stumpy (this also goes for imbeciles who clap out of time at concerts).
"Tonight on Insight we discuss the Israel and Palestine conflict – Is there a solution?"
I don’t know, probably not, but if there was it is not going to be found on SBS on a Tuesday night. They might as well discuss "Abbott versus Howard – who is the bigger shithead?" or "Wilson Tuckey and Barnaby Joyce – who is the most likely to have a bunker filled with bottled water?" It's all the same meaningless bullshit that leaves people exactly where they started. Entrenched in views cunningly chosen when they thought it would impress someone they wanted to fuck.
And this is the stuff most people deem 'too intellectual'.
Learn to swim.
"I'm the most unrelenting and heartless on humanitarian issues that have no affect on the average voter, and in fact represents a broader insecurity that their well-funded, insular lifestyle is thoroughly undeserved."
"No I'M the most unrelenting and heartless on humanitarian issues that have no affect on the average voter, and in fact represents a broader insecurity that their well-funded, insular lifestyle is thoroughly undeserved…..and I hate women."
Over and over again with the same dross, like a three week projectile vomit of tepid scheme water. Only Q and A on the ABC has produced anything resembling decent performance from someone who counts. Even then most of them were akin to inoffensive dog shit – white, brittle and completely devoid of character. Not that I can watch Q and A anyway, as I can not stand the smug, self-important audience members who think that just because they can ask a loaded political question without stumbling, Tony Jones might give them a collegial wristy after the show.
SBS's Insight is no better, and in fact is much worse. Where Q and A merely allows the idiots to ask questions, Insight actually asks their opinion. It does so while discussing issues so intractable that you already know what people are going to say. It is a complete waste of time and is just plain infuriating. If I hear one more supposedly spontaneous round of applause for a comment so pathetically mundane that it could have appeared in an Australia Democrats advertising campaign, I will take out my machete and go a-hacking. Hands are a privilege, not a right. Tell it to someone who cares stumpy (this also goes for imbeciles who clap out of time at concerts).
"Tonight on Insight we discuss the Israel and Palestine conflict – Is there a solution?"
I don’t know, probably not, but if there was it is not going to be found on SBS on a Tuesday night. They might as well discuss "Abbott versus Howard – who is the bigger shithead?" or "Wilson Tuckey and Barnaby Joyce – who is the most likely to have a bunker filled with bottled water?" It's all the same meaningless bullshit that leaves people exactly where they started. Entrenched in views cunningly chosen when they thought it would impress someone they wanted to fuck.
And this is the stuff most people deem 'too intellectual'.
Learn to swim.
Tuesday, August 3, 2010
Policy, Pollie Don't
In an election campaign as bereft of intelligence as say, I don't know…the last election; I find the lack of policy focus from both politicians and media alike thoroughly unsurprising. As we progress inevitably towards the point where society finally crumbles and rampant, sexually charged animism begins, election campaigns will continue to get dumber.
Political lame-arses like myself are being continually confronted with the prospect that to claim to like elections will be similar to claiming that one is interested in some rather uninspired pornographic theatre troupe. Recently it has become almost impossible to adequately talk about politics in the presence of sharp objects, lest one of the participants were to repeatedly stab themselves in the crown to release the homogenised mush that has been mercilessly fed into their consciousness.
It upsets me such a level that I fear I will become one of those people who state with proud banality that: "I don’t care about politics" or "Politics doesn't really affect me" or "I am merely a shell designed to reproduce and to search out the utopia of a 'pub-style parma' at home."
Increasingly, elections have moved away from people like me, they are not aimed at anyone with a particular set of world-views. The reason for this is that elections are not decided by people who possess any sort of consistent ideology. If, with a little under three weeks to go, you know who you are going to vote for, this election is not about you and never has been. If, for you, going to your old primary school on a random Saturday with 4-6 weeks warning can only be viewed as the most hideous of chores then pay attention: there's baby bonuses to be had.
If anyone has ever wondered why politicians offer thinly veiled bribes to buy votes at election time without shame, it is because there are people who literally have their votes for sale. It's thoroughly ironic to me that in a country that seems, at least in the last few decades, to value the trait of patriotism, that people are perfectly willing to declare naked self interest when deciding their vote. They usually do this on one of those terrible Today Tonight/A Current Affair election stories, which temporarily deny the need of viewers to know about shonky tradies and how to feed the family for less than $100. These are the people who decide elections, and will forever more.
And yet on Election Day I'll be standing at a primary school, handing out leaflets trying to woo these very people. Who's the idiot now?
Political lame-arses like myself are being continually confronted with the prospect that to claim to like elections will be similar to claiming that one is interested in some rather uninspired pornographic theatre troupe. Recently it has become almost impossible to adequately talk about politics in the presence of sharp objects, lest one of the participants were to repeatedly stab themselves in the crown to release the homogenised mush that has been mercilessly fed into their consciousness.
It upsets me such a level that I fear I will become one of those people who state with proud banality that: "I don’t care about politics" or "Politics doesn't really affect me" or "I am merely a shell designed to reproduce and to search out the utopia of a 'pub-style parma' at home."
Increasingly, elections have moved away from people like me, they are not aimed at anyone with a particular set of world-views. The reason for this is that elections are not decided by people who possess any sort of consistent ideology. If, with a little under three weeks to go, you know who you are going to vote for, this election is not about you and never has been. If, for you, going to your old primary school on a random Saturday with 4-6 weeks warning can only be viewed as the most hideous of chores then pay attention: there's baby bonuses to be had.
If anyone has ever wondered why politicians offer thinly veiled bribes to buy votes at election time without shame, it is because there are people who literally have their votes for sale. It's thoroughly ironic to me that in a country that seems, at least in the last few decades, to value the trait of patriotism, that people are perfectly willing to declare naked self interest when deciding their vote. They usually do this on one of those terrible Today Tonight/A Current Affair election stories, which temporarily deny the need of viewers to know about shonky tradies and how to feed the family for less than $100. These are the people who decide elections, and will forever more.
And yet on Election Day I'll be standing at a primary school, handing out leaflets trying to woo these very people. Who's the idiot now?
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