Saturday, March 31, 2012

Kyle Sandilands slapped with creepy, patronising ACMA ban

I thought that the social engineers determined to control Australians' thoughts and feelings had decided to focus pretty much entirely on race lately. But they haven't forgotten gender, as their censorious ruling on perennial bad boy Kyle Sandilands attests:

The Australian Communications and Media Authority has ordered Sandilands not to say anything that could be regarded as offensive or demeaning to women or girls.

That is an expansive decree that is very much open to interpretation. Different women get indignant about different things, after all. Say Kyle starts ranting about abortion. If Sandilands says that it should be outlawed he will outrage heaps of lefty feminist, pro-choice women. And if he says that those who oppose it are ultra-religious throwbacks he will offend conservative right-to-life women.

And that's just one issue that relates to chickdom. There are squillions of 'em!

Even if he tries his damnedest not to be offensive, it's likely that Kyle will rile a certain proportion of his female audience. So whose miffed feelings will be deemed more deserving of some sort of official response? I suspect that those who are more left-wing and PC will get a more sympathetic ear. Hell, they'll be more likely to arc up about him in the first place since bleating about stuff that most sane, independent-minded women find trivial is pretty much all they do anyway...

But back to the ruling itself. I love this aspect of it:

Neither the authority nor Austereo is revealing what Sandilands and his colleagues cannot say.

So, they've issued this ruling in the interests of Australia's females. But the so-called beneficiaries of it aren't actually allowed to know what it consists of. The media thought police are saying: "We know what's good for you, women and girls. But you don't need to know. Don't let it worry your pretty little heads, okay!"

I know that according to today's laws of offense taking, I'm immediately disqualified from having an opinion on such matters on account of my gender. Still, I've gotta say that I find the secretive subtext of ACMA's ruling deeply offensive to women -- even more offensive than the noxious rant of Kyle's that provoked the ban in the first place.

Friday, March 30, 2012

Michael Bernard Kelly condemns anti-gay mariage campaign

I'm an atheist, however I've definitely become very sympathetic to the Catholic church in its battle to maintain the traditional concept of marriage as being between a man and a woman.

It's fair enough that people should be able to question that idea, but the way that gay marriage extremists repeatedly slime their ideological opponents as homophobic is truly revolting. And their arrogance is almost beyond belief.

Take their reaction to the campaign by Victorian Catholic bishops to get their parishioners to denounce a couple of gay marriage bills before Parliament. Organizations have a right to participate in the political process and launching a grass roots, letter writing campaign is pretty standard stuff. Hell, the cultural Left do this kind of thing all the time (as well as indulging in a whole host of other tactics, many of which are dodgy as all get out).

Ye the po-faced proponents of political correctness see this justified action as inherently bad and wrong. They are, er, lefteously indignant that their radical demands meet any resistance at all. Gay Catholic author Michale Bernard Kelly, for example, had this to say:

"The Catholic hierarchy also has a lot of housekeeping of its own to do in terms of dealing with issues of sexuality and power before it starts trying to tell gay people or society as a whole what it should be doing," he said.

The finger-wagging arrogance is astonishing, isn't it? Talk about being holier than thou! He's preaching to the preachers about what they can and cannot preach. If anyone's qualified to sermonize on what marriage means to Catholics, then it's the bishops themselves isn't it?

I've long found this right-on condemnation from within the church quite amazing. I mean, if you define yourself so strongly by your homosexuality, and that is the very thing that results in your sense of alienation from other Catholics, then why the hell would you want to be one anyway? It's like the inverse of that great Groucho Marx line: Why would you want to join a club that wouldn't have you as a member

Next thing you know there'll be "Catholic atheists" demanding to be ordained as priests, shrieking that they're victims of discrimination when their applications fail.

Jeb Corliss, proximity flyer, is completely and utterly insane

Watched a fascinating documentary last night about a young bloke called Jeb Corliss. This guy is hooked on adrenaline like you just wouldn't believe. He's into proximity flying, which basically involves jumping from massive structures or out of helicopters way up in the sky and impersonating a sugar glider.

Bloke is so crazy, he glided down the side of the bloody Mattherhorn -- and with a freshly busted hand to boot! I thought that was his most extreme achievement, but he's gone one better and flown through a hole in a mountain in China.

I suspect that Corliss is just going to keep on upping the ante. Which is why I can't seem him surviving for much longer.

But if he does learn to be a bit more sensible, and scale back to the comparative safety of run-of-the-mill, bog standard base jumping for example, then he may actually reach a ripe old age. Though it won't be a very happy one, I suspect.

PS: If the video below isn't enough to leave you completely slack jawed in awe then check out this close call, in which he nearly cleans up a photographer

Wednesday, March 14, 2012

Tanya Plibersek and Mick Gooda on Q&A

As we all know the smug, sneering cowards and bullies of the politically correct Left gravitate towards the ABC's Q&A like blowflies to a sheep's backside. Buzzing with faux indignation, they accumulate there both on the panel and in the audience. Tune in to the show on a Monday evening and you are sure to be treated to some truly world class smuggery.

Take this effort from an audience member:

MARK TOZER: Thank. As a young gay male, I’ve contemplated suicide because I used to believe what I felt was wrong. I just want to know why do we allow people who espouse such openly discriminatory policies, such as Bob Katter's opposition to gay marriage, to hold public office when it sends a message that one person does not deserve the same rights as another and may lead to more young Australians taking their lives?

It may seem unfair to criticize someone who tried to top himself (which is exactly why he included that bit of information, I suspect). But if he's emotionally robust enough to make his point on national television, then he deserves to be called out on it. And what utter nonsense it was.

First, you've gotta wonder who comprises the Orwellian "we" he referred to in his question. It's certainly not a majority of Australians who would wish to see Katter banned from holding political office. I suspect most think the loopy Queenslander is a tool for using such nasty insinuations in his ad. But they'd much rather let him continue to beclown himself and ultimately lose electoral support. It's a process called democracy.

And this idea that Katter's homophobia -- and by implication his ad attacking Campbell Newman -- could lead to people taking their lives is just too silly for words. If a stupid 30 second attack ad can cause you to end your own life, well, you're almost certainly in a psychotic state already and need to be hospitalized, pronto.

Not to be outdone, Mick Gooda took the victim angle and ran with it hard:

But it’s the same - people have got to understand the impact that these comments have on people. You know, this is a human issue and all of a sudden we’re just playing this card, the homophobic card, just to get a few votes and, like Malcolm said, I don't know who is the beneficiary of this except I think - I know who the victims are here and it’s the homosexual community.

So the ad was so powerfully oppressive, it left actual victims in its wake. Oh, the humanity!

And who comprises this "homosexual community" of which he speaks? There's no doubt that gays are not all as offended as he may think. Some don't even believe in gay marriage for starters, and many are glad that the Mad Katter is free to broadcast his self-satire so that they can laugh openly at him.

And speaking of "communities": Gooda is the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Social Justice Commissioner. The attitude of the "Aboriginal community" to gay marriage, or homosexuality in general, may be something to consider here. Knowing how women and children are treated in traditional communities, it may be that when it comes to the treatment of gays, a teensy weensy bit of the "attitudinal reconstruction" so beloved of Gooda and his ideological ilk might just be in order.

Then Tanya Plibersek chipped in with some sterling sanctimony of her own:

TANYA PLIBERSEK: The second thing I’d say about this ad is it is kind of curious still that Andrew Bolt and even my dear friend Malcolm are focused on what it does to Campbell Newman not what it does to gay men and lesbians watching it.

Well why wouldn't they? The whole political point of the ad is to smear Newman, after all.

And the accusation is not correct, anyway. Bolt himself was mindful of the underlying attitudes to gays and lesbians it revealed:

But I suspect he may now have finally done his dash with the media thanks to his new party’s vile ad, openly and shamelessly appealing to homophobia. 

Plibersek continues: 

I think there's a few things that you always see in commercials or commercial TV to show that someone’s guilty of something. You know, they do the slow motion, they bring in the dun, dun, dun music and they pixelate.

Ah, yes, the dun, dun, dun  music. Reminds me of how the ABC introduces climate change sceptics on shows like Four Corners.

They’ve pixelated a picture of two men hugging as though it is a criminal or offensive thing and so I think that that ad is the subconscious message, even the quite overt message is that there’s something very wrong with same-sex relationships.

Again, she's not quite right here. While the pixelation was almost certainly used to imply something revolting about the relationship between the two men this appears to be a secondary aim. The main reason was clearly to obscure the fake breasts and womb that one bloke was wearing.

Later in the show, Plibersek sneekily implied that another panelist was racist when he talked about Australian history going back only 200 years:

TANYA PLIBERSEK: Look, no particular flood event, no particular year's weather proves climate change. You’ve got to look over the long term but what we see over the long term is that the globe is warming and that extreme weather events are becoming more common. I also wanted to say that we’ve been here a lot longer than 200 years and we might want to talk about that later.

Lefties just looove taking offense on behalf of a group they don't represent in response to bigotry that isn't actually expressed, don't they? They'll play the racism card every chance they get.

Interestingly, this same nasty, dishonest tactic was employed by "Count" Paul Grabowsky on the exact same show the week before.

I'll bet that's where she was reminded of it. I can see her gimlet eyes lighting up as she gave herself a mental memo: "Oh yes, that's a good one! Remember to use that if you get the chance!"

These people are grotesque. They're not just cowards and bullies; they are so bereft of ideas they even plagiarize each other's smears.

Tuesday, March 13, 2012

Bob Katter's homophobic ad's stock photos provoke stock outrage

I agree that this ad for Bob Katter's Australian Party is homophobic. Still, I do think people are overreacting to it. Some are so inordinately indignant that even the identities and opinions of the two shirtless men in the ad have now become part of the story:

The image used in the anti-gay marriage ad can be found on the website of an international stock images agency, and involved the men posing with the breasts and a pregnant stomach - something that was pixellated out of the Katter Australia party advertisements.

It is believed the men did not know their image had been used in this manner.


Eh? Like it was some sort of egregious violation of their human rights or something.

Of course they wouldn't know. It was a bloody stock photo! Katter's ad man had every right to use it in whatever way he wanted, having bought the rights to do so.

Some assiduous hack even went to the trouble of finding out who took the photo in the first place:

The photographer behind the image, Franck Camhi, told the Sydney Morning Herald the photos were of two friends, who were not a couple, taken to illustrate the gay adoption issue.

Mr Camhi said he sold the pictures through an online image library and said he was against the images being used for this purpose and would contact the agency to try to stop them being used.

"I am against the use of it personally and if I can stop it I will," he said.


Franck, mate, if you don't want your photos used in ways you might find a tad offensive you shouldn't sell them to an online image library in the first place! Gawd, if everyone was so petty and controlling about where their snaps might end up an entire online industry would go belly up overnight.

Actually, this kerfuffle reminds me of the sadly deceased hoax blogger Alene Composta. I recall some blogger or journo saying that her image was seen in an online ad for genital warts. That makes it likely that it was also a stock image.

I'd imagine this woman (or the photographer who took the shot of her) might have been mighty offended as well -- what with countless people thinking she suffered an unmentionable STD, and others believing her to be a lonely agorophobic depressive who ended up committing suicide.

But did anyone even wonder what she might have felt? Nup. Obviously, no one even cared. Really, the sexism that pervades society is appalling isn't it? Clearly, it's even more pervasive than homophobia.

UPDATE: Some po-faced quackademic is now suggesting that the ad could be guilty of copyright violation on rather vague grounds of "integrity of authorship". These people will go to amazing lengths to be offended.

Sunday, March 11, 2012

Stephen Smith, like Rudd and Gillard, is a very odd person

Heaps of commentators are really getting stuck into Defence Minister Stephen Smith, saying he should resign for his shockin' treatment of Commodore Bruce Kafer. Hell, even Mike Carlton is of this mind. Now that's saying something!

It's pretty clear that Smith dislikes his job and the military itself. That has a lot to do with why he's botched this particular issue big time. But he also seems to possess a more general lack of intuition and common sense that I find really quite strange

He's long struck me as being a very cold, humourless character who takes himself enormously seriously. From his demeanour he certainly seems professional but as this issue in particular has borne out he can overreact wildly and doggedly insist on the least sensible option. The cool, competent persona is just a mask. It really makes you wonder about what's going on in his head.

That's a problem with so many of the most powerful people in Labor. Take Rudd and Gillard. One is narcissistic, the other is duplicitous in the extreme. They've just had this amazing stoush over nothing more than personal ambition that has damaged the party's reputation hugely. And they don't seem to give a tinker's about that!

Political leaders right across the spectrum are all going to be highly ambitious, of course. But in all other areas of life you'd hope that most would be comparatively well adjusted. How else would they be able to connect and communicate with the voters apart from anything else? I mean, you wouldn't expect them to be full-on weirdos now would you?

You'd think that intra-Labor competition and selection processes would weed out people with such obvious personality flaws as Smith, Gillard and Rudd -- or at least not let them progress too far up the greasy pole. But the opposite seems to have happened. It really makes you wonder what the hell is going on in that party.

Relativist reporting of the Liam Jurrah machete attack charge

I heard some talk on ABC local radio recently about Liam Jurrah, the Aboriginal footy player who has been charged over a machete attack. Geoff Hutchison and a couple of sports journos were chatting about the issue and it was amazing how little condemnation of Jurrah they expressed. Actually, he came across more as a victim than an alleged perpetrator!

They just didn't want to go anywhere near implying that he should be responsible for his actions. There was nothing about how his alleged involvement in this serious attack has brought shame on his club in particular or the game in general. He was under a great deal of pressure; caught between two cultures; in need of understanding, etc. The usual sanctimonious claptrap.

More of this creepy relativism can be seen in this report:

Melbourne chief executive Cameron Schwab said the club had sent officials to Alice Springs today to help Jurrah and ascertain the details of the incident."We can confirm that Liam has been charged," Schwab said today.

"We're trying to get him back to Melbourne as quickly as we can.

"Ultimately the courts will decide the outcome of what has actually evolved here.

"We will try and assist and support Liam as much as we can during this period, understanding that we are dealing with incredibly complex, emotional and difficult issues."


Yeah, but not nearly as complex, emotional, and difficult as those being dealt with by the poor bastard who was hit with the machete.

Monday, March 5, 2012

Kalgoorlie couple plead guilty to arson

People can be very, very strange. Take this married couple from Kalgoorlie:

Alan Robert Sloane and Rebecca Louise Sloane pleaded guilty yesterday to a string of arson attacks on homes, businesses and abandoned cars but said they had no explanation for their bizarre behaviour.

I doubt many others could come up with one either. About the only thing I can think of is that the passion had gone from the relationship and this was the only way they could, er, re-ignite it.

If that's the case you've gotta wonder what kind of romantic music they listened to on their inflammatory jaunts. There are heaps of popular songs equating fire with passion, but I think this is the most apposite.

Thursday, March 1, 2012

Francesca Minerva, Dr Alberto Giubilini and after-birth abortions

Occasionally I've clashed with zealous advocates of abortion, citing the slippery slope argument that when you make something that's ethically questionable completely acceptable then people will inevitably push for extensions of it. They almost always counter with something along these lines: "We're only arguing for terminations early in the pregnancy when the foetus is not yet a person. Nobody is advocating extremely late term or after-birth abortions."

Er, well, actually they are. Ethicists Dr Alberto Giubilini and Fracesca Minerva published a creepy little article online that's outlined here:

They argued after-birth abortion should be allowed in cases when abortion would be permitted, including if a child had a defect such as Down syndrome.

Even in cases where the baby was born perfectly healthy, parents should have the right to end the life of the child if their own wellbeing was at risk.

The researchers said a newborn baby and a foetus were “morally equivalent” and both were “potential people”.


Right-to-life advocates are routinely derided as loons because they talk about abortion being "baby-killing". But surely the practice described above fits that description.

The slippery slope doesn't end there, either. Who's to say that they don't start calling certain kids, or even adults, potential people because of their low mental capacity, or even for ideological reasons. Having been around smug left-wing, deep green tossers for years on end, I know how little they think of anyone who doesn't share their nihilistic ideology. They routinely describe them as being less then human. (Not saying that they're all on the verge of committing mass murder a la Hitler or Pol Pot, mind. Just that the seeds for such behaviour are most definitely there.)

Not surprisingly, some people who have learned about the disturbing views of these quackademics are more than a tad shat off about them. A few have even made death threats.

Obviously, such reactions are way out of line. But maybe Minerva and Giubilini should ponder the possibility that these outraged zealots are actually a lot like them. Rather than arguing for the offing of infants, they see the "ethicists" themselves as mere "potential people" who don't deserve to live.