You've probably heard that great line "politics is show business for ugly people". It's funny and has a lot of truth to it. (The aphorism's inverse, that showbiz is politics for pretty people, does too. Look at how movie stars compete for agents -- who themselves battle each other viciously -- and advance their careers with feel-good causes, for example.)
Needless to say, show business proper is all about celebrity. And if you wanna make it as a sleb, you gotta have personality, baby!
Similarly, a politician's personality is a hugely influential factor in the eyes of the electorate. Of course he doesn't need to be able to sing, dance, or tell jokes. And voters don't absolutely have to like him -- although of course it helps if they do. But they do need to feel that they know what makes him tick; where he's coming from; what he truly believes in.
That's why I think Bill Shorten got it wrong with this observation about the upcoming election:
Speaking in Sydney today, Opposition Leader Bill Shorten said Australians should realise Mr Turnbull favoured wealthy people.
"When you hear some people say more money doesn't fix things, the only people who have that view are people who already have enough money," Mr Shorten said.
"The more [people] look at the policies, not the personalities, and they see our positive plans, I'm optimistic that despite our underdog status people will realise that a Labor government will put people first," he told Channel Nine.
Shorten is trying the ol' class warfare line here. That will have some influence, of course. But I think that a bigger reason he's now got a very good chance of winning the election is because voters are finally getting a handle on Turnbull's character (or lack thereof) and they don't like it at all.
They started off blinded by his dazzling smile and impressed by his authoritative manner. But his tendency to waffle and his inability to actually get anything done have prompted a massive reappraisal of him.
Also, I think a lot of people are starting to suspect that Turnbull is not nearly as smart as he thinks he is, and all his tragic meeja boosters have been telling us. Take this train wreck interview with David Speers, in which he couldn't bring himself to state a simple dollar amount.
This could have been another example of his tragic tendency to waffle. But it seems likelier that he just didn't know what it was. Both these interpretations reflect very poorly on him as a pollie, and as a person. Hell, if he isn't across this kind of info, why on Earth is he in the top job?
Voters have had a longer look at Shorten and they've got a clearer idea of what he's like deep down. Aside from those tragically deluded rusted-on Labor voters who think he's a real "salt of the earth" "man of the people", I think most Aussies see him for what he is: a ruthlessly ambitious opportunist with a very murky past as a unionist, and one who is beholden to that movement as well as to other special interest groups in his party. They don't really trust him. But they kinda know where he's coming from.
Of course there are other factors that they're considering, with policies significant among them. And I know we don't vote for the PM directly on election day. But we are all mindful of who is leading each party and how we perceive his personality is a massive part of what goes into making our final choice.
Saturday, May 7, 2016
Friday, May 6, 2016
Candace Owens's claims not outlandish given SJWs' form on hoaxes
Lately, I have been thinking about the ongoing saga over Candace Owens's ill-fated anti-cyber bullying startup Social Autopsy. The young entrepreneur's claims about a conspiracy between "anti-bullying" activists and liberal journalists are pretty jaw-dropping.
Needless to say those on the SOCJUS side say they're all a load of tosh. Gamergaters, on the other hand, just shrug, not surprised at all.
Some journos have attempted to be very fair about the whole thing, such as the excellent Cathy Young. In this article for example, she says there's no smoking gun proving Owens's case.
That may well be. But I found it very compelling for a couple of reasons.
Firstly, there's the astonishing extent to which social justice warriors have signed up to the politically correct victim narrative. It's such a massive part of how they perceive themselves. They have to see oppression everywhere to know who they are, basically.
So that goes a long way to explaining the unconscious bias that numerous journos have in covering these issues as well as the way right-on activists often hugely exaggerate the severity and pervasiveness of the social ills they claim to be bravely combating.
But would such people knowingly engage in online "false flag" operations?
Well, it's something that most people would never even consider doing their entire lives. But we are talking about lefties here. They are well known for running fast and loose with the truth. They tend to have this view that they can ultimately create a perfect world, after all. So to them, "the end justifies the means".
Take the many recent hate crime hoaxes on American campuses, for example. These are so frequent that you've gotta wonder if the racist hatred that liberal students and academics constantly rail at even exists at all in America's higher education system.
Given that SJWs have such form when it comes to faking hate crimes on campuses, why wouldn't they engineer online harassment campaigns to bolster claims of victimhood, and even use the same methods against others they deem to be a threat?
Not too long a bow at all, IMHO.
Needless to say those on the SOCJUS side say they're all a load of tosh. Gamergaters, on the other hand, just shrug, not surprised at all.
Some journos have attempted to be very fair about the whole thing, such as the excellent Cathy Young. In this article for example, she says there's no smoking gun proving Owens's case.
That may well be. But I found it very compelling for a couple of reasons.
Firstly, there's the astonishing extent to which social justice warriors have signed up to the politically correct victim narrative. It's such a massive part of how they perceive themselves. They have to see oppression everywhere to know who they are, basically.
So that goes a long way to explaining the unconscious bias that numerous journos have in covering these issues as well as the way right-on activists often hugely exaggerate the severity and pervasiveness of the social ills they claim to be bravely combating.
But would such people knowingly engage in online "false flag" operations?
Well, it's something that most people would never even consider doing their entire lives. But we are talking about lefties here. They are well known for running fast and loose with the truth. They tend to have this view that they can ultimately create a perfect world, after all. So to them, "the end justifies the means".
Take the many recent hate crime hoaxes on American campuses, for example. These are so frequent that you've gotta wonder if the racist hatred that liberal students and academics constantly rail at even exists at all in America's higher education system.
Given that SJWs have such form when it comes to faking hate crimes on campuses, why wouldn't they engineer online harassment campaigns to bolster claims of victimhood, and even use the same methods against others they deem to be a threat?
Not too long a bow at all, IMHO.
Wednesday, May 4, 2016
Lisa Wilkinson's Waleed Aly "gaffe" shows her true "Westie" nature
As we all know, politically correct lefties are humungous hypocrites. They are forever falsely accusing others of racism, sexism, homophobia and all the rest of it. Occasionally they are correct ('cause, you know, a busted clock is right twice a day). But most of the time they are just falsely sliming better, smarter, more principled people then they are to further their own careers. Not only that, in their unguarded moments they often reveal themselves to be guilty of these same flaws, and to a far greater extent.
The unfortunate little "gaffe" that ageing TV sleb Lisa Wilkinson made about Gold Logie nominee Waleed Aly recently is a case in point. Now before I get to it, some background on Ms Wilkinson:
While lil' Lisa may be a physical featherweight, intellectually she's on the other end of the scale, no kidding. See, as well as having been co-host of that high falutin' televisual journal of record Weekend Sunrise along with fellow public intellectual Andew O'Keefe, she even used to edit Dolly! Impressive stuff, no doubt about it. No wonder she's been a guest on the incisive and undeniably fair and balanced ABC panel show Q and A.
During that particular appearance she expressed a great deal of seeming concern for the marginalised in our society, upbraiding George Brandis:
LISA WILKINSON: But you can't seem to understand how that would cause enormous discomfort for somebody and they would withdraw from public life. Do you think that’s because you are a white, able-bodied, heterosexual male?
So, pretty funny and telling that she's just been caught out making an outrageous comment that clearly referenced Waleed Aly.
On the morning after the Logie nominations were announced last month, Karl Stefanovic and Ben Fordham discussed the contenders on the Channel Nine breakfast show.
“Where is Lisa Wilkinson’s Gold Logie?” Fordham asked.
“I think it’s very clear, Lisa’s too white,” Stefanovic joked.
Wilkinson then chimed in with, “I got a spray tan and everything, still didn’t make it”.
Oh. Dear.
Just imagine the cries of "racism!" that Lisa's fellow travellers would have emitted en masse if Jones, Hadley or Latham had said the same thing. But given Lisa's leftie credentials there's been buggerall howling from the usual suspects so far. Even Waleed Aly himself was forgiving after she "reached out to him" (desperately covered her arse, in other words).
That said, no one is safe from the SJWs these days. So now that the issue is again in the news with the revelation about Wilkinson contacting Aly it could still snowball. No wonder Wilkinson's other half "Pirate Pete" FitzSimons has tweeted in support of the little lady, his trademark red bandanna quite possibly drenched with sweat.
And this tells me that her submerged but nonetheless obvious racism has much to do with her childhood growing up in Sydney's western suburbs. Ex-Westie Ms Wilkinson's current pals in the meeja's upper echelons look down on these areas privately if not publicly, and see them as hotbeds of bigotry born of "white trash" ignorance. The sneering inner city hipsters often use labels like "Boganville" to describe them.
So, it just goes to show you can take the bimbo out of Boganville. But you can't take the Boganville out of the bimbo, eh!
The unfortunate little "gaffe" that ageing TV sleb Lisa Wilkinson made about Gold Logie nominee Waleed Aly recently is a case in point. Now before I get to it, some background on Ms Wilkinson:
While lil' Lisa may be a physical featherweight, intellectually she's on the other end of the scale, no kidding. See, as well as having been co-host of that high falutin' televisual journal of record Weekend Sunrise along with fellow public intellectual Andew O'Keefe, she even used to edit Dolly! Impressive stuff, no doubt about it. No wonder she's been a guest on the incisive and undeniably fair and balanced ABC panel show Q and A.
During that particular appearance she expressed a great deal of seeming concern for the marginalised in our society, upbraiding George Brandis:
LISA WILKINSON: But you can't seem to understand how that would cause enormous discomfort for somebody and they would withdraw from public life. Do you think that’s because you are a white, able-bodied, heterosexual male?
So, pretty funny and telling that she's just been caught out making an outrageous comment that clearly referenced Waleed Aly.
On the morning after the Logie nominations were announced last month, Karl Stefanovic and Ben Fordham discussed the contenders on the Channel Nine breakfast show.
“Where is Lisa Wilkinson’s Gold Logie?” Fordham asked.
“I think it’s very clear, Lisa’s too white,” Stefanovic joked.
Wilkinson then chimed in with, “I got a spray tan and everything, still didn’t make it”.
Oh. Dear.
Just imagine the cries of "racism!" that Lisa's fellow travellers would have emitted en masse if Jones, Hadley or Latham had said the same thing. But given Lisa's leftie credentials there's been buggerall howling from the usual suspects so far. Even Waleed Aly himself was forgiving after she "reached out to him" (desperately covered her arse, in other words).
That said, no one is safe from the SJWs these days. So now that the issue is again in the news with the revelation about Wilkinson contacting Aly it could still snowball. No wonder Wilkinson's other half "Pirate Pete" FitzSimons has tweeted in support of the little lady, his trademark red bandanna quite possibly drenched with sweat.
While Wilkinson's hypocrisy is obvious, you gotta wonder what's behind that telling little "gaffe". Well, given that on Q and A she used the tried, trusted PC class-race-gender template in characterising Brandis's take on bigotry, I'll do the same with her. It's only fair, after all ...Today's hosts Karl Stefanovic and @lisa_wilkinson back 'brave' rival Waleed Aly for Gold Logie https://t.co/j81j8Bvvc3 via @smh— OzRepublic FitzSimon (@Peter_Fitz) May 4, 2016
And this tells me that her submerged but nonetheless obvious racism has much to do with her childhood growing up in Sydney's western suburbs. Ex-Westie Ms Wilkinson's current pals in the meeja's upper echelons look down on these areas privately if not publicly, and see them as hotbeds of bigotry born of "white trash" ignorance. The sneering inner city hipsters often use labels like "Boganville" to describe them.
So, it just goes to show you can take the bimbo out of Boganville. But you can't take the Boganville out of the bimbo, eh!
Tuesday, May 3, 2016
Devine and Latham own Badham and O'Keefe on Sunrise
Sure you've heard about that heated debate on Weekend Sunrise about man bashing. I first heard about it on Twitter where the leftist trollective were having kittens over Mark Latham. True to form they didn't address any of his arguments. Just bleated variations on "Why the hell do they keep giving this arsehole a platform?". Totally caught up in their lefteous indignation, the poor little poppets never twigged that the fact that so many of them were asking this very question was a big part of the answer to it.
Being busy, I didn't watch the entire segment -- which posed the question "Are men becoming second class citizens?" -- until last night. But even though it's kinda old news already I thought it was worth writing about since it was a very good example of bolshie bluster and bullying.
Early on Miranda Devine succinctly summarized what so many people are arcing up about these days. There is and has long been a toxic strand of feminism obsessed with casting women as victims and demonising men. It's doing severe damage to the fabric of Australian society.
This was a perfectly reasonable opinion, calmly expressed. But Van Badham, sitting on her fainting couch in Melbourne, immediately interpreted this as a personal attack! And then she accused Devine of being paranoid. This was a textbook example of projection, one of the defining characteristics of the "social justice warrior".
Andrew O'Keefe shamelessly ditched his role as a detached moderator and took Badham's side, mindlessly regurgitating dodgy statistics about "the wage gap". (And in a small but telling aside he also invoked the idea of "rape clubs" which even the decidedly PC Vox conceded was a myth.)
When they could get a word in, Latham and Devine observed that one of the main reasons women earn less on average than men is because they work fewer hours, by choice. But O'Keefe and Badham, true to SJW form, just upped the ante.
Hard to remember everything exactly and in sequence, but well into the debate O'Keefe accused Latham of making a personal attack. But that was exactly what Badham did to Devine by calling her paranoid at the beginning and he happily let that pass.
Badham was obnoxiously hypocritical and self-indulgent throughout, rudely talking over others then falsely accusing them of doing that to her along with excluding her in a sexist way. Hardly surprising, of course. It's about the only thing she and her fellow "feminists" ever do ... Speaking of which, Badham's somewhat saner but still seriously silly sister Tracey Spicer tweeted this about Latham:
Not only that, the claim was utter bollocks. Tracey's take is the opposite of what happened. As Badham blathered on about this alleged event as if it was some kind of unbeatable argument Latham was silent. The person who did interrupt her was the female host of the show (who, unlike O'Keefe, did a good job, BTW).
And Spicer is a journalist? Gawd ...
On the subject of women only carriages Devine offered good sense again, saying that while some men are abusers, men are also protectors. If women feel unsafe then what you have is a policing problem.
To which Latham added words along the lines of "if you put yourself in the mind of the sexual predator, the pink carriages will be their first target".
Both O'Keefe and Badham then used a favourite tactic of the Left. They snidely implied that this thought experiment was a reflection on Latham's character. It was a dog whistle to their fellow lefties that said "he's thinking like a rapist because he's close to being a rapist".
Now, that's nonsense for a start. Cops, in particular serial killer profilers, put themselves in the minds of criminals as a necessary step in solving crimes. And no sensible person would say they are bad guys, would they?
It's also really mean-spirited and vicious. Still, that's typical of the Left. They don't have any valid arguments so rather than politely refute a view with evidence and reason they always go straight to "you're a hateful, bad person, quite possibly a criminal".
This, in turn, is because they're completely up themselves. They think it's all about them and their precious fee-fees.
So it's hardly surprising that Badham thought she did brilliantly in the debate. She was so enamoured of her own performance -- a trainwreck from start to finish by any rational measure -- that she actually asked her followers on Twitter to create a GIF of her rolling her eyes at Latham. And one of them obliged, no fibs!
Really, this chick oughta check her swivilege.
Being busy, I didn't watch the entire segment -- which posed the question "Are men becoming second class citizens?" -- until last night. But even though it's kinda old news already I thought it was worth writing about since it was a very good example of bolshie bluster and bullying.
Early on Miranda Devine succinctly summarized what so many people are arcing up about these days. There is and has long been a toxic strand of feminism obsessed with casting women as victims and demonising men. It's doing severe damage to the fabric of Australian society.
This was a perfectly reasonable opinion, calmly expressed. But Van Badham, sitting on her fainting couch in Melbourne, immediately interpreted this as a personal attack! And then she accused Devine of being paranoid. This was a textbook example of projection, one of the defining characteristics of the "social justice warrior".
Andrew O'Keefe shamelessly ditched his role as a detached moderator and took Badham's side, mindlessly regurgitating dodgy statistics about "the wage gap". (And in a small but telling aside he also invoked the idea of "rape clubs" which even the decidedly PC Vox conceded was a myth.)
When they could get a word in, Latham and Devine observed that one of the main reasons women earn less on average than men is because they work fewer hours, by choice. But O'Keefe and Badham, true to SJW form, just upped the ante.
Hard to remember everything exactly and in sequence, but well into the debate O'Keefe accused Latham of making a personal attack. But that was exactly what Badham did to Devine by calling her paranoid at the beginning and he happily let that pass.
Badham was obnoxiously hypocritical and self-indulgent throughout, rudely talking over others then falsely accusing them of doing that to her along with excluding her in a sexist way. Hardly surprising, of course. It's about the only thing she and her fellow "feminists" ever do ... Speaking of which, Badham's somewhat saner but still seriously silly sister Tracey Spicer tweeted this about Latham:
So funny given that Spicer et al are always accusing men of shaming women with regard to their sexual behaviour and weight, among other things. Yet here she was quite explicitly doing that to Latham.Looking back, Mark Latham talks over @vanbadham as she describes being sexually assaulted as a teen on a train. #shame— Tracey Spicer (@TraceySpicer) May 1, 2016
Not only that, the claim was utter bollocks. Tracey's take is the opposite of what happened. As Badham blathered on about this alleged event as if it was some kind of unbeatable argument Latham was silent. The person who did interrupt her was the female host of the show (who, unlike O'Keefe, did a good job, BTW).
And Spicer is a journalist? Gawd ...
On the subject of women only carriages Devine offered good sense again, saying that while some men are abusers, men are also protectors. If women feel unsafe then what you have is a policing problem.
To which Latham added words along the lines of "if you put yourself in the mind of the sexual predator, the pink carriages will be their first target".
Both O'Keefe and Badham then used a favourite tactic of the Left. They snidely implied that this thought experiment was a reflection on Latham's character. It was a dog whistle to their fellow lefties that said "he's thinking like a rapist because he's close to being a rapist".
Now, that's nonsense for a start. Cops, in particular serial killer profilers, put themselves in the minds of criminals as a necessary step in solving crimes. And no sensible person would say they are bad guys, would they?
It's also really mean-spirited and vicious. Still, that's typical of the Left. They don't have any valid arguments so rather than politely refute a view with evidence and reason they always go straight to "you're a hateful, bad person, quite possibly a criminal".
This, in turn, is because they're completely up themselves. They think it's all about them and their precious fee-fees.
So it's hardly surprising that Badham thought she did brilliantly in the debate. She was so enamoured of her own performance -- a trainwreck from start to finish by any rational measure -- that she actually asked her followers on Twitter to create a GIF of her rolling her eyes at Latham. And one of them obliged, no fibs!
Really, this chick oughta check her swivilege.
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Sunday, May 1, 2016
Why I pity Trigglypuff but detest the "social justice" ideology that created her
Anyone who has been following developments related to freedom of speech (or rather the alarming lack thereof!) in American universities will be well aware of "Trigglypuff", the student who suffers a meltdown over conservative speakers at her campus.
As Paul Joseph Watson observes in the video embedded below, she's "the GIF that keeps on giving". If a picture paints a thousand words, then this little vid has written squillions of thick tomes about the Left, none of them remotely nice.
But I've gotta say I do feel a bit sorry for Trigglypuff. Being turned into a meme and mocked globally would be an extremely unpleasant experience regardless of your political leanings.
And she's just a kid! Well, not quite, but you get my drift ... Her behaviour is definitely obnoxious and censorious. But when you're at that age it's much easier to go overboard on stuff and be an utter bell end than when you're a few years older. And she really is just doing what she's been exhorted to do by her peer group and, presumably, lecturers. They've ginned her up to behave like this.
And in the end it's her behaviour that is so, er, problematic. It's not her size and appearance, which had much to do with the vdeo going viral.
That said, her weight is related to her ideology, since she's into all that fat acceptance nonsense and would probably be much lighter, and therefore healthier, if she hadn't embraced it.
Really, that stuff is so destructive. Being morbidly obese should not be celebrated, okay! In the vid the poor girl almost collapses from the exertion of shaking her arms and screaming at the conservatives. It's funny in a way but it's also a sign that even at such a young age her health is very poor. And that's depressing. (I don't like lefties as a rule but I don't wanna see them pop their clogs before their time. Would much prefer that they live as long as everyone else so they might eventually grow the far cup, and thereby shed their toxic ideology of victimhood.)
The tragicomedy (or rather, commie tragedy) of Trigglypuff is that she's a useful idiot for older -- and prolly a tad less hysterical -- leftist ideologues. Ironically, she's ended up proving to be very useful to their opponents, too. She's been used by both sides!
Sadder still is the likelihood that she'll learn nothing from the experience. The tsunami of jokes and abuse about her appearance will no doubt magnify her sense of victimhood. She'll probably engage in even more obnoxious, censorious "social justice" activism down the track.
And, in another irony, that's where she may ultimately, er, "benefit" from the whole experience. Just as many on the Right see her as the poster child for leftist stupidity, the PC Left will see her meme-ification as "objectification" and turn her into a kind of socialist sleb in her own right. You never know, she might even turn her ordeal into cold hard cash in the long run. It's certainly been done many times before ...
But even if Trigglypuff herself doesn't decide to use her suffering as a way to earn "victimbux" there are plenty of people in the meeja and halls of quackademe who will do this indirectly anyway.
And that's the thing that I find most repellent about politically correct "social justice". It's not really about healing society. It's about perpetuating a narrative that cynical socialists leverage for power and income. Many righties do cruelly mock society's genuine victims. That's ugly and wrong. But socialists live comfortably off their suffering and desperately want it to continue. And that's far, far worse.
As Paul Joseph Watson observes in the video embedded below, she's "the GIF that keeps on giving". If a picture paints a thousand words, then this little vid has written squillions of thick tomes about the Left, none of them remotely nice.
But I've gotta say I do feel a bit sorry for Trigglypuff. Being turned into a meme and mocked globally would be an extremely unpleasant experience regardless of your political leanings.
And she's just a kid! Well, not quite, but you get my drift ... Her behaviour is definitely obnoxious and censorious. But when you're at that age it's much easier to go overboard on stuff and be an utter bell end than when you're a few years older. And she really is just doing what she's been exhorted to do by her peer group and, presumably, lecturers. They've ginned her up to behave like this.
And in the end it's her behaviour that is so, er, problematic. It's not her size and appearance, which had much to do with the vdeo going viral.
That said, her weight is related to her ideology, since she's into all that fat acceptance nonsense and would probably be much lighter, and therefore healthier, if she hadn't embraced it.
Really, that stuff is so destructive. Being morbidly obese should not be celebrated, okay! In the vid the poor girl almost collapses from the exertion of shaking her arms and screaming at the conservatives. It's funny in a way but it's also a sign that even at such a young age her health is very poor. And that's depressing. (I don't like lefties as a rule but I don't wanna see them pop their clogs before their time. Would much prefer that they live as long as everyone else so they might eventually grow the far cup, and thereby shed their toxic ideology of victimhood.)
The tragicomedy (or rather, commie tragedy) of Trigglypuff is that she's a useful idiot for older -- and prolly a tad less hysterical -- leftist ideologues. Ironically, she's ended up proving to be very useful to their opponents, too. She's been used by both sides!
Sadder still is the likelihood that she'll learn nothing from the experience. The tsunami of jokes and abuse about her appearance will no doubt magnify her sense of victimhood. She'll probably engage in even more obnoxious, censorious "social justice" activism down the track.
And, in another irony, that's where she may ultimately, er, "benefit" from the whole experience. Just as many on the Right see her as the poster child for leftist stupidity, the PC Left will see her meme-ification as "objectification" and turn her into a kind of socialist sleb in her own right. You never know, she might even turn her ordeal into cold hard cash in the long run. It's certainly been done many times before ...
But even if Trigglypuff herself doesn't decide to use her suffering as a way to earn "victimbux" there are plenty of people in the meeja and halls of quackademe who will do this indirectly anyway.
And that's the thing that I find most repellent about politically correct "social justice". It's not really about healing society. It's about perpetuating a narrative that cynical socialists leverage for power and income. Many righties do cruelly mock society's genuine victims. That's ugly and wrong. But socialists live comfortably off their suffering and desperately want it to continue. And that's far, far worse.
Friday, April 29, 2016
Dame Edna vs Waleed Aly on The Project
So Dame Edna was on The Project, and there seemed to be a weird passive-aggro vibe happening between the fabulous Aussie gigastar and Waleed Aly. More than a few people have been scratching their heads about what this was all about.
In live theatre shows and appearances on the teev, Dame Edna often singles out an individual to cruelly send up. If the target is a sleb, the gags will usually relate strongly to that person's public persona. If he is just a punter, Barry Humphries' character will mostly focus on his general appearance, and what can be gleaned from this in terms of his social background.
But this little episode was different. Though Edna's jibes did get laughs, you couldn't really see where they were coming from. And Aly did nothing to provoke them, too. So, you gotta wonder what their motivation was.
Now, it's risky to play amateur shrink with a satirist's motivations. If there's any complexity to the characters he creates then there will be a whole mess o' them. This definitely applies to Dame Edna Everage. She's been alive, developing, and moving with the times for decades now. She's probably got more psychological layers than some living, breathing people!
So, there's a good chance I've got this wrong. But here's my guess: It's got much to do with the fact that Barry Humphries is a conservative. He's obviously up to speed with Waleed's many smug utterances on Islam, such as terrorism being an "irritant".
I'll be that he would have loved to mock this stuff through his character. And he's certainly not afraid of controversy. He usually savours it, in fact. But given how hysterically the MSM reacts to anything that could be deemed offensive to Muslims, he just couldn't take the risk. So, prior to his appearance he made an inner choice to just not go there.
Still, sitting just near Aly the antipathy bubbled away, and he couldn't stop himself taking a few shots at him. But strangled by self-censorship, he only had poor, cheap, vague options to choose from. Hence the odd, mediocre performance last night.
What do you reckon? Am I close, or was it something else?
In live theatre shows and appearances on the teev, Dame Edna often singles out an individual to cruelly send up. If the target is a sleb, the gags will usually relate strongly to that person's public persona. If he is just a punter, Barry Humphries' character will mostly focus on his general appearance, and what can be gleaned from this in terms of his social background.
But this little episode was different. Though Edna's jibes did get laughs, you couldn't really see where they were coming from. And Aly did nothing to provoke them, too. So, you gotta wonder what their motivation was.
Now, it's risky to play amateur shrink with a satirist's motivations. If there's any complexity to the characters he creates then there will be a whole mess o' them. This definitely applies to Dame Edna Everage. She's been alive, developing, and moving with the times for decades now. She's probably got more psychological layers than some living, breathing people!
So, there's a good chance I've got this wrong. But here's my guess: It's got much to do with the fact that Barry Humphries is a conservative. He's obviously up to speed with Waleed's many smug utterances on Islam, such as terrorism being an "irritant".
I'll be that he would have loved to mock this stuff through his character. And he's certainly not afraid of controversy. He usually savours it, in fact. But given how hysterically the MSM reacts to anything that could be deemed offensive to Muslims, he just couldn't take the risk. So, prior to his appearance he made an inner choice to just not go there.
Still, sitting just near Aly the antipathy bubbled away, and he couldn't stop himself taking a few shots at him. But strangled by self-censorship, he only had poor, cheap, vague options to choose from. Hence the odd, mediocre performance last night.
What do you reckon? Am I close, or was it something else?
Thursday, April 28, 2016
For SJWs Gamergate is an arm of the Patriarchy
Fascinating how words and phrases can have such hugely different meanings to different kinds of people. Take "Gamergate", for example. For those on the cultural libertarian side it's shorthand for a consumer revolution -- a concerted but non-centralized push for ethics in games journalism. But to the social justice crowd, Gamergate immediately evokes hordes of misogynist trolls hiding in their basements, making poor women's lives hell with their vicious online abuse.
The latter interpretation is clearly bullshit on stilts. If there is a concerted push to harass people online, it seems to be coming from the SOCJUS side more than anything. Yet the demonisation of Gamergate continues, and not just in the, er, twenches of Twitter. It's the prevailing angle in the MSM too.
And you've gotta wonder, why is it so dominant and immovable? Aren't journalists supposed to seek the truth? Surely they would disabuse themselves of their delusions and come to a more balanced, nuanced perspective after a few objective interviews of those involved in these numerous online stoushes. Hell, even a bit of Googling would do that, you would think.
But nup. Gamergate's haters are not for turning, that's for sure ... The reasons are manifold, of course. But I'd say one of the main factors is the toxic influence of the PC Left in higher education. This victim feminist myth about the entire world being stealthily controlled by a bunch of diabolically nasty old white heterosexual males (who are simultaneously knuckle dragging morons, BTW -- work that one out!) is drummed into journalism students right across the western world. They graduate seeing eeevil white males behind every social ill and not surprisingly their reporting reflects this.
It's this deep seated social justice narrative that bonds these people, gives them an identity. Throw in the huge political pressures (often in the form of mountains of moolah) brought to bear on many companies and organizations employing these nascent newshounds and the odds that they will start to think for themselves are remote indeed.
It's not too long a bow to say they're kinda like young priests fresh out of the seminary. Newbie padres have a neatly divided universe: God vs Satan. And in the tiny mind of your typical crusading journo it's the Patriarchy's war on Chickdom.
Reporters like this (and most of them are like this) see the dark, or should I say pale, hand of the Patriarchy at work everywhere they look. For them, Gamergaters are like this faceless cabal's younger henchmen. Just as victim feminists can never actually name which blokes comprise the Patriarchy they're always shrieking about, Gamergate is almost always collectively condemned. Named, individual harassers are almost never included in articles about its appalling antics. Which is odd, because if it were as vast and vicious as it's purported to be, there should be squillions of these cases to choose from.
It really is whacked out conspiracy theory stuff. The wheels are gonna fall off of it. They just have to. But it's gonna take a while, unfortunately.
The latter interpretation is clearly bullshit on stilts. If there is a concerted push to harass people online, it seems to be coming from the SOCJUS side more than anything. Yet the demonisation of Gamergate continues, and not just in the, er, twenches of Twitter. It's the prevailing angle in the MSM too.
And you've gotta wonder, why is it so dominant and immovable? Aren't journalists supposed to seek the truth? Surely they would disabuse themselves of their delusions and come to a more balanced, nuanced perspective after a few objective interviews of those involved in these numerous online stoushes. Hell, even a bit of Googling would do that, you would think.
But nup. Gamergate's haters are not for turning, that's for sure ... The reasons are manifold, of course. But I'd say one of the main factors is the toxic influence of the PC Left in higher education. This victim feminist myth about the entire world being stealthily controlled by a bunch of diabolically nasty old white heterosexual males (who are simultaneously knuckle dragging morons, BTW -- work that one out!) is drummed into journalism students right across the western world. They graduate seeing eeevil white males behind every social ill and not surprisingly their reporting reflects this.
It's this deep seated social justice narrative that bonds these people, gives them an identity. Throw in the huge political pressures (often in the form of mountains of moolah) brought to bear on many companies and organizations employing these nascent newshounds and the odds that they will start to think for themselves are remote indeed.
It's not too long a bow to say they're kinda like young priests fresh out of the seminary. Newbie padres have a neatly divided universe: God vs Satan. And in the tiny mind of your typical crusading journo it's the Patriarchy's war on Chickdom.
Reporters like this (and most of them are like this) see the dark, or should I say pale, hand of the Patriarchy at work everywhere they look. For them, Gamergaters are like this faceless cabal's younger henchmen. Just as victim feminists can never actually name which blokes comprise the Patriarchy they're always shrieking about, Gamergate is almost always collectively condemned. Named, individual harassers are almost never included in articles about its appalling antics. Which is odd, because if it were as vast and vicious as it's purported to be, there should be squillions of these cases to choose from.
It really is whacked out conspiracy theory stuff. The wheels are gonna fall off of it. They just have to. But it's gonna take a while, unfortunately.
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