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Unsure if I could stomach it, I nevertheless watched ABC Insiders yesterday morning, the main reason being to see what they would make of Bill Leak’s passing. Bill was a regular contributor to the Talking Pictures segment and appeared a number of times on the show. Given Bill’s long connection to the program and his significance in Australian media and political life, I thought it might have been appropriate to devote that segment to him.
Instead, in their warped ABC world, there was nothing in that segment about one of Australia’s greatest political cartoonists. Nothing! Instead, to add injury to the insult of silence, the ABC gave the guest spot to a hopelessly ordinary comedian, Mark Humphries, who helps out on The Feed, yet another of SBS’s alleged comedies.
Humphries is an exponent of the lightweight, politically correct “satire” that picks on easy targets and is never likely to offend, unless you happen to be a member of the approved and designated target groups — you know, conservatives, Christians etc. It’s that asinine, blow-in-the-breeze type of “satire” common on government-funded channels, the sort that leaves an impression as transitory as footprints on a beach. Hardly biting, hardly satire, hardly funny (except that we all have to pay for it), but successful in assuring those who won’t think, or can’t think, that thought really isn’t necessary because, well, they already hold the correct opinions (and isn’t everyone who doesn’t think likewise just icky and awful, and a racist/homophobe/Islam-averse/rape culture advocate).
If you want to know why the ABC felt free to depict a conservative columnist having sex with a dog, that mindset explains it.
In August last year, using taxpayers money, The Feed broadcast what it modestly billed as “the most sublime takedown of Bill Leak’s racist cartoon”. This piece starred the aforementioned Humphries and his “limbo” sidekick, Jan Fran — limbo as in “leftoid bimbo”. Their superficial analysis and smug ignorance demonstrated in the clip below is astonishing. Watch and wonder why, two days after Leak’s death, Insiders chose to promote this particular, er, humourist.
It takes a great deal of intelligence to produce good satire, the sort Bill produced day-in/day-out. One of the keys to success in this field is to begin with a kernel of truth. But there is no kernel of truth in the notion that Bill Leak was racist, not in any way, shape or form. The misrepresentation of his opinions and cartoons by these state-favoured lightweights can perhaps be regarded as testament to our education system’s long-term failure to teach critical thinking. Unbelievably, SBS describe the above segment as “simply brilliant”. Brilliant, maybe, if you are as simple as Humphries and his femme foil, but utter crap to pretty much everyone else, especially those who grasp that, like it not, we all pay to keep Humphries out of a Centrelink queue.
The deliberate insult of broadcasting and promoting the perpetrator of this ordure — the person chosen by ABC to appear in the Talking Pictures segment less than 48 hours after Bill’s death — is palpable.
But Insiders didn’t stop there. Following the briefest of mentions of the sad news by Barrie Cassidy and a 30-second clip of Bill talking about the joy of drawing Kevin Rudd, the failing Australian Financial Review‘s Laura Tingle plumbed a new low with perhaps the most mealy mouthed eulogy ever uttered for a “friend”. Here’s what she said (emphasis added):
Vale Bill. I worked with him in the 1990s and he was a funny, outrageous man, we laughed a lot.
But [I’ve been] perplexed by where he headed in more recent years, and I suppose I wonder often where, in our collective game, about what happens to people when they’re being constantly told its good to be outrageous, good to be out-there, and what sort of impact that sort of has on you over the years
He was a brilliant artist and he will be missed by, er, a lot of people.
If all your friends were in the Tingle mould, being lost at sea, quietly and unnoticed, would be the preference. Dying would be bad enough, but the thought of a “friend” delivering a eulogy delicately worded to let others know that she didn’t really approve of the deceased would be unbearable.
Don’t fret, Laura, you did well. Those invitations to schmooze with Phillip Adams on Radio National won’t be withdrawn. You’re still part of the gang, still in with the in-crowd, and all it took to stay there was some damp-squib praise for an old pal.
Now, how about demonstrating your acumen with one more Fin column hailing Malcolm Turnbull as the salvation of the Liberal Party?
The sign-off comment of the female luvvy in the video clip is a vivid illustration of just how “sublime” and sophisticated these buffoons are. One is reminded of Christ’s dying words on the cross: Forgive them Father for they know not what they are saying.
Vincent, by Don McLean
Vincent, by Don McLean, maybe these people don’t understand humour, and we’ll have to do it with bathos
They know exactly what they are saying.
Simply appalling!
pinnacle of abc satire is to satirise Hanson.and Lambie. But not Shorten or course..
The reason they behave like this is because it’s GETTING TO THEM. This is something basic my mother taught me as a youngster; if somebody is bullying you or treating you badly it’s because they are INSECURE; you have something they do not, etc. etc. This is the case with the ABC.
When I worked there in the 70s the staff were openly contemptuous of anybody in commercial television – you know, the ones which cost the consumer nothing by way of a licence fee and which had the biggest audiences. I interpreted their resentment as snobbishness which thinly veiled jealousy. The ABC saw themselves as the leaders, the elite, the intelligentsia. In their own little world it was scary when the outside intruded. It wasn’t until I grew older and more mature that I realized what a sham it all was. So, relax, folks; happy people don’t have to denigrate others; reduce them so that they can feel taller. Psychology 101.
Jesus taught that if someone takes your coat, you should give him your shirt too. Bleeding heart liberalised Christians interpret that as saying that we should let ourselves be bullied and robbed and downtrodden. To take that to its extreme, Christians could never fight for a noble cause, nor cause offence in the face of wrong (sound familiar?).
In the context of Jesus’ lesson however, he was actually teaching that if somebody wrongs you, then shine a spotlight on their shameful behaviour for all to see. ‘You want my coat? Here, take my shirt too, ya bastard’. This would have resonated strongly in the patriarchal honour-bound society of the time. Jesus was telling people not to let the powerful get away with their abuses. It’s a lesson people like Abbott and Turnbull need to learn, and learn fast. Hanson gets it, sort of.
On another tangent; my husband and I have lately been discussing the “feminization” of the polity. My husband has long held the view – more recently shared by me – that the influence of women in public life has increased exponentially the phenomena of political correctness, bleeding hearts, victimhood, “let them stay” and myriad other crybaby policies which tell us both “there’s a woman in the room”.
I think my husband (a very stable individual who sat happily on the sidelines while his wife achieved, without fuss or insecurity! is really onto something here. I leave it here for you all to consider.
Jody, being a woman, you are more likely to get away with the “blaspheme” you articulate, but don’t count on it. What you suggest certainly makes more than a little sense.
The underlying problem is the idiotic proposition that the only difference between men and women is strictly biological, muddied further by the even more stupid notion that gender is a social construct. In the natural order of things both men and women have a distinct role to play in the perpetuation of the species and each are equipped with specific traits to render them especially suited to their respective roles. Man, the protector and provider, women the nurturer a d homemaker. The more these basic tenets are ignored and disregarded by society, the worse off we all end up as a result.
I’m not afraid to take the flak for my opinions. As Bill Leak said to a friend recently, when the friend asked him whether he’d lost friendships as a result of the move Right…”yes, I did but life became a lot easier without those dickheads”. That’s how I feel. I made a pact 2 weeks ago…”No more lefties: OUT THEY GO”. And I mean it.
i agree with you and your husband there Jody.
Having to tightly guard those kind of thoughts to ourselves for fear of return verbal avalanches we don’t have the energy to fight, it’s quite liberating for us men whenever we hear a woman acknowledge such a thing. So I salute you. We’re much the poorer as a society when socialised to forget there are constructive and creative dynamics unique to all-men groups gathered around a purpose. As much as we need and love our women we cannot thrive without such moments. All men know how the dynamic completely changes when one woman is added to the group – not always a bad thing of course. Likewise when I’ve been the only male in a female group I’ve noticed how it takes a while before they start to forget you’re there as you can finally begin to watch and marvel and envy at how women seem to socialise so much more naturally and again uniquely. I’m afraid we don’t celebrate this, at least in public life, anymore. A question though, Jody: do you think that women tend to be more PC in the company of men than they are alone among women? Just curious
I’d say those who espouse political correctness generally and feminism specifically are ‘equal opportunity’ proselytizers. They never let their guards down; and that includes being able to laugh, sadly!!! I’ve been at gatherings where I’ve been put at a table with people I don’t know at all or very well. The first thing lefties do is size you up to see if you conform to the ideological club. On one such occasion years ago the issue of David Hicks came up. Just as I was about to scalp my piece of cow a woman piped up about it. I replied, “I love my country and I’d do anything to protect it; if that means putting somebody before the courts who has threatened that then I’m all for it”! With that the piece of cow and myself left the table.
With that piece of cow did you take your steak too?
(yeah, a little dark but couldn’t resist)
Last time I was at a table of lefties, the doctor’s wife stereotype manifested loud and clear. Miserable.
Those doctors’ wives are amongst the serial offenders; those and lawyers’ wives. (My daughter was once in a long relationship with a young fellow with whom she did her HSC who went on to become a lawyer. She attended a Law Ball with him and when I enquired about what it was like she retorted unenthusiastically, “well…they were lawyers”!!!)
The people in question to whom I referred as I ate my piece of cow were my sister’s closest friends!! Institutionalized lefties who have never worked anywhere but for the government and are now all on defined benefits superannuation. The second generation of them are off and running in their lifetime public service occupations.
I prefer to stay and watch their contortions as I espouse my views. I recall telling a former female barrister that I would send ice makers and dealers to a jail in Central Australia for thirty years. She asked why and I said it was because we could not shoot the bast…s. She was in favour of having them feel more accepted by society as they obviously felt estranged. It had nothing to do with greed or their lack of empathy. The others around the table kept quiet but NTL thought our verbal stouch was highly entertaining.
My advice is to stay, fight and enjoy the discomfit, theirs more so than your own. Remember that most of your opponents will not have the facts to defeat you, only the platitudes of the groupthink.
You only have to see the self-congratulatory nonsense Mem Fox came out with on the ABC to see your husband’s point. Apparently now “freedom of speech,” for which countless people have died over the centuries, can be safely styled “the right to be insulting and offensive.” Apparently the right to call out Fascists or Nazis is now verboten if they are likely to be insulted or offended. As Ms Fox says, when did that do any good?
Unlike Voltaire, I would not fight to the death for her right to curtail my right to free speech.
It’s the typical Lefty view of ‘consensus’; everybody needs to agree with me!!
Partly correct. The real problem is that men have allowed ourselves to become effeminised. We’re just a bunch of useless bleeding hearts ourselves now. The same thing is happening in the church. Liberal ‘theology’ is a form of effeminisation of the truth into more palatable drops of sunshine and fairy bread.
Perhaps we men are waiting quietly in the vestry to pick up the pieces when it all falls apart.
Now, don’t take this to be a rebuttal of any sort, Jody, but I have taught English for more years than I’d care to remember. I confess to an inbuilt disposition that demands that a statement be backed up with a level of support. I don’t have enough here for me ‘to consider’ as I’d more than likely come to the wrong conclusion.
So, remembering I don’t disagree with you, how the flamingo did the influence of women in public life lead to the ‘exponential’ development of political correctness? I though it was all kick started by those Herbert Marcuse blokes back in the Hamburg School in the 1930s, when women were discouraged from engaging in academic studies of any sort.
Jody,
I think your husband is correct. I have long suspected the problem with certain forms of affirmative action is nobody knows where to stop. Weak-case affirmative action recipients want to bestow the benefits of affirmative action upon even weaker-case recipients in a perpetual cycle towards lower standards.
Regards, Ash.
So how do you beat these ******* socio paths? well with humour. Ahh, but they killed that also, along with Mr.Leak.
Bathos
I stopped watching Insiders a long time ago. Thank God for Sky News and some of their fantastic shows. However, last Sunday I watched because I was convinced that they will do something nice for Bill Leak. What a disgrace that show was as perfectly summarized above. You would think that the ABC can’t sink any lower but alas they can. Especially the cartoon/photos special towards the end. Not even a word. Barry Cassidy and his team should be ashamed.
You are missing the point! The reason the Left has to go after Leak is because he provided an existential threat to their edifice of clay. If they were SECURE they could be gracious, but they are NOT secure – their whole ideology is a house of cards which Leak called out.
BE THANKFUL.
I had never considered their insecurity but it certainly explains many of their actions. When Newcastle was still the steel city the local NBN 3 TV news would often show union meetings. The organiser would put the motion and the assembled sheep would look around to check how they should vote and then follow the leader. There were sometimes a few free thinkers who would oppose the motion and be held in contempt by the bruvvers or were they in awe?
Laura Tingle is not worth a bingle, only a bungle
The attitude and words of those 2 on that short bit of footage mad me sick, and angry, all at once. Though it was yet another great example of sickening hypocrisy about tolerance the left preach to the rest of us.
I would endorse that, but add at the same time that the essence of humour, and I mean all of it, is the gap between expectation and outcome.
Vaudeville: a young man opens his front door expecting his lady love with a passionate kiss to deliver, and instead gets a custard pie in the face from an angry and outraged rival… And so on.
Charlie Chaplin, still for my money the greatest comedian ever, was a master exploiter of this sort of situation. So was Roy Rene. Likewise Reg Livermore on his best nights… ..
But what passes for the ‘humour’ that I see on TV these days owes far too much to the Theatre of the Absurd, where anything goes, and the zanier the ‘better’, and one laughs only to keep oneself from crying at the unintentional pathos and stupid futility of it all.
Much of Bill’s humour derived for his ability to conflate a current affairs or cultural event with a political one. The way he was able to link ideas and themes was the product of intelligence and creativity, yes, but also brainstorming his ideas relentlessly with colleagues and friends.
Who amongst us can say we have so many wonderful friends? I’ll bet it’s a HUGE funeral and that’s the only signal that needs to be sent to the regressive left.
It is not the feminisation of the polity that is the problem. Far from it. Women have been involved in the Australian Polity since the time Caroline C. Was Australia’s representative at the Home Office in London in the 1830-40s. Australian women have always made a significant contribution to Australian life throughout the firming of this country.
It is only the last 40 years in which things have become skewed.
What happened was the expansion of universities in to areas which previously only required TAFE or career course schools. Eg teachers and nurses.
Nowadays instead of a real intelligencia being produced at our Unis we have ‘graduates’ who think they are the intelligencia but they are only really limited to and by the knowledge they have been taught. They do not think for themselves but cluster around the current ‘accepted’ intreperation of ideas and society.
They make up today’s elites. They dictate through their adherence to their truths.
They denounce those who hold different views and find it impossible to understand the lives of people outside their elitist circles.
The shut down the views they see as not their truth.
We see the one sided drivel that passes for debate from both centrist left and right in this country. Across all our forums including this one.
Until our universities return to centres of academic and philosophic excellence things will not change very much.
These shallow self involved totalitarian fools will fight tooth and nail to avoid self critical thought and understand exactly how their ways are destroying this counties political system.
Jody
I regularly exchange many views with many lefties. Even they understand my point of view … without telling me to go away.
I’ve been yelled at and threatened by rabid climate changers and others who see my views as threatening their livelihoods and comfortable little worlds.
You shouldn’t talk about you private possessions etc as it really is a sign you are validating yourself with the material side of your life. Guess what psychology 101 would label that behaviour?
Tomorrow night I give my ‘icebreaker’ speech at Toastmasters. That will really push my boundaries.
Today is the first time in my business life that I made someone redundant. An employee of 6 years. I don’t want to but economic conditions have forced that action. I feel terrible. Other small business people around me are doing the same.
We all agree the problem is a lack of leadership.
Your solutions, we’ve discussed and we all agree, they would just result in the same.
None of us have any or had any income from government in any way
I talk about my possessions because what I’m tell you and others is that government is NOT getting any of my cash. I’ll spend it long before they get the chance to take it from me!! And it’s a way of making myself feel assured in the face of lefty hatred and contempt. I’ve got what they want. Yes, it feels GOOD.
Bill Martin
Where do I sit in your assessment … nurturer and homemaker or hunter protector.
I was the sole custodial parent of two children from the (children’s) ages of 18 months and four years? I ran my own business throughout the period of raising them.
Just wondering.
You talk about yourself a lot!!
I talk about things I’ve done not what I earn or have.
It is ok to validate yourself through your achievements.
I don’t worry about money or possessions because I can always achieve things that will ensure an adequate amount of both.
Remember Kiplings Unforgiving minute is in “If”
And Twain’a musing on the fear of death being caused by the fear of life.
I fear nothing and can do anything. Centrist fear everything especially lose and don’t test out their boundaries, and so usually show they fear fear life itself.
And isn’t that a fair description of the elites of today?
A do nothing, make everything safe brigade trying to make everybodies lives the same and conform to their ideas of safe.
They are on both sides of the left/right chasm, in fact they bridge it.
I have more degrees than a thermometer so I hardly need material possessions for ‘validation’. In any case, I have plenty more where they came from which I’ve never mentioned. Now, that IS baaaad!!
Will you two please get a room!
What a priceless response, Thomas.
And there in is the nub of the problem today. All degrees and little intellect.
Who’s Laura Tingle?
Jody
Why are you always so bitter?