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This is my final, last, finishing, conclusive comment on the national broadsheet newspaper, The Australian. I say this because although I will for the time being continue to buy the paper, I will not read anything from Peter van Onselen, Cameron Stewart, Troy Bramston, Paul Kelly or Katrina Grace Kelly, and maybe others worth forgetting about, which I have.
Didn’t I mention it? The creepy editorials are out too. Did you see that the paper has awarded its Australian of the Year conjointly to COVID contact-tracers (I kid you not) and to Victorians; the latter, effectively, for having to put up with the lockdown idiocies of Dan the Man. To Victorians, a large majority of whom were responsible for voting in Dan and his leftie crew in the first place? Give me a break!
Another thing, I will immediately cease reading any so-called conservative commentator as soon as they lapse into left-wing talking points. For instance, when, as today (23 January), Adam Creighton refers to “Trump’s own repulsive personality” or Chris Kenny refers to “Trump’s appalling behaviour post-election,” I will simply stop reading. Thus, I will have nothing to complain about or take issue with. Problem solved.
In passing, let me say that I don’t know anything about Creighton’s personality. I don’t know him well enough. I assume the best. He might do the same for others and refrain from casting personally insulting stones. Trump is a person too, with a family.
Pretender Biden has been caught sniffing young girls’ hair, boasting about fighting the bad dude ‘Cornpop’ with a chain, making up a story about being arrested on behalf of Nelson Mandela, explaining how children liked to fondle his leg hair, plagiarising Neil Kinnock, and taking kickbacks from the Ukraine and China. Yet, I am not willing to go nearly so far as to use the word ‘repulsive’. I don’t know him. Maybe he’s the kindest of men in his daily life.
Trump’s children appear to genuinely love him. I have seen friends of his interviewed. They say good things about him. Can we please have civility? And avoid going around describing other people, other than serial killers, evil despots and the like, as repulsive. It is repulsive to do otherwise.
As to Trump’s ‘appalling’ behaviour. The election was stolen! Kenny only needs to extract his head to see that. Voter turnouts: National 66.7 per cent; Ohio, which Trump won easily, 67.4 per cent; the nearby states of Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania, which Trump lost narrowly, 75.8 per cent, 73.9 per cent and 71 per cent. In those states, they found enough votes in the dead of night to beat him.
Here’s an analogy. Thieves break into your house. You wield a cricket bat in defence of your property and family. Appalling, magistrate Kenny says; too much force. But what about the thieves, you protest. Weren’t they appalling too; worse than appalling?
Let me tell what I think is appalling, sinister to boot, among a number of Biden’s rushed and reckless executive actions. It is the order with the noble title of “Preventing and Combatting Discrimination on the Basis of Gender Identity or Sexual Orientation.”
Who in the world could disagree with the opening: “Every person should be treated with respect and dignity and should be able to live without fear, no matter who they are or whom they love.” Hear! Hear! And then comes the most egregious among a number of punchlines: “Children should be able to learn without worrying about whether they will be denied access to the restroom, the locker room, or school sports.”
Who’s cruelly preventing little Johnny from having a widdle or kicking a football, you might ask in your naivety. No one is the answer. They are preventing Johnny from being in the girls’ restroom and locker room and from ruining girls’ sports. And that has got to stop, according to Biden.
This is the stuff that you would like your conservative newspaper to thunder about. Not about what I would call Trump’s occasional and inconsequential gaucheness. Who cares, when he is out there, among other derring-dos, protecting women’s rights and traditional family values.
We should not misunderstand what is going on. This is not about giving boys and men who think they are girls and women – and vice versa – equal protection under the law. That’s fine. They ought not to face discrimination. The world for them is hard enough as it is.
This about undermining the basic building block of our civil society. This building block is the complementary roles of men and women, which is fully expressed within traditional marriage and with the birth of children. Only biological men and women are participants in this ‘dance of life’.
To the more nitty-gritty, the rights of biological men claiming to be women do not trump the rights of women. Biological (older) girls and women have a right to be free of the presence of biological (older) boys and men in places where they undress. Not hard. They have a right to compete in sports against other girls and women without being overpowered by biological boys and men whose physiques have been moulded by testosterone. Not hard.
There were 28 Biden executive actions on January 20 and 21. Most took the US backwards. I have focussed on the transgender executive order because it is, I think, the most sinister. However, there is a lot among the twenty-eight to cause trepidation and concern. Never mind, as Paul Kelly tells it (22 January), “Joe Biden’s metaphysical pledge is to restore the soul of America. His political quest is to achieve this through the restoration of national unity.”
Kelly and company fiddle while the US burns. What a pleasure it is to resolve not to read this superficial piffle anymore.
Who in the world could disagree with the opening: “Every person should be treated with respect and dignity and should be able to live without fear, no matter who they are or whom they love.” On the contrary, that proposition is “woke” nonsense, with respect. There are millions of people who do not deserve our respect: Dictators, murderers, rapists, pedophiles, users of so-called social media, ignoramuses and most politicians, to name but a few.
With regard to The Australian I now depend on Quadrant and Spectator to keep me sane. I’m becoming rather relieved that I’ll only be around another ten or so years. I don’t see it getting any better and it certainly is getting a lot worse.
I don’t read anything either, by four of the five mentioned in Mr Smith’s first paragraph. Life is too short, and would be if I were Methuselah. But I make an exception for the popular professor—who apparently simultaneously holds two professorships on different sides of the country.
I recommend reading his illogical, tortuous English, rich in sentence fragments and poor in grammar, to be unpleasantly reminded of the parlous state of our educational institutions.
The feeling of superiority balances the unpleasantness to some extent.
I agree with above.
Just judicious reading of the Weekend Australian ( of which the cryptic crossword is the best reading) with Albrechtsen, Henderson, and occasional columns by others; The Spectator; Quadrant; IPA ( especially for publications); Sky News for Credlin, Bolt, Jones and Outsiders. That’s plenty to stimulate the grey cells.
The editorship of Michelle Gunn, now into its ninth month, has not been a great success. Formerly editor of the Weekend Australian, now editor of the Australian as well, her promotion has seen the soft-left ambience of the Weekend Australian progressively permeate the Australian. However, as noted above, there are some holdouts against the fluffy tide and so I still read the Australian, but now selectively rather than generally. I have concluded that as the Left seem to get woked-up most by cartoonists, the acid test will be the treatment of Johannes Leak. If Leak is replaced or required to change his approach, that will signal the end of a once great newspaper.
I think Nick Cater and Henry Ergas should be on the list of writers to be read in The Australian, and Johannes Leak’s cartoons are brilliant. I agree however that the number of articles that I don’t read has increased recently, and had not realised that perhaps the new editor has influenced the swing to the left.
There has been a slide towards the left. However, there is still plenty to read in it. I don’t go past Henry Ergas, Judith Sloan, The Mocker and Salvatore Babones.
Have I missed something or has it been a while since we have seen Johannes Leak’s cartoons?
You have missed something Bernard:
.
Jan 26 Spooner
Jan 25 Leak
Jan 23 Leak
Jan 22 Leak
Jan 21 Leak
Jan 20 Spooner
Jan 19 Spooner
Jan 18 Leak
Jan 16 Leak
Jan 15 Leak
Jan 14 Leak
Jan 13 Spooner
Jan 12 Spooner
Jan 11 Leak
Jan 9 Leak
Jan 8 Leak
Jan 7 Leak
Jan 6 Spooner
Jan 5 Spooner
.
Etc. I’ll bet tomorrow it’s Spooner.
I watched my sister play basketball in the 2019 Australian Masters in a 65years+ team. Because there were too few old ducks (her words), they had to play in the 55years+competition.
.
As if it’s not hard enough for a 70yo to stand a 50s-something, her opponent was over 6′ and “built like a brick shithouse” – I looked carefully at close range, and her opponent was clearly a man.
.
These days, when asked “How are you” I reply “Another day older and closer to the end of this garbage”.
Much appreciated is this nailing by PS of the weaknesses in Oz writers particularly the weakness of PVO. The latter even gets a spot on weak and woke TV!
Fortunately my Lindfield coffee shop provides for its patrons 2 copies of the Daily Telegraph along with 2 copies of the OZ. In the DT along with the easily skated over sport and crime items there are regular gems from intelligent weekly contributors such as James Morrow, and Miranda Devine who, apart from her Turnbull lapse, is good value. Andrew Bolt is my favourite and like devine Miranda he has a moral compass. The Bolt DT feature is often a highlight from the Bolt Report on the Sky channel [after dark].
Wednesday is a good day for the DT because it has Miranda, and the weekly TV guide, and it has space on the History page for readers to contribute a ‘Remember when – – -‘. Real memories of times past are priceless!
I share the dismay about the Oz’s slow drift to the Left. The paper’s weekend magazine and Review sections led the way, the rot has now spread to the Monday to Friday issues. I hadn’t realised that Michelle Gunn had become the main editor.
Living in Perth, I see only the West and the Oz. The former is a rag, the main reason for my buying it is to scan the Deaths column looking for my contemporaries who have departed this world. The only columnists worth reading are Paul Murray (the former editor, not to be confused with the person of the same name on Sky News), and Gemma Tognini, who writes the occasional article for the Oz. The Letters page has several stalwarts, such as Anthony Negus and Dr Carol Williams PhD, whose opinions on any subject never vary. For the Oz, Henry Ergas and Janet Albrechtsen are worth reading, as is Chris Mitchell, who has a column in the Media section on Mondays.
For me, the final straw was the US election. I used to find Paul Kelly (mostly) worth reading, but his article in Friday’s Oz was so appalling that I have given up on him. I have never bothered with Cameron Stewart.
I have taken to reading British and American websites. Their verdict on the election is that the Deep State has executed a putsch, and that the USA has become a one-party state, like Russia following the Bolsheviks’ seizing power in 1917.
Cancelling my subscription to the West Australian was what prompted me to subscribe to Quadrant. Finally cancelling my subscription to the Oz for the same reason as the author freed up some extra cash which I donated to this great publication. I have completed the trifecta recently cancelling my subscription to Foxtel having become frustrated with Bolt, Credlin, Murray, Jones and even Kenny. This may seem harsh but the only presenter on Sky who has been completely consistent is Rowan Dean which I now discover I can listen to on a Sunday morning for free elsewhere on the interwebs. Winning.
“This about undermining the basic building block of our civil society.” Yes, that’s not a side effect, that’s what it is about.
Well put Peter, very good piece. Biden is so obviously false you can almost taste it. His reported comment regarding black voters and his supposed championing of all things black pretty well summed up this falseness I think “If you don’t vote for me then you ain’t black “or words to that effect anyway, so I read somewhere. Concerning the Australian you’re right of course and I do a lot of skipping and reading between the lines in it, but then I find I have to do that with all newspapers these days and have been restricting myself to the sporting sections for some time….except that’s also going off now. As soon as I read Tim Paine’s article a little while back in the Courier Mail I think, where he said the Australian Cricket Team were so confident & a great bunch etc. who get along splendidly and there was a ‘lot of love in the dressing room’ I got the feeling I’m going to have to start doing a bit of skipping there as well.
I cannot assist in hastening the decline of the Oz as I cancelled my subscription a year ago …
I wonder how many subscriptions to the Oz have been cancelled recently ? – mine finishes next week.
I cancelled my own over 12 months ago, the lies being passed as news overtook the need for something to line the cockies cage.
Hello Peter,
Totally agree with you. The Murdoch Press are definitely negative against any Trump achievement.
If this laugh a minute dementia champion, who a few Americans want to call their President, is so sick to sign an executive order to say blokes with a mental problem must be allowed to enter female bathrooms and change rooms, then the President is very very ill and has not got the mental faculty to conduct the office of President of the USA.
Appalled as I am, that males with such mental problems like thinking they are female, are given so much title by the Left wing weirdo’s, I thought our dementia champion would have been prudent to say to those males with mental problems, “Go and start you own sports competition against yourselves and let the Women be Women and the Men be Men”.
Only Reg (Peoples Popular Front of Judea) on the topic of Inalienable Rights, has a full grasp on reality.
(….I breach copyright as follows);
Reg: Furthermore, it is the birthright of every man …
Stan: Or woman.
Reg: Why don’t you shut up about women, Stan, you’re putting us off.
Stan: Women have a perfect right to play a part in our movement, Reg.
Francis: Why are you always on about women, Stan?
Stan: (pause) I want to be one.
(pregnant pause)
Reg: What?
Stan: I want to be a woman. From now on I want you all to call me Loretta.
Reg: What!?
Stan: It’s my right as a man.
Judith: Why do you want to be Loretta, Stan?
Stan: I want to have babies.
Reg: You want to have babies?!?!?!
Stan: It’s every man’s right to have babies if he wants them.
Reg: But you can’t have babies.
Stan: Don’t you oppress me.
Reg: I’m not oppressing you, Stan — you haven’t got a womb. Where’s the
fetus going to gestate? You going to keep it in a box?
(Stan starts crying.)
Judith: Here! I’ve got an idea. Suppose you agree that he can’t actually
have babies, not having a womb, which is nobody’s fault, not even the
Romans’, but that he can have the *right* to have babies.
Francis: Good idea, Judith. We shall fight the oppressors for your right to
have babies, brother. Sister, sorry.
Reg: (pissed) What’s the *point*?
Francis: What?
Reg: What’s the point of fighting for his right to have babies, when he
can’t have babies?
Francis: It is symbolic of our struggle against oppression.
Reg: It’s symbolic of his struggle against reality.
Since the fraudulent ‘election’ I’ve pretty much turned my back on all Australian media. There’s no real depth there and the messengers seem very confused, throwing out random opinions merely for the sake of justifying their presense on one side of the divide or the other. The price of The Australian is not worth the odd gem from Ergas, and it hardly seems interested in reporting the news anymore.
Every time I turn on Sky News I’m faced with Richo or some other Labor Party nobody who has to have his or her ridiculous opinion aired on an hourly basis. Paul Murray doesn’t have much in the way of a thought process, and Jones seems to like the sound of his own voice more than anything else in life. So I don’t watch anymore. The rest are up and down, and round and round like a clown on a unicycle.
Whilst there is a certain freedom in turning away, it is mainly sad that things have come to this. Perhaps it is my increasingly jaded take on Modernism, but I find that consservative opinionistas in Australia are losing direction, having been overthrown by the very same humanist nihilism that they once stood against. Australian conservatism now comes across more as an old man grumbling into his beard about a long-gone past. I get why the young aren’t exactly enamoured with it. Conservatism needs to re-establish its core beliefs and curb the lazy trend in making everything about politics, (that is the realm of progresives, and they will always win the dirty political war).
Once again I’m immersed in Solzhenitsyn. I don’t know why I keep punishing myself with his writing. On the one hand it is deeply disturbing, and on the other extremely mundane in its tedious similarities with what daily life in the West is becoming. I guess with Solzy there is a link to something higher, as behind the narrative is a sense of the author smiling paternally at the foolishness of all that he has seen and experienced, with the unspoken judgement that all such human folly will ultimately have to answer to real authority.
PS: “Let me tell what I think is appalling, sinister to boot, among a number of Biden’s rushed and reckless executive actions.”
It’s not an “executive action”, but for me it’s also appalling and sinister:
H. Rept. 116-15 – FOR THE PEOPLE ACT OF 2019
https://www.congress.gov/bill/116th-congress/house-bill/1/text
According to blogger Joanne Nova, the Democrats are “not even pretending anymore. They want more fake voters, no identification and no signatures.
The new Bill “would ban state governments from asking voters to provide ID to get an absentee vote. It would allow people to harvest votes and dump them. It takes more power from the State Legislatures and gives it to guess who?”
Alice, whether that bill or another, the path is now fixed and has been since 2016, when Hillary was the preordained winner but Trump took it in an unexpected landslide. That mistake won’t happen again.
The Christian remnant today likes to focus on the preaching of love. It should, like John, be preaching repentence.
Repentance is indeed what is needed. Until last year, I believed that the greatest need for Australia and the United States (where I was born) was the salvation of the lost. The need for them to repent of their sins and believe in the crucified and risen Saviour has not lessened, but I now believe that the greatest need for both my countries is that God’s children repent of our obeying God rather than man and failing–with notable exceptions–to take the stand our forefathers did, when we were ordered to forsake the assembling of ourselves together. That failure still horrifies me.
Dont forget the Australian edition of the Epoch Times (https://www.theepochtimes.com/australia). It’s thoroughly conservative and pro-Trump.
The article encapsulates very well why I cancelled my Oz subscription a few months back. Which means of course there isn’t a newspaper worth reading in the country any more.