Silence becomes him

Speak not ill of the dead — it is advice which Bob Ellis (above), now croaking with the Choir Eternal, might have heeded. Here he is, drawn to his keyboard in a passion of jubilant incoherence upon hearing that Margaret Thatcher had passed away:

We would have a safe Qantas without Thatcher. We would have a Commonwealth Bank, and houses in Coogee would cost us two hundred thousand dollars. We would have a renationalised Holden, and a million more jobs in manufacturing. We would have small farms, selling milk to corner stores. Some say she was not the cause and the Harvard Business School or the Chicago School of Economics was — but she was the trigger, she was permission, she was the starting shot, and the Gordon Gekkos went for it.

We should not mourn Thatcher today, but the good world she cost us.

And curse the day that she was born.

Let us say nothing of the day Bob Ellis was born.

Below, a link to a Lateline story from 1998 reporting the libel action arising from his pulped book, Goodbye Jerusalem. Do notice how then-host and future Labor MHR Maxine McKew frames her report:

“In joining the action both Peter Costello and Tony Abbott have left themselves open to the charge that their primary interest is a pot of money…instead of the defence of damaged reputations.”

Bob Ellis gone. The ABC lives on.

Read More