‘I am with terrorism’

Nancy has been somewhat tardy of late emerging from her kennel at the Sydney Institute, the good dog’s thoughts on matters of the moment now going public on Saturdays, rather than late on Friday afternoon. Still, interesting things are worth a little patience and her latest epistle especially so.

Courtesy of Gerard Henderson’s remarkably well informed heeler, we learn of the ever-appalling Mike “some of my best friends are Jews” Carlton wishing a toxic death on those attending a dinner to which he happens not to have been invited.

There is also a fascinating account of intramural politics and Robert Manne at LaTrobe University in the Seventies. This particular bulletin, inspired by the tertiary institution’s self-published  book charting its 50-year path from paddock to ivory tower. According to Nancy, the tome fulsomely hails the institution’s efforts to lift intellectual standards above those formerly in place, when its Bundoora site was home to nought but rocks, tiger snakes and Scotch thistles. Without such a book, who would have noticed the improvement?

But the item that most tickled Essential Reading‘s fancy concerns Fairfax Media’s announcement that it will be trying harder to produce newspapers and websites people actually want to read.

This news came as an immense surprise, as it was only recently that the foreign editor for both the Age and SMH, Maher Mughrabi, set his mind to explaining why Ayaan Hirsi-Ali is a low sort of woman much given to telling whoppers about Islam and its propensity to inspire murderous inclinations among more ardent subscribers. Mughrabi keeps it relatively simple for Fairfax’s core audience, many of whom may well have attended LaTrobe and need it that way.

To see why little credence should be placed in Fairfax’s recent assertion that, news-wise, editors will  be pulling up their organic, fair-trade, carbon-neutral socks, consider another example of Mr Mughrabi’s mindset as published in the Marxist journal Arena. It is a little poem which he quotes with what some might see as a degree of sympathy, if not approval. Here it is

I am with terrorism
If it can liberate the people
From tyranny and the tyrant
And save man from the inhumanity of man
And return the lemon, the olive and the goldfinch
To the south of Lebanon
And the smile back to the Golan

It is all very well and good for Fairfax to announce that it intends to mend its ways, toss the bias, supervise the cheap-to-hire kiddies in its newsooms and take journalism seriously once more. But has that memo filtered down to  Mr Mughrabi? His Arena essay can be read in full via the link below.

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