Hard News: Standing up and calling bullshit
And as I noted elsewhere, Finlay might not inclined to "grow up" if he opened the SST and found, above his latest column, Michael Laws or Rosemary McLeod using the tragic death of his eldest son as a hook to go on a rip against inter-racial marriage, or insinuated he'd conspired to cover up the "sleazy" truth.
In such a case, I suspect Finlay and Carol would not only be laying a complaint with the Press Council but having a chat with a good defamation lawyer. And good on them.
pantywaist? who on earth uses 'pantywaist' in normal conversation (other than about underwear)
unless of course you're trying to appear pompous on purpose
Grant McDougall, 11:51 Oct 27, 2009
Russell, the Anke Richter link is the same as the McCroskie one.
Dunedin • Since Dec 2006 • 760 posts Report Reply
Raymond A Francis, 11:52 Oct 27, 2009
So I don't think Finlay's all wrong: the systematic solicitation of outrage from rent-a-quotes
Sums it up for me,
I do think it is a bit rich for any German who is not Jewish/Gypsey etc suggesting to us how to think or deal with Nazi stupidity
45' South • Since Nov 2006 • 578 posts Report Reply
Fixed now.
Right message, but dare I say it would be a little more credible coming from someone who isn't taking thirty pieces of silver a week from one of the worse offenders? It's hard not to come to the conclusion that the editorial m.o. when it comes to Michael Laws' column is to run a blue pencil through anything resembling a considered fact.
Jolisa, 12:03 Oct 27, 2009
Heck, even about underwear. If your panties have a waist, you're wearing them wrong.
Or you're wearing Absolutely Enormous Panties, in which case, fair enough.
Auckland, NZ • Since Nov 2006 • 1472 posts Report Reply
Right message, but dare I say it would be a little more credible coming from someone who isn't taking thirty pieces of silver a week from one of the worse offenders?
Crikey -- freelance rates finally go up!
Oh, and there's a little irony about this I don't think anyone else has noted:
Moir's column hit a nerve: it eventually triggered 22,000 complaints to Britain's Press Complaints Commission – more than the total number of complaints the PCC has fielded in the past five years.
If The Daily Mail wants to complain that it's the vicitm of a vicious attempt to suppress free speech, then one has to wonder why The Mail's own editor, Paul Dacre, was a member of the PCC for nine years before becoming chairman of its Code of Practice Committee.
You better hope not. :) But seriously, I do wonder if Finlay has ever taken an opportunity to bend his own editor's ear on the subject of "systematic solicitation of outrage from rent-a-quotes". I was dimly optimistic that standards would rise with the departure of Cate Brett, but that passed quickly enough.
giovanni tiso, 12:09 Oct 27, 2009
I blame Twitter for pantywaist. It's like a petri dish for cretinous neologisms.
Wellington • Since Jun 2007 • 7473 posts Report Reply
James Butler, 12:21 Oct 27, 2009
I believe pantywaist is in fact a cretinous paleologism. And I blame the rise of increasingly shrill ultraconservative bloggish blatherers from the US in recent years, who need a way to be hateful and homophobic without cussin'.
Auckland • Since Jan 2009 • 856 posts Report Reply
I tend to agree - I imagine it being used by William F Buckley whenever I hear it
First, I really think Finlay will be unamused at being called a neo-con. And let's be fair here: The SST does have some standards, and "whiny little bitches permanently on the rag" is not fit language for a family newspaper.
Gore Vidal would beg to differ...
heh - sadly I have a W F Buckley voice somewhere in the back of my head (from years of boring PBS talk shows) but no Gore Vidal one
Oh, and one final Darce-related: In 2007 he was on "medical leave" for a total of four months, and apparently somewhat unamused that speculation about his health (and continued employment) reached such a pitch that his employer issued a statement about matters he considered private and not of legitimate public interest.
Funny, isn't it, how often media folks have an expectation of privacy they aren't willing to extend to others?
It's like they think they used to suffer under an evil dictatorship or something.
Re: Jimmy Carr, I really struggle to understand the fuss; it's a reasonably amusing joke which draws much-needed light to the fact that there are a lot of people coming home from Iraq and Afghanistan with severe disabilities which they - and the British health system - will be dealing with for a long time to come. In light of that, black humour is a coping system.
First, I really think Finlay will be unamused at being called a neo-con.
I don't think I ever said that... also, I was thinking more of the types whom Salon.com et. al. like to call paleocon. WFB was a proper neocon, and deserving of a sliver more respect.
[neologisms sic]
who need a way to be hateful and homophobic without cussin'.
Bang on the money, James. And inasmuch as homophobia and misogyny overlap in a tidy Venn diagram sort of way, see also big girl's blouse/pussy/etc.
In light of that, black humour is a coping system.
Yes, and there's a time and a place for it. I've got a very good friend who is a neo-natal nurse, and when you deal with enough dead babies and pregnant women in severe physical and emotional truma you reach for whatever coping mechanism that doesn't leave you in your own version of Nurse Jackie. But black humour in the break room is one thing; in front of patients and families. Hell no.
WFB was a proper neocon, and deserving of a sliver more respect.
Buckley was also a genuinely intelligent, witty and articulate man, who (oddly enough) had a lot of friends on the 'other side' because he was rather good company. I don't think the likes of O'Reilly, Coulter and Glenn Beck would get it, or be allowed in WFB's porch without the hounds being let loose for some exercise. :)
Leopold, 12:46 Oct 27, 2009
Off Topic - but do you have any way of persuading your commercial overlords to remove that National Party ad of Bill English in blue as the public face of TV7 from your masthead. Its most irritating.
And no, not to be replaced with Helen, Rod or Russel (one l)
Could put up with Goff-who? in bland, I suppose
Since Jan 2007 • 153 posts Report Reply
But black humour in the break room is one thing; in front of patients and families. Hell no.
True enough. Although, while I'm not in the group being joked about and so don't get the final say on what is and is not offensive, I still don't think Carr's joke was on the level of dead babies.
Apropos of the ministers suicide comments, I was thinking that a few T-shirts with: Nick. Just Do It. might be amusing.
On the SSTs opinionators, I think on balance I prefer that dickheads like Lhaws get a platform. At least it enables us to know that the majority voters of Whanganui are a bunch of moronic rednecks, as opposed to being lulled into voting for the twat in ignorance of his views.
Incidentally Stephen Franks is acting for a port company that's in litigation with Whanganui council. Life's a riot with Bigot vs Bigot.
Matthew Poole, 13:29 Oct 27, 2009
I suspect that many of those about whom Carr was joking would've found the quip rather amusing. I mean, hell, they're soldiers. There are few groups of people more at home with black humour as a coping mechanism than those for whom potential bloody, violent death is a daily companion. If they can find me some outraged amputee veterans to quote I'll reconsider my position, but somehow I doubt that's going to happen.
Brickley Paiste, 13:34 Oct 27, 2009
Buckley was also a genuinely intelligent, witty and articulate man, who (oddly enough) had a lot of friends on the 'other side' because he was rather good company.
Didn't he cut his teeth writing for a pro-segregation journal or some shit?
it doesn't seem like a bad joke to me.
It's a great joke. I'm going to use it. I miss George Carlin so much.
Auckland Grammar boys who took some stupid pictures of themselves worshipping a swastika during a school trip to the Auckland War Memorial Museum
Nazis are becoming boogey men from story books and black and white pictures. I remember when I was 7 or 8 years old walking around in the school yard with my friend doing Hitler mustaches and marching like Nazis (we had just both seen our first Fawlty Towers).
One of the teachers, an English woman, grabbed us both by the ear and told us about living through the bombing of London.
We went white and apologised.
She said, "So don't you go making jokes about Hitler in front of me. Do you know what it's like to be five years old and hearing bombs going off over your heads?"
Now most teachers don't know how to use apostraphes and have Forest Gumpesque intelligence.
We can never forget what happened during the holocaust and seeing smug rich kids make a joke out of it is sickening, not youthful exuberance.
Since Mar 2009 • 164 posts Report Reply
Ross Mason, 13:39 Oct 27, 2009
RE Carr Quip.
Don't worry, even the Times have mentioned it. How sad. Main stream now.
I knew I had seen it a few years ago since I had just come back from Athens Paralympics. :-) Yes, GOLD!!!
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/us_and_americas/article744784.ece#
I AM waiting for Russell to mention the dropping of the ACC Fall Prevention Programme that the instigators suggest has halved the number of falls since it was started.
........oh...and the fact it has been replaced by......Tai Chi.
Oh dear....
I smell magnetic underlays coming through again.....