A couple are living in the same house. A child dies of catastrophic neglect. The mother is a prescription drug abuser and unable to cope with a (special needs) child, with heaven knows what other things going on, but clearly quite mentally incompetent.

The mother is charged with murder, but the father is charged only with manslaughter.

Where is this feeling of deja vu coming from?

Oh yes, this.

One year later:

The father’s defence was that his wife was the only person who could feed and care for their daughter because of her autism, and the mother had never indicated there was a problem with the girl.

What. a. crock.

The father is completely invisible in this account, except as “and her husband” at the beginning of the article. I did see a brief glimpse of him on the news, face pixillated, blaming the Department of Community Services. There’s a certain type of person that will find someone else to blame, no matter how damning the evidence.

So, let me get this straight: you’re an adult living in the same house with your married or de-facto long term partner, and your partner is not coping to the extent where she allows one child to die slowly over a period of weeks or months (with comcomitant disappearance of child, urine stench, etc); you demonstrate a shocking and callous lack of care towards both your daughter and her obviously unwell mother. And you’re considered less culpable.

I’d say he failed both of them. But it seems the Law here in Australia is still blindly essentialist. Or an Ass. Or both.

This is a repost from the old Blogspot Cast Iron Balcony in March 2004. I was going to link to it in this LP post about Desmond Moran and the Melbourne gangsta thing, but the old blog has lost its template, and its paragraph breaks, completely. For those who perhaps aren’t familiar with Victoria and its obsession with things “Gangland”, I’ve reposted it here instead.

The gangsters of Melbourne have been having something of a killing spree lately. Killing each other, that is. There is even a special Task Force out on them called Purana, which the radio meeja takes great delight in pronouncing “piranha”.

None of us are perfectly consistent: I may be a bleeding heart pinko most of the time but I, too, have an inner right winger. It is hard to feel any sympathy at all for these characters and the temptation is to think “There goes another one! You Bewdy!” and perhaps award a mental Darwin Award.

Callousness is a two edged sword and something that there’s too much of these days, both in the blogosphere and the world at large. It’s to be resisted. Justice can be counter intuitive. Once you say it’s OK for one idiot to blow another away because the other lowlife blew his brudda away and anyway they’re less human than the rest of us, then you’re heading for Rwanda or Northern Ireland. And you’ll be no better than Ronnie Reagan. Remember that 80s joke? Reagan says, “Hmmm, you say there’s a new disease, it’s always fatal, and it affects homosexuals, prostitutes and injecting drug users?… And the problem is…?”

One good reason for ridiculing our homegrown Dougs and Dinsdales is that we need to stop portraying gangstas as cool. The Meeja pretend not to do it, but they can’t help themselves. I guess it’s too easy for a journalist on a deadline to whack in some Hollywood imagery to help a piece along. On the way to work the day after Lewis Moran’s death I saw a Herald Sun poster: GANGLAND KING DIES. Terrific! The Hun, usually of the “lock ‘em up and throw away the key” persuasion, promotes this sad man to King status. This wasn’t on the online version, but we did have “Drama plays like a movie”.

A couple of weeks ago in the Australian, the wife of one of the gangstas had a bit of a grumble about it. Sorry, can’t find the link. Her opinion, that a group of younger wannabes at Andrew “Benji” Veniamin’s funeral, standing around in dark suits and black sunglasses, were pathetic and up themselves, reflected the views of many of us out here in the, ahem, wider community. She also mentioned, revealingly, that Veniamin was full of valium and on his way to his mum’s to get his washing done when he was killed.

Think on that, you young boys and girls. Is that glamour? Is that excitement? Valium, the drug of choice of bored Tennis mums in the 60s, and in the boot of the Merc, instead of another wasted gangsta, a load of smelly washing. Boys, organised crime isn’t glamorous; it’s boring. Gangsters are not people to admire; they’re clueless. ‘Benji’ wasn’t shot down in an exciting, Bonnie and Clyde-type scenario; he was sitting in a restaurant with a mouthful of Fettucine Carbonara*, on his way to his mum’s to get his washing done. As a crusty old feminist, sorry, I can’t resist a final poke: If he had simply learned to bung a load of washing in the machine and turn the knob, instead of being a knob, he might still be alive today.
 
 
*Embellishment alert: I do not know what type of pasta Veniamin actually was eating. It may have been Alfredo.

One of the scary things about getting older is watching other people, who used to be younger and groovier than yourself, age and settle into the sclerotic patterns of unexamined privilege and rightwing attitudes.

In the 90s, as a thirtysomething, I used to listen admiringly to Helen vocalising volubly on 3-RRR Triple J with Mikey Robins. You might have noticed I have a weakness for people who write hilarious, OTT rants full of subordinate clauses, tangents, abstruse words and the occasional runon sentence - Twisty and Tiger Beatdown, Elizabeth Farrelly sometimes. That’s a clumsy attempt to describe what I liked about Helen on the radio. As a thirtysomething in the 90s, I heard her as the voice of younger and hipper people, as well.

So who took away that Helen and replaced her with Christina Hoff Sommers?

I respect Helen’s childfree status - but she doesn’t, it seems, respect others. And all that boilerplate anti-Greens shit? “Hippies”/naive/”ancient-grains”/”patchouli” - it’s a wonder there’s no reference to hemp or volvos there, but you get the incredibly original and edgy jokey references that have never been made before, don’t you?

And the idea that she once voted Green because she was perimenopausal, and therefore unable to make a rational decision, is really special. Of course, that could be taken to mean that childfree women are equally unfit for Parliament because they’re all stark raving bonkers once they reach the median age for the MPs there. That just explains why no-one should employ a woman over forty to do anything, anywhere. Good one Helen! Seems there’s really no life stage in which we can expect to share in the democratic process!

Seems the spirit of backlash antifeminism has claimed another writing soul. And it seems in the MSM as it is today, that kind of writing is well rewarded. The punters love it - so maybe Razer has just made a rational decision, despite the dreaded perimenopause. It’s sad for us fans, though.
 
 
 
Crossposted

I should be putting up something of Jacko’s…but I can’t go past this.

First time I’ve ever been scolded for not being sweary enough in an internet discussion thread, I think. And here I was thinking that the standards at ALR would be so lofty.

I do bristle at the idea that asshat is a mere euphemism, though. Although mild, I love it for its evocation of the location of the subject’s head relative to his arse.

(More etymology of asshat here.)

A while ago I wrote a post on LP about SLAPP suits, the weapon of large corporations against ordinary people and non-government organisations who threaten their hegemony. Then, just after the long weekend, I had one of those “I heard the news today, oh boy” moments: Bob Brown had been SLAPPed down.

Score one for the woodchip industry, and against parliamentary democracy.

Sometimes I wonder why Bob Brown is the target of so much hate from Mr and Mrs Typical Australia, more so than other left-ish politicians. Has the steady drip of disinformation from the media and politicians, Labor and Liberal both, convinced so many “working families” that they’d be living the high life if only the logging companies could just remove the last vestiges of old-growth in South-Eastern Australia? It’s not just the environmental activism; the animus against Brown is so personal. He isn’t annoying, or trollish, in the way that other parliamentary “personalities” like Wilson Tuckey or Steve Fielding are trollish. He’s not from a rich or elite background. His NSW country drawl is real and unforced, and he looks as if he’s stepped out of a Russell Drysdale painting. Perhaps it’s because he’s a gay man in a homophobic culture that he incurs an extra dose of bile from the News commenters and talkback.

I was trudging through the rest of the week, filled with gloom, thinking that the Forces of Darkness had won again. Then, this.

Australian businessman Dick Smith has pledged to help Australian Greens leader Bob Brown pay a $240,000 legal bill which is threatening to force him into bankruptcy.
…Speaking from his helicopter over Lake Eyre today, Mr Smith said it was inappropriate for the industry to threaten someone’s political future.
“I’m very disturbed when I understand the legal letter which came in to Bob Brown threatened to make him a bankrupt, and of course, Forestry Tasmania would know that means he’d have to vacate his seat from Federal Parliament,” Mr Smith said.
“And I don’t really like that at all. I think that type of threat is quite uncalled for in Australia.”

…”I believe it’s just not acceptable and Forestry Tasmania will do themselves great damage if they think they can remove Bob Brown from Parliament because he doesn’t have much money,” he said.
“I know if need be, I’ll come in with some money and I’m sure others will too.”

Before the anti-Brown forces could work up a full head of steam about how terrible it was that Brown would take money from a businessman and how morally bankrupt that made him - never mind the steady stream of corporate money to the Liberal and Labor parties, not all of it above board - the story took another twist: Brown wouldn’t need Dick Smith’s offer after all, because the public had donated the money. All of it.

It was really wonderful to see the level of support for Brown, even in unlikely places and the condemnation of such antidemocratic SLAPP litigation tactics. Flicking around a few comment forums, I noticed many comments from people who said they disagreed with Brown and would never vote for him, but would still donate because Forestry Tasmania’s action was simply wrong. The animus against BB had abated somewhat (although I’m sure it’ll be back.) I think that middle Australia had been shocked out of its complacency, and Dick Smith had reminded them what human decency could do.

Score one for Bob Brown, and none for “Gunns, Forestry Tasmania and the [Forestry wing of the] CFMEU, which, at this stage of the game, are basically different arms of the same misshapen beast“.

Because Friday was too busy.

I think it was Anne O’Dyne, or perhaps Caroline, who first pointed me to this lovely YouTube of Mike Rudd in the Olden Days.



I remember listening to that song when it first came out and riding our grey mare for hours down just such country roads, alone with my thoughts (or my friend Nicky) and the sounds of the crows and magpie song and the creak of saddle leather. The coolest boys at my high school looked like Mike.

Some of the roads I rode down have kerbs and gutters now. You can never go back.

Words and chords here - the chords are all over the place, but they’ll allow you to work it out for yourself.

Because of a deliberate campaign by the right-wing senator Eric Abetz, the ABC has gone out of its way to boost the Liberal voting and conservative element in the studio audience for the political discussion program Q & A.

ABC managing director Mark Scott told a Senate estimates hearing yesterday that, of the 2500 people who had attended the program this year, 34.4 per cent said they supported the Coalition, while 33.9 per cent voted Labor. Green voters comprised 12.8 per cent of audiences, while 2.4 per cent supported other parties and 16.6 per cent declined to reveal their voting intention…

…To restore the balance, Q & A producers leaned on Liberal politicians, firms such as Ernst & Young and PricewaterhouseCoopers and organisations including the Australian Christian Lobby, the Australian Union of Jewish Students, the Australian Family Association and the Australian Retailers Association in their hunt for conservatives.

The Howard government has gone but their miserable culture wars live on. The ABC has to bow to the whims of wingnuts like Abetz or, presumably, stand accused of commie radical advocacy. There is a huge double standard at play here.

If that tactic had been employed by the ABC to boost input from people Mr Abetz didn’t approve of, it would have been called “stacking”. If efforts had been made to boost input from marginalised or less powerful groups in society, it would have been called “affirmative action”, and you know how well that goes down with the Abetzes and Albrechtsons. Oh, well, consistency, you know, the hobgoblin of little minds, etcetera.

12.8 percent Greens in the audience is called “over-representation”. When a single Liberal senator pressures the ABC to use affirmative action and stacking to increase the rightwing content of the audience, it’s called “balance”. Anyway, that explains why there are so many inane questions from young apparatchiks-in-the-making in this program’s audience.
 
 
 
Crossposted at Larvatus Prodeo. Edited to correct typo “12.8 Greens” to “12.8 percent Greens

Check out this illustration, which goes with this massive outbreak of flatulence on bbc.co.uk. Yes, that’s right. It looks like the kind of thing you’d see in the Mail or Telegraph, but it’s the BBC, which is very sad.

“Women who believe liberal values exploit their sexuality have something much greater to fear - the jackboot of dictatorship, says Clive James.” Oh, look, the word “jackboot” is closely juxtaposed with the image of a very, very expensive piece of bejewelled, stilletto heeled footwear - exactly the kind of footwear favoured by rich, selfish western funfeminists, obviously. The Manolo Blahniks, or jackboots, as your subconscious now suggests that they are, are stamping on… what? they’re stamping on all the women in the non-western world!

Clive thinks that it should be obvious that liberal democracy is best for women, but do you think feminists agree? No, because they hate democracy, and prefer the jackboot / manolo blahnik of dictatorship! Say whaa, you say? Yes, according to Clive this is the case. “Some Western feminists” (that’s code for most of us, I think) don’t want women to have freedom, which is proved by their lack of support for joining up with the US and bombing their countries back into the Stone age.

Kuwait is by no means, a perfectly constituted democracy. As far as I can figure out, there is a ruling family whose Emir chooses the government and calls elections for parliament. But women have now been elected to the parliament, by popular vote. It should hardly need saying that this would have been unlikely to happen if Saddam Hussein had been allowed to continue to rule the country by terror, but let’s leave his awful memory aside for a moment, if we can, and dare to put forward a general reflection.

Kuwait? Saddam Hussein? errrr….. Let’s just skip over that minor error and continue with James’s demonstration of how wrong all the western feminists are. The solution, he appears to be saying, is just to give up on this notion of women being equal to men and get themselves protectors from the world’s supply of naturally violent men. Yes, he’s reviving the old spectre of “regime change” again, to rescue the damsels who will strew flowers in their path when rescued by the violent western forces (but it’s good violence, you understand, not that bad violence practiced by The Other Side.)

Does this sound familiar? He’s reviving the old 2007 Decent talking point, that if you oppose invading and bombing other countries you hate democracy. If you’re a so-called feminist, and you don’t think the Coalition of the Willing should be reducing one country or another to rubble, that means you support the continued oppression of the women there. It’s logical, innit. And it’s linked to our unreasonable repudiation of violence. Unreasonable, because (Clive thinks) it’s a chick thing.

It’s just too clear a proof that men have a natural advantage when it comes to the application of violence. When you say that women have little chance against men if it comes to a physical battle, you are conceding that there really might be an intractable difference between the genders after all.

…Men will always monopolise the means of violence if they can. Women can learn to shoot guns, but there are no all-female armies, and even the Amazons were probably a myth. Women, on the whole, would naturally like to do something else, whereas an army, for too many men, is a home away from home, and often their only home.

…What [Aung San Suu Kyi] needs is an invading army…”

Yes, that’ll work. Depending on the good graces of the Warrior Class has worked really well for the women of the world, so far. That’s why the Sudan is such a fucking paradise. And I don’t get the feeling that the army was a home away from home for Clive. He spent his youth writing articles for the University rag and building his career. If he gets his wish, this old man won’t be invading Burma. His government will be sending younger men (and women) on this latest useless adventure. People like MY SON. Words are cheap, Clive.

And, Clive? The worst thing about this article is not that you’ve latched onto this ancient and pathetic gotcha fully two years after the other Decents did, and the rest of the blogosphere showed very convincingly what a pile of old dog’s balls it was. It’s not that you admit you won’t even use your position as a popular writer and functionary of The Burma Campaign to do anything for Aung San Suu Kyi because it’s not threatening and warlike enough - you terrifying old keyboard Kommando, you. No, it’s because you use the women of Burma and Iraq - or was it Kuwait? - to score some kind of point over the strawfeminists who you’d like to get off your lawn. And that does not make you the better person.

There’s a guy called Kant who wants a quick word with you. In the meantime though, Western Feminists, just give up your sick love of violent dictatorships! and get your bejewelled jackboot the hell off Aung San Suu Kyi!

Next time you are sitting at the computer (make sure you have the sound turned up), and a dear child comes in and says something like “I can’t find any SOCKS!!”, click on the tab / extra window which you have opened with this link, and click the big blue button. Clutch your head Edvard Munch style.
 
 
H/T: Fetch me my Axe.