Hard News: In the nicest possible way
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Anyone wanting to get a handle on the strange story of Palin could do worse than Todd Parnum's piece in the latest Vanity Fair, which paints an interesting picture of a woman riddled with so many inconsistencies that the only consistent aspect about her seems to be her utter contempt for anyone who stands in her way.
Or maybe, it requires the reliably sane (and still awesome) Tom Tommorrow to sum things up.
Then again, Tom Tomrrow, along with Paul Krugman, are two "commentators" (for want of a better term- I'm fully aware Krugman has another identity as a Nobel-winning economist on Trade Theory) who seem to have approached the new age with the same amount of healthy skepticism and honesty as they have over last eight years.
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Apropos the Lily-Allen thing I feel bound to report that the pages of this week's "Press" are full of frothing and gnashing of teeth following the publication of a 3-page article on bondage. Talk about your anger. I suppose a "think of the children" argument could be mounted against this sort of thing whereby a precocious young reader could unwittingly stumble across depictions of people getting their jollies (though such an argument would probably involve said young reader not getting all the way through to the classifieds section, where more mainstream sexual activities are regularly described, depicted and in some cases provided with dialogue of an "Ooh! Yes! Ooh!" nature. Go figure... )
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Apropos the Lily-Allen thing I feel bound to report that the pages of this week's "Press" are full of frothing and gnashing of teeth following the publication of a 3-page article on bondage.
But let me guess: not so much with the legnthy, and unnervingly detailed, reportage of how Sophie Elliot and the Bain family met their ends? Don't know about you, but if you want to be a Helen Lovejoy about it I would like to explain to a child how or why someone could be stabbed over two hundred times.
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On disturbing things to read.
Daughter searches for father & ends up in a 10yr sexual relationship with him. Only Dad was convicted, the daughter aquited & the paper didn't say why.
http://www.stuff.co.nz/national/crime/2585571/Man-found-guilty-of-incest
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I'm still disappointed TVNZ7 didn't have the cojones to repeat the Media 7 show on Friday morning lest it frightened the kiddies and their mums confusing the station with TVNZ 6.
A BSA complaint would have made the station come of age (you're not taken seriously as a TV station if you haven't had a BSA complaint upheld against you).
Lily Allen and swearing feature daily on morning radio such as bFM with impunity. A missed chance for some good publicity, methinks. (and I think the BSA would have thrown out any complaint because the swearing wasn't gratuitous as when in reality TV or a soap but in context of a "serious discussion". -
You know Michael H (great first name btw;-)), as one of the participants in the clip, I thought it was entirely aimed at nutters and bigots, and dismissive of them rather than attacking them. It is both light-hearted (hence all the smiles) and making a serious point.
We don't want to be around small-minded ignorant bigots.
I think that's a reasonable position for anyone with intelligence and a humanist perspective to take.
I am just amazed I don't look as hungover as I felt while doing it.
Michael Stevens, thanks for this account. It came across that way to me. I do understand Michael Holt's point, and I thought he was constructive in the way he raised it, but I have to say I love the video. The celebration, tounge-in-cheek, and the hilarity of it all but the clear message; fuck off if you're going to be judgmental. It's some of the most positive anger I've encountered.
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Dear Professor Paglia,
Fuck off you crazy old dyke.
Always,
Julie Burchilli dig very much the work of JB but will someone tell me just what is so loveable about the above quotational?
plz? -
back so soon, lil p?
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Was lil p's last incarnation ("complacenta" or somesuch) banned? I missed that.
Anyway,
If homophobes don't to feel rejected then perhaps they should get out of the rejection business. If they're offended then, now they know how it feels. And this is done with humour.
Tim provides the counter to Michael's "preaching to the converted" argument. No one who's going to dig their toes in over this sort of thing would be persuaded by reasonable argument anyway.
So fuck them.
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I'm still disappointed TVNZ7 didn't have the cojones to repeat the Media 7 show on Friday morning lest it frightened the kiddies and their mums confusing the station with TVNZ 6.
Of course, Uroskin, it's always easy to be brave with someone else's cojones, n'est-ce pas?
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Mais c'est comme ça.....
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I'm still disappointed TVNZ7 didn't have the cojones to repeat the Media 7 show on Friday morning lest it frightened the kiddies and their mums confusing the station with TVNZ 6.
I'm not. It was an editorial decision, bearing in mind the fact of school holidays. Whether we could have got away with it in the event of a BSA complaint -- we probably could -- wasn't the point. But I know I'd be reading out the list of words people told the BSA they found most offensive.
A BSA complaint would have made the station come of age (you're not taken seriously as a TV station if you haven't had a BSA complaint upheld against you).
Jeez, if we're going to use up some capital, I'd rather spend it on a more important issue than that,
Lily Allen and swearing feature daily on morning radio such as bFM with impunity.
A great many things feature on bFM. Its immortal BSA advisory actually ends with the words "fuck-knuckle, cock and piss ... balls. Thank you." But DJs are still expected to lay off particularly profanity-laden tracks during the day; "cunt" is generally considered beyond the pale. It's not a big deal, just considered poor form, I think.
A missed chance for some good publicity, methinks.
We did what we did, and I was determined to say all those words, rather than their euphemisms, and talk about their use. But it didn't seem that important to spring them on a Friday morning screening just because we could.
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@ Conseismal
I don't know either but to watch two respected thinkers behave like a couple of seven year olds gives us all a glimps at the emperors new clothes & their very human failings of ego.
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I don't know either but to watch two respected thinkers behave like a couple of seven year olds gives us all a glimps at the emperors new clothes & their very human failings of ego.
Burchill isn't a "respected thinker" -- she doesn't even agree with herself sometimes -- but she is possessed of a dynamite prose style. Paglia, as the fax exchange shows, can't claim that.
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Into the creepy - Whaleoil is hounding a 24yr old young woman.
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=10583918
Not knowing any of the of it beyond this story it reeks of middleaged obsession with youth and all of the nasty destructiveness Whaleoil is known for.
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Just had second coffee. Sorry for delving into the gossip pages of what I once thought was a news paper.
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But DJs are still expected to lay off particularly profanity-laden tracks during the day; "cunt" is generally considered beyond the pale.
Not so much for all DJs though I am guessing.. Jarvis Cocker, Cunts are still running the world is played during the day.
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Of course, Uroskin, it's always easy to be brave with someone else's cojones, n'est-ce pas?
I'm always only brave with my own ones, thank you very much. We have had death threats for showing some programmes (always a slightly more scary experience than being slapped by Tapu Misa) or nasty phone calls for showing Queer Nation at breakfast time.
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I was surprised the term 'faggot' wasn't mentioned in the same instance as nigger. Was there are reason for this? I noticed someone had posted it under the youtube clip in fucking bad taste. Also related to the first section is the film 'Nothing but the truth', a fictional take along the lines of the Millar case. It has its moments including Matt Dillon's performance and a kind of good conjugal visit scene; essential viewing for John Campbell at this juncture methinks.
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i am curious about RB's comment on Julie Burchill. Exactly what is the problem with disagreeing with yourself sometimes? Even in the midst of composition? What better way to put yourself through some changes, to interfere even with your very own imperatives? And what criteria would he use to discern between the mere execution of a "dynamite prose style" and thought worthy of, thought that generates, "respect"?
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Not so much for all DJs though I am guessing.. Jarvis Cocker, Cunts are still running the world is played during the day
As it should be ;-)
I'm not suggesting there are hard and fast rules (although I wouldn't know these days anyway). Matt & Chris on Thursday Drive will generally say what they want, but that's their brand. And sometimes someone will email in to tell them to stop fucking swearing for the sake of it. Who needs the BSA?
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i am curious about RB's comment on Julie Burchill. Exactly what is the problem with disagreeing with yourself sometimes? Even in the midst of composition?
Burchill will sometimes positively go to war on herself -- her down-on-the-gays period was followed by her lesbian period, for example. But that is how she is.
And what criteria would he use to discern between the mere execution of a "dynamite prose style" and thought worthy of, thought that generates, "respect"?
It's possibly a columnist thing, but even at times when Burchill's argument is nonsensical or offensive, I've still found her prose thrilling.
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"going to war on (oneself)"
sometimes i think that the reactions hereupon even to the likes of me-kins indicate that this is a somehow 'unacceptable state to be in'
Would that i was sure, that this unacceptability is not but one more sign of immersion in identity/victimary rhetoric? And just how much more real thought can from now on come out of that?having just now read the Paglia-Burchill fax exchange (thankeethankee for posting!) i am sytricj by JB's comment that any sort of serious contact with academia is a "fate worse than death" Paglia is here indeed, oh, icky beyond belief!
and yet today we find Miss Julie "studying theology" in the region of old Brighton & Hove..
somehow i do not believe this will deprive her of her thrillsomest nuts!
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Burchill will sometimes positively go to war on herself -- her down-on-the-gays period was followed by her lesbian period, for example. But that is how she is.
If she's ever acknowledged her inconsistencies I've missed it, but there are vast slabs of her career that've happily passed me by.
She was certainly snidely amusing in the late 70s NME/Tony Parsons era. On the Village People: "They're all practicing homosexuals (keep practicing, boys)."
A lot of then-hubby Tony Parsons's role was taken up with damage control for what Burchill had previously written. For example, the week after her slagging More Songs About Buildings and Food as a steaming heap of elitist pretension, Parsons did a Talking Heads interview, which started with Tina Weymouth's "Your wife didn't like our album." It was fun for a while, but no-one's good enough to sustain those kind of hijinks indefinitely, and Parsons was certainly destined for better things than cleaning up after Burchill - or spooking Johnny Ramone into thinking that he was a communist because he turned up to interview the pinheads wearing a hammer & sickle badge.
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Into the creepy - Whaleoil is hounding a 24yr old young woman.
Creepy squared: The Herald on Sunday -- that bellweather of good taste and rigorous journalistic and editorial standards -- crawling onto the moral high ground.
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