So we’ve all pretty much heard about the dopey British backpacker who survived 12 days lost in the Blue Mountains, Jamie Neale, by now, yeah? It’s a wonderful relief that he’s been found, it goes without saying. He’s a very lucky lad.

And that should be the end of that, right? He goes back home to England and recuperates fully and resumes normal life, right?

Oh no. Not at all. Don’t be so fuckin’ naive, Bron, for this is the day and age of instant “celebrity” and round-the-clock, in-your-face media exposure. Timespan of everyone wanting a piece of your arse: usually a week.

Thus I was shitty when I saw the headline on the SMH website, “Jamie Neale stands to make a fortune”.

Shitty because I really need to make an instant fortune and it was him who gets the money and I don’t.

Seriously, though, it’s shitty because everyone is getting fiscally rewarded and instant “celebrity” for mishaps, accidents, and just generally getting caught up in the vicissitudes of life.

Shit happens.

And who the hell are these celebrity agents? The dude’s just come out of the bush after 12 days and is recovering in hospital and he’s already signed up to a celebrity agent? Do celebrity agents hang around hospital corridors waiting for the next “big” story to be wheeled past in a gurney? There is just something sordid about the speed at which Jamie and his dad were snapped up by a “celebrity” agent.

I, for one, won’t be reading or watching any interviews. I know the story, I know what happened, and I know how it ended. I don’t need a complete rehash and deconstruction of The Boy Who Was Lost in the Bush for 12 Days. I’m just glad he’s been found safe and sound. And that’s that.

Once again, mothers are up in arms over some B-grade celebrity getting her gear off for a men’s magazine. Funny how we never hear dads shrieking about the demise of our morality in the same way.

Anyway, this time it’s… hang on, can’t remember her name, let me check… oh yeah, this time it’s a certain Kellie Crawford, apparently a former Hi-5 “star”. She stripped down to her underwear and pranced around a studio while someone took photos of her for publication in Ralph. Great rag, that. Or so I’m told by some men in my life.

So, I’m reading this news thingy about this Kellie whoever and how “family groups” reckon Kellie is sending out a “negative” message to young girls everywhere.

“The fact she’s posed on a cover is particularly problematic because magazines like Ralph are on shop shelves at kiddy eye level,” [Women's Forum Australia spokesperson, Melinda Tankard Reist] said.

“It’s an abuse of her position with tens of thousands of little girls looking up to her.”

No it’s not. Kellie whatsis doesn’t owe any little girl anything, particularly if she’s no longer a member of Hi-5. Relatedly, from the pictures I’ve seen of Kellie’s norks, the tens of thousands of little girls looking up to her wouldn’t even be able to see her chin anyway.

Julia Gale from Kids Free 2B Kids also criticised Crawford.

“Older teenage girls will wonder why performers feel the need to pornify their image,” she said.

“They are damaged and harmed by messages that they need to sexualise yourself.”

Oh spare me! You’re the fucking parents, you can control what your kids see (although, granted, with the internet these days… ).

Plus, “pornify” is NOT A FUCKING WORD! I looked it up.

As for Ms Crawford, I was a bit alarmed when she said, “I did [the photos] for myself to remind myself that I am a woman.”

To remind herself that she’s a woman?

Okay! Here’s hoping she now has absolutely no doubts about what she is.

UPDATE: Judge for yourselves…

John Howard has been traveling a lot since he got turfed. You can’t blame him, really. By last November – even in his own electorate – Australians were less than enthused about the fella. But over in America, wingnuts staring down the possibility of an Obama presidency just love him.

If you dare, check out the video at PajamasTV where Johnny explains how the media were all agin’ him. (I think it was taken just after he got that award that Bron was talking about)

Highlights abound. Not least among them is the premise of the thing: that Howard had a “contentious relationship with the press” which “wasn’t a whole lot better than the Republican party’s in the US”.

Now, my memory isn’t what it once was, but I could have sworn that John had a few media outlets very much on side. Just for a start I recall a national newspaper openly campaigning for him, friendly columnists in practically every major paper, a good relationship with the family who owned Channel 9 and The Bulletin for most of his tenure, and a bunch of right-wing shock jocks cheering him on. So why would JWH think the meedja were out to get him?

HOWARD: It is a reality in all of our societies that the majority of people who go into the media have a centre-left disposition, that’s just the reality. Not all of them, and there are a significant number of remarkable exceptions to that rule.

Yes, there are many significant and remarkable exceptions to this rule, Mr Former PM.

HOWARD: You need as much diversity as you can have in the media.

Stuff like cross-media ownership restrictions can help with that.

HOWARD: In talkback radio you have a different attitude, a different spirit.

Indeed. Then, with a cheeky grin:

HOWARD: On occasion I accused particular outlets of having a particular bent… From time to time when I’ve been involved in a heavy debate or a heavy campaign I’ve made some remarks about certain outlets in Australia that have identified them with the Labor Party.

Who could he be possibly have been making these mischievous allegations about?

So then there’s some painful, faux-blokey banter about the Olympics and vegemite and Jamaica, after which as quickly as he appeared, the Man of Steel is gone. That leaves the Internet TV guys to talk about how awesum he is in absentia.

PJTV GUY: His single quality is his moral courage, his ability to see right from wrong, and say it plainly.

Hmmmmmm. Are you sure?

OTHER PJTV GUY: My daughter is now in Australia… and she says he’s actually thought of very kindly by the people of Australia who still think of him being a towering leadership figure.

I dunno. I can think of some people who don’t remember him that fondly.

A branch of the Russian Communist Party has threatened Indiana Jones star Harrison Ford that he will be “beaten and despised” if he comes to Russia to promote his latest movie. The St Petersburg branch of the Communist party also called for a boycott of the movie, describing it as crude, anti-Soviet propaganda.

My first thought was not for the safety and well-being of Harrison Ford should he go to Russia, but for how long it would take before the anti-communists and the Joe McCarthys in blogdom to seize on this and claim it is proof, EVIDENCE! that all communists are a rather nasty bunch, then go on to tar all lefties with the same brush. Evidence that lefties hate freedom of speech, evidence that lefties are censorial, evidence that lefties are violent and full of hate, evidence that lefties cannot stand Hollywood big-budget adventure flicks.

So far, I have seen nothing. And it’s been over six hours since the ABC News Online posted that bit of news.

If you see anything from the moonbats frothing over the dirty, filthy commies and “Leftards”, leave a note in the comments.

UPDATE:

True to form, the Daily Telegraph have used Our Cate as an angle to this “story”. They also helpfully provided the link to the Russian Communist Party website where the denunciations were made. It’s helpful if you can read Russian.

The Editor, John Surname, Ant Rogenous, Jeremy Sear, The Happy Revolutionary and Craig discuss:

* Sin tax
* Whingeing musicians
* Chair sniffing
* Wilson Tuckey vs. Bill Heffernan in the GrodsThink naked cagefight

** Because of the pernicious lack of Brendan Nelson bashing in this episode use only the “Play in popup” link or the “Download” link. **

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We’ve all got an embarrassing relative tucked away somewhere, usually in Queensland. Someone you never visit, speak to or speak about … and even mention of them makes you cringe and wince. For me, it’s a distant cousin with no neck who is now safely tucked away in rural north-east Victoria. His claim to fame was three years in ‘Nam (i.e. Pakenham) where he was arrested five times, usually for petty theft and public drunkenness. His coup de grace was stealing and torching a car, only to discover it belonged to an off-duty police sergeant. He now lives on a small farm near Myrtleford, his de facto wife has a job at the local supermarket while he has a job on the sofa. (As far as I know they don’t have the Internet, or the irony would be complete.)

Rest assured that if I’m ever famous and/or in trouble, the Herald Sun would rush up to interview said distant cousin, as they did with Kevin Carey, father of Wayne. Big Kev’s got an opinion on everything, including Wayne the footballer:

“He was the best. He’s still the best, but he’s just an idiot.”

…the causes of Wayne’s problems:

“It’s the piss and his dick”

…Wayne’s girlfriend:

“She’s . . . bad news”

…the criminal offence that landed Big Kev himself in prison, for:

“Belting up some c—”

…and his ex-wife, who alleged that their relationship was violent:

“She was a f—ing liar. She will go out and say I’m a wife-basher”.

Classy journalism, digging deep to get to the bottom of this story of global interest.

Don’t get me wrong. I think that actors’ jobs can be stressful at times and that they can get just as tired and frustrated after a long day at work as the rest of us, but it’s still not exactly a hard life. Last weekend’s Sunday Life magazine out of the Sunday Age had two profiles: one on actor Guy Pearce and one on an emergency and trauma doctor.

Guy Pearce talked about working on box office flop The Time Machine and how it was, like, really tough and stuff.

The Time Machine “was tricky. It went on for so long…” says Pearce. One director, Simon Wells, withdrew due to stress. Panned on release, the flick struggled to recoup its $80 million outlay.

[...]

As matters grew messier, Pearce succumbed to stress, what he calls “head noise”. When shooting ended the Aussie headed for home. “The whole thing felt like overload. Around that time, I smoked more marijuana than the entire country put together. I went by myself to Cape Leveque [in the Kimberly] to sort myself out.”

He lugged around 30 books on Buddhism and his guitar. The guitar was soon ditched (”this wasn’t about being creative”) in favour of meditation. “I needed to stabilise myself. To learn to concentrate, to breathe.”

So a film shoot goes bad and Pearce takes half a year off to go bush, smoke pot and “breathe” to get over it. A couple of pages later Dr Rohan Laging talks about a bad day at his office.

“I’ve had a death every week for the past three weeks, which is a bit of a rough run. You go back and try to think about what you could have done differently but,” he ticks off procedures on his fingers, “I did that, I did that, I did that. But I couldn’t have done anything. It’s particularly unpleasant.”

One patient four years ago sticks in Laging’s mind. He was an elderly general practitioner with an inoperable “triple A” — an aneurysm in his abdominal aorta. He was the first to die under Laging’s care.

[...]

When the man died, Laging told nurses he needed 30 minutes off.

Really puts things in perspective, doesn’t it?

UPDATE (9/3/08): Chuck has kindly linked to a very relevant video in comments and noted that it probably speaks for all of us.

How do, Grodcorpuscles, I’m back from my winter sojourn to Europe. I’ll make a post about it later, once the jetlag has cleared and I’ve toiled my way through a month of washing. In the meantime, check out the cover of this snazzy book my neice is starting the school year with – the title is at once misleading and accurate:

In light of recent media beat-ups it’s time for some lyrical deconstruction:

Steve Irwin lived in khaki, a cartoon kamikaze, he taunted crocs and tots so frequently. Brocky was some revhead who pumped the air with lead, so anti-green he drove into a tree.

Nothing too erroneous or hyperbolic there. Irwin did spend his life in khaki, yahooing from one end of the globe to the other, jumping on the back of crocodiles, waving dead poultry and slabs of horsemeat in front of their snouts. Sometimes he even replaced the horsemeat with his own son (the media should remember that - since they savaged him for it, when he was alive, of course).  As for Brocky, he might’ve owned a farm and found new-age karma late in life but much of his adulthood was spent depleting reserves of fossil fuel. When he wasn’t having a 15-year extra-marital affair with a family friend, behind his wife’s back.

John Lennon chose the hippie life, he chose some nutbag for a wife, his songs were never quite as good as Paul’s. Jeff Buckley fooled all lovers, just one album, mostly covers, with more wailing than Japan does off our shores.

Lennon was a hippie and Yoko Ono does seem slightly cracked. Not sure I agree about the songs; much of his and Paul’s post-Beatles stuff sounds horrible to me, but that’s a matter of personal taste. Strange though how the current media reports don’t report the ‘tasteless Chaser attack’ on Lennon, him being all socialist and all (it seems not even lefties turn into top blokes after death).

Princess Di was just a slut for sex, when they looked in the car, a wreck, her dress was wet with Arab’s semen stains. Stan Zemanek was a racist jock, a fatso xenophobic cock, his views were more malignant than his brain.

Tacky and vulgar. I loathe the term ’slut’, mind you Diana was indeed as promiscuous as she was photogenic, amiable and charity-focused. She wasn’t too bothered if her bedpartners were married either. As for Zemanek, is there a right-thinking person who disagrees with that assessment of him? He spent his life fertilising stereotype, bigotry and paranoia, in the guise of a raving, vindictive clown. Even his widow, if she looks past her grief and into her conscience, must see it.

Don Bradman was a total bastard, grumpy, greedy, a real tight-arse, who couldn’t even score one run the last time he played. Kerry Packer was a brothel chief, a tax fraud and a kidney thief, and procreating Jamie was the worst mistake he made.

Greatest cricketer ever sure but Bradman’s elitism, his bigotry towards Catholics and his capacity for holding and facilitating grudges are legendary. When he became an administrator he was even worse, by all accounts. And we’ve already heard (from his own network and media publications mainly) about what a bonza bloke Kerry was. He gave away thousands to needy individuals and millions to worthy institutions (i.e. casinos) – all from his stash of billions. I’ll stand up for Kerry on one point though – he didn’t steal that kidney, he bought it fair and square.

It’s a tough life being a has-been supermodel. As sycophantic journalist Marion Hume notes in today’s Sunday Life magazine, “The image of a young woman being so genetically blessed that studies were denied her is unexpectedly sad.”

Apparently Elle McPherson finished in the top 10% of the country in HSC and earned a place to study law, but her modelling career took off and took over. In the process she’s lived all around the world, earned untold riches and climbed to the top of the modelling ladder.

Now that she’s “42 [or] 42 in a few months or whatever,” she says, correcting herself, her career is winding down and it’s time to regret paths not followed. “My biggest disappointment is not going to university because I wanted to experience university life. Today I have a ferocious desire to expand my mind and if I had one thing… I don’t have any regrets but I wish I had the time in the day to read as much as I’d like to read and have time to think.”

But don’t fall into the trap of thinking that Elle is shallow because she’s a model. Her interests are many and varied. “I visit museums, I buy art, I love furniture, I’m interested in philosophy, in poetry, I listen to music constantly.”

It’s oh-so-hard being cursed with a celebrity life. But along with the sacrifices comes wisdom. “I have a much broader spectrum of emotions and understanding of life. If someone comes to me with a concept, I could, organically, take that in and re-express it, whereas I think when I was younger… Now I can take things in at a deeper level so as a conduit, I may be a richer source. Does that make sense?”

Not really.