Last week I poked fun at Malcolm Turnbull’s seemingly-lame attempts to reverse his terribad polling figures by visiting Afghanistan and launching a debt trailer truck. This morning Mr Turnbull’s efforts were revealed to have been effective, leaving me with very serious egg on my face.
Satisfaction with the Leader of the Opposition lifted in the past two weeks after he spent a week overseas visiting Australian troops and a week in Perth attacking the Rudd government’s debt and budget deficit.
[...]
Last weekend, satisfaction with Mr Turnbull rose from 25per cent to 31 per cent, and dissatisfaction fell from 58 per cent to 55 per cent.
I apologise unreservedly to Malcolm Turnbull for ridiculing his campaigning methods.
In unrelated news, Andrew Bolt says that drawing conclusions from “changes that fall even within the margin of error” is “a waste of time and credibility”. What did The Australian ever do to Andrew to deserve such a scathing attack?
THE editor-in-chief of GrodsCorp, Scott, has won the Latte Award for Media Excellence for leading the blog’s balanced coverage of politics and current affairs. The award is presented each year by the Australian Coffee Roasters and Brewers’ Association.
For the first time, the judging panel presented the award to an editor rather than a reporter or columnist. ACRBA chief executive Ernest Pickleheim said that over the past 12 months GrodsCorp’s “in-depth and balanced coverage of a range of social and political issues affecting Australians all has been of a consistently high standard”.
Writers at GrodsCorp including John Surname, Bridgit Gread, Ant Rogenous, Bron and Jason, were judged to have “significantly contributed to this very high standard of journalism”.
(More information here and here.)
Further to GrodsCorp’s story yesterday, Dr (sic) John “TingTong” Ray has reached the pinnacle of academia: he’s been published! Okay, so it’s only in the The Australian’s “Strewth” column, but just like GroupThinkFC, TingTong will take the wins any way they come.
Anyone for tenuous?
THE US presidential election campaign dived to a new low yesterday when an Australian blogger called John Ray claimed to have uncovered three “pornographic” photographs of Barack Obama’s mother Ann Dunham. While mainstream American newspapers backed away from publishing the claims, the internet went crazy with dozens of sites running the old black and white snaps. While the woman photographed bears some resemblance to Dunham, who died of cancer aged 54, there is absolutely no proof it is her, and the photographs are anything but pornographic. The woman is naked but for stockings, high-heeled shoes and oversized Christmas earrings but the poses are modest by today’s standards. She is posed in front of a Christmas tree and piles of wrapped gifts. Anti-Obama bloggers claim the jazz LP records seen in one of the snaps somehow prove that Dunham, if it is her, posed for a communist.
You know it’s going to be a rough day when you’re walking to the train station along a suburban street in the icy pre-dawn darkness and you’re suddenly hit by a flying rolled-up newspaper.
Damn you to the fiery bowels of hell, The Age, The Australian, the Herald Sun or whatever the fuck you were!
Oh, and paperboy — you just made The List.
There’s a big story in the news at the moment about drink driving players who belong to a football team commonly referred to as the “Pies”. It’s a sub-editor’s wet dream. Match the headlines…
* Club bans porky pies
* Eddie chucks pies on sauce
* Collingwood drink drive debacle — out for season
…to the newspapers:
* The Herald Sun
* The Age
* The Australian
Just get a load of those puns. Answers over the fold.
Read the rest of this entry »
Further to this morning’s post about the American Family Association’s gay filter, I was saddened while reading The Australian over a brunch latte (piss off, it’s school holidays) by the fact that News Corporation sees no need to run the same wire story through a similar gay filter.
So I corrected it for them.
The pen is mightier than the printing press
But hang on — what’s that?
Self-referencing exclamation marks
Deary me. I think there needs to a dick filter as well to ensure that there are absolutely no gaymosexual references at all.
I don’t recall The Australian ever being this critical when the Howard government (peace be upon it) was busy slashing funding to welfare programs and public services:
Labor razor gang slashes carers’ bonus
LABOR will scrap annual bonuses of $1600 paid to carers as its budget razor gang carves deep into welfare programs to cut spending and curb inflation.
It will replace the payments with a higher utilities allowance but will leave the sick and disabled and their carers hundreds of dollars a year worse off.
But I’ll let that slide for the moment and say I agree that this announcement is disgraceful. Full-time carers have it tough enough as it is, and were barely supported under the previous government.
Wayne Swan, get your fucking act together. Or join the Liberals.
GrodsCorp has been named Blog of The Year.
It won the prestigious title at the 2007 Grods Awards held in Melbourne last night.
More than 2 guests from across GrodsCorp attended the smart-casual dinner in the dining room at The Editor’s house in Brunswick, presided over by GrodsCorp chairman and chief executive The Editor.
Sound ridiculous? Then try this story from The Australian.
We are Newspaper of The Year
The Australian has been named the Newspaper of the Year for the second time in three years.
It won the prestigious title at the 2007 News Awards held in Canberra last night.
[...]
More than 300 guests from across News Limited attended the black-tie dinner in the Great Hall at Parliament House in Canberra, presided over by News Corporation chairman and chief executive Rupert Murdoch.
