How a desirable wish-list item suddenly morphed into a death threat. The deafening derision around town seems to be lost on iditor Ben Bogan, but the latest circulation figures which landed yesterday must surely give him pause about the total mess he is making of the Astonisher.
While we’re in that neck of the woods, The Fallacy of Transferred Authority … the art of the plausible lie was taken to a new level this week in the paper’s most desperate bid yet to be the mouse that roared about a stand-alone stadium.
Also, want to be remembered by history? Depending on your name, be careful what you wish for.
And Scott Morrison joins the world elite of political tongue twisters.
But first, Bentley.
Our man was quite taken by those three would-be terrorists who turned humorists with their plan to motor in a small cabin cruiser from Cape York across to the Middle East to join ISIS. They were stopped in FNQ before they even put the boat in the water, (for God’s sake, why?) and remain in chokey awaiting their fate.
But Bentley is thinking they perhaps should be thankful they were nabbed before pushing off from the beach.
The Fallacy of Transferred Authority
One of the first lessons The ‘Pie learnt as a cadet journalist 50 years ago was the fallacy of transferred authority. Just because someone is famous in one area doesn’t necessarily translate into any special expertise in another. Classic examples abound, particularly when movie and sports stars express opinions on matters about which they know no more and possibly less than the average Joe. They are entitled to those opinions, but the enormous airing they get in the media adds false weight to that opinion, giving the impression that the person is an authority in that area, too.
It can sometimes be dangerous.
Gwenyth Paltrow
For instance, take sublime actress and social media fruitcake Gwyneth Paltrow. Off screen, Ms Paltrow runs a health and well-being website called (most aptly) Goop. Thousands of Paltrow’s female fans flock to the site, where they are, inter alia, encouraged to indulge in vaginal steaming, make their own lubricants, non-toxic condoms (‘just slip on the tofu and seaweed Johnny, darl, while I mix up a bit newt’s eye and quinoa lube’) and to buy things like $15000 gold-plated vibrators. Really! Mongrel the Barrister says he’s all for a steaming vagina but vagina steaming?
Be that as it may, with her star appeal, Gwynny must have hundreds reaching for the kettle and the pudding basin at this very moment. A lot of this … well, this Goop … has been debunked and Ms Paltrow has been outed as the quixotic twit of the health world.
But Closer To Home …
But the Fallacy of Transferred Authority had an interesting outing in Townsville this week. On the front page, no less, of the increasingly desperate and irrelevant Townsville Daily Astonisher aka the Bulletin.
Before we go any further, let’s be absolutely clear about the paper’s dishonesty with this front page … although clearly intended to convey the false message to the contrary, JOHNATHAN THURSTON DID NOT SAY BUILD IT OR WE ARE GONE – OR ANYTHING LIKE IT. His was a stock standard ‘it would be a good thing for Townsville etc etc’. The ‘we are gone in five years’ twaddle came from the latest member of the Gang of Four, the NRL-instructed carpetbagger, Cowboys CEO Greg Tonner. Now he’d have a balanced civic view of the world, wouldn’t he?
What’s more, Tonner makes the magnificent leap of logic from ‘the current stadium is tired’ to ‘ if we don’t get the CBD stadium, the Cowboys will have to leave town for another city.’ as bloody if, that is of course, a-grade, rolled gold, nickel plated bullshit … the Cowboys won’t be leaving Townsville as long as News Corpse own the Bulletin, the team is one of its financial mainstays in which it has a huge investment. Tonner appears to be telling porkies in line with instructions from his betters which of course includes the Bulletin.
Getting Johnathan Thurston’s opinion on the desirability of a new stadium can be likened to a school P&C concerned about the unbearable costs of a new playground furnished with the latest equipment … and then leaving the vote up to the kids as to whether they want the new facility and damn the costs down the line.
Johnathan Thurston is not a child, but he is a man dedicated to his sport and the people who have helped him use his enormous talents to become immensely wealthy. Any analytical thoughts about civic costs, financial priorities and unfair burden on ratepayers would come a distant second to his devotion to rugby league … and would be highly coloured by the Gang of Four, led by CBD property czar Lozza Lancini.
But Wait, There’s More
If all that smacked of desperation and dishonesty, Friday’s front page smacked of WTF. In one of the most cringe-worthy, juvenile offering from an increasingly muddled Astonisher, this was possibly one of the most insulting efforts to date.
Talk about twaddle.
First that sub-head ‘Cowboys fans fear stadium stalemate will force club’s exit’ is a self-fulfilling news generator, because if fans felt that way, it is only because the Bulletin told them so the day before. And the whole idea was not even supported by the hoked up story. Cute baby pic, yes, but could she give a toss about the Cowboys ? Well, no, according to her mother. For reasons best known to themselves, reporters Kieran Rooney and Victoria Nugent decided to negate the whole bloody set-up right from the story’s outset.
2nd par quote: ‘Natasha Akee said she could not face the thought of not being able to take daughter Naakeeva to watch the North Queensland Cowboys. ‘We took her to one game, but I think it was a bit loud for her. To be honest, I think I’m going to cry.’ Unquote.
Huh? At a guess, Natasha m’dear, there’d be plenty who read this who will join you in shedding a dainty tear, but in their case, it will be for seeing a once proud and respected paper falling so low. Weird doesn’t even begin to cut it. Someone has really lost the plot now at the Astonisher with this stuff that makes absolutely no sense at all.
Despite All That, Still They Wonder, Who’ll Stop The Drain …
That astounding front page turn off (on Friday 13th) coincided with the release of latest audit circulation figures. If the paper makes you laugh, the figures will make you cry.
A snapshot summary shows that in the year to the end of March, the paper dropped another 1277 buyers Monday to Friday, but it was even grimmer for the Saturday flagship and real estate moneymaker … a circulation of just 25,650 means 2754 more people have stopped buying the Townsville Bulletin in the past year.
Even more disconcerting must be the appalling digital subscription figures. Other papers count gains in this area in the thousands – indeed, almost all the metros are now more read digitally than in print – but the Bulletin’s current drive for subscriptions is now seen in all its urgency, because the digital subs almost look like a typing error … just 135 Monday to Friday, and 138 for Saturday.
By now, it’s no joke that the Bulletin has become a paper they can hardly give away. Although they try to, at all sorts of events around town. But the paper is spurned in the hundreds, even when it’s free. Like here at last Saturday’s junior soccer at Brolga Park.
The $4 entrance fee came with a free Astonisher. Few takers, it seems. Wonder how those papers are counted in the circulation.
A Dubious Sort Of Immortality
Television program pioneer Reg Grundy left us during the week, eliminated from the game in his Bahamas home, aged 92. Reg made a fortune not through originality but more through imitation and some are unkind enough to say intellectual theft, grabbing American TV game show ideas and translating and improving them into an Australian product. This was in an era when no licensing agreements existed. After Sale of the Century and Wheel of Fortune came Neighbours, Home and Away and Prisoner. All of which made him both fabulously wealthy and a household name. He sold the whole lot back to those he had pinched it from in the first place for squillions.
And therein lies the rub, as Willy S so neatly says.
The Aussie talent for rhyming slang makes a mockery of just about anyone and anything, and Reg Grundy quickly joined that elite band of personalities that have gone into folklore. Indeed, he is on the upper tier where those so well known can have the rhyming word dropped and most will know what is meant. In this case, the original Reg Grundys – for underwear as in undies – became and remains ‘yer Reggies’.
Perhaps not the enduring fame one might want, but it could’ve been worse. Just ask (well you can’t they’re all long dead) jockey Edgar Britt, 1930s tennis ace Adrian Quist and the perhaps lesser known racing personality of the 50, Morris McCarten, as in ‘Phew, you been Morris again?’
Wicket keeper Wally Grout inspired millions of cries across pub bars ‘Your Wally, mate’ usually to a bloke nicknamed ‘Hero’ because he wouldn’t shout if a shark bit him. It is an ingrained Aussie habit which continues to this day, and you do not have to be departed, just prominent enough in the media, which the likes of Barry Crocker, James Hird and Rex Hunt have learnt to their embarrassment.
This special lingo can be off-putting to visitors to these fair shores. Ask American basketball import Derek Rucker, who apparently had to inquire why he was being referred to as ‘Mother’. Apparently he wasn’t amused, which more or less ensured the nickname stuck. Sometimes, you can sniff the ones that try too hard, like League player Phil Sigsworth was briefly known as ‘What’s a packeta’. It lacked the wit of the 80s League player who was known to run out of puff as the game went on. He was called George Negus, after the TV star had just knocked back lucrative offers and declared he’d ‘only work for 60 Minutes’.
But The ‘Pie’s personal favourite, which one supposes is obvious as it is clever is the Newcastle League player Matt Hilder. He was simply called ‘Waltzing.’
Bill Shorten’s Mark Latham Moment In Townsville
From The Magpie’s Nest comments during the week.
The Magpie
May 11, 2016 at 10:21 am (Edit)
Bill Shorten has a Mark Latham Moment.
Cathy ‘The Tool’ O’Toole introduced a political deja vu moment to the Short Un’s Townsville round of blah-blah, when it was revealed she is/was opposed to the current Labor refugee policy.
She was reminded that she campaigned outside Ewen Jones office a few months ago, with a sign proclaiming Let Them Stay – which Labor knows would be toxic anywhere let alone in this electorate.
The Latham moment? Well, The ‘Pie’s old pal Shallow Nosril (The ‘Pie cannot afford a Deep Throat) took us back to 2004 and then Labor leader Mark Latham’s visit to the ‘Ville. The hopeless and politically top-of-the-queue candidate Anita Phillips, who really did not have a clue, accompanied Latham on his local rounds.
Mark Latham
He wished she hadn’t, as he made clear in his best seller The Latham Diaries the following year.
“Got through the rest of the day by conditioning my mindset, by sending up the absurdity of what I do. Toured he Townsville Show with Anita Phillips, our hapless candidate for Herbert. When I said troops out by Christmas, she told the local media, ‘He didn’t say which Christmas.’ Where do we get them from? And how do I give them back?” (The Latham Diaries, Mark Latham, 2005, p 312)
The Tool is now being called the new Anita Phillips by her opponents.
ScoMo A Go Go
It’s the low hanging fruit of language to suggest that politicians are twisters, but our new Treasurer has shown he is world class in tongue twisters.
The ‘Pie almost dropped his hot cocoa all over his nightly Ice VoVos when he Scott Morrison, without even blinking or a mini-stumble, say the following:
‘We say what we mean, mean what we say, and we do what we said what we’d do in the why we say we will do it, and that’s what we are doing on this issue.’
Just imagine Wingnut Abbott trying to reel that off. Have a look for yourself, the quite starts 9.50 in.
There is a rich history of politicians catching us off-guard with the off-beat pronouncement like this.
Spiro Agnew
Back in 1970, US VEEP Spiro Agnew, who had a running battle with the media, suddenly came up with an original description for them. He described them as ‘the nattering nabobs of negativism’, a phrase invented for him by White House word whiz William Safire. This attack on what Agnew further described as the ‘4H club of the media – hopeless, hysterical hypocondriacs of history’ was more than just verbal gymnasitics … it’s impact was immediate and started the mood of distrust in the American media which persists to this day among what Nixon called ‘The Silent Majority’.
Donald Rumsfeld
Even more recently, there was the famous ‘known unknowns’ comment by US Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, replying to a question about the lack of evidence that Iraq possessed weapons of mass destruction. Although lampooned widely at the time, an analysis of the language has proved it to be perfectly sensible … almost philosophical. Here’s his comment in full.
‘Reports that say that something hasn’t happened are always interesting to me, because as we know, there are known knowns; there are things we know we know. We also know there are known unknowns; that is to say we know there are some things we do not know. But there are also unknown unknowns – the ones we don’t know we don’t know. And if one looks throughout the history of our country and other free countries, it is the latter category that tend to be the difficult ones.’
It wasn’t just in politics that we have been blindsided by unexpected but perfectly correct language and concepts.
Heather Whitestone Miss USA
In 1994, the host of the Miss USA competition asked Miss Alabama, Heather Whitestone, one of those questions that usually only comes up at the end of sparkling, languid dinner parties: “If you could live forever, would you want to?”
“I would not want to live forever,” replied Ms Whitestone, “because we should not live forever, because if we were supposed to live forever, then we would live forever, but we cannot live forever, which is why I would not live forever.”
Yet again, the circular logic makes perfect sense on both an empirical and a hypothetical level. Incidentally, Ms Whitestone went to win the title, the first deaf woman to do so.
All this tends to heighten the nonsense of statements like General Motors classic ‘We are preparing to undergo an expiated, court-supervised process for the reinvention of our company.’ They meant GM had just filed for bankruptcy.
You’ll remember KRudd’s brain buster warning that the Australian public should not expect ‘detailed programmatic specifity’ from the Copenhagen climate talks – he meant we were not likely to get many details.
Nope, short and sharp does the trick, like Paul Keating’s description of the Senate as ‘unrepresentative swill’.
Now that’s a useful phrase that could be applied in other arenas to this day. Perhaps perfectly suited within the Townsville community to the managerial policymakers down at the Townsville Bulletin.
