Tim Blair

Think you might have the wrong link there, Tim, no mention of Mad Mark as far as I can see. It does have a nice yarn on my boss, though.

Posted by: Gareth at March 4, 2004 at 12:06 AM

problem: I've seen that chewed-leg pic befor, more than 3 years ago, on rotten.com. And I think it was supposed to be of some guy who went into a lion enclosure on a bet and got partially eaten. Maybe my memory fails, i dunno.

Is this incident 3 or 4 years old?

Anyway, the other pictures are of a big, dead bear, and appear to check out. Kudos!

Posted by: Amos at March 4, 2004 at 12:15 AM

Gareth,

Can't find the old link, which was to yesterday's Strewth column. News Ltd has an abysmal website.

Posted by: tim at March 4, 2004 at 12:26 AM

That bear story is a couple years old. All the pictures are real, but the third picture is from a different incident. Still pretty horrid, anyway. http://www.snopes.com/photos/bearhunt.asp

Posted by: John at March 4, 2004 at 12:40 AM

I believe the verb is "to treach," defined as "to post intermittently, with or without labored attempts at wit." So it might be more accurate to say, "He's treaching up a light breeze."

Posted by: Jim Treacher at March 4, 2004 at 03:25 AM

If you're gonna be a bear ... be a GRIZZLY BEAR!

I guess someone ignored those signs that said, "Don't feed the bears".

Posted by: Dwayne at March 4, 2004 at 05:43 AM

from another incident? But it was billed at the result of the midnight snackery of THAT bear. Something's screwy here.

But the bear in question is indeed big and appears either dead or very tired.

Posted by: Amos at March 4, 2004 at 08:04 AM

Psychotic episode, Tim? Nope.

Just pure frustrated rage at the double standards of Australian conservatives, that's all.

* * * *

January 10, 2004

SOUTHERN HEMISPHERE ANTI-SEMITISM

"Graham Barrett in the Melbourne Age:

Just six decades after the Holocaust, it is no longer considered socially inappropriate in some educated circles of the West to express anti-Semitic sentiment. It happens right here in Melbourne.

I wish this wasn’t true -- I love Melbourne, where I lived for a decade -- but it is. I lost an old contact book a few months ago, and I don't miss it that much, because it’s loaded with people I used to like who these days blame the Jews. Sad.

Posted by Tim Blair at January 10, 2004 02:59 AM

Comments

I find it can be lonely being a (small 'f')fascist.

Posted by: jafa at January 10, 2004 at 03:40 AM

I guess it has to do with the way the literati operate the oppressor/oppressed categories. Once it's been decided you're an oppressor, you've had it. Think of the diatribes against white males over the last 30 years. A section of the literati seem to have decided to make Israelis oppressors and Palestinians the oppressed and once this happens any reasoned approach to the issues becomes impossible.

* * * *

Etcetera, etcetera, etcetera, Tim...those damned anti-Semitic Lefty elites, eh.

* * * *

Now:

Mr Hutton Gibson, religious kook, on the global Jewish conspiracy:

"During his lengthy radio interview, Hutton Gibson, 85, said Jews were out to create 'one world religion and one world government' and outlined a conspiracy theory involving Jewish bankers, the US Federal Reserve and the Vatican, among others."

And on the Holocaust:

"It's all - maybe not all fiction - but most of it is."

Mel Gibson, rampant ego and serious creep, to Diane Sawyer, when asked about this:

"He's my father. Gotta leave it alone, Diane. Gotta leave it alone."

Mel Gibson, Lethal Weapon, on Frank Rich, the Jewish reviewer who took exception to Gibson's film:

"I want to kill him...I want his intestines on a stick. I want to kill his dog."

The Saintly Miranda Devine on Rich's review:

"Critics have called the movie a 'blood libel' against Jews, and a "religious splatter" film. The New York Times critic Frank Rich was among the most vicious, writing at one point that even if the final product was not anti-Semitic, 'either way, however, damage has been done: Jews have already been libelled by Gibson's politicised rollout of his film'. Which was rich of Rich, considering his newspaper politicised the rollout."

The generous Miranda Devine on Gibson:

"It was an admirable gamble for the movie star, backed up by a life that seems equally admirable."

Your mate Miranda on we lefty anti-war types:

"...Before the first coalition soldier entered Iraq, these neo-pacs were most concerned about the influence of another cabal, the neo-conservatives of Washington DC, who had persuaded the Cowboy Moron in the White House to invade Iraq. With the help of sinister background music, ABC Four Corners' Jonathan Holmes exposed their "hidden agenda". They are "almost all Jews whose parents had emigrated from Eastern Europe". Crikey!

In beautiful Iraqi Information Ministry style, Holmes later claimed those who pointed out the anti-Semitism embedded in his story were the "bigots". As the Jerusalem Post pointed out last week, neo-conservative has become a code word for Jewish, just as neo-pacifist is a code word for delusional. Having uncovered the dastardly plot by Jews to take over the world, starting with Iraq, the neo-pacs moved on to more mundane matters, like undermining the coalition war effort..."

* * * *

AIJAC's Tzvi Fleischer (Executive Director Colin Rubinstein) on Margo Kingston/Ashrawi:

"However, probably the worst accusation came from Margo Kingston, web diarist for the Sydney Morning Herald. She claimed on Nov. 14 that Jewish backers of Sharon 'seem to have the power, money and clout to dominate public debate and wield enormous political and financial power behind the scenes. The Ashrawi debacle has exposed this secret power.' A more clearly stated racist conspiracy theory I have never seen in the mainstream media in Australia."

George Brandis on Greens (the party I've voted for for 13 years):

"The commonalities between contemporary green politics and old-fashioned fascism and Nazism are chilling."

On Rubinstein:

"I was contacted by a very large number of leaders of the Jewish community who told me that they fully supported what I had said, in particular the leader of the other peak Jewish community in this country, Colin Rubenstein, the executive director of the Australia Israel Council told me not only was he not critical of the speech but he supported it and he was pleased that it had been given."

* * * *

Again, Hutton Gibson on the Holocaust:

"It's all - maybe not all fiction - but most of it is."

Again, Mel on Rich:

"I want to kill him...I want his intestines on a stick. I want to kill his dog."

Again, YOUR mate Miranda on Rich:

"Which was rich of Rich, considering his newspaper politicised the rollout."

Again, Tim, YOU on 'Southern Hemisphere anti-Semitism':

"I lost an old contact book a few months ago, and I don't miss it that much, because it's loaded with people I used to like who these days blame the Jews. Sad."

* * * *
* * * *
* * * *

Miranda - she of 'Blaming Ourselves' fame - is BLAMING Rich for the anti-Semitism that will almost certainly be stirred up by his film.

So - what, Miranda ? Rich should have just kept his whiny mouth shut, should he? Dammit.

Where's your outrage, Tim???? Where's the huge
blog-debate??? Why aren't you fisking the shit out of Devine? She's not the only one, either. All over the Oz frigging joint - Pell, Henderson, your own Bulletin's piece - columnists are bending over backwards to tip-toe around this film AND lay off Gibson's hateful old man AND Gibson's increasingly strident apologias for him/it.

WHY????? WHY????? WHY???????

Why the double standards, Blair? WHY the double standards? WHY, goddammit?????

If you conservatives are going to go there with cheap anti-Semitism accusations against the left at all, for pity's sake at LEAST be CONSISTENT.

And if I should, as Bunyip apparently reckons, be wrapped in a strait-jacket and stuck in a cork-lined room, Tim, is it any f***ing wonder?

Damn it. Just be CONSISTENT, at least. At LEAST.

Please.

Posted by: Jack Robertson at March 4, 2004 at 09:42 AM

Take a pill Jack Robertson???? and come back when your not full of incoherent rage,But at least your CONSISTENT!!!!!!!!!.

Posted by: Gary at March 4, 2004 at 11:17 AM

Now, now, Gary. We must show compassion to the mentally challenged.

Posted by: Andrea Harris at March 4, 2004 at 11:46 AM

Damn it. Just use ITALICS or some method of DIFFERENTIATING what is quoted material and YOUR OWN comments at least. At LEAST. Because I can't UNDERSTAND.

Also CAPITALISING suitable words almost AT RANDOM is also EXELLENT for proving to us you are some form of NUT or perhaps just another frustrated SOCIALIST CAT FUCKER or perhaps you have a malfunctioning KEYBOARD.

But do keep writing in, Robbo, you are EXTRA special because YOU try HARD like my cousin JOSHUA who's mother DRANK all through her PREGNANCY.

Posted by: Amos at March 4, 2004 at 04:54 PM

catch you 'round, blair. thanks v. much for all the space & etc over the yrs. good luck at the dems convention. hope it goes well for you.

back to the padded kell for me.

Posted by: jack r at March 4, 2004 at 08:17 PM

Er, Jack? I haven't seen the film yet.

The tablets are in the mail.

Posted by: tim at March 5, 2004 at 12:26 AM

It's not just the film, it's the crap Hutton and his seriously delusional boy are spouting and spruiking behind it, Tim, in Mel's case with staggering naivete (and personally I'd say worse, too), and on his worldwide movie-junkarama so far, mostly unchallenged by blinkered Catholic hypocrites like...oh, fuck's sake, name me one who IS challenging it - and I mean as hard as nails?

For best filmic effect, tho', let's you and me not go see Mel's exercise in dishonest, dangerous, reckless, half-cocked wankery ourselves just yet...let's hold back our fifteen bucks, wait a year or so, and then go see the Spanish or Bahasa Indonesian or Portuguese or especially Arabic dubs...

Tim, Mel might as well stick an invitation on the film stock cans to Osama's agitproppers saying 'ok, boys - insert your witty one-liners here...and here...and...here...'

Wahhabism writes the script, Mel provides the visuals, the Catholics of the world from the Pope's vetriloquists down do the marketing.

Are you conservatives going fucking MAD???

I mean there's not even an 'authoritative' English/original version for you Anglospherians to dig in and 'fight the subtler text corner' from, either. Unlike the King James bible, say.

What's Aramaic for 'never again'?? Does anyone know or care?

In my view, it's really very simple:

Vatican 2 said: 'The Jews did not kill Jesus'. It was and remains official. Mel, on the other hand, says Vatican 2 is all bullshit. And so here, now, with all his warm Christian leeeerve - oh yeah, in a slick, cynically-marketed Hollywood package that is ten times more 'compelling', portable and seeing-is-believable than any Parkinson-ravaged Papal speech or decree - is Mel's counter-story: let's call it Lethal Vatican Weapon 3.

This now is the anti-Vat 2 story that will, modern mass media being what it is, and especially in the beleagured modern/ancient third world these days, increasingly supplant the popular/populist Catholic sensibility. This is now the 'REAL' myth that the Frank Riches, so relieved when Your Man laid down the new law for the world's billion Catholics in 1962-65, can look forward to hearing with increasing fervour.

Nice one, Mel, says Frank. Thanks a lot, dipshit. And for objecting to Mel subverting his own Pope's much-needed, historically-long awaited, blessedly salving new ruling? Sweet Lovable Mel, Australia's favourite multi-millionaire movie star (who made the loot that financed this piece of self-absorbed, guilt-ridden shit with sicko films in which he got to pretend to kill hundreds with much witty wisecracking)- now apparently wants to kill Frank's dog.

What an asshole. What a cocksucker. What a fucking wanker Mel Gibson is. Someone needs to quietly belt his fat Hollywood mouth, man-to-bodyguarded Hollywood tosser. Preferrably another Australian toss-pot celebrity - Mel is our boy, and we should be going the little turd. Let's call the Crocodile Man. Crikey!

Tim - just this once, look past my frothing incoherence and my over-wrought jabber and cut me some slack: you've got reach in the states, and Gibson's bullshit needs to be flamed by Australians, conservatives, Catholics, and preferrably Australian conservative Catholics, imho.

If you need to SEE this film to grasp the ugly magnitude of the triangulating sectarian spanner just chucked into what was, until S11 at least, the increasingly harmonious worldwide engine-room of mainstream Christian/Jewish/Islamic relations, then you're not as smart as I thought you were. I dunno whether you're a Mick or not, so forgive me for being rude about the thumper if you are, but REAL conservative Catholics like Cardinal Pell ought to be in FRANTIC damage control, in my view. Frankly, Pell ought to be ashamed of that review for the Tele he did the other weekend. Utterly ashamed. Also the self-regarding 'tough guy priest' interview he did for Byrne last week.

Pell's not a fucking film critic, he's a goddamned office boy for the Infallible Pope, and the Pope's official message is still that the Jews did NOT have any particular or isolatable responsibility in Jesus' death. Apparently Mel Gibson has Caiaphus getting the crowd to chant 'crucify him', or some such charming hilarity. This apparently is some 18th century sex-starved nun's midnight-diddle fantasy. Everything I've read from biblical scholars says it's bollocks, along with much else - nothing in actual scripture makes these claims. Even the more ambiguous line 'his blood be upon us' - which Gibson left in, but unsubtitled (which, btw, just happens to = the worst kind of fuel for conspiracy theorists worldwide), is also rendered unparsably irrelevant post-Vat 2.

THAT was the whole POINT of it. To bat away nutters like Hutton Gibson. It shouldn't be Jews who are front and centre in flaming this film, it should be Catholics. WHY aren't local Micks doing so?

It's a rhetorical question, btw.

George Pell now says he wants to jump back in the bedroom with us, apparently, but if he's not prepared to argue the blasphemy and false idolatry of this film balls-to-the-wall, then he can take his cassock and fuck off on matters like gay marriage, frankly. Maybe all the publicity he's got since he came north has turned him into your standard Emerald City media/celebrity junkie, religious hypocrite and a doctrinal fake.

He should be flaming Gibson's ass, not kissing it. To use George's language, Gibson is a false prophet. And you're an iconoclast, mate, aren't you? Well, there's your literal icon worthy of clasting right there, if ever I saw one.

But meanwhile, on the secular front, your own Bully's Craig Mathieson dopily writes: "It is also made for the faithful". What would he fucking know, he's a bloody film critic, not a goddamned Cardinal. We're all getting the demarcation lines messed up; because 'Our Lovable Famous Mel' is so famous and so lovable and so ours, we're all hand-passing the hot spud to the next guy, and as a result, none of us is nailing his dangerous bullshit for what it is.

If his film doesn't conform to current Papal Doctrine, it's either a) just another Hollywood toss-n-gore-fest, and its explicit violence ought to be condemned by the Church in the same way as it routinely condemns violent films like Baise-Moi and Pulp Fiction; or b) if really IS allegedly about Jesus Christ's last hours, then it is made by/for worshippers of FALSE Catholic doctrine, and MUST be condemned by Pell as anti-Papist subversion.

Vatican 2 is pretty much ratshit anyway, but the anti-blood libel stuff is still hanging in there. But there's a new Pope due, and we live in apocalyptic times. Jesus, GWB wants to amend the Constitution, so who knows? Don't Catholics understand why the Pope's gob is Infallible? Or does it only count when Pell is prosecuting Rome doctrine on fags?

Why are opportunist Catholics getting away with these hypocrisies in the mainstream press? And why are our allegedly secular conservatives going so damned soft on Hutton Gibson? Gerry 'Orwell' Henderson minced something like: "Gibson's response to his old man's Holocaust denialism was radically insufficient."

Oh, puh-lease. A more apt phrase might be 'fuckwitted', Gerard. Why the hell is everyone being so damned lame on this in Australia? Gibson is ours, mate. We MUST call the fucker's bluff. (For Tequila Sunrise, too, if you really need a less hysterical excuse than my rantings.)

Just remember Woody Allen's diktat on dealing with kooks. You don't debate them politely, you metaphorically smash their teeth in...

* * * *

OK, fine, fine, fine, so forget the weirdo religious elements of it all, it hardly does my rant any good. Think about the war on terror, tho.

You ever wandered around a marketplace in egypt or pakistan or saudi arabia or indonesia and seen what the nutters have done with the protocols? With mein kampf? Well, thanks to Our Lovable Mel they've now got a full-bore AAA+ US-approved 'vatican-ratified' - (or was it - pretty nice line, bit too much like 'The Real Thing' to come from the old shaker's lips himself, I'd reckon) - insert-your-own-soundtrack-filth-here Frank Devinely-pleasing (today's Oz) all-singing all-dancing 'as it was' technicolour sensaround hollywood-sexy snuff-flick.

Just add vocal soundtrack, and hey presto.

Oy. Gibcockson could not have handed al-qaeda a bigger propaganda weapon had he tried, tim. and conservatives everywhere are shouting 'hurrah for the New Messiah!'? oh dear dear me.

This is NOT 'just another film'. It's a lunatic celluloid invitation to the third world, from a technically outstanding and zealous director capable of generating enormous publicity and hype and momentum, to...go beserk on shit like fundamentalist religious law, scriptural rigidity, rejection of post-Enlightenment gains and 'stuff'.

All the scary illiberalisms you conservatives have been yarping are upon us since S11.

And because it's only the last twelve hours, the focus is all wrong: fuck-all in the film about Jesus Christ's nice gospel message, and everything (and more = FICTION) about the destructive, self-flaggelating, self-loathing, guilt-ridden, apocolyptic, here's-the-fasttrack-to-salvation bits.

Sound like a familiar cocktail to you?

What sort of message do you think your average death-wish, martydom-craving, Paradise-seeking suicide bomber in downtown Ramallah will pluck from the Palestinian version?

Do conservatives need a road map? Or are the Devines x 2 and the Pells not really conservatives after all?

OK, so I give up. I surrender. I dips my lid, and duly step off the moral high ground and the secular liberal turf. Over to you, righty red rovers. You can be Orwell, you can be Churchill, you can be Curtin, you can have the battler and the Anzac and Mark Latham and Martin bloody Luther King on your side for all I care. I'll concede that Hitler was a lefty chatterer after all, that tough love is good, that mandatory detention is compassionate and that we liberals were to blame for every social ill of the last forty years.

But only when George Pell, as a truly conservative Catholic, starts flaying and ridiculing and belittling this film - and Mel - for all he's worth.

As for the rest of us, Tim, and especially those conservatives who have had such jolly sport since S11 calling people like me anti-everything under the sun...:

"He's my father. Gotta leave it alone, Diane. Gotta leave it alone.".

My fucking arse we do, Gibson, you short-arsed little turd. You cocksucking fuckstick. Let's hear you call your creep of a dad the Holocaust-denying, lying old jerk that he is, Mel Gibson. Let's see an Icon Press Release that recommends everyone read Raul Hilberg's masterpiece. Let's have a free copy of 'If this is a Man' with every ticket to your piece of shit purchased, Mel.

You wanker. You monumental jerk-off. Gotta leave it alone??? Red rag to a frothing loony, Mel. WHERE'S THE GODDAMNED PRESS PRESSURE?????

Gotta show the world you're just another Hollywood wanker on a massive ego-cum-guilt trip, Mel. Before your piece of junk rolls way out of your and everyone else's control.

Tim, you might think I'm a lunatic, and I don't mind much if you do, so long as you least try to understand why I am making such a rampant idiot of myself here, in an obscure corner of your blog, and then maybe write something more useful and lucid about this yourself. I don't even know if you'll come back and read this; but as you will well know, the frothingest blogrants are usually written with considerable reflection, much forethought, and a surfeit of icy deliberation.

And if you think it hurts like hell to make such a fool of myself again, then you'd be about right.

But it's not about what the post-Enlightenment West thinks of, and does with, 'The Passion', is it. It's not about Saint Mel's saintly intentions, or you, me, Pell, Miranda, Frank, Gerry or Craig's chattery, subtle, nuanced views on them, either.

It's about what happens elsewhere. It's about the very many among the rest of the six billion...and so on, and so on.

I thought we'd learned all this by now?

* * * *

but there i go, SHOUTING again, Amos. back to fucking cats for me. sigh.

still, as with iraq, useful scepticism on this and much else that is related (viz. aforesaid Const. Amend.) can only come from conservatives now. the left is out of the game, evidently. this bit is, anyway. fine enough. i'll cop that as deserved.

tho' i do think i have a fair final shouty point and i do think that i have laid it out before you. i may be wrong, but i do think that it does need a shout. i really think that. it don't matter where it comes from. as ever my prolix jabbering destroys any shred of my own cred and risks overwhelming the content, too, but that's not the point, and never has been. rational argument bores me very much - others are better at it, and much more succinct.

but these things do have a habit of eating their own young, if their own young don't put the gentler brakes on early - as i guess andrew sullivan is discovering lately viz the bushies.

i'm ready for my medication now, nurse.

one last thing, tim - sorry again for the ancient nasty history, about which you've been very generous. guess i sure could have used me them tablets back then, eh. better still, bunyip's cyber-strait jacket & padded cell, to whence i shall now return forthwith to mope and mutter and dribble in solitude. thanks again.

fish in a barrel, and all that, but better to have hollered and been wrong than vice-versa...you kno how it is...glug glug...boom.

Posted by: jr at March 5, 2004 at 05:04 PM

i just read andrew bolt's piece in the sun today.
nails it. spot on. spot on. hope pell is reading.

Posted by: jack r at March 5, 2004 at 05:38 PM

I have little idea about what jack is ranting and raving about, something to do with "frigging conservatives" backing Mel's film and blaming the jews and thereby bring the wrath of 3rd world countries down upon our heads. Considering this would have to be a first for lefties siding with jews it's a bit rich, but Perhaps Jack should read Andrew Bolt's piece while he takes his pills (free speech, gotta love it):

http://heraldsun.news.com.au/common/story_page/0,5478,8875371%255E25717,00.html

Posted by: Gords at March 6, 2004 at 05:13 AM

As I understand it, you're saying that Mel's film is anti-semetic and unchristian and conservatives need to condemn it. This is called brevity and assists in COMPREHENSION.

But alot of conservatives are taking the stick to mel's film, Andre Le Bolt for example and Charles The Kraut Hammer.

His film sounds aweful to me. Apparently the central theme of Jesus's message was "I get beat up alot".

Posted by: Amos at March 6, 2004 at 08:19 AM

When the Pope and other global Christian leaders explicitly condemn this film as blasphemy and false idolatry, using Vatican 2 as the template, I'll be satisfied.

I take your point about brevity and comprehension. Thank you for wading through twice. Your summary is apt.

Two conservative writers, on the other hand, is not 'a lot', especially in comparison to the tidal wave of fervently pro-film conservatives. And the great useless mass of smug, ironic, 'superior' liberals who've disdained to care much either way, for that matter. 'It's just another film controversy'. How urbane and clever and detached we lefty chatterers are.

Anyway, I'm s'posed to be belly-up in a barrel. Thank you once again, Amos.

Posted by: jr at March 6, 2004 at 11:02 AM

You know, jack, too much ranting is just boring. Well, yours is, anyway.

Posted by: Andrea Harris at March 6, 2004 at 12:10 PM

ok, you win, andrea.

thanks for not banning me from the site. i won't post again.

Posted by: jr at March 7, 2004 at 01:28 PM