Tim Blair

Well, that was quite a Shiel-ish exchange...on both sides.

I know. Told you it was boring.

(Yaaaaaawnnnn...)

Sorry, Tim, you were saying?

So funding the Navy and funding the ABC are placed on equivalent levels in Marr's eyes? Figured as much.

Content aside, the second point illustrates for the umpteenth time that Marr, in his Media Watch role, will manipulate facts, distort, avoid and lie in order to promote his extreme left agenda. I find it amusing that all protestations of innocence, in respect to left-wing bias, by the ABC can be refuted merely by pointing to Media Watch and its resident guru.

I am amazed, agog even, that you or your peers even consented to an interview with Marr. His propensity to view the world through a Leftoid Distort-a-scope is well documented - what made you think you would get a fair shake?

Marrrrrrrrrrrrr
after the election, suggestion Mr Howard, use the funding from media watch and give it to the Navy it will be much better spent

Marr is a joke.Has he stopped using media watch for attacking Alan Jones yet?
I do think it's good to have dialogue with people like him Tim,even if they distort.Wasn't it not that long ago that all right wingers were racicst etc etc.At least now they acknowledge we exist and are worth talking to.

Tim,

This isn't boring at all. In fact, it is EXTREMELY IMPORTANT. What people seem to forget about public spending is this very point of who pays?

To bring this point out, let me quote from Ayn Rand "Man's Rights". The following is an extract from the US Democratic Party platform of 1960:

1. The right to a useful and remunerative job in the industries or shops or farms or mines of the nation.
2. The right to earn enough to provide adequate food and clothing and recreation.
...
5. The right of every family to a decent home.
...
8. The right to a good education.

In the Australian context, they might add "The right to have my cultural preferences subsidised via the ABC"!!

Now all the above might seem very reasonable. However, Rand makes the issue stunningly clear:

"A single question added to each of the above eight clauses would make the issue clear. At whose expense?
Jobs, food, clothing, recreation(!), homes, medical care, education, etc, do not grow in nature. These are man-made values - goods and services produced by men. Who is to provide them?
If some men are entitled by right to the products of the work of others, it means that those others are deprived of rights and condemned to slave labour"

Australians may not be very demonstrative but deep down I think they understand reality and the real issues at stake. That's why the core electorate will still vote for Howard, notwithstanding their distaste for him personally and a lot of what he does (Margo K, please note).

Keep up the good work Tim! Smite the collectivist filth wherever they appear!

Thanks for sharing... blogs are a good forum for nit-picking, because a reader can always click "next" if they aren't interested.

Marr's lecture left me with the impression that the right is now slagging off at the left with the same kind of attitude that the left slagged off at the right during the Hawke-Keating years. It's completely understandable, and I don't think the left can really complain too loudly about it.

However, I don't see how you can characterise slagging off as a contest of principle.

Howard's reign has given the left some small amount of humility. Lefties are explaining their point, debating with one another, and actually changing their minds - a marked contrast from the I'm-right-and-you're-an-idiot chest thumping that used to be pervasive. This new attitude is by no means universal, but I hope it persists and spreads for at least the next couple of decades.

Tim -

I was actually there... my first ever visit to Lygon Street's Trades Hall - an amusing place for David Marr to question the notion that "the Left" is still a relevent descriptive term to use. You should know that your gag about the Left's objection to "an increasingly pleasant, warmer globe" got a decent laugh from the audience in spite of themselves. Marr's lecture (including the references to yourself) is also printed in full in number 176 of the literary/political journal Overland, produced with funding assistance from the Australia Council, Arts Victoria, "Victoria - the place to be", and Victoria "University".

this was an interesting part of Marr's speech -

"But you would imagine those dishing out this abusive rhetoric would remember where they’ve heard such demands before, demands that the intelligentsia submit to the will of the people. Doesn’t it remind them of Eastern Europe before the Wall came down? The same savage tabloid hacks who - quite rightly - make heroes of Soviet dissenters, vilify Howard’s critics for failing to see him through the eyes of the people. And they’re unembarrassed - perhaps unaware - of the grim echoes of their own abuse."

Ben P, that's a great quote from Marr's speech. Thanks for posting it.

Can anyone point to an article written by Tim Blair, Andrew Bolt, Piers Akerman or Gerard Henderson that even suggests they "demand that the intelligentsia submit to the will of the people"

Is Marr harbouring fantasies of being an East European dissident? Is Australia like East Germany before the Wall came down?

I think we'd all be satisfied if Marr just submitted to the will of logic.

I often have a problem distinguishing the grammar used by Australian, and indeed all English speaking, journalists. For example, when is a smirk a smirk and not a smile? Both George W Bush's and Peter Costello's facial contractions (when they're being sardonic or humourous) are invariably described by the Left-Wing commentariat (a redundancy) as being a 'smirk', and for those of us who are partially educated, a 'smirk' (in literature) is derogatory. Most of the villians in pre-contemptory literature 'smirk', eg. Dicken's 'Uriah Heep' smirks, whereas the the hero in numerous 'feel-good' novels gives a 'friendly good-natured grin'. Is there any difference? Does it depend on the persuasion of the viewer? I'm not sure!
What I am sure about is that I can identify a sneer. When I steel myself to watch the odious David Marr, I identify his sneers without difficulty. I mean it's all so evident; the curled lip; the arched eye-brow; the pregnant pause, and so on! Viewers are left in little doubt about the scepticism of the reporter. I suppose that really sums up the great difficulty in identifying and quantifying the Left-Wing bias as exhibited by the ABC. It's all very worrying.

"But you would imagine those dishing out this abusive rhetoric would remember where they’ve heard such demands before, demands that the intelligentsia submit to the will of the people. Doesn’t it remind them of Eastern Europe before the Wall came down?"

Wow, what an astounding example of lefty doublethink, equating "the will of the people" in the Communist Bloc (i.e. whatever the local Politburo said) with "the will of the people" in the Australian democracy (i.e. ordinary people rejecting leftist positions for the nonsense that they are).

I didn't have time to comment on my Marr quotation before, but my guess is that the majority of the "intelligentsia" of Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union - those teaching in universities or active in intellectual life, the arts or the media, were not dissenters/dissidents at all, but supporters of both some version of the Party Line and the rhetoric of class warfare. It took some courage and committment to truth to be a dissident, qualities that are quite often not characteristic of members of the intelligentsia.

Dear Tim

Love the site. I agree with you that satire can be compellingly persuasive.

To get all this right wing loon stuff up (and so much of it) is an achievement, you could even swear you were 'stateside'..

But really Tim, these days doesn't this kind of irony just go straight over the heads of most fun loving Aussies.

You should try writing for Private Eye.