The Greens oppose the CPRS not because it is too weak, but because it will point Australia in the wrong direction with little prospect of turning it around in the timeframe within which emissions must peak, says Senator Christine Milne.
Why Rudd said the F-word. Twice!
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Having been reported by Misha Schubert weeks ago, without garnering any comment at all, Kevin Rudd’s F-bomb attack on a range of Labor factional hacks has been put back into play by a full-page splash by Glenn Milne — whose bizarre new hairdo appears to be one man’s attempt to imitate a three-flavour gelato — and dutifully given the News Limited clusterfuck treatment. The latest is some nonentity in The Hun calling for Rudd to undergo “counselling”. It’s hard to know what’s most pathetic in this latest round of nothing — the natural thin-lipped prissiness that would attract a miniature Pomeranian such as Milne to the story, the dutiful way in which it was spun through every News outlet as if it was news, or the psychobabble counselling angle that’s now been taken up by a disposable Hun hackette. If News is really trying to open up a new front against the Ruddkrieg, they’re getting pretty desperate. The PM said fuck twice? What sort of cardigan-wearing, twinset-and-pearls constituency do they think is out there, sitting by their Bakelite radiograms, waiting for our Sir Robert to come on and announce that we’re at war with Japan again? Like hatters driven mad by the mercury that gets under their fingernails, have the News crew started to believe their own guff about collapsing morals, etc, etc. Is there a swear box in the editorial offices? If so it would pay for the new A+ roll-out, the brave new repaging, sorry reinvention, of The Oz we were waiting for. However, on the off-chance that this malarkey could have some impact, I offer Labor the following remedy. It was reported that the PM really let fly at Victorian Senator David Feeney. The remedy to any negative fallout from this is to arrange for as many Australians as possible to personally meet Senator Feeney. Feeney is the Cartman of Labor politics — bumptious, spherical, and obsessively concerned with the management of his Victorian right-wing microfaction — any encounter of more than 15 minutes with the man would have most people praising the PM’s Christ-like restraint in sticking to verbal abuse and not stabbing him through the eyes with a biro, so as to better mash his frontal lobes. In my subjective opinion. Your correspondent has tangled with Senator Feeney only once, in the sandpit of student politics of the early ’90s when I together with many other people succeeded in turfing out the sitting SRC president at a time when Feeney was running the Labor club (or whatever they had branded it). The impression then of Feeney, correct or otherwise, was of a young man obsessed with the accumulation of power, and driven, I suspect, by a deep resentment arising from his morbid obesity. It was an early and salutary lesson that joining the ALP would involve devoting your one life on earth to battling these people and that it just wasn’t worth it. Like a gambler winning roulette on his first go, and never gambling again, your correspondent quit the field. Feeney went on to rise through the Labor ranks with the occasional flare-up like a fire on a distant ship — a news report about misusing Gareth Evans’s mail allowance while working in the beardie’s office, a fake death notice planted by enemies in the papers, and a recent carpeting by the federal leadership over his and others’ attempt to pull a “faceless men” stunt, and impose factional deadweight in office-bearer positions. So it was inevitable that the Rudd-bomb would be dropped over mail allowances — mail allowances are to these guys what a Magnum .357 is to Dirty Harry. Remove it and they’re eunuchs. Why does a No.3 ticket Senator, who runs a microfaction, need a huge mail allowance, you ask? Why indeed? Anyway, Labor should get Feeney on a tour of meet-and-greets ASAP. Shopping centres, community halls, a pen in the Royal Melbourne Show — just show enough people the sort of people Rudd has to deal with and the issue goes away instantly. You could send Milne out with him. Milne could ride Feeney. There’s your dog and pony show. |
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26 Comments
Both true and hilarious. The jackpot.
No Mark Day version?
No truer expletive deletive words have ever been written Guy. K.Rudd should speak like this more often, particularly to Senators…what did PJK call them? F##king unrepresentative swill. Who knows? If K.Rudd maintains this form all manner of truth could break out…
Great article Guy. Love the image of Milne as a pomeranian. “It’s a fucking Pomerian, with papers. I can’t leave it home alone or he eats the furniture”.
ROTFL
Actually John M, with lines like…..
“You could send Milne out with him. Milne could ride Feeney. There’s your dog and pony show.
This one doesn’t even need a Mark Day version. Pure gold!
The suggestion that Milne and Feeney could help initiate a revival in the lost art form of the traveling circus is indeed imaginative; however if it caught on how would the RSPCA cope with the ‘cruelty to dumb animals’ issue ?
Great stuff again — I think I understood it, despite no Day version.
The other eye-opening thing about student politics is that the buggers take their sandpit tactics to the bigger stage when they leave.
Thanks Guy for giving me a hearty laugh. Always look forward to your column, but this one is exceptionally witty.
Outstanding. I could even get to like Rudd - a little.
Guy….this is funny……very good……
what a moralistic hypocrite Milne is….unbelievable…..
to even make an issue of this is pathetic journalism…must of been a slow week….
The hypocrisy of Kevin Rudd who said piously: “Acts of violence against women, in my view, are cowardly acts by men and have no place in modern Australia.” Surely swearing at women, even if they are Labor politicians, is a form of violence.
David Feeney supported the boycott of Durban II because it is anti-Semitic. It just goes to show that supporting Kevin Rudd on his pro-Israel stance will not get you very far.
“The hypocrisy of Kevin Rudd who said piously: “Acts of violence against women, in my view, are cowardly acts by men and have no place in modern Australia.” Surely swearing at women, even if they are Labor politicians, is a form of violence.”
No, not really, unless you want to devalue the word ‘violence’ so it means literally nothing. These female Labor politicians are adults, not children. They can handle some naughty words I’m sure.
You got Milne pretty right. Feeney’s more complex and your bile got a laugh but at a discount of your credibility.
Hey Mr Wong, who said it was a woman he gave the verbal heave ho to, its a damn lie to imply Chrissie Pyne was there, just because the speaker thinks he is a she, leave the poor girl alone. Try and get it wight.
Trundle on. Brilliant. You made my day
Come on, no picture of the Big Lebowski? No meat pie in hand, with layer of tomato sauce smeared from lip to lip? We await with anticipation. This could be a whole new Commonwealth games sport of spotting the blimp.
Have to admit there is something a bit weird about a fist throwing journo reporting with approbrium the ‘bad language’ of a prime minister. As said once about Turnbull’s fearsome temper before politics - do you want a lawyer who is a wimp to represent you? Err no thanks, we’ll have the tiger fangs pointing your direction.
Actually the funny thing about all this is, Rudd’s people probably planted the story, you know like a reverse Scores poll boost. Enough to give him some character but not enough to frighten the blue rinse.
Meanwhile the real story is Copenhagen is dead and so is the Planet …. people just don’t know it yet. It was a good 2 billion years. All good things have to end I suppose.
Guy, again with the incorrect pop culture analogies? Wikipedia is only a few clicks away.
Dirty Harry of course used a .44 magnum (and was pretty handy with his fists too
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yeah fair enough Ed but you can’t check every ref. if you seem to remember something as being a 357 magnum, you tend not to check it. shoulda stuck to magnum. no you mention it, it seems obvious harry would use the ultimate calibre not some pissy 357 nonsense
Brilliant…That’s gold….I was sitting by my bakalite radio radio waiting for the latest update on the war from old mate Bob, when I suddenly felt lucky, so tuned into crikey and read this feature.
What can I say; you have made my day punk…
Trash or treasure? This was pure trash.
The references to “mobid obesity” and “not stabbing him through the eyes with a biro, so as to better mash his frontal lobes” are enough to have me questioning the sanity of this author.
What saddens me most is all the cheer-leaders above who are either all Guy Rundle’s one-hand clapping or an audience of people who don’t believe in anything at all other than sledging opponents without imposing any limit or scruples on it.
Pitiful.
For heaven’s sake Raymond - lighten up!!
Not me not guilty, din do it
Pleased to see you do have a sense of humour Raymond.
What the …. In reference to old mate RAYMOND and one handed clapping, the only person on here using one hand mate is you, and not for clapping. Better stop now before you go blind.
The worst of it is I don’t disagree with most of Rundle’s points about Milne, swearing and tabloid news.
That’s why I subscribe to Crikey and have done so from day one.
Rundle can be entertaining especially when firing on all cylinders but as best as I can figure out, he’s used this article to pursue an entirely personal agenda and has done so using hate-speech of a kind you’d expect to hear at a Ku Klux Klan meeting.
From what I’ve seen on the tube, Guy Rundle is overweight (why has he made this any of our business?) yet attacks Feeney’s “morbid obesity” and claims that his physique is the reason for doing what he does. The wide bottomed pot calls the kettle black. And there I go, doing the same disgraceful thing Rundle does.
If you don’t like what Feeney stands for and argues for then take him on for that. But his weight? It’s so obviously a cheap shot that adds nothing. Rundle scarcely explains what it is about Feeney’s views that he disagrees with. Readers are left not knowing anything other than Rundle shows evidence of being deeply troubled.
Attacks of this juvenile kind are high school style bullying and have no place in civilised debate. Rundle goes on to say Feeney should be in a pen at the Royal Melbourne Show. Hilarious, not. The author clearly needs to be in a cell of the padded kind if he thinks attacking Feeney’s weight is a credible way of engaging in a battle of ideas.
He even accused Feeney of being like Cartman, an anti-semitic and evil cartoon character in South Park. Given Rundle’s obsession with Israel (the part of his writing I always skip over in the daily email because it’s so predictable) and his enthusiasm for very nasty bullying, it seems Rundle might see quite a lot of himself in Cartman. I suppose being Kenny (the one who gets killed all the time) could be worse.
As I’ve said, when Rundle wrote of Feeney that Rudd could be “stabbing him through the eyes with a biro, so as to better mash his frontal lobes,” it did and does cause me to be worried for Rundle and worried about the editorial process that allowed those words to be published in the publication I support with my hard-earned.
Rundle went too far with this disgusting, vendetta-driven, vile personal attack. On this Grand Final Day, I encourage all to play the ball and not the man.
I think an apology and withdrawal of this muck would be appropriate. Rundle is too proud and too insecure to do that I fear.
This article was trash, not just a personal vicious attack in this public forum but with violent unfunny rhetoric. Violence is an epidemic in Australia, a national embarrassment. We blame alcohol, yet many cultures drink big and don’t engage in yob violence. It’s a serious issue we must confront. When people like Rundle unconsciously buy into the culture of violence with such vile, violent hate-language too, it truly makes me worry for our future.
Society needs vibrant intellectual debate, Rundle would see himself as part of it. But if this is what we writes, and is encouraged by a few dopey cheerleaders or the silence of appalled inertia, then we are wasting more time than we have to address the urgent issues facing this country.
It’s always been my hope that Crikey would be part of the solution, not be the worst offender in terms of media malpractice.
Rundle slams tabloids and often I agree they’re dreadful. Crikey’s willingness to take on the excesses of some in the media is important and part of the reason I’m a regular reader and subscriber. But I can’t think of one tabloid or gutter current affairs show that would use the disturbing hate-language Rundle used to attack Feeney. They’re better than that. And Rundle and Crikey should be too.