Blog - Marieke Hardy

Today I am turning thirty-seven years of age and this is how I choose to celebrate it.

2013-05-26T00:00:00Z

Photograph by my darling pal Lee Sandwith.

When a hashtag makes all the difference.

2013-04-22T00:00:00Z

From The Age, ‘They lived the dream….then tried to destroy it’.:

From Dzhokhar Tsarnaev’s Twitter account:

You’re better than this, The Age.

Or at least, you used to be.

This is how it will be.

2013-04-19T00:00:00Z

In the wake of Wednesday’s historical decision to legalise same-sex marriage in New Zealand there has been much jubilation and dancing in the streets and sharing of videos (including Maurice Williamson’s brilliant ‘Rainbows across my electorate’ speech).

It was a timely decision, and a moving occasion, and it felt unifying, and it felt right.

Since then the focus has inevitably turned, of course, to Australia’s current leaders and their thoughts on said historical decision.

Prime Minister Julia Gillard made her thoughts unequivocally clear:

‘Asked by a member of the public at a community cabinet in Melbourne on Wednesday night why Australia lagged behind New Zealand in legalising gay marriage, Ms Gillard said she would not be changing her mind on the issue.

‘'I doubt we’re going to end up agreeing,’‘ Ms Gillard said.’

Tony Abbott, naturally, was true to form, spinning out his broken record bleat that the vote was ‘'decisively rejected’‘ in 2012, repeat chorus, fade.

And it’s more than a shame. Because Julia Gillard was presented with the perfect opportunity to set herself apart from the rest of the pack – to set herself apart, indeed, from the relentless shadow of Kevin Rudd, a social conservative himself – and to state that yes, as an unmarried atheist she too could see that there was no longer such thing as ‘traditional’ partnership, and that speaking as the country’s first female Prime Minister with the first openly lesbian member of an Australian cabinet she could recognise that it was time to set the standard and take us into an inevitable future.

But she didn’t, and it’s too late now, and if she even dared attempt to change her mind 149 days out from the election she would be once again pounced on as a ditherer, a fibber, a leader who no longer understands their core beliefs, if of course they possessed them in the first place.

So this is how it will be.

Tony Abbott will be Prime Minster on September 14th (and it pains me to write it, it does, more than you could possibly know).

He will be in power for some time before his execrable personality finally wears his colleagues down, or Julie Bishop’s long-standing policy of standing nearby smiling with demonic ferocity eventually compels him to jump off a bridge. Two, three years. At least.

And in that time – in the latter part of that time – he will ‘graciously’ allow a conscience vote on same-sex marriage, and allow his colleagues to do the hard work, and it will pass.

Because it will be long overdue and the public will be so ready and ripe it would seem ridiculous to let it hover in limbo a moment longer. Because he has spent years ‘softening’ his stance on gay partnerships, through his media-savvy daughters, through his ‘supportive’ gay sister. Because it’s just going to happen, no matter who or what is in power, and Tony Abbott will simply be in the right place at the right time.

And he will be hailed as a hero, and Malcolm Turnbull will gnash his teeth over the unfairness of it all (if only they hadn’t forced him at gunpoint to defend that idiotic NBN, the unfairness of it!), and middle Australia will say they always saw it coming and wasn’t it a great pity that Julia Gillard – who had at one time seemed the obvious choice, the breath of fresh air, the one with an opportunity to make a clean break – hadn’t done it first.

But she didn’t. And it’s over for now, at least for her.

And while it will of course be a watershed moment, to celebrate what was always going to happen, whenever it occurs, however it occurs…isn’t it a pity that it couldn’t have been sooner?

And this is how it will be and it is devastating.

Women of Letters, USA tour.

2013-02-19T00:00:00Z

Because this is what I do in my spare time.

This is what a vegan Christmas looks like.

2012-12-24T00:00:00Z

Roasted brussels sprouts with caramelised walnuts.

Cauliflower and Mushroom risotto with broccoli slaw

Stuffed butternut pumpkin

Roast vegetables with mushroom gravy

Nasu dengaku

Baked sweet potatoes with fresh figs

Beetroot and orange salad

Mango Salsa

Carrot salad with maple lime dressing

Pear crumble

Bond by Bond.

2012-12-03T00:00:00Z

Look, I don’t normally bother publishing articles by Andrew Bolt because to my mind he is simply a strange and very funny man who debates like a jowl-wobbling year nine house captain (‘I think you’ll find the dictionary definition of racism is’ etc) and besides which life is infinitely nicer when you carry on with your days pretending he doesn’t exist and is a fictional character of fun in a flesh-coloured onesie like Mr. Blobby.

Today’s little side-column, though, is so unbelievably and brilliantly batshit crazy I must share it with you lest I spend the rest of the day alone re-reading it and then looking up in wonderment saying: ‘No really, what the actual ACTUAL actual of fuckingly fuckests?’ and then calling up the Herald Sun emergency hotline (I am assuming they have one of these. Either that or a big red phone under a cake dish like Commissioner Gordon used in Batman) and screaming FOR THE LOVE OF GOD SOMEBODY ASSIST UNCLE ANDREW CAN’T YOU SEE THIS IS A CRY FOR HELP until they blackban me from the building ~~again~~.

I am pretty sure you will get just as much enjoyment out of reading it as I did, and also when you are finished I would like you to perhaps clarify a few points that I am yet to figure out as I am quite stupid.

What the fuck – no really – is he on about?
Is this a pro-gay article wrapped up in a slightly homophobic and deliciously warm blanket?
‘He commands men and is cool and brave. Like a few gay men I know.’ SEXY AMIRITE
Does this article end with an inherent approval of a transgender love affair and a general plea for all of us to get along and ‘find happiness’ and if so IS THIS THE COMING OF THE oh shit here come the four horsemen
Anyone able to properly explain what the final line means will win a little trophy and fruit basket. I have been studying it for the last four hours and I am still completely bewildered.

Your turn, have fun!

PROGRESS IS MADE, BOND BY BOND.

By Andrew S. Bolt, Esq (age 53 and two months)

‘JAMES Bond and Labor senator Louise Pratt tell us something has changed, and for the better.

In Skyfall, his latest outing, Bond faces a new villain, Silva, played by the great Javier Bardem.

Silva is gay, and gives the bound Bond’s leg a teasing stroke, but otherwise plays to no gay stereotype, unless you think his obsession with killing the female secret service head who betrayed him is some mummy fixation.

He’s tough, resourceful and radiates presence.

He commands men and is cool and brave. Like a few gay men I know.

Contrast that with the gay couple Bond fought three decades ago in Diamonds are Forever.

Bond could smell them coming from their cheap scent. One simpered, and Bond disposed of him by ramming a bomb between his legs. “Ooh!” squealed the villain – his last gasp of pleasure before the big bang.

So we’ve made some progress, and Senator Pratt last weekend confirmed how much in a newspaper profile.

The 40-year-old spoke of life with her transgender partner, 29-year-old Aram Hosie, who earlier in their relationship was a woman.

To Pratt it’s a so-what: “We are just two people who happen to be in love.”

That such a relationship can be had today by a politician without killing her career is heartening. That she dares speak of it publicly, more so.

Life is hard enough. Happiness is its reward, and too often elusive. That two people can find that happiness in each other’s company is a blessing and its highest justification.

Sneering at how they may find it – and with whom – too often sounds like the jeering of the unhappy, demanding that others be as miserable as themselves.

Sounds like Bond, after 30 years, may now have found some love himself.'

As clear as slush.

2012-11-27T00:00:00Z

Julie Bishop: ‘[Prime Minister Gillard] created the stolen vehicle that the bank robbers took to the bank to rob the bank.’

Janet Albrechtsen: The problem is pretty clear. And let me try to put it in user-friendly terms here tonight. Let’s say that I’m a partner at a law firm, and that law firm has as its big client the ABC. Now let’s say Tony Jones works for the ABC and he happens to be my boyfriend.

Tony Jones: For argument’s sake.

JA: Stay with me. Tony wants to set up a slush fund to gather funds for the re-election of him as staff-elected director onto the ABC. Now, what do I do as his girlfriend? I can do two things. I can say, look, there’s a bit of a conflict here and I should probably hand it over to someone else at the law firm. I don’t do that. In fact I give the legal advice not only to establish a trust fund for Tony my boyfriend but also –

TJ: Janet, my mind is spinning.

JA: – to set up a fund –

TJ: I am Bruce Wilson in this equation…

JA: It improves. There’s a happy ending, so let me come to the happy ending. The fund is called the ABC workplace reform association. Now, um, as a lawyer I’m very familiar with ABC rules, I know you can’t sent up an association using the letters ABC without authorisation. It was not authorised. What do i do next? I decide not to open a file. I’m a lawyer, I’ve got fiduciary duties to my partners at a law firm. I choose not to tell my partners about this matter. I’m a lawyer, I’ve got fiduciary duties to my client the ABC, but I choose not to tell other members of the ABC that I’m doing work on the side for my boyfriend to set up a fund using the letters ABC for purposes that have nothing to do with workplace reform.

Audience: (Bewildered silence).

Cheers for clearing that up, ladies.

Let's celebrate with White Ribbon Day ambassador, Tony Abbott.

2012-11-26T00:00:00Z

13/05/2009

TRACY GRIMSHAW: She was 19 years old, she was naked, she was outnumbered. There was a very clear power imbalance in that room wasn’t there?

MATTHEW JOHNS: Tracy, I was unaware that she was 19 at the time, but again, she gave no indication that she did not want to be there.

27/09/2012

(via the always perfect First Dog On The Moon.)

Bingle Bells.

2012-11-24T00:00:00Z

So when I opened up today’s Fairfax broadsheet and found the weekend liftout solemnly informing me that ‘Lara Bingle Wants To Be Taken Seriously’ my first instinct, obviously, was to do this

Because I am a giant jerk and look, until you’ve whiled away happy hours finding old Good Weekends and sticking your tongue through a torn hole in the front page for comedic effect then we have very little to discuss and good day to you sir.

It’s obscenely easy to hate on Lara Bingle, mostly because she appears to be idiotic to the point of brain damage. For the most part I am unbothered by her except when she appears in my Good Weekend bleating about being ‘taken seriously’ and yearning for ‘credibility’ all the while spouting pithy bon mots such as ‘I lose my words sometimes because I don’t know myself!’ and ‘You don’t often see me eating like that!’. Why, why is it that these women taking precious space in the public eye have so little to fucking offer in the way of national discourse? And why is it that someone of Lara Bingle’s astonishingly gargantuan profile, who purports to influence ‘females under 35’ (‘Our feeling is that there are very few people in this country who have the ability to influence an audience as much as Lara’, self-described ‘brand architect’ Simon Bookallil leers at one stage in the piece), offers absolutely 0.5 slice of fuck-all in the way of engaging, inspiring, provocative, or stimulating acts?

I want women in the public eye to be quick on their toes like Yumi Stynes, to spit passionately with their words like Clem Ford, to uplift through music like Mojo Juju, to stoically square off in the face of naysayers like Kate Ellis, to unite, to stir, to debate.

There were plenty of things that bothered me about Lara’s Good Weekend article, not least imagining poor Jane Cadzow, Walkley-nominated journalist, suffering the ignominy of trailing around behind an aspiring lingerie designer prone to career-defining insights such as ‘I think I did, like, a Campbell’s soup, and, like, a Head & Shoulders’. There was also the skin-crawling awfulness of digging up Professional Creep™ Sam de Brito to rush to defend Lara’s honour like the noble knight he is FOR GOD’S SAKE LARA PLEASE HAVE SEX WITH HIM ALREADY CAN’T YOU SEE HE IS DOING HIS BEST TO GET YOUR ATTENTION LIKE A DESPERATELY LONELY FLAG-WAVING CASANOVA.

The worst bit, however, had nothing to do with Bingle herself and everything to do with the tiresome re-hashing of ‘that’ photograph, taken by professional wankstain Brendan Fevola, allegedly in the dying days of a presumably much-regretted affair between the two, and eventually passed around amongst magazine editors with grubby paws, eager to play a role in the scandal. You’ve all seen it, I’m not going to repost it. In the picture, a showering, naked Bingle looks clearly distressed and is in the midst of telling Fevola to stick his camera phone up his fucking arse (I’m paraphrasing of course, I wasn’t there to enjoy the moment). Why the Good Weekend – or indeed, any media outlet profiling Bingle – have to dig up this incredibly painful, exploitative moment of a nineteen-year-old girl being photographed naked without her consent is beyond my understanding. It happened, it was apparently newsworthy, it can be referenced in a profile piece WITHOUT BEING PRINTED.

The next time Nick Riewoldt is profiled by the Good Weekend do you think they’ll run that idiotic picture of him waving his dick around like a little wand? No, because Riewoldt is more commanding, more untouchable, more powerful, and the media fear his icy wrath more than they do the insipid, tittering Lara Bingle’s.

So you have it correct – I’m pissed off they profiled her in the first place because she is a fucking waste of time and I’m pissed off because the Good Weekend should know better than to rub salt in the wound of a girl who was once put in the vulnerable position of making a very public mistake. I’m like a pissed off tiramisu. Stay out of my way, or if you’re in it, bring ice-cream.

Dearest Michael.

2012-11-22T00:00:00Z

I found this letter at a tram stop maybe ten years ago and rediscovered it in an old diary today (never mind why I was reading an old diary that is patently nothing to do with the story I am about to tell you so hush). I had forgotten how utterly brilliant it was and since I now have THE INTERNET at my fingertips with which to share such missives of joy I would like to transcribe it, word-for-word, discreetly censoring only the name of the author herself and a few other odd bits and pieces.

I love everything about letters. To be honest, I would have picked this one up off the ground and adored it no matter what the content because I am a ~~soul-stealing vulture~~ whimsical writerly type – and because simply gathering insight into a complete stranger via the intimate tone they adopt when putting pen to paper is a thing to be treasured. The thin, spidery handwriting, the worn, creased paper, the frank and fearless revelations. Somebody took time out of their day to write this. Somebody wanted to share these thoughts with another human being.

To me this particular letter is like the most incredible flower. It just keeps opening and opening, and right when you think it has bested itself it reveals further stunning plot twists. It makes you want to know the author intimately, or at the very least buy her a tumbler of whisky and give her a little pat on the shoulder. And the last line utterly destroys me.

I feel so lucky to have found this. Dearest Michael. I’m sorry you never received this letter. But I promise it has found a good home.

‘Dearest Michael,

A few anecdotes re: myself.

My date of birth is 21/01/1946 or 12/12/46. Not known by me which. I could be D—— H——– which is the name given by my mother after my father died.

When I was 12 months old my eldest sister or someone who looked like her put me in hospital with a broken pelvis and broken legs. I was in calipers for eighteen months after that.

My Aunt Anne either took me overseas or to the movies, probably the latter.

When I was about three and a half I went to O—— Grammar pre-school. It was run by two kinky lesbian Oxford Blues and we learnt six languages. I cannot remember any of them.

When I was nine or ten I went to ——– College for two years. I missed out on name day because I fell out of bed and broke my collarbone.

All this time we lived in a humble two bedroom plus sleepout house in Box Hill. My father died of a heart attack at 45 years and we were relatively well off but my mother had to spend the money on us before we were sixteen. When I was twelve I went to ——– High School as the money ran out sooner than expected. It was a bit of a rude shock to me but the academic standards were superior to those I’d had before.

There were three accidents at that school in that year and Anthony Johnstone laid down under a steam-roller.

I passed the test for ——– High School and went there in 1959. It was a long way, as you know, but I did remarkably well and matriculated with a Commonwealth Scholarship. I was to get the disadvantaged students allowance, but unfortunately they did not pay until July, so I could not do Arts/Law as I wished. I had to work and fell downstairs at the State Bank.

I did not perform very well but escaped through with a pass degree in Psychology and English Lit.

In my final year I learnt to drive and fell downstairs during a visit to St. Nicholas Hospital, where I saw Anthony Johnstone. Flat as a tack.

You will have gathered from this saga which is making me tired and bored that I am accident prone.

I have had only three or four boyfriends here in the past fifteen years and after each encounter I have been stung by a bee. I am allergic to bees and this form of God-inflicted aversion therapy has made me allergic to men. I might faint, cough or have an asthma attack. The hospital treatment for bee sting allergy is lengthy and unpleasant. I am allergic to men as individuals and also to menstruating women.

I am not allergic to men and women I see frequently.

Or could they perhaps be carrying something in their pockets?

All my other allergies are too numerous to mention.

Love from

D———.

p.s. I have stopped drinking coffee and cooking oil. My temper has improved because of this.

As you will guess, I have had a lot of pain-killers of the old-fashioned type. Probably that is why I smoke cigarettes, also the absences from home.

I do not suffer much pain now.'

The case for avoiding adulthood.

2012-10-27T00:00:00Z

‘I don’t want to find out what happens.’

Chris Ware, ‘Building Stories’.

In our grief.

2012-10-11T00:00:00Z

We are invited to emotionally invest in the lives of these strangers.

We are invited to invest, to vote, to pick a favourite, to boo at the bad guy and swoon at the romance, and generally celebrate the pop culture vacuousness of it all; a welcome escape from our own lives of appointment-keeping and tedious responsibilities. We are invited to curl up on our couches and nightly let go of ourselves, to pass judgement on fourteen grinning, game-for-it, might-at-least-get-a-radio-spot-on-Nova-at-the-end-of-the-whole-palaver-eh twenty-somethings. As the hours tick by it happens almost without our knowing: we go from rolling our eyes, smirking, ensuring friends our passion is ‘ironic’, to somehow viewing these loveable twits as our personal property. When they weep, we weep, when they laugh, we shriek, when they are inevitably bewildered our teeth grow dry from gaping mouths hanging open in empathy.

And when it so happens that their constructed reality is dented by the pain of a very raw grief it is difficult to know how exactly to react. At what point do we turn a blind eye, insist that the entire Big Brother experience is simply an exercise in superficial pop culture and that these are not real people, they are ‘contestants’ and ‘HMs’ and when do we get to vote, when do we get to switch off, when do we get to pretend it’s not real and play fantasy again?

I’m sorry, Josh. I’m sorry my lingering real-life grief for Genevieve has somehow piggybacked onto an existence I have no right to intrude upon. I’m sorry you somehow allowed me in and I’m sorry I’m sitting on a couch tonight feeling a giant ache for a family I am never likely to meet. I’m sorry I want to reach out and embrace a person whose existence, I assumed, was solely based around taking me briefly out of my own reality and granting me a frivolous respite from pain.

We cannot escape our grief, even in these fabricated bubbles of colour. We cannot escape it.

A quiet word just between us dames.

2012-10-05T00:00:00Z

‘Coochy coochy coo!’

Hullo my ~~ho’s~~ ladies! Margie Abbott here. It has recently come to my attention that some of you naysayers have been assuming that my Tony has an ‘issue’ with the fairer sex and I am here today to happily tell you that NOTHING COULD BE FURTHER FROM THE TRUTH. Tony is such a huge flag-waver for the ‘vagine people’ he is practically one of us!!! In fact, only the other day he turned to me with a faraway look in his eyes and said ‘Margie, sometimes I honestly wish I had a hoo-hoo so I could feel what life was really like for you bitches’ POWER SWOON!!!

Obviously there are still a few ~~boner killers~~ ‘feminists’ among you who seem exasperatingly hell-bent on taking some of Tony’s quotes ‘out of context’ and while I have managed to ‘sit tight’ in my ‘happy home’ until ‘now’ I simply cannot take it a moment longer and must use this opportunity to redress the balance. As my dear friend Julie Bishop once said ‘If you can’t say something nice, say it about Julia Gillard’ which I think is just priceless and ‘classic Julie’!!

Now if you’ll indulge me, I am going to run a few of those aforementioned ‘sexist quotes’ through the ‘Margie-rator’ (a canny little invention of mine) and set all those ~~skanks~~ leftist ratbags straight! Strap in your vaginas, you’re in for a bumpy ride!!!

‘We have a bizarre double standard; a bizarre double standard in this country where some-one who kills a pregnant woman’s baby is guilty of murder, but a woman who aborts an unborn baby is simply exercising choice.’ – March 2010.

I think we all know what Tony is saying here, girls. Why exercise ‘choice’ when you could pop on your bicycle and exercise your ‘bodies’ instead!!! Everybody understands that a healthy lifestyle is the key to a long and prosperous existence and if we’re not focusing on our ‘BMI’s we’ll be sharing 'TMI’ with our gynecologists, AM I RIGHT??? FERNWOOD MEMBERSHIPS FOR ALL!!!

‘I think it would be folly to expect that women will ever dominate or even approach equal representation in a large number of areas simply because their aptitudes, abilities and interests are different for physiological reasons’ – March 2010.

Hahahahaha! If I had a dollar for every time this was used as an example of Tony ‘looking down’ on ‘women’. This is a classic case of what I call ‘out of context’!!! Does Tony mean we slags will never have equal rights because we are simply ‘not good’ at ‘things’?? NO!!! He is saving us from disappointments! Do we really think we’re capable of ‘donating sperm’ or ‘being a hitman’ or ‘running the country’?? I’m tired just thinking about it!!!!

‘The problem with the Australian practice of abortion is that an objectively grave matter has been reduced to a question of the mother’s convenience.’

I think if we look closely this shows yet again how Tony’s BEST INTERESTS lie with WOMMYN. More than anybody he appreciates that our days are full, we are busy flitting about from social tennis to casserole party, and he understands that it would be SO EXASPERATING trying to fit an abortion into that hectic schedule!!! Abortions are not convenient for mothers as we have way too much on our plate already!! Less time for abortions means MORE TIME FOR FUN!! THANK YOU, TONY!!!

‘I think there does need to be give and take on both sides, and this idea that sex is kind of a woman’s right to absolutely withhold, just as the idea that sex is a man’s right to demand I think they are both they both need to be moderated, so to speak’ – March 2009.

Can I get a ‘holla’!!!!

Sisters, if I can be frank for a moment I’m sure we’ve all had times when we’ve thought ‘you know what? I don’t want to have intercourse with that man’. I am here to tell you IT’S TIME TO THINK AGAIN/MODERATE!!! If our men friends are going to be considerate enough to ‘pull back’ on the ‘demands’ on our ‘sacred triangles’ then it is up to us to pay back the favour!!! Trust me, stop being such snooty ‘my body is my temple, thou shall not pass’ types!!! It will all be over before you know it!!!

‘I got a bitch that’s old, a bitch that’s new/ A bitch who love velvet in the colors blue/ I got a bitch who’s fat, a bitch who’s built/ A bitch who all her titties give out powdered milk.’

This isn’t one of Tony’s, this is a sample of lyrics from Ice-T’s seminal 1993 album Home Invasion, featuring Brother Marquis of 2 Live Crew. Not sure how that slipped through.

‘I was talking to my 18-year-old daughter just the other day with what I was thought was a worthy moral exhortation. She said: 'Well, what would you know dad? You’re just a lame, gay, churchy loser.’ – August 2009

LOL!!!! If only the people of Australia could see the love that runs so deep between father and daughter(s) in our close-knit, impenetrable family!!! ‘Lame’ ‘gay’ and ‘loser’ are the affectionate terms we Abbott gals use to compliment our FAVOURITE PEOPLE!!! Tony even has a ‘gay’ sister who we invite over for dinner and there are several times we haven’t even disinfected the toilet seat that ‘loser’ touched on the off chance our daughters might catch her ‘lame’ disease!!! DO YOU SEE WHAT I DID THERE, AHAHAHAHAHA!!!

That’s that settled. If any of you ‘gay losers’ (ROFL) wish to join Abbott’s Angels you need only ask. I came up with the name all by myself, is it not the most precious thing imaginable??

Yours, in the name of all that is good and holy (Tony)

M.A.

xxxx

The Australian: a riposte.

2012-10-03T00:00:00Z

Yesterday I experienced the distinct pleasure of being contacted and told that my chums at The Australian were holding a pity party and I was one of the courses on offer. Nom nom! It wasn’t the first time such a thing had occurred – nor, I must assume, will it be the last, not even in a year or so when the entire staff of The Australian consists of a Shetland pony with a drinking problem trotting up and down an otherwise empty News Limited office transferring feces from bucket to bucket – yet after a couple of curious emails I wandered across to see what all the batshit crazy fuss was about.

The offending piece was written by Liberal MP and ~~friend to the stars~~ dog whisperer Greg Hunt and generally seemed to be making the point that well yes, Alan Jones may have made a few off-colour remarks about the Prime Minister but WHY DOESN’T ANYBODY GET CROSS WHEN PEOPLE ON THE LEFT MAKE ASSES OF THEMSELVES WHICH HAPPENS ON A REGULAR BASIS EXAMPLES OF WHICH I WILL LAY OUT FOR YOU IN DETAIL NOW. The article then went on to name several left-leaning ratbags and scoundrels and the scandalous utterances they’d made over the years, including the truly evocative image painted by Mungo McCallum of stubbornly present ex-PM John Howard as ‘an unflushable turd’, which seemed to cause poor Greg no end of pink-cheeked tutting.

There was – of course – a reference to me:

If we may for a moment address the latter part of these claims, both of which paint me as some sort of Kony-esque warlord, twirling at my moustache and demanding violence be enacted to all naysayers. The offending items Hunt refers to involve a tweet in which I wrote ‘Tony Abbott, I hope your cock drops off and falls down a plughole’ (not my finest moment, though mostly I am simply sad I forced people to briefly visualise Tony Abbott’s genitals) and a Drum article in which I said that I rather hoped Christopher Pyne would be attacked by a large and libidinous dog. To be honest, the image I had in mind when writing the Pyne piece more involved some sort of giant Dulux sheepdog rutting at his leg with slobbering and comedic force, but there you go, perhaps I am to blame for not putting it more clearly/amusingly.

To see the terms ‘genital mutiliation’ and ‘rape’ in relation to one’s name is no small thing in light of recent events and I feel – indulge me – that our friend Greg may have been gilding the lily somewhat for the purposes of his sweatily insistent piece.

The Brendan Nelson quote attributed to me, however, was not something I ever said or wrote. It was taken from a comments section on my old blog and to be honest I was rather startled to see it bandied about in such an incorrect fashion.

I ran my old blog from the years 2004 – 2008, and for the most part I didn’t moderate comments. For one thing, free-range comments gave angry anonymous people the chance to tear me a new one on a daily basis and I didn’t want to seem precious by blocking or deleting them when I was at the time giving it out with equal ferocity. For another, the idea of choosing who could say what and when seemed to set a dangerous precedent. I liked to imagine the blogging community as a robust round table of weirdos yelling at each other, and despite the fact occasional hideousness certainly got through I didn’t then have the time or inclination to sift through the countless attempts at engaging (moderating comments on a blog is hard, you guys – ask anybody). The debate about whether blog publishers are responsible for the content of their deranged commenters rages on to this very day and to be honest, I still have a foot in both camps.

Whatever the case, the Brendan Nelson quote is one I most definitely (thankfully) didn’t author, and it tires me to think that Greg Hunt lazily pulled together some random bullshit for the sake of a political argument.

During a somewhat heated phone conversation with The Australian’s op-ed editor Rebecca Weisser yesterday, during which she shrieked interesting bon mots such as I’M REBECCA WEISSER and I’M THE AUSTRALIAN (what) I made the point that perhaps including the Brendan Nelson comment in quotation marks and saying that I wrote it may in fact give The Australian’s audience (please don’t laugh, there are still a few loyal people reading it) the impression that I, well, wrote it, as well as lead to irksome things such as the following:

and

Rebecca conceded that it was thus, and in what may be construed as an act of pure, unmitigated generosity (I am going to assume she is slightly sweet on me and wants to take me out for candy and sodas) she adjusted the piece to say ‘published’ instead of ‘wrote’ so thankfully now it only looks as though I have written entire volumes on violent acts I wish to make on Brendan Nelson’s family and released them via Black Inc. so, you know, phew!

Certain things come back to bite you on the arse when you grow up on the internet, and it’s fair to say now that the conservative press have a go-to drawer of pull quotes I have made over the years that they can dust off and employ at any given time to support an argument or simply put me in my goddamned pinko place. Most of them are on my old blog and I haven’t deleted the entire thing in a fit of pique because firstly, I suppose it exists on public record anyway and there’s no point hiding from it, and secondly, difficult as it is now to read some of it back (like the teenaged bleatings of a pissed off Evanescence fan), it’s a document of a time and a person who no longer exists. Your writing softens as you get older, and I’d like to think that despite the fact I am still a politically irate individual I’m able to focus my rage rather than spray it across the room with the ungainly grace of an intoxicated rollerblader brandishing a machine gun.

If, at seventy-one years of age, after a lengthy and chequered career in media, I am invited to speak at a function for Young Liberals I will ~~be fucking surprised~~ hopefully manage to have aged gracefully enough to make whatever comedic points hit their mark for my slavish hooting audience without offending an entire nation in the process.

I am not afraid to take responsibility for my past actions, but I reserve the right to learn from my mistakes. If Greg Hunt wants to fact check for future trawling he need only call.

UPDATE:

Someone forgot to tell Cory Bernardi.

‘Soz, too busy pretending to read to take your call right now.’

UPDATE:

The Australian’s equivalent of flowers and fruit basket.

Vale Genny B.

2012-09-17T00:00:00Z

Trolling: a response.

2012-08-31T00:00:00Z

Since the whole Charlotte Dawson thing happened yesterday I have been receiving phonecalls from various news radio stations. Would I like to discuss the issue of internet trolling and anonymous abuse? Well no, thank you, I wouldn’t really. But I will say this here. When a faceless person on the internet tells you to commit suicide because you are a barren, worthless, ugly piece of shit – a cheery event I experience almost daily – it does, on occasion, give you pause for thought. For the most part I am able to block these people out no matter how much they attempt to make themselves seen. I am, however, forced to consider all the times I have made some spiteful off-the-cuff comment about Tony Abbott’s penis or Kyle Sandilands' fat head. Does the fact that I have been outspoken, vicious, sporadically rash and thoughtless mean that I deserve an ongoing campaign including comments like (and I quote): ‘Ms. Hardy, i hope a muslim bashes you and rapes you and eats you and shits you.’? Like fuck it does. I don’t give a shit about the odd times visible women on the internet have pushed the boundaries of satire or abuse. I have never, ever, carried on a relentless mission simply to ensure another human being is emotionally destroyed on my behalf. There is a difference. Get well, Charlotte. x

WHY AM I DOING THIS TO MYSELF.

2012-08-22T00:00:00Z

Ryan: I spy with my little eye…somethink….outside of our vehicle…beginning with…P.

Benjamin: Plants.

Ryan: Nuh.

Benjamin: Umm…police?

Ryan: Nup.

Benjamin: Um…pots.

Ryan: Nup.

Benjamin: Hmmm.

Ryan: Did you want a clue?

Benjamin: Yep.

Ryan: * blows air out through mouth in mysterious whooshing noise *

Benjamin: Oh.

Pause.

Benjamin: What’s the clue?

Longer pause.

Benjamin: Police helmet?

Ryan: Yep.

Benjamin: Is that what it was?

Ryan: Nah, it wasn’t. It was ‘power pole’.

(laughs)

Ryan: But there are no power poles!

Benjamin: Oh.

Long pause.

Benjamin: Well, that was fun.

Ryan: * laughs *

Benjamin: I’d prefer a swift kick to the head.

Interminable pause.

Benjamin: Alrighty, my turn. I spy, with my little eye, something beginning with….M.

Ryan: M?

Benjamin: Yep.

Ryan: ….Where is it?

Benjamin: I can’t tell you.

Ryan: Is it on the motorcycle or outside the motorcycle? (BEAT) Is it on the board there, or…?

Benjamin: I can’t tell you.

Ryan: What do you mean you can’t tell me?

Benjamin: This is the whole point of the game. I say a letter and you have to look for it.

Ryan: I can’t really look man.

(laughs)

Ryan: Good game though.

Benjamin: Yeah, it’s been real.

Vale, David Rakoff.

2012-08-13T00:00:00Z

This post by Gawker has been doing the rounds since David Rakoff’s untimely demise, and rightfully so. It is such a beautiful piece of writing and performance…a perfect blend of warmth, cynicism, emotional honesty.

I wish I could write like Rakoff. I wish I had his openness, his genuine skill that makes it all look so effortless. He gives me something to aspire to and his outstanding prose will be greatly missed.

Go and watch.

Controversial humour or hate speech - an offender reflects.

2012-08-08T00:00:00Z

‘Hi,

Thanks for your recent report of a potential violation on Facebook. After reviewing your report, we were not able to confirm that the specific page you reported violates Facebook’s Statement of Rights and Responsibilities.

Learn more about what we do and don’t allow by reviewing the Facebook Community Standards: https://www.facebook.com/communitystandards.

Thanks, Viki'

There has been some incredibly heated discussion on the Facespace about whether the stupefyingly unamusing ‘Aboriginal Memes’ page falls into ‘ribald comedic riffing that coincidentally happens to be based on a racial stereotype’ (fetch me a doctor for I fear my sides have split) or outright hate speech.

Under the ‘Hate Speech’ sections in Facebook Community Standards, the following is listed:

‘Facebook does not permit hate speech. While we encourage you to challenge ideas, institutions, events, and practices, it is a serious violation to attack a person based on their race, ethnicity, national origin, religion, sex, gender, sexual orientation, disability or medical condition.’

The creators of this particular Meme site – predictably anonymous, I LOVE YOU INTERNET YOU GIVE COURAGE TO ONLY THE WORTHIEST OF FACELESS OPINION HOLDERS – have obviously been feeling the pressure and overnight added the brand ‘Controversial Humor’ to their page’s title. But is simply stating something as ‘controversial humour’ (I refuse to spell it the American way as I am a patriot) enough to give it a free pass?

In Tony Abbott’s vision of a fair and just Australia, yes. Abbott promises to repeal section 18C of the Racial Discrimination Act once his political opponents collapse in an undignified pile and in true Steven Bradbury fashion he simply skates across the finish line (and into our hearts). Our future Prime Minister says free speech is “the freedom to write badly and rudely. It’s the freedom to be obnoxious and objectionable”.

The question is, how would Facebook – and Abbott himself – react if the Aboriginal Memes page featured African Americans* depicted in the following fashion?

I have been guilty of saying some very grubby things about conservative politicians in the past and the endlessly topical discussion regarding personal insults to our Prime Minister (see the recent ‘unproductive old cow’ saga for a starting point) certainly serves to hold up a mirror to what is acceptable and what is not when it comes to making internet ‘comedy’. There are many of us who learn on the fly – who learn by doing wrong, publicly, by crossing the line and being told in no uncertain terms that we have done so. We are placed in stocks in the town square of cyberspace and duly pelted with rocks until we learn our lesson.

Whenever the issue of ‘free speech’ or ‘hate speech’ or ‘edgy’ humour is raised I am often reluctant to comment upon it – only because I am keenly aware that by wading in to such a debate I will instantly have elements of my inglorious internet past dredged up and smushed in my face like soiled bedsheets (‘Just look at what you’ve gone and done’) and that is fair enough and a byproduct of growing up on the web I suppose.

It doesn’t, however, mean I can’t call bullshit when a website purporting to be comedic vilifies an entire race of people. And this meme website is bullshit.

UPDATE: There is also the phenomena of Third World Success memes. And this is worth reading – ‘How a Disasteful Meme Sparked a Web Culture War’.

7A.

2012-08-07T00:00:00Z

She was in her sixties and she had a bowl hair cut. Silvery, neat, the type of practical haircut you get at a certain age and think ‘I suppose this will have to do’.

I caught her rifling through the idiotic collection of magazines I had bought at Coolangatta Airport, those brain vacuums you guiltily purchase in order to make a movie-less flight go faster. I always read the ones about UK starlets I never even knew: women named Mylene, Cheryl, Gemma, their divorces, their weight loss successes, their scandalously visible streaks of tanning lotion. I felt dirty when I read them and always tried to cover them up with something worthy like The Age or The Monthly.

Joking with David, I had picked up this particular stack of magazines before we boarded and loudly announced: ‘David, I’ve got your Now and OK magazines. Did you want me to put them with my Monthly?’

She was seated next to us on the plane and she was leaning over as though she had every right in the world to sift through the contents of my seat pocket; like it was a personal entertainment pouch for her to choose from at will. Perhaps she didn’t understand the rules of domestic flying: thou shalt not steal thy neighbour’s glossies without at first making some form of polite, desultory chit-chat about a Kardashian.

I coughed politely. She looked over.

‘Are these yours?’

‘Yes.’

‘Oh gee, sorry.’

She moved to return them and I assured her they were hers for the taking, she’d be doing me a favour, really, the last thing I needed was to become au fait with the love triangle of some chisel-jawed twits from The Only Way Is Essex. I was under strict instructions from my employer to finish the interminably worthy Middlemarch, and thus far had only chewed through 374 of its endless, doughy pages. She was welcome to the magazines and she took them, flicking through the photographs of bikini bodies and competitive gowns (‘Who wore it best?’) and we sat together in companionable silence.

It was after her trip to the toilet that she started talking. Oh god, I thought, there’s still another forty minutes to go. What were we going to discuss? Places of employment, children, grandchildren? I had a low tolerance for making conversation on airplanes and I was tired. Nevertheless we had formed a borrower/lender relationship via my idiotic cache of magazines and as 7B to her 7A I was in some way beholden to her request for conversation. We spoke mildly about the Gold Coast, where we’d been, what we’d been doing. She had been in a motorhome with her husband, driving up and down without a real plan.

‘We were on a holiday…four weeks. But we’ve had to come back early because my father’s dying.’

I thought I’d misheard her. ‘Sorry?’

‘My father…’

She looked out of the window. A cold purple light fanned over the stretch of cloud.

‘I woke up at six this morning and I called the nursing home. I just had a feeling, I suppose. He hasn’t been well for some time, but this morning…they’ve put him on morphine now. And once you’re on morphine it takes two days, doesn’t it? So we packed up everything and I got on a plane. My husband’s driving back.’

She was a retired nurse, her retired husband once a fireman. Her parents had been the same. ‘My mother, grandmother, sister…we’re all nurses. I met my husband when he came to help my dad fix our car.’

The holiday had been designed to put some clean Queensland sunshine in her lungs. She traditionally suffered through Melbourne winters. And now her father lay dying in a Cranbourne nursing home, a morphine drip lulling his suffering into something remotely tolerable, cushioning his passage through to nothingness.

She wanted to get back in time.

‘My sister is with him. My brothers….they can’t make it.’

‘Oh. That’s a pity.’

She tilted her head to one side.

‘Well. They can make it. But they’ve decided they don’t want to be there at that exact moment. That has to be their decision though, doesn’t it? I think it would be too much for them. Men just can’t…they can’t do that.’

‘Yes…’

The pilot announced our descent into Melbourne. She really started talking then – about anything and everything, nursing, Cranbourne, motorhomes, the weather. There was a wild edge to the way she spoke, a rapid-fire delivery, and I knew she was trying to fill the white space between her time in the air and the moment we touched down and her bubble of painful reality would engulf her. I listened and I responded where necessary, helped colour in the blank spaces so she wouldn’t have to stop and hear herself think. Together we spoke a patchwork quilt that covered us and gave no room for pause.

When we landed I encouraged her to ignore the requests over the PA and to turn on her phone. They wouldn’t care, this was an emergency, those rules were really only made to be broken anyway.

Almost immediately after turning on her burgundy telephone it rang and I felt very still and cold.

‘Hello?….Yes, we’ve just landed. How’s grandpa, has he passed?’

There was a long pause.

‘It’s alright, you can tell me now if something’s happened. Has it happened or hasn’t it?’

I knew it then, and she did too. The weight of it was stifling.

‘He’s passed, has he.’ It was not a question. A small, contained sigh. ‘Oh well. Ah well. What time? Three-thirty?’

Our plane had taken off at 3:25. Five minutes after we had left Queensland her father had died. She had not made it.

‘Oh well. Ah well.’

She ended the call, and turned to me with a confused smile. She was a nurse and she didn’t want to cry.

‘Three-thirty. Ah well.’

I was helpless, an oaf. I wanted to reach for her but instead I pawed clumsily at her forearm.

‘Are you okay?’

She looked out of the window again, watched the lights of Tullamarine as we ambled in, nodded.

‘He’s still there. They’ve still kept him in his bed. At least I’ll get to kiss him goodbye, won’t I?’

She kissed us goodbye once our feet were on the ground, hugged us both. ‘I’ll be okay’ she kept saying. ‘Bless you, now. I’ll be okay. I’ll be okay.’ Looking around for her daughter who was supposed to be waiting for her. Insisting that we go off to our own home, and thank you so much for all those magazines, she’ll be okay, she’ll be okay.

And I cried in the queue waiting for the taxi, and I cried again in the taxi as we drove away. And I wondered about what stranger I might be sitting next to on the day my father dies, and if it might be a boorish type in a floral dress, unable to say the right words, only to offer me colourfully inane magazines, an escape into a world that is not my own, an escape for an hour, a blessed escape.