Wednesday, June 08, 2005
PEOPLE’S INQUIRY GETS RESULTS!
A People’s Inquiry led by Professor Bunyip and Blithering Bunny has unearthed troubling information about Judith Armstrong, the EU booster whose views (“it is tempting to wonder whether democracy is not wasted on voters”) were recently published in the Melbourne Age. Bunyip reports that The Age:
“... footnoted Armstrong’s column with a short and simple biography, introducing her only as “a fellow of the Contemporary European Research Centre at Melbourne University.”
And who funds the Contemporary European Research Centre? Over to you, Bunny:
I note that the Contemporary European Research Centre is a EU-awarded Jean Monnet Centre for Excellence . (Monnet, in case you didn’t know, was more than anyone else the father of the EU). In other words, the EU takes your money and doles some of it out to Institutes around the world who put out propaganda on behalf of the European project. At least the CIA had enough of a sense of shame to make its cultural bribes secret.
So does The Age, which neglected to inform readers of Armstrong’s EU connection. The Age also declined to reveal certain matters in the case of TV writer Marieke Hardy, whose new program launched recently. Here’s The Hack’s review:
Last Man Standing has one again proved my longstanding theory about Aussie television scriptwriting – that it’s clearly the itinerant fruitpicking of the writing world – seasonal, soul-destroying and woefully unskilled.
And piggybacking it off Desperate Housewives is not gunna save this turkey from the chop.
My prediction: LMS might just crash and burn faster than … er … Crash/Burn.
Mainstream reviews weren’t much better (“I could almost hear the brains of the scriptwriters crunching as they set up one cliched situation after another ... ”). The Age, however, thought Hardy’s series might be a winner, so ran a 1,328-word profile on the hyper-talented lefty script-churner and mysterious online ranter:
Although she prefers to keep her online identity a secret, Marieke Hardy, the 29-year-old Melbourne screenwriter who wrote and produced Seven’s 22-part drama, Last Man Standing, drops some fairly strong clues about it in her own publicity material for the show.
Along with her impressive professional credentials in the program notes for the 20-something series are the lines: “Marieke Hardy has a radio show, a political fashion label, a go-go dancing career, a regular DJ gig and a secret contentious life on the internet.”
Secret? Please; anyone who cares learned long ago that Hardy posts as Ms. Fits at Reasons You Will Hate Me. Not mentioned in The Age’s admiring profile was that Hardy has appeared in ads promoting the dull broadsheet. Blogger Ari Sharp presented the evidence, drawing a wrathful response from Hardy fans, who in other circumstances might be disinclined to support a Big Media shill.
UPDATE: References to canned Seven program Let Loose Live now deleted, since it isn’t anything to do with Last Man Standing. As should have been obvious, even to me.
(Via reader Rene).
UPDATE II. Media diversity opponents Tim Dunlop and Phil Gomes celebrate the removal of a conservative voice from The Age.