We live in an Age of Unreason. Characteristic of such an age is the near-universal trading of victimhood-as-currency. The Cult of the Victim fosters all manner of irrational ideas. As the great Australian journalist Jack Marx wrote, years ago, should there come a point where the mouths of victims’ families
As I wrote recently, the small target strategy has been the prevailing wisdom in Australian politics since 1993. That was the year John Hewson launched his Fightback! campaign, a year out from an election. Hewson was perhaps the last politician to try a degree of honesty: he told everyone, in
Every joke is a tiny revolution, as Orwell said. Which is why authoritarians so detest comedy. Actual comedy, that is. What is passed off as ‘comedy’ on late night US television, or Australia’s ABC, for instance, are very much not. They’re Maoist Struggle Sessions pretending to be comedy.
Looks like it’s back to the basement for Senile Joe. The presidential incumbent and Democrat candidate for this year’s election has ducked out of a campaign visit to a battleground state, after testing positive for Covid. Which is odd, because Biden is fully boosted with the Covid vaccination,
A week that could have been unimaginable disaster just gets better and better for Donald Trump. By literally dodging a bullet in Pennsylvania, Trump came up with the campaign photo for the ages. A bloodied Trump, fist raised in defiance against a backdrop of blue sky and American flag, has
One of the most jaw-dropping scary sights I’ve seen on the roads was passing a girl driving solo on Tasmania’s West Tamar highway. She had her head down, texting on her phone, with earbuds in. In other words, she was completely sensory-isolated from what was going on around
I don’t know whether to laugh or quietly curse in disappointment. On the one hand, the first explicit attempt to leverage sectarian politics in Australia in half a century is allegedly imploding. On the other, a potentially fatal wedge against the Labor party is imploding. I’m talking, of
Listening to independent journalist Tim Poole recently, he made a point about free speech which changed much of my previous thinking. Free speech, yes, Poole said. But only for people who actually believe in free speech. Free speech fundamentalism, advocating free speech even on behalf of people who avowedly do
If you recall my review of When We All Fall Asleep, Where Do We Go?, I’m not exactly the world’s biggest Billie Eilish fan. As I wrote at the time, it was fairly standard, slick, but oddly murky studio wizardry, propping up a performer distinguished only by her
My readers know me only too well. As an astute BFD reader commented on my recent piece about the generationally divided, two-speed economy: I just said to my wife yesterday that it was about time for Lushy’s annual boomer baiting. Annual? I can and must do better than that.
I’m not a huge fan of racial vilification laws (as distinct from incitement laws), such as Australia’s notorious Section 18C, but, if we must have them, then surely they must be equally applied to everyone? Yet, to date, there’s been a notable slant in the few prosecutions
Spare us the hypocritical pearl-clutching of the elites. Yesterday, it was ABC journalist Patricia Karvelas finger-wagging about “misinformation” – even as she peddled gross misinformation of her own. Today, it’s the lefty politicians’ turn. Home Affairs Minister Clare O’Neil has warned that democracy in Australia is under attack from
Sooner or later, lefties in a love-affair with Islam come unstuck. In the ’70s, it was the Iranian communists, supporting the Khomeinists against the Shah. Once the Khomeinists came to power, they immediately rounded up the communists and shot the lot of them. More recently, pathologically altruistic “asylum seeker advocates”
Self-reflection, it must be said, is not one of the mainstream media’s strong points. They clutch their bodices when subscriptions and public trust in media go into free-fall. But, like Principal Skinner from The Simpsons, they refuse to countenance that the problem might be them. No, it’s the
It’s one of the classic scenes of movie comedy: Tha’s nae ordinary rabbit! When Sorcerer Tim warns King Arthur and his questing knights that the way to the Grail lies through a cave “guarded by a creature so foul, so cruel that no man yet has fought with
