Saturday, October 20, 2012

The Pigpen Pundit

UP until yesterday afternoon, when Gerard Henderson's latest Media Watch Dog became available, it was the great Lennie Lower who laid pre-eminent claim to having penned Australia's most pithily poisonous paragraph. Jack Gudgeon, hero of Here's Luck, speaks of his mother-in-law:
In this description of my mother-in-law's mode of life, I think I have written with a certain amount of tolerant restraint. She is an old lady, and the age of chivalry is not dead while a Gudgeon lives. Perhaps a different son-in-law might have described her as a senseless, whining, nagging, leather-faced old whitlow, not fit to cohabit with a rhinoceros beetle. But I wouldn't.
Lower now has some competition. Henderson writes of scruffy Scott Burchill:
Then, when Dr Burchill gets really down and dirty on the News Breakfast set, this is a sign that his ute outside the Southbank studios is loaded up with a dysfunctional worm-farm, three pre-loved busts of Lenin which have been attacked by Maoists  and perhaps a dead cat or two. That’s how he presented earlier in the year.  The only time Dr Burchill wore a suit and tie was when he was heading off for a job interview – presumably for a lectureship position at Deakin University’s Department of Applied Garbage. [Do you mean Deakin University’s prestigious Department of Humanities and Social Sciences? – Ed]
Every tart word of the new Media Watch Dog is a gem, and don't miss the letter from Terry McCrann.




7 comments:

  1. McCrann. How do the kids say it.... he just "owns bitches" whenever, wherever, whatever he writes.

    mr.simmon

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  2. Media Watch is a must read and Gerard sure has a way with words. We need to sool him on the editor of Macquarie Dictionary.

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  3. Not OT....she lives!
    A Composta sighting at Bolta's.

    http://blogs.news.com.au/heraldsun/andrewbolt/index.php/heraldsun/comments/a_feminist_with_the_help_of_her_maid/

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  4. Burchill is the resident missionary for the awful Chomsky. If Chomsky were a Mormon, Burchill would have a friend and a bicycle, and be a damned sight better dressed!

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  5. I would like to protest most strongly the Henderson column's use of: "THE GUARDIAN-ON-THE-YARRA: AN UPDATE RE TONY ABBOTT".

    I recall that the term was often "Pravda on the Yarra." This is much more useful as it describes the Age more precisely.

    Thank you.

    Miner of Darwin

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  6. I never miss Gerard on Friday arvos He is superb.

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  7. Elizabeth (Lizzie) B.October 22, 2012 at 1:32 PM

    The Faculty of Applied Garbage. Can universities survive this and return to to the old ways of the merely dull, peppered with occasional bright stars? It would be a welcome relief.

    ReplyDelete