Racist with an S

How do you spell racist?

Marieke Hardy describes herself as “your favourite ABC investigative reporter”. Addressing a lesser-known (that is, Victorian) political scandal, Hardy has chosen to go behind the scenes of Labor MP Don Nardella’s “spelling slur”.

Constituent Fiona Peterson wrote to Nardella, "You seem to not want to help anyone except the immagration people". Nardella’s reply read simply: "My advice to you stands from my initial email reply. Learn how to spell 'immigration' before using the word again"

The only outlets that appear to carry the story in a quick Google search are the Herald Sun and News.com.au, both owned by News Ltd. The stories are identical, and while Nardella’s quote contains the implication that this was not the extent of his correspondence with Peterson, the item itself suggests that Nardella did nothing but dismiss Peterson.

To Hardy herself: she covers the other side of the story, that of defending Nardella and identifying an endemic problem: racists can’t spell. Hardy has taken a non-story and transformed it into a comedy piece that also exposes a disturbing (and disturbed) subset of the internet. In so doing she reveals the more pressing issue: that racism and ignorance remain unremarked upon in society while politicians are the frequently cast as villains, particularly if their ideology is diametrically opposite that of the publishing outlet’s.

Hardy is guilty of this in that she presents Pauline Hanson as a punchline without comment – and this is where reader bias comes in, because I thought that was funny. By making a direct correlation between hate speech, racist ideas and diminished intellectual capacity, Hardy has informed, entertained and demystified a subset of “the other”.

No one could confuse Hardy’s investigative reportage with actual investigation and reportage, but she has produced an admirable piece of work nonetheless.

And That Was the Election that Kind of Was

Occasional pundit and all around media consumer Ben Pobjie comes to us this week with a brief rundown of the election … such as it was. Pobjie presents his audience with an early interpretation of what looks to be a long-running confusion, and he starts by dispelling some very basic myths.

Pobjie’s first task is to dispel the bizarre notion that Australia deliberately hung itself. His joke structure is sound: “Trust me on this: people who voted Labor wanted Labor. People who voted Liberal wanted Liberal. People who voted Green wanted Green. People who voted Family First wanted a lobotomy.”

He is factual and funny and clearly showing his own political leanings all at once. The entry is tagged “idiots”, as Pobjie is clearly disgruntled at the illogical state of political discourse in Australia – in that he rightly wonders why anyone would wish this situation upon their country.

The second point is more trivial and semantic, but still valid for its criticism of political journalism practice.

Pobjie’s parting shot is leveled at Bob Katter, who has begun to gain a cult following. Pobjie illustrates the befuddlement with which Katter tackles hot button issues, but sadly this has served only to make certain corners raise the man to the level of Chuck Norris, another figure thoroughly undeserving of his legend. (A quick consultation of Wikipedia attests to Katter’s somewhat repugnant political views).

Pobjie’s article is successful in that it acts in a “venting” blog form but also as a call for more level headedness and accuracy in political reportage. Pobjie also scores bonus points for enabling people to justify quoting “bitch, please” on a university blog.

Gillard and Abbott nearly let The Punch have a knock out

The Punch is supposed to be News Ltd's answer to ABC’s The Drum, and similar sites such as Crikey and its spin off Pure Poison. Coming from a News Ltd funded operation, “Julia and Tony learning the art of limited overs politics” is presented surprisingly without much in the way of spin – especially in the context of it being published a mere eight hours after the somewhat dismissive “Bob Brown is feeling lucky”.

Paul Colgan approaches his subject, the second people’s forum of the election campaign, in an informative but folksy way. Colgan almost immediately admits that the cricket analogy that he is using is tenuous at best – and it was already wholly lost on me, regardless. I’m not “down home” enough for this sort of talk but undoubtedly a lot of The Punch’s readers would understand.

This recount of the forum is remarkably balanced, with Tony Abbott and Julia Gillard both coming across as flawed individuals receiving mixed reactions from their shared audience. Colgan is critical of the responses of both of them, but seems to pay particular attention to the perceived ridiculousness of Abbott’s answers in regards to peak oil and the Global Financial Crisis. It is definitely not something that I would reasonably have expected to ever read on The Punch, and certainly not on something run by News Ltd.

Colgan’s article was apparently composed in haste with a minimum of editing applied: several sentences are missing key words, meaning that the reader has to deal with a couple of stumbling blocks. Still, despite its flaws, Colgan has produced one of the more readable items on The Punch website. Damning with faint praise, perhaps, but true nonetheless.

Wendy Francis vs. Moral Relativism

In the “Twitter election”, the parallel universe that has been running through the #ausvotes hashtag on Twitter, Family First Queensland candidate Wendy Francis has caused a stir. Francis posted a stream of tweets claiming, “Children in homosexual relationships are subject to emotional abuse. Legitimising gay marriage is like legalising child abuse” and similar. The internet and Twitter being the way they are, a politician can make an ill advised comment and delete it. The traces remain, however – if someone sees something particularly noteworthy, they will be sure to take screen caps and distribute them widely.

“Bigotry and homophobia in politics” reads almost as an apologia for Francis’ own words simply because they are born of ignorance and are not as repellent in the author’s eyes as those of One Nation’s John Groves. While Francis has never incited people to violence as Groves has, simply chalking Francis’ claims up to ignorance is irresponsible.

The author, “Bastard Sheep” (who apparently does not use his real name online), believes that education is the solution to Francis’ issues and worldviews. The fact remains that she is espousing the viewpoint that gay marriage and child abuse are the same thing. Francis’ claim is that she speaks for the “concerns of mainstream Australia”. She wants “mainstream Australia” to listen to her, and therefore she firmly believes that what she is saying is true and in the country’s best interests.

The “Bigotry and homophobia in politics” blog entry illustrates that a story can spread across the Twitter and blogospheres and be interpreted in a variety of ways. For Bastard Sheep, Francis’ comments were insignificant relative to the violent threats of John Groves, and not taken on their own merits.

(A more in-depth account of the John Groves issue, which is a mixture of reportage and opinion, is available at Nicholas Perkins’ blog.)