Actually, I've changed my mind. This is what irks: journalists who think it is appropriate to hold children to account for their own statutory rape. I don't particularly recommend clicking on that link. It'll take you to a typically loathsome Sydney Morning Herald article about - ha ha ha - child prostitution. The shock-horror angle is not that a fifteen year old is the victim of who knows how many counts of statutory rape, but that her rapists paid her! She made pots of money! From a shortlived career as a weekend prostitute! It's a laugh a minute!
The pots of money (£8000, as it turns out) have been "forfeited to the authorities". I'm guessing this is meant to deter other fifteen year olds from getting ideas above their station. I call it theft, and humbly submit that there would be no need to deter fifteen year olds from taking up sex work if we deterred adults from thinking that throwing a credit card around entitles them to have sex with children.
In other news, The Australian is appalled, appalled, that four foster children are still in the care of a prostitute, even though "child protection authorities were warned last May". Because it's quite clear that anyone trying to support her foster children through sex work has no interest in their wellbeing.
10 comments:
Like the Today Tonight crew, or possibly the Toady Tonight crew, there are people who work for the SMH and the Australian who need to be fed razor-wire.
Ha. Ha.
I'd settle for consciousness raising, but I see your point.
I'm suspicious of there being any consciousness to raise. Deeply, deeply suspicious. I mean, they wrote the damnable things. Wrote 'em. Wrote 'em right up. Published them, too! Someone read that and thought, 'what a fine piece of investigative journalism'. You see now why the razor-wire is such an appealing option.
I thought I might've had something more profound to add to that particularly single-minded and not particularly illuminating statement, but on reflection, I think all the salient points have been covered.
Oh, no, wait, I've got something! It's a good one! As newspaper subscriptions slowly dwindle and the economy detumesces, I look forward to meeting those sweet, kindly...people...from the Australian and the SMH very soon indeed!
Out on the fucking street. Where they belong. That anyone ever expended any time or effort teaching the basics of the English language to the people who ended up writing those...things... *waves his hand at the aforementioned articles*... drives me insane. How the hell did that happen? Doesn't your mind just recoil at the thought of having to put your name to those two pieces? Don't you hunch over in disgust and physiological spasms of revulsion? Gah!
Consciousness should be raised in the same manner as an eyebrow. Yerss, that'll do.
Also, though the Fairfax papers generally win out against the Murdoch rags as the paper for choice for self-consciously cultured inner-city types (for reasons unclear, though perhaps they like spiting Rupert Murdoch), it's worth remembering that they're the written equivalent of Channels 7 or 9. They subsist primnarily on advertising income, and hence comparisons to tabloid journalism by the likes of Today Tonight and A Current Affair.
This is why I buy the Murdoch papers. Rupe's evil but enjoyably so.
If consciousness should be raised in the manner of an eyebrow should it also be shaped in the manner of an eyebrow?
And if so, should consciousness manifest in the use of eyebrowesque quotation marks, as in "consciousness" (except they look more like sideburns in this font - give me a good curvy quotation mark any day).
I think the Fairfax papers are preferred because they're supposed to offer a more liberal, centre-leftish sort of vision on the world. But the SMH has Miranda Devine and The Australian has Phillip Adams, so I guess they're both gesturing ineffectively towards editorial pluralism.
I think the answer to your question Nails would be yes.
Eyebrow fact: some of the illustrated horses, in the Sir John Harington translation of Ariosto's Orlando Furioso, have human eyebrows.
Perhaps I'm unshockable after reading a lot of newspapers, Baron, but I found that article extremely tame and lacking in schlock and horribility after your build-up.
In fact after your commentary it seemed amazingly boring and measured in tone. I was expecting more.
Exactement. It's very similar in tone and content to five bazillion entries in the annals of our mainstream media.
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