Another Thursday, another edition of Stilgherrian Live scheduled for 9.30pm Sydney time. So that means — yes! — nominations are open for “Cnut of the Week”.
Who do you think is futilely resisting the tide of change? Nominations are open to people, organisations, nations and even abstract forces of nature — but your nomination has to reflect the news of the last week, and you have to give reasons. As usual, I’ll select the shortlist at 8.30pm Sydney time, and you can vote during tonight’s program.
Also, last week’s episode was the William Alan Shatner Commemorative Edition. Is there anyone or anything worthy of being commemorated this week?
Who do you nominate, and why? Don’t forget the “Why?”!
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Tags: cnut, tv, ustream, william shatner
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Probably the most obvious first nomination would have to be to Telstra for the unfolding Twitter fiasco.
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@AussieKen: But what, exactly, is the “tide of change” which Telstra is trying to hold back? If it’s the new tide of openness that comes with emerging social media, then as comments to my piece for New Matilda hint, maybe Telstra is actually doing good here? Leslie Nassar has not been sacked, and any misinformation about whether he’d been asked to stop tweeting seems to be cock-up rather than cover-up.
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You really can’t go past Pope Benny and his assertion that AIDS is caused by magic pixies and can only be prevented if you sprinkle grated leprechaun penises on your toast. Or something.
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john jackson i meant… gads
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Telstra, obviously, for the way they dealt with FSC.
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In light of this weeks “First rule of censorship, you can’t talk about censorship” Wikileaks blacklisting by ACMA, followed by today’s announcement that the Australian blacklist has been leaked, I nominate the ACMA.
Information will out, no matter how much they try to hold it in.
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While I’m not an expert on the whole Telstra / FSC saga, I just think its bad form if someone is made to feel like they have to stop twittering. FSC combined humour with politics, it was pretty harmless. If Telstra did ask/tell/force FSC to quit posting on twitter, then they’re trying to hold back his freedom to do what he wants in his own free time, and that’s trying to turn back progress (in my opinion).
Mainstream Australia is largely non politically active, and it’s usually only through humour that middle Australia pays any attention to politics (eg the Chaser)… not that FSC would’ve reached most of the mainstream — we all still get asked “What is twitter?”… then explain it, only to receive a “sounds like a waste of time” way too much.
Like I said, I’m not completely up-to-date on the Telstra / FSC issue, but I’m sure I’ll learn more during tonight’s show!
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ACMA for sure!
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NBC Universal CEO Jeff Zucker for trying to keep web video away from TV sets by attempting to ban Boxee from Hulu (I know its US-centric but the sheer futility of it warrants nomination). I guess he hasn’t noticed the PC input on LCD TVs! Read about it at: http://www.businessinsider.com/nbc-boss-explains-why-boxee-users-cant-have-hulu-2009-3
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I’d like to nominate as Cnuts of the Week, all the people calling for Leslie to be sacked for any negative criticism he may have broadcast about his employer.
Now that there are more immediate, farther-reaching, easily-accessible, and sometimes anonymous ways of communication, there is more exposure of our “real” selves on the Internet through Twitter, Facebook, etcetera.
It’s unrealistic to think that everyone is always going to be super-duper happy Stepford employees and not vent frustrations that may make their way online.
As a consumer, I make purchasing decisions based on how honest I feel an organisation is as well as how closely-aligned our philosophies are. Who best to demonstrate and publicise this but their employees?
I am a Telstra client and won’t base any decision to continue using the Telstra service on tweets that have been revealed to come from a Telstra employee.
The tide being held back is the transparency of organisations, through both disgruntled (and gruntled) internal criticism.
Despite Leslie’s secrecy up until now, I feel this is more universal and worth a nomination.
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My vote for Cnut of the week: Senator Conroy re the AMCA and his statement “No one interested in cyber safety would condone the leaking of this list.”
Maybe he will now get the point that we don’t condone it, in fact we’re horrified by it, because it proves two things:
- We were right: it was inevitably going to be leaked.
- We were right: it’s already being abused to block the wrong stuff.
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Heather Ridout
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Thank you for all the nominations so far. I had to look up Heather Ridout, I must admit, but I now know she’s CEO of the Australian Industry Group, and that she’s been whingeing about the unfairness of the government wanting to limit executive salaries when — what was it again? — oh yeah, when we’re all having to do it tough because there’s a global financial crisis!
Keep the nominations coming in — and don’t forget to explain why your nominee is “holding back the tide of change”
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Does hypocritical laziness come under the rubric of futile resistance?
If so, I nominate myself.
I haven’t updated my blog since the second post late last year, yet still pretend to be some sort of ‘communicator’. Shame on me.
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But I’ve got Buckley’s of even laying a glove on AMCA in the Cnut stakes, and I know it. Wankers.
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well ACMA for listing wikileaks on the don’t look at site
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ACMA – because they want to reduce the tide of change to a moderated dribble.
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Can we rename the award to Conroy of the Week, or give him a permanent seat / induction to the hall of fame or something? Otherwise we’re tying it up indefinitely.
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I think the Bill on Alchopop tax will get the go ahead anyway (we do want it don’t we?), but Senator Steve Fielding tried to block it in the Senate. See http://tiny.cc/3tbiP from The Australian. I’m not having much luck filtering Hansard to see more but I’ll keep trying.
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How about Steve Fielding? Not for blocking the legislation as such, but just for being generally clueless yet powerful!
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Can we please have a mention for March in March in Canberra on Saturday? http://www.marchinmarch.org
I nominate Kevin Rudd, his government and his dopey comms minister. And his cat, while we’re at it. And ACMA. And Bernadette McMenawhatever. And Clive Hamilton. And anyone else who thinks that children are safer now that Australia’s Yellow Pages of child abuse sites is out there and Streisanding.
Let’s hope this is the beginning of the end for this expensive, impractical, immoral and downright dangerous vanity project.
Attention Conroy: you promised us an evidence-based approach. The evidence says you should go now.
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The ACMA is filled with particularly high levels of cnutfulness this week
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Thank you, everyone. Nominations are now closed and I am frantically preparing for the program in 40 minutes. Jesus WEPT.
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Thanks for all the nominations. I’m sorry I didn’t mention them all on the final program, but it was a tad chaotic at the time. I was still editing graphics up to 10 minutes before we started.
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