All publication is a political act. All communication is propaganda. All art is pornography. All business is personal. All hail Eris. Vive les poissons rouges sauvages!
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I’m also in Crikey today on the Prime Minister’s new blog, with a piece called Ruddblog: populist masterstroke or full of fail? Needless to say, I think it’s the latter. You may like to comment over at Crikey, or continue the conversation on my post from this morning.
Kevin Rudd launched his prime ministerial blog yesterday. I’m not sure it’s going to work — as I already told the Fairfax newspapers.
In addition to the common prohibitions on defamatory and abusive content, the rules for Mr Rudd’s blog say that comments will be accepted for only “five business days” from the time the post is published, be moderated by his staff strictly during business hours, cannot include links to other websites, and are limited to 300 words.
“Not allowing links to other websites is just dumb,” one blogger, Stilgherrian, told the Herald. “Links are the currency of the web. They allow you to reference work that’s already out there. If you can’t do that, and you’re limited to 300 words, then the discussion won’t ever get past repeating slogans.”
It was a sentiment shared by “An Onymous Lefty” blogger, Jeremy Sear, who posted a response to the Prime Minister’s blog titled “Kevin Rudd is hip to the kids… of 2004″.
“The strict moderation will remove the livelier aspects of discussion,” Mr Sear said.
I also reckon the first post, about climate change, sounds like a prepared political speech, with a question tacked on the end to make it look bloggy.
How do you think we can make Australians more aware that we need to act on climate change now?
I thought we’d mostly moved well past “creating awareness” and the biggest criticism of the government’s climate change policy was the lack of actual action so far.
But what do you think?
[Note: The original Fairfax piece doesn't have links: I've added them in myself. Fairfax is still too rude or daft or whatever to link out to the things they mention. It's nice that they included my quote, given that.]
Here are the web links I’ve found for 22 May 2009 to 27 May 2009, posted automatically.
Episode 47 of Stilgherrian Live, the Cheap Edition, is now online for your viewing pleasure.
Actually it has been since shortly after the program finished on Thursday night, and you could have just gone to the channel page to watch it. I’ll sort out a better notification system when I get back from Africa.
Except you don’t know I’m going to Africa, because it’s SEKRIT.
There was another strong field this week for “Cnut of the Week”, too.
I thought Prime Minister Kevin Rudd would score more votes for the federal budget, but no. After winning last week, he only came in 4th (20%). ABC TV came in 3rd (24%) for choosing not broadcast the controversial mock anti-discrimination advertisement on The Gruen Transfer.
We had a draw for first place: Scott Swabey’s nomination of “all marketing peeps for their continued insistence on trying to find a way to control/monetise the social media movement” and Wolf’s nomination of “everyone on Twitter that [sic] kept reposting the #fixreplies even after twitter did… you all look like a bunch of whining idiots now” (28%).
Visually, “everyone on twitter” was represented by a social network diagram and, in our usual tasteful way, “all marketing peeps” by a tapeworm.
I particularly like the tapeworm, don’t you?
Meanwhile, congratulations to Wolf, who won a t-shirt from our friends at King Cnut Ethical Clothing — and a big raspberry to Gedulous who would’ve won if he were watching the program when his name was drawn from the Cocktail Shaker of Integrity but he wasn’t so we had a redraw and Wolf won instead so there nyer.
The Stilgherrian Live Eurovision Special is tonight from 7.15pm Sydney time, with special guests Nick Hodge, Snarky Platypus and probably Mark Pesce.
The regular old Stilgherrian Live will return at 9.30pm next Thursday night.
Episode 46 of Stilgherrian Live, the Zeitgeist Edition, is now online for your viewing pleasure.
We had a strong field of nominations for “Cnut of the Week”, and it was tough selecting the shortlist. However we eventually saw Rupert Murdoch in 4th place (11%) for his insistence that we somehow pay for news online; Wynyard Baptist Church in 3rd place (22%) for their religious intolerance, and the Australian Football League came in 2nd (30%) for their legal attacks on a fan website which actually supports their sport.
The clear winner of “Cnut of the Week”, though, was Australia’s Prime Minister Kevin Rudd (37%) for delaying the introduction of an emissions trading scheme (ETS).
As my friends over at newmatilda.com point out, Monday’s announcement amounts to Rudd breaking his first major election promise. But apart from that, it’s a clear failure to take action on the most important long term issue facing this country and, indeed, the world.
Not happy, Kevin.
Meanwhile, congratulations to deanlk, who won a t-shirt from our friends at King Cnut Ethical Clothing via his nomination for the journos and obit writers who got duped by a fake quote in Wikipedia.
Stilgherrian Live will return at 9.30pm next Thursday night Sydney time.
The cat vomited this morning. Again. Artemis has this habit of gorging her food and then, five minutes later, throwing up wherever she’s standing.
Today it was a projectile effort from the heights of the TV stand, a reddish-brown spatter right across the living room floor.
Remember that last time you threw up? How the acrid stomach acids burnt your throat and mouth? How it felt like it was surging up into the back of your nose? It’s just like that. Freshly warm and mixed with the reek of cheap fish.
You can’t help but get it on your hands as you wipe it up.
I’ll bet just the thought of that smell is causing tightness in your sinuses, clenching in your throat.
Wiping up cat vomit first thing in the morning is rather unpleasant, no?
If wiping up cat vomit is the worst you have to think about today, then you’re one of the luckiest bastards on this planet. It’s not a particularly demanding sacrifice to make in return for some furry companionship.
Today is, of course, Anzac Day, our national memorial for those who’ve made the ultimate sacrifice for our country, and that other country.
It’s the second day of the RuddNet, and everyone’s still getting their heads around it. Here’s a few quick reads to orient you to this… yes… this, the largest infrastructure project in Australia’s history. If it happens.
There’s bound to be more. Much more. This is a huge story. I’ll try to provide the choice links.
Senator Stephen Conroy has been sacked as Minister for Broadband, Communications and the Digital Economy.
According to early reports, Prime Minister Kevin Rudd remained tight-lipped when questioned about the reasons for Conroy’s departure. “Senator Conroy did a commendable job over the past 14 months, but it’s time for a change of direction”, he said.
The move leaves the government’s unpopular ISP filtering plan up in the air. Continual delays with the NBN tender and the exclusion of Telstra from the plan have been cited by analysts as key reasons for why Conroy has been dumped. Earlier this year, the Senator was found by a Whirlpool survey to be a less effective communications minister than his Liberal predecessors.
Conroy has been in the post since Labor took government in 2007, and was previously the Shadow Minister for Trade, Corporate Governance and Financial Services.
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