Post: #1

Daily Mail Wrote:Former Labor leader Mark Latham has resigned as a regular columnist at the Australian Financial Review newspaper amid allegations he uses a parody Twitter account to troll women.

The Fairfax newspaper released a statement on Monday afternoon confirming his resignation 'amid controversy over his views on feminism and other social issues'.

Mr Latham had been a regular columnist at the AFR for eight years but informed editor Michael Stutchbury he was resigning on Sunday.

'Mark has been a provocative and highly readable columnist for the Financial Review,' Mr Stutchbury said in a statement.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-...women.html

Post: #2

On 4chan, Australians are notorious shitposters.

This is to be expected.

Post: #3

Once again, fiction has become reality.

http://www.rooshv.com/the-denouncer

The political commissars are hard at work. If they cannot defeat your argument, they must crush your livelihood, blacklist you, and attempt to bankrupt you.

Everyday, it feels like we are living in the novel of "The Trial" by Franz Kafka.

Post: #4

Small update on this:

https://au.news.yahoo.com/thewest/a/2932...-all-need/

For context, Paul Murray is an ageing baby boomer columnist for one of the bigger papers out here -- fellow prisoners (current or ex) of Australian will probably recognise The West Australian as one state's major daily.

Anyway, couple of illuminating comments from the column.

Quote:Importantly, he sought to break with the group-think orthodoxy that has long characterised and undermined the Canberra press gallery. (For US readers: the press gallery that covers the Australian Parliament.)

Along the way, he collided with many of modern society’s newly found sensitivities. And his demise signals another sad step in the deterioration of Australian journalism.

Latham could cut through the crap of politics because he’d been up to his ears in it for so long, understood it so well and showed his disdain where many Canberra journalists relish it as a form of sport.

But he was often offensive and we’ve unfortunately entered a dismal period when that carries severe penalties in public life. We will be the lesser for it.

It seems many Australians are no longer content to say: “Well, I disagree with that.” They now mobilise to silence those voices that don’t fit their world view.

Make no mistake, Paul Murray is a journalistic fat cat like the rest of them, but you wouldn't find this commentary out of place on our boards here.

Quote:A commentator for Rupert Murdoch’s low-rent website news.com.au was able to mark Latham’s passing by calling him a “festering, sweaty, pus-filled boil that was sitting on the a*** end of the Australian media landscape.”

The person given the space to write that bile, Em Rusciano, came to prominence by finishing ninth in the second season of Australian Idol.

While she’s got as much right to her point of view as Latham, hers hardly carries the same authority or insight as one that comes from his background.

Rusciano we've sniggered at before: /thread-49104....t=Rusciano

I had forgotten she was a popstar wannabe.

Quote:She upset Murdoch’s top Sydney-based columnist Miranda Devine, who made the obvious point that Rusciano’s slagging was acceptable for news.com.au’s audience, but Latham’s Twitter crudities were apparently beyond the pale.

Devine attacked the AFR for succumbing to feminist activists who she says drove Westpac, co-sponsors of the newspaper’s 100 Women of Influence awards, to declare it would not tolerate his “anti-women remarks”.

“Mark Latham has bagged me, bagged my friends and bagged my enemies,” Devine wrote. “He’s an equal opportunity bagger.

“But, boy, he can write. His columns are original and lively, thought provoking and unpredictable. He offends every sacred cow and politically correct shibboleth, from left-wing feminism to AFL’s boo-patrol.

“He dubs himself the Outsider and, amid the spittle, tackles important subjects from the viewpoint of a suburban Australian dad, whose voice is increasingly marginalised.”

Admittedly the West, by dint of the fact it keeps running Murray's columns, has never been much of a leftie paper (it's in summary a rag for miners and the bosses who funded them) but it's enlightening to see (slightly beige) version of Red Pill views out there, the idea that even fat middle-aged journalists are starting to figure out that as a society we have become entirely too precious.

Quote:AFR editor-in-chief Michael Stutchbury defended the publication of a column Latham wrote in June criticising domestic violence campaigner Rosie Batty for talking about her personal tragedy on the paid speaking circuit.

But the meat in the column was an attack on left-wing feminism for depicting domestic violence as the result of a patriarchal gender power imbalance rather than a function of social disadvantage. An AFR report on Latham’s departure noted that this year’s winner of its 100 Women of Influence award, Sex Discrimination Commissioner Elizabeth Broderick, said women had asked her whether they should avoid the awards because of the association with the newspaper.

She said Latham’s writing was damaging the AFR’s brand, sparking another of its columnists, the Institute of Public Affair’s John Roskam, to comment that public debate had gone “beyond creeping political correctness to outright authoritarianism”.

As always, if you really value free speech rather than just give lip service to it, you end up defending those whose words you may often dislike, but who sometimes give you cause to reflect on your own views.

I should also note some background for the US readers here: Mark Latham, the journalist in question, was not just some fuckhead with a journalism degree. At one point he was the Federal leader of the Labor Party out here, i.e. the leader of the party that most represents the left in Australia, i.e.e. pretty much the equivalent of Hilary Clinton albeit much further left. He lost to John Howard in one election because of bombast and because he couldn't get his public image electable, but he created a successful post-politics career by skewering and insulting pretty much all the political bullshit he had seen and pointing out obvious holes in the left's point of view.

Post: #5

I still remember who Latham is because he allegedly smashed up some paparazzi dude who was taking pictures of his kids in a restaurant. He may be a leftist, but he's still got some sense of right in him.

Post: #6

Mark Latham's "parody account" is called "Real Mark Latham". That's pretty funny.



"he/she" is considered a slur now, we are moving fast!

Post: #7

http://www.news.com.au/national/victoria...7494530066

Quote:In an obscenity-laden rant, Latham issued unbelievable slurs against a transgender military officer Cate McGregor even as he railed against the “terrible corrosion of free speech”.

Many of his comments can’t be repeated.

“At least you got the real me,” Latham quipped as members of the audience were left visibly reeling.

Quote:He also took aim at a string of journalists, dubbing one: “She’s not the sharpest tool in the shed”, accusing others of inaccuracies, and just refusing to respond to Green until he admitted he was “a deviant”.

He also took a general swipe at a range of controversial issues, claiming no-one gave “two hoots” about gay marriage, domestic violence, or recognising indigenous people in Constitution.

Quote:Instead, Latham took aim at him, and a string of other public figures including Australian of the Year Rosie Batty, saying he was “sick of the left feminist clique”.

http://www.heraldsun.com.au/news/victori...7494398450

Quote:Actor Max Gillies was in the audience and told Mr Latham that he didn’t come to “listen to an afternoon of abuse”.



Mr Latham replied: “Piss off, leave, go, go. It’s a democracy ... Get your lard ass off the seat and go.”

And now for some truth...
How Mark Latham reactions shows we're a nation of hypocrites

Quote:August 24, 2015 7:50am
OPINION: Rowan DeanThe Courier-Mail
IF YOU can’t be foul-mouthed at a writer’s festival, then where on earth can you be?

The uproar over Mark Latham’s diatribe at the Melbourne Writer’s Festival lays bare an uncomfortable truth about modern Australia — we have become a nation of whining, craven wimps frightened of our own shadows and terrified of our own thoughts.

Worse, we have become a nation of hypocrites, says Rowan Dean. We pretend that we value free speech, but we instantly take offence at anybody who disagrees with our pre-ordained, pre-packaged, homogenised “progressive” attitudes. And that’s not the end of it. Read Dean's full spray here

Unfortunately, the "full spray" is behind a paywall. It's not posted on his personal blog either, but I would love to read it. If anyone has access behind the curtain & can post the contents here, I'm sure it would be a satisfying read.

As Paracelsus said, Latham's never been able to curate his public image to get anywhere meaningful in politics but I'm glad there is someone out there calling out all this progressive lunacy being shoved down our throats daily. I'll be paying more attention to Rowan Dean in the future.

Post: #8

Latham, probably most famous for the handshake with Howard pre election.

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=hReBMauqhrY

He was never going to win but that probably cemented it with the Australian public

Post: #9

Quote:Actor Max Gillies was in the audience and told Mr Latham that he didn’t come to “listen to an afternoon of abuse”.

Max Gillies, the actor who made his entire career out of lambasting and making fun of political figures on the ABC!