The epic literature of the modern invertebrate

Lessons learned from society #226; apparently all you have to do to earn Warhol's 15 minutes these days is get consistently drunk and act like a dick until you've collected enough stories to fill a book.

After that, fame is pretty much instantaneous because it turns out that the current ‘literary’ trend is for exactly that kind of writing! Now, I’m going to go out on a limb here and guess that if I’d handed up misogynist trash in English at school, about how hilarious it was last time I got drunk, and the funny ways in which I treated women like a convenience for my consumption, I probably wouldn’t have passed! I also don’t recall studying any novels with that sort of plot!

Drunken misogyny is something to be condemned rather than something to be published. How does the man himself feel about this criticism?

It's water off Max's back. Ask him the worst thing that's been said about him and he's in no doubt. "That I'm a misogynist. I hate, hate, hate that. It's, like, there's this extreme version of feminism."

There’s this extreme version of feminism where people think that threatening to kill because a girl won’t kiss you is not regarded as acceptable behaviour. “Feminism” here, if you get away from Max’s use of it as a scare word, means really any women who don’t like the idea of a drunk abusive man wanting to sleep with them. It’s rather disturbing that there is a bestseller’s market for stories like that.

(via iblamethepatriarchy)

What the fucking fuck?

Townsville Bulletin: Medicare abortion code 'identifies women'

Tony Abbott is pleased as punch: the scarlet 'A' is back in the form of a Medicare number.

All women considering an abortion will be easily identified under a new system that requires doctors to charge pregnancy counselling to a unique Medicare number.

The Australian Medical Association has warned the system means that doctors' receptionists and Medicare staff will know instantly a woman is contemplating an abortion.

This would be a significant breach of the woman's privacy, the AMA said.

"This item number would put on the record the fact that a woman has had an unplanned pregnancy or is uncertain about whether to continue with her pregnancy, regardless of her ultimate choice," AMA president Dr Mukesh Haikerwal said.

"The information would be available to anyone who saw the Medicare account in the medical practice, in Medicare offices or family members," he said.

"This affects patients' privacy - particularly in small towns or close-knit communities and potentially may lead to discrimination against the patient," Dr Haikerwal said.

Not surprisingly, Abbott is sneakily trying to couch this in terms of his version of 'choice'.

"If these initiatives help women to make genuine personal choices rather than socially conditioned ones; if they help women in an almost impossibly difficult situation feel less alone, they will ultimately be one of the Howard Government's more significant achievements,"

Because genuine personal choices can't be made without the pressure of town gossip and discrimination. I honestly don't know how he managed to say the above without laughing his anti-choice, anti-woman arse off. I know I'm laughing at the fucking irony.

From PunkassBlog.

Interest-ing

Hey, he does know that word!

Except, he only uses it when he doesn’t think it’s anything to do with him. Howard, after running an election campaign based nearly entirely on the fear of high interest rates under Labor, is now washing his hands of the present interest rate increase. Wait, but I thought that it was under Labor that we’d see interest rates go up. Oh, he only meant that under Labor they’d go up more. Silly me.

If you look over Howard’s government you can quickly see a pattern. Every positive change in the past decade is the direct result of Liberal government, but if anything bad happens, it was somebody else’s fault. I thought Keating’s infamous ‘banana republic’ comment was ancient history, but it appears the humble banana is now in no small way responsible for controlling the reserve bank! Personal debt is increasing, and I think it should be abundantly clear that this is happening because individuals are taking out bank loans to afford modern bananas.

While Howard is busy blaming the situation rather than his party’s decisions, he is happy to blame politicians when they aren’t on his side. Indeed, it is very difficult to mention interest rates around Howard without causing him to parrot that they were at 17% under the Labor government that preceded his. This is completely true, but Mr Howard, didn’t you just spend the past week explaining how your government has absolutely no control over the current rise? Let me put it another way: Am I the only one who finds it slightly strange that high Liberal interest rates are not Howard’s fault but high Labor interest rates are Labor’s fault?

It might be just me, but I could swear there was some sort of large event that affected the whole world during the last Labor government’s time in office, the sort of large event that might drive interest rates up. I would also like to know why, a decade after the coalition gained power, Howard is still trying to associate financial problems with Labor. Johnnie boy, eventually you have to grow up and admit that it's you making the problems now. Not that I am suggesting that Labor is any sort of credible alternative at present, an idea I will only entertain when Labor stops trying to mimic the coalition’s hybrid of conservatism and populism.

Howard is eager to take credit for global upswings and very quick to distance himself from negative changes. In fact this is really a pattern through his entire leadership. In the magical wonderland Howard inhabits, the Liberal party is prancing along to victory, and up to the present, the public has been happy to prance along. Maybe reality will intervene in time for the next election. The reserve bank has indicated that another rate rise is possible, but that will probably be because of strawberries.

Howard "sorry" about rate rise

The original SMH article here.

So John Howard, leader extraordinaire, has seemingly turned his back on his base. Interest rates are now at the highest level since 2001. Petrol prices are soaring, without any respite to come. Housing costs are through the roof, mortgage rates have just risen and Howard manages a paltry, "Sorry."

The cost of living is rising. Add to that the effects of WorkChoices, and the ways that employees are now being shafted in the name of big business.

"Sorry", from the man who claimed that interest rates would not rise under a Liberal government. The man that led a scare campaign against Labor during the last election; one that proved to be quite successful in garnering support from homeowners who were afraid of any rise in their debts.

For all his posturing, for all the claims about this Liberal government's oh-so-splendiferous track record on economic management, it seems that Howard cannot even manage rising inflation.