Inpress-ive
The flame of the Marieke Hardy kinda-sorta-a-bit conflict of interest story from last week was down to a few dying embers, although Ben Butler at Inpress (and repeated here on The Music) has decided to stoke those embers with a big stick like a bright-eyed kid on school camp:
Generally a fair comment, although I don't know how I qualify as a right-winger. Though I started off as a lefty a few years back, since leaving the near-extinct Democrats in 2003 I've been sitting firmly on the left-right fence, with the pickets occasionally doing damage to my sensitive regions. On economic and foreign policy, I'm on the right with the free marketeers and the less nutty neo-cons. On social policy, I'm lining up with the vegetarian gay whales in defending their right to euthenise their IVF babies in privacy.
LAST CONFLICT OF INTEREST STANDINGTouche.
It may not be rating very well, but Seven's new Australian drama Last Man Standing is causing aggro anyway. Last week, right-wing blogger Ari Sharp pointed out that an Age profile of the show's writer, Marieke Hardy, failed to disclose that she appears in subscriber ads for the paper. "Surely something like this - that Hardy has a commercial relationship with the newspaper - was worthy of a mention at the end of the profile," Sharp wrote. But The Age isn't on its lonesome when it comes to being conflicted over Last Man Standing. Also last week, the Herald Sun's Sally Morrell wrote an opinion piece attacking the show's "gratuitous" nudity (or something - Morrell's argument lacks clarity). Morrell didn't tell readers she's married to fellow Hun pundit Andrew Bolt, who had a ding-dong battle with Hardy in November last year over Hardy's attack on a Young Liberal (Bolt ended up using his column to say Hardy is "unwittingly helping to push us into the abyss of despair".) Morrell didn't reply to an emailed request for comment by deadline. (Apparently, it's impossible to write about LMS without some sort of conflict of interest. Here's this column's: the writer provided some unpaid advice to an act whose music the show's producers want to use in an upcoming episode.)
Generally a fair comment, although I don't know how I qualify as a right-winger. Though I started off as a lefty a few years back, since leaving the near-extinct Democrats in 2003 I've been sitting firmly on the left-right fence, with the pickets occasionally doing damage to my sensitive regions. On economic and foreign policy, I'm on the right with the free marketeers and the less nutty neo-cons. On social policy, I'm lining up with the vegetarian gay whales in defending their right to euthenise their IVF babies in privacy.
Comments
As for whether or not you're left or right, Ari - I think I'm in a similar position. I've done a lot of politcal quizes and consistently end up much more "centre-right" on economic issues - and mostly "left" on social issues. What pisses me off is the attitude that a few on the left have that says you have to be a communist, PETA supporting tree-hugger before you can care about social justice issues.
Economic Left/Right: -4.38
Social Libertarian/Authoritarian: -3.95
Those questions are too simplistic. Everything in life is much greyer than it is put there, and anyone that strongly agreed or disagreed with all of them is trying to create a particular result. But then I've always been difficult to pin down to one particular box. Ari's Right-Wing? Hell, that must make me a fascist.
Meanwhile on Last Man Standing I've no idea but on the face of it its jsut another Secret Life of Us. I'll give a more informed verdict after it shows at the ungodly hour of 11:30 tonight (must be a repeat) up here in the Capital.
Also, I find Polly's comment funny, because what pisses me off is the perception that to be "green" you have to be "red".
In a post-Democrat world, people ask if I will join the Greens, to which I say I'm not leftie enough. Then they ask if I will join the Labor Party, but I cannot stand voting on party lines, its a violition of representative democracy I cannot stand and has eroded the public's need to know something about their candidate beyond who's membership card they've got in their wallet.
If the person is tehn stupid enough to ask if I'll joins the Libs, the Nats, Family First or One Nation, they tend to then find me flinging my drink in their face and preparing to glass them with what's left.
Desperate Housewives - never started watching, don't intend to. Give me the Six Feet Under and Aaron Sorkin-era West Wing seasons any day.
Failing that, watch the OC for my trash intake.
There is some sort of problem if right wing = conservative; some of the 'rightest' people I know are libertarians.
Damn that test, it lies, it lies!
Personally, I think libertarians highlight the inadequacies of left and right as political categories.
Are they left or are they right?