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November 16, 2007
Over at PollieGraph Ben Eltham has a summary of the Government Gazette versus Newhouse in Wentworth nonsense.
You'd have to expect a modicum of skullduggery over such a pivotal seat, where the only really plausible future leader of the Liberal Party is skating on thin ice. Galaxy has Newhouse and Turnbull at 50/50 two party preferred. But the whole thing is getting ridiculous.
Newhouse is suspected of being ineligible to run, so naturally Turnbull is going to make the most of it. The ABC website seems to have removed the report that Ecuyer has decided to preference Newhouse. Caroline Overington has tried to get the independent Ecuyer, running on the pulp mill issue, to preference Malcolm, while being aggressively flirtatious with Newhouse.
Gripping drama, and you couldn't find a more appropriate setting than the seat of Wentworth.
As far as the blogosphere is concerned the newspaper formerly known as The Australian has lurched from one catastrophe to another. Shanahan is a standing joke and Overington is well on the way to becoming one, preferably after the AEC and Uncle Rupert have given her a good talking to.
But thinking about it, Murdoch is likely to be pleased with the way this is working out. If you wanted to turn a highly reputable news outlet into a bawdy tabloid, Rupert's your man. If your circulation was falling and you wanted an online readership, you couldn't do better than Shanahan.
At the release of every Newspoll the collective weight of the blogosphere arrives at Shanahan's page, then scuttles back to its various burrows to indulge in a little airing of contempt. Fair enough. It's a lot of fun and you come across some clever one liners.
Meanwhile we're forever going on about the sorry state of the media and it's common for bloggers to see themselves as somehow holding the fourth estate to account. Rupert must be laughing his head off.
The perfectly reasonable George Megalogenis keeps pumping out the sort of columns we say we want, but Dennis and Caroline get all the attention. And in comments George is forever fending off accusations that the paper is garbage from people who apparently read it to reassure themselves that it is, in fact, garbage.
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it is garbage. but like playboy, they are sensible enough to scatter a few 'good articles' amongst the good bodies.
if george chooses to write for this mob, he must suffer the same fate as the sallyann lass who hangs around the brothel to save souls, but ends up in a g-string and diamante choker: "the devil/money made me do it".