With Chicken Salt, Too
August 30th 2006 11:37
Category: No Category
So, there we go. Don Chipp is dead. This is, of course, not an exclusively Australian blog, so a little explanation might be in order.
Don Chipp was the founder of the Australian Democrat Party. This does not mean the same thing as in America, where the Democratic Party represents liberal thinking and free speech and sodomy and terrorism and so on; in Australia, the Democrats mean...
Well, I'm not really sure what the Democrats mean. They tried to teach us something about Australian politics at school, and yet all I came out with was the fact that Milton Friedman was published in Playboy and some vague notions about a man called Bennelong, which I'm sure is incorrect; how could one man support the entire Opera House?
Anyway, the Democrats are a party formed in the 1970s by Don Chipp, who quit Malcolm Fraser's Liberal Party, most likely out of boredom, and boldly stepped forth with a shining "third way", the way of "keeping the bastards honest". Very big on this, Don. Honest bastards were a real obsession of his. His dream was that one day every bastard in Australia would be an honest bastard, since in the 70s, bastards were routinely dishonest. "I'm not a bastard!" they would blithely cry, in blatant contradiction of the evidence.
As it happens, Don Chipp died without actually ever having kept the bastards honest. Tony Abbott, for example, claims to believe in half-man, half-animal monsters, while Kevin Rudd still denies being a robot. What's more, without Chipp, the Democrat party has degenerated to the point where its MPs regularly send death threats to each other, and candidates are routinely defeated in elections by children's cartoon characters and popular bistro meals.
So there's a lot of sadness about Don's passing. But there is a bigger issue here, and I'd like to take the opportunity to speak up about it, to expose the travesty perpetuated by the malodorous rabble known as "the media". That issue is this:
Puns in headlines.
That's right. Those of who are sensitive to these matters winced when they heard he news about Don Chipp, because we knew exactly what was about to happen: a blizzard of headlines reading, "A Chipp Off The Old Block", "A Chipp On His Shoulder", "Don Kept Chipping Away", and most painfully of all, "Goodbye Mr Chipp".
Why do they do it? What hideous childhood trauma, what kind of juvenile head injury, causes an outwardly normal journalist to break with all standards of decency and unleash such horror upon a relatively innocent poopulace?
When Floyd Landis was stripped of his Tour de France title, the unhappy public shut its collective eyes and awaited the inevitable. And we got it. "Tour de Farce" screamed [I]every single paper I read/I]. You prepare yourself for the worst, but you're never really ready. It still hurts.
And yet, did the sub-editors responsible for these outrages get punished? Were they flogged? Were they dipped in barbecue sauce and confined in a paddock of hungry pigs? Were they spun around hanging from the ceiling by hooks thrust through their nipples, a la Richard Harris in A Man Called Horse? Were they hell.
It's a good thing there really isn't a man called Horse. Some journalist would start a malicious rumour about him just so he could deny it and the newspaper could run a story titled "Horse says Neigh".
Sport's the worst area for pun-haters of course. Particularly cricket with "England, you've been Warned", and "This means Waugh", and "Pitch Taylor-made". If the backpages weren't so fixated on puns, they could put forth more earthy, worthwhile headlines, headlines that addressed the important issues, like "New Study Reveals: South African Cricketers Tossers" or "Inzamam, just piss off".
Likewise, rugby league has its fair share of "Storm Warning" stories relating to the Melbourne team, and papers covering the Australian Football League are legally required to write an article about the Collingwood Magpies headed "Hot Pies" or, if they are in poor form, "Cold Pies", at least once a month. One editor who missed his quota in 1999 was actually eaten by trained horses.
But the non-sporting world has its fair share of these crimes against the human spirit too. In politics, "Can't see the trees for the Bush", for example. Or in the cinematic world, "Cruise Control". Or in the works of Kathy Lette, every second bloody sentence. Foetal Attraction indeed. Go to hell. And on a related topic, why is it that every time any actor on earth is expecting a baby, there have to be eighteen different stories written beginning with the words "Superstar X is preparing for her greatest role of all - motherhood"? WHY?
And that's why the death of Don Chipp is even more tragic than most deaths of eighty three year old men whom most people thought were dead already. When will people learn? When will we outgrow this horrific congenital disorder afflicting so many of us? Do we have to wait until the problem reaches critical mass? Do we have to wait until subbies start conceiving ways to play on Ahmedinejad?
No. End the madness. Let's start a zero tolerance approach to media puns. Write letters, start petitions, run screaming into the streets firing large guns wildly in random directions, whatever it takes.
Let this Chipp be the last in the wrapper.
See you next time.
-BenP
objieb@people.net.au">Email me!
Don Chipp was the founder of the Australian Democrat Party. This does not mean the same thing as in America, where the Democratic Party represents liberal thinking and free speech and sodomy and terrorism and so on; in Australia, the Democrats mean...
Well, I'm not really sure what the Democrats mean. They tried to teach us something about Australian politics at school, and yet all I came out with was the fact that Milton Friedman was published in Playboy and some vague notions about a man called Bennelong, which I'm sure is incorrect; how could one man support the entire Opera House?
Anyway, the Democrats are a party formed in the 1970s by Don Chipp, who quit Malcolm Fraser's Liberal Party, most likely out of boredom, and boldly stepped forth with a shining "third way", the way of "keeping the bastards honest". Very big on this, Don. Honest bastards were a real obsession of his. His dream was that one day every bastard in Australia would be an honest bastard, since in the 70s, bastards were routinely dishonest. "I'm not a bastard!" they would blithely cry, in blatant contradiction of the evidence.
As it happens, Don Chipp died without actually ever having kept the bastards honest. Tony Abbott, for example, claims to believe in half-man, half-animal monsters, while Kevin Rudd still denies being a robot. What's more, without Chipp, the Democrat party has degenerated to the point where its MPs regularly send death threats to each other, and candidates are routinely defeated in elections by children's cartoon characters and popular bistro meals.
So there's a lot of sadness about Don's passing. But there is a bigger issue here, and I'd like to take the opportunity to speak up about it, to expose the travesty perpetuated by the malodorous rabble known as "the media". That issue is this:
Puns in headlines.
That's right. Those of who are sensitive to these matters winced when they heard he news about Don Chipp, because we knew exactly what was about to happen: a blizzard of headlines reading, "A Chipp Off The Old Block", "A Chipp On His Shoulder", "Don Kept Chipping Away", and most painfully of all, "Goodbye Mr Chipp".
Why do they do it? What hideous childhood trauma, what kind of juvenile head injury, causes an outwardly normal journalist to break with all standards of decency and unleash such horror upon a relatively innocent poopulace?
When Floyd Landis was stripped of his Tour de France title, the unhappy public shut its collective eyes and awaited the inevitable. And we got it. "Tour de Farce" screamed [I]every single paper I read/I]. You prepare yourself for the worst, but you're never really ready. It still hurts.
And yet, did the sub-editors responsible for these outrages get punished? Were they flogged? Were they dipped in barbecue sauce and confined in a paddock of hungry pigs? Were they spun around hanging from the ceiling by hooks thrust through their nipples, a la Richard Harris in A Man Called Horse? Were they hell.
It's a good thing there really isn't a man called Horse. Some journalist would start a malicious rumour about him just so he could deny it and the newspaper could run a story titled "Horse says Neigh".
Sport's the worst area for pun-haters of course. Particularly cricket with "England, you've been Warned", and "This means Waugh", and "Pitch Taylor-made". If the backpages weren't so fixated on puns, they could put forth more earthy, worthwhile headlines, headlines that addressed the important issues, like "New Study Reveals: South African Cricketers Tossers" or "Inzamam, just piss off".
Likewise, rugby league has its fair share of "Storm Warning" stories relating to the Melbourne team, and papers covering the Australian Football League are legally required to write an article about the Collingwood Magpies headed "Hot Pies" or, if they are in poor form, "Cold Pies", at least once a month. One editor who missed his quota in 1999 was actually eaten by trained horses.
But the non-sporting world has its fair share of these crimes against the human spirit too. In politics, "Can't see the trees for the Bush", for example. Or in the cinematic world, "Cruise Control". Or in the works of Kathy Lette, every second bloody sentence. Foetal Attraction indeed. Go to hell. And on a related topic, why is it that every time any actor on earth is expecting a baby, there have to be eighteen different stories written beginning with the words "Superstar X is preparing for her greatest role of all - motherhood"? WHY?
And that's why the death of Don Chipp is even more tragic than most deaths of eighty three year old men whom most people thought were dead already. When will people learn? When will we outgrow this horrific congenital disorder afflicting so many of us? Do we have to wait until the problem reaches critical mass? Do we have to wait until subbies start conceiving ways to play on Ahmedinejad?
No. End the madness. Let's start a zero tolerance approach to media puns. Write letters, start petitions, run screaming into the streets firing large guns wildly in random directions, whatever it takes.
Let this Chipp be the last in the wrapper.
See you next time.
-BenP
objieb@people.net.au">Email me!
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