Tuesday, August 23, 2011

Alan Jones and that rally - updated again

Jacqueline Maley has written in this morning's SMH about her experience with Alan Jones at the poorly attended rally yesterday. (They have also put up video).

He took objection to the question of whether he was being "paid" to appear. The question was perhaps a little naive - largely because Jones himself is a brand. To not appear - to leave the rally bizz to his competitors at 2UE - really isn't an option.

Jones response to David Lipson has also been reported today. This was over the now infamous "two kilometres of trucks" comment. A bit like the now incredibly famous "of all the carbon dioxide Australians are producing .000018 of a per cent." Jones when he has his errors explained to him does not know how to react.

"Grown ups" know how to acknowledge they are wrong, to make a correction and move on. Serious people go as far as Lord Keynes and note that when the facts change they change their minds.

But not Alan Jones. His brand is built in part on his infallibility - that every pronouncement is right, that every person he decides to befriend is a saint ("We pick and stick" he says, as if this were a rugby team selection).

The real horror is that he is teaching Tony Abbott this "demagogue-ary." Abbott knows there is no way for a double dissolution to be called, and that there is no basis for the GG to dissolve the House of Reps alone. Yet he bays to the crowd in his best Jones impersonation that which the mob wish to hear.

As someone tweeted yesterday - they hope the NSW and/or ACT police pursue Jones for the claim about the trucks stopped at the border.

Update - Crikey's Power Index has noted the two stories above but has added responses by Hadley and Jones this morning.

Hadley seems to think 200 trucks is more important than a revolution in Libya. Jones repeats his assertions about underhand police acts - but changes the story. Meanwhile he seems to be unsure of exactly what he thinks people are complaining about. In yesterday's video footage he was talking of rural suicides - many of which were drought related. Today it was citrus farmers and propositions that the Government should buy Australian crops and give them as food aid in Africa. Economically irrational on every level - not least the cost of shipping waste to a drought. Ship water, ship concentrated nutrients - not oranges.

Updated again - listen to the audio. Two things worth commenting.

Jones can't distinguish between "the border" and the Parliamentary Circle. State Circle is not five kilometres long - and if there were trucks filling it both ways - where were they going to go when they got onto Parliamentary Circle? weird.

How can Jones know whether Maley was afraid or not - how can he criticise her for leaving in those circumstances?

Novae Meridianae Demetae Dexter delenda est

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