Better than realism

Once again, Federal politics falls short of the racy standards of Annabel Crabb.

"Members and senators commented on the issue of housing affordability," for instance, once translated from the Southcottese generally means "a full-scale riot ensued during which the Assistant Treasurer was unfortunately stabbed".

Rather than apply journalistic skill to create an interesting and important story from fact, she has to make shit up to fend off the dreaded boredom. Emma Tom did this ten times better ten years ago, and even she's getting tired. Why work a niche that isn't open?

One wonders why the Libs spend all that money on the pollster firm Crosby/Textor to tell them they're boring and out of touch when their own backbenchers can establish for free that there's no problem whatsoever.

The question here is, why bother with representative democracy when you can just outsource it to Crosby/Textor? I will never forget Mark Textor barking down the phone at a NSW State Liberal candidate in 1999 that he knew that electorate better than the candidate, a long-standing local councillor whose face and name was plastered across the community in which he (not Textor) had been born and raised. But that's sooooo much work and what time does the Holy Grail open?

You know you're in strange territory when actors are underpaying people.

You know you're a disappointed reader of the MSM when you're shortchanged by a journalist who's, like, wayyyyy to cool to hang off the every word of duffers like Andrew Southcott, but who does it anyway out of some misplaced notion that she's making a difference with the kind of byline-lint in this piece.