crikey
Small Screen
1:46PM Jess McGuire | Dear Lord! Crikey have gone above and beyond with the following short film tribute to MasterChef judge Matt Preston. For some folk, this would be like porn – but not me. Still, a marvellous clip. More »
Matt Preston: The Movie
1:46PM Jess McGuire | Dear Lord! Crikey have gone above and beyond with the following short film tribute to MasterChef judge Matt Preston. For some folk, this would be like porn – but not me. Still, a marvellous clip. More » 
Small Screen
11:00AM Jess McGuire | Friday was not the greatest day of Richard Wilkins’ career as an “entertainment guru”. After breaking the news to the nation that both Farrah Fawcett and Michael Jackson had passed away, it seems Richard needed something more to talk about in order to pad out the extra three hours of airtime Channel Nine gave him with their extended Today coverage of the Grim Reaper’s rampage through the world of showbiz. More »
Jeff Goldblum And Stephen Colbert Unite To Mock Richard Wilkins
11:00AM Jess McGuire | Friday was not the greatest day of Richard Wilkins’ career as an “entertainment guru”. After breaking the news to the nation that both Farrah Fawcett and Michael Jackson had passed away, it seems Richard needed something more to talk about in order to pad out the extra three hours of airtime Channel Nine gave him with their extended Today coverage of the Grim Reaper’s rampage through the world of showbiz. More »
Small Screen
2:13PM Jess McGuire | Just a quick follow up from this morning’s little piece regarding The Chaser – on the off chance you’re not a Crikey subscriber, you would have missed yesterday’s brilliantly cutting assessment of the current furore in their daily newsletter. You need to read it. More »
Crikey’s Summary Of The Recent Chaser Outrage
2:13PM Jess McGuire | Just a quick follow up from this morning’s little piece regarding The Chaser – on the off chance you’re not a Crikey subscriber, you would have missed yesterday’s brilliantly cutting assessment of the current furore in their daily newsletter. You need to read it. More »
Flotsam & Jetsam
3:10PM Jess McGuire | Via today’s Crikey newsletter, which says:
There’s a moment in Proust when he relates the experience of discovering through a sudden, illuminating fragment of conversation, that the person with whom you’re talking, someone you’d assumed was perfectly civilized, intelligent and rational, is in fact quite and utterly, mad.
Peter Costello produced just such a moment of revelation in his address to the Catch the Fire prayer rally in Melbourne on Monday. Delivered by video, the man who for so long craved the Australian Prime Ministership, declares his firm belief that the Bible and the Ten Commandments form the foundation of Australian society and its property laws, and that any movement away from those “God-given commandments” will lead to a breakdown of social order. “As we look back over hundreds of years of Australian history, we can still see the benefits of God to us in this country,” says Costello, presumably surprising indigenous Australians, whose ancestors were here a damn sight longer.
Declaring one’s Christian faith is one thing. Arguing that only the maintenance of Christianity preserves order, directly implying that those of other faiths, or its complete atheistic absence, are a threat to that order, is an extraordinary statement from a major political figure in an allegedly secular state.
John Howard blocked Peter Costello from the Prime Ministership as long as he could, preferring even to take his party to defeat rather than let him run it. Based on this bizarre rant, it looks like Howard’s judgement was absolutely right.
Right on, Crikey! You go, girl!
Watch the video after the jump. More »
Peter Costello’s Special Australia Day Message
3:10PM Jess McGuire | Via today’s Crikey newsletter, which says:
There’s a moment in Proust when he relates the experience of discovering through a sudden, illuminating fragment of conversation, that the person with whom you’re talking, someone you’d assumed was perfectly civilized, intelligent and rational, is in fact quite and utterly, mad.
Peter Costello produced just such a moment of revelation in his address to the Catch the Fire prayer rally in Melbourne on Monday. Delivered by video, the man who for so long craved the Australian Prime Ministership, declares his firm belief that the Bible and the Ten Commandments form the foundation of Australian society and its property laws, and that any movement away from those “God-given commandments” will lead to a breakdown of social order. “As we look back over hundreds of years of Australian history, we can still see the benefits of God to us in this country,” says Costello, presumably surprising indigenous Australians, whose ancestors were here a damn sight longer.
Declaring one’s Christian faith is one thing. Arguing that only the maintenance of Christianity preserves order, directly implying that those of other faiths, or its complete atheistic absence, are a threat to that order, is an extraordinary statement from a major political figure in an allegedly secular state.
John Howard blocked Peter Costello from the Prime Ministership as long as he could, preferring even to take his party to defeat rather than let him run it. Based on this bizarre rant, it looks like Howard’s judgement was absolutely right.
Right on, Crikey! You go, girl!
Watch the video after the jump. More » 
When You’re About To Sack 550 Employees, Who Goes First?
1:36PM Clem Bastow | If you’re Fairfax Media, the answer would be simple: can the editor-in-chief of one of your biggest papers! That’s right, just a day after Fairfax announced 550 jobs would be slashed across the board (the news, as other papers quaked in their boots regarding the apparent downturn in publishing the cuts reflected, reached as far as the UK), The Age’s editor-in-chief Andrew Jaspan – who’d been in the role since July of 2004 – was shown the door. Here’s the official word, and more over the jump.
Don Churchill, Fairfax’s chief executive for Victoria, broke the news to staff at a meeting this morning.
More » Alexander Downer’s LiveJournal-esque Sook Doesn’t Impress Crikey One Bit
2:08PM Jess McGuire | Oh, my. I do love when Crikey starts their daily email to subscribers with the textual equivalent of a king hit, and today they didn’t disappoint, slamming former King of Mayo Alexander Downer in three punchy paragraphs.
What a bloody sook Alexander Downer is. His response today in The Sydney Morning Herald to Peter Hartcher’s savage farewelling of him last week contains a standard-issue lament about the anti-conservative bias of the Australian media.
More » 
A Great New Angle For Dubbo Tourism!
4:26PM Jess McGuire | Via today’s edition of the ever-informative Crikey, we have learned that the following front page was proudly published in Dubbo paper the Daily Liberal.
Crikey reader Keith Perkins says about the above -
You want unwarranted, unappreciated sensational journalism, then take a peek at Dubbo’s Daily Liberal front page on the 9th of this month. In 32mm bold print they informed their readers that “It all started here.” They then went on (page 3) to relate details of an incestuous relationship between a South Australian father and daughter, a story that had been running in, and on, every media outlet in Australia, for days. The couple’s only connection to Dubbo was a one-time visit to the Dubbo Zoo. I would advise any future visitors to Dubbo to ensure there are no skeletons in their family closets before embarking on such an adventure.
John and Jenny Deaves, your tale still manages to induce shudders.
Meanwhile, IT STARTED HERE! should be the tagline for all future television advertisements for Western Plains Zoo. More » “Well Done, Team – But Stay Out Of The Drinks Fridge…”
1:48PM Jess McGuire | We rather enjoyed this little tidbit from today’s Crikey newsletter.
On the day the Channel Nine newsroom in Melbourne claimed victory
(Friday 30 November, by twisting the figures) in the ratings battle,
after a long hard fought year against Seven, the message from the
carpet strollers downstairs was not one of congratulations. Instead an
email was sent by Michael Venus on their behalf to the newsroom staff
telling them the bar was off limits.
What sort of world are we living in when our nation’s best journalists are deprived a rewarding post-Seven pounding beverage? A cruel, heartless one. Two thumbs down, Channel Nine! More » Touching Tribute To Pavarotti In Today’s Crikey Mail Out!
1:48PM Jess McGuire | Seventeen thousand thumbs up, followed by a gentle self-harming session whilst listening to Dashboard Confessional, to Crikey.com.au for the stunningly and wonderfully emo tribute to recently deceased opera star Luciano Pavarotti that opens today’s newsletter.
Luciano Pavarotti is dead. Why does this resonate? Because the life of Pavarotti is an allegory for our time, our decadent decline made flesh.
Here was a man blessed by talent, art and beauty who was consumed by vanity and the dumb blandishments of vapid celebrity. A man gifted with an abundant natural resource – a larynx touched by God he thought – a creature of incalculable, classical, learned beauty that ended up stuffing itself with lard and singing duets with Bono.
This is our age on legs: cancer laden, caked in hair dye, fake tan and kohl, still sort of singing. Then dead. RIP.
“Then dead. RIP.”
BRILLIANT. More » In Retrospect, The Catch-Up Was Actually Quite Amazing
3:40PM Jess McGuire | The episodes of recently boned Channel Nine chat show The Catch-Up we managed to watch never quite did it for us, and so we immediately began mocking the program whenever it was raised in conversation. But as Joni Mitchell once sang, you don’t know what you got til it’s gone.
Crikey.com.au have helpfully put together a list of YouTube links to the shows greatest moments, and it is compelling and essential viewing.
* Lisa gags at footage of a man eating corgi.* Libbi and Zoe’s lesbian kiss (includes bonus footage of Libbi pashing Rupert Everett)* The ladies model Stella for Target* The ladies discuss reverse chivalry (warning: contains too much information about the Oldfields’ love life)* Lisa’s drug confessions* Lisa’s botox regret. (Reader says Lisa had a “little cat’s bum mouth”, Lisa gets botox, blames horse fall for swollen lips) * The ladies discuss adultery . Lisa reveals, if a loved one murdered or cheated, “that person would be dead to me”.* Oldfield tells how she froze David’s sperm post 9/11 following a series of death threats he received.
Brilliant! Jane Nethercote, we applaud you for compiling this Best Of. As one of our beloved friends put it, “After reading this, I am now wishing that The Catch Up wasn’t ending.”
Touche.
WE TAKE IT ALL BACK! UNBONE! UNBONE!
PS: We’re also a bit obsessed with Lisa Oldfield now, if you must know. More » 