I have banned Eleanor of Aquitane for what can only be described as daft egocentric babblings that touch on no public policy and speak only of her true identity, ‘the real Eleanor’, a sure sign of madness, and Bob Ellis’s Salad Dressing for alleging repeatedly that I drink to excess and so implying that this in some way nullifies or undercuts my opinions. If I drank, as Gore Vidal did for two decades, two bottles of Johnny Walker a day, I should nonetheless be judged like him by my arguments not my cocktail cabinet nor what gender I spend my nights with.
As it happens, I do drink a good deal once a month, at the Primates, for all of a Tuesday afternoon, but hardly at all on the other twenty-nine or thirty days, going for whole weeks without alcohol very frequently and favouring green tea. I was falling-down drunk last in 1978 at the New Hellas with Phillipe Mora and not since. If anyone can remember me legless in later decades will they please say so and give details.
Bereft of sensible policy, the Right can only say, and say loudly, that their adversaries are of unsound mind; that they drink, take drugs, attempt ‘sex by surprise’, have become ‘arrogant’, ‘hubristic’, have ‘outbursts’, ‘dummy-spits’, ‘tantrums’, ‘lash out’ and so on, lest their readers look at their good policies and find sense in them.
I have repeatedly asked my respondents to name eight bad policies Labor should be thrown out for and they can’t. This can only mean their reasons for being anti-Labor are corrupt, suspect or unhinged. There can be no other explanation for it. They should have a cause in policy for hating Labor and they do not. Whatever the real reason — family tradition, avarice, envy, their response to a leader’s personality — it is illogical and shallow and will get short shrift in these columns.
The bannings are forever unless otherwise stipulated. And they will be enforced.
Name:
I do recall one evening in Melbourne whereupon you and I got fairly plastered with Bourbon.
That’s a pity Bob; I was thinking of meeting you at last, and sharing a bottle of Glenlivet . . .
Four million years.
Bob I hope this does not in anyway impact on our bet… 1000 clams and a schooner of Mateus to the winner… you say Abbott will be gone by August I say he will be the next PM.
Can I make a suggestion Bob, maybe the site should be called Table Talk, full stop, and remove the film and theatre subtitle?
This site has the feel of an outback boxing tent, for ‘fighters and brawlers”.
Allthumbs I echo that… Fred Brophy would be proud.
Bob, Bob, Bob,
So many lies, so many lies!
Let me see if I can knock these ducks off:
After repeated questions, 8 to be exact, you never told why it was you were banning me.
Never.
You were last seen cowering behind your ridiculous Ban button.
If you choose to ban under the charge “daft egocentric babblings” then, my foolish old host, I should take a number behind many others here, not the least of which is yourself!
As a man of the Left, who absurdly enough has spent the better part of a year providing the Right with ammunition and arguments, it does strike me as a sure sign of your faltering capacity to rail against anyone using the preface “real”, and that it is, “a sure sign of madness”.
Don’t get me wrong Bob, my time of posting is over and I’m quite happy to read and laugh, it’s just that I don’t want you to tell lies about me.
Just don’t tell lies.
Is that too much to ask?
An excellent suggestion Allthumbs. or perhaps, “Table Talk?”
Table Talk – Squatter Class War Campaign Headquarters, with your host the famous celebrity Bob Ellis.
He bought it for $47,000 back in nineteen dickety two and still owes $200,000 on it but even then I think you’re missing the point. Gina’s billions would be better spent on Australia than on Gina. Mining is not magic and there are many people around who are much more skilled at exploration and site management than she is. All it takes is a geology degree and a bit of application.
I thought it was more about Australia as a whole but if personal character rundowns are more your go, perhaps you might care to cast an eye briefly over Gina’s moral mores.
It’s uncharacteristically kind of you to defend Bob, but aren’t you overstepping the line by talking about some one’s finances on a public blog.
Ellis might not mind, but I certainly did when you startered listing my possessions on UL..
What on god’s earth are you talking about? This is just downright weird stuff, Helvi. Obviously, I only know about Bob’s finances from Bob saying it on this blog. When did I ever list your possessions on Unleashed? I HAVE NO IDEA WHAT YOUR POSSESSIONS ARE. And even if I did, why would I be listing them? I would need a reason to do so. It would have to be in service of making some kind of point. But I never did any such thing, or anything remotely like it and I have a singularly uncanny memory.
Do not presume to understand my relationship with Bob. It’s been a journey, it’s been deep and at times, it’s been a little bit sexual. You can butt your prurient little nose out.
R!, you know what I’m talking about…
As for you having a relationship with anyone. Good luck, if you get lucky it might make you a happier and if possible a nicer person..
You are a malevolent fraud.
What argument?
Leave it as it is, I just enjoyed reading an excellent post by Frank Willmott about British TV series, Shadow Line
Hopefully we’ll get more posts like that in the future, and less swearing and name-calling…
Helvi, I am not advocating getting rid of the film and theatre pieces, just that the blog title does not reflect wholly what goes on here.
You pay entry for one avatar, but there is a family ticket, if you require more seats for one or more sub-personalities, some here will require a corporate box.
allthumbs, maybe just adding ‘politics’ before film and theatre, might do the trick.
And hopefully others than political bullfighters will drop in on Table Talk.
I enjoyed the exchange of favourite books between You and E of A, most enjoyable,hopefully She/he will be allowed a come-back…
Thank you Helvi.
This was culled on the article – so I’ll try it here.
My love of Shakespeare does not blind me to other joys, and so in response to the question put forward by our host on the “Tom O’ Bedlam” essay, I say this:
There are poems/verse by Donne and Milton, by Marvell and Shelley, Coleridge, Keats, Wordsworth that would effortlessly challenge the said merits of the one posted.
But the ending certainly put a sparkle in my eye!
“With a host of furious fancies
Whereof I am commander,
With a burning spear and a horse of air,
To the wilderness I wander.
By a knight of ghostes and shadowes
I summon’d am to tourney
Ten leagues beyond the wild world’s end.
Methinks it is no journey.”
No journey at all Helvi, none at all.
What do you think?
A return?
I’ll try Wednesday
Am I still good, Bob?
Bob, I’m glad to hear you drink green tea. It is healthy and very refreshing.
In no particular order (I have included a few extra for you to mull over)…
1. Carbon (Dioxide) Tax (will achieve no positive environmental impact (its aim last time I checked)).
2. Malaysia Solution (cruel, inhumane, stupid).
3. BER (abject waste of money).
4. MRRT (state royalties are a more effective method).
5. Performance pay based on classrooms national testing results (principle is sound but not based on this – will lead to formulaic teaching not addressing broader educational issues).
6. NBN (technology will be surpassed and the cost is disproportionate).
7. Green Fund (why prop up failed and inefficient, unproductive businesses with taxpayer’s money?).
8. Live export debacle (nothing needs to be said, save perhaps an apology to the farmers).
9. Set top boxe handouts (absolute go to Harvey Norman to figure out why)
10. Asylum seeker policy in general.
11. Grocery Watch (achieved nothing).
12. Fuel Watch (ditto).
13. Pink Batts (highlighted ineptitude and lead to trafic consequences)
Bob the list (as requested by your kind self) has been up for over an hour. In the mean time you have replied elsewhere on this fine blog. I shall take your lack of response as a concession of defeat, or at the very least an ackowledgement that some (and likely all) the policies I have listed are in fact reason enough for Labor to lose power, and be cast forth into the wilderness. Prove that I lie.
Bob refuses to engage on the list… I am curious as to whether it is laziness, rudeness or cowardice. He asked for a list. One has been produced. Where art thou Herr Ellis?
Verily, maybe deep down Bob does not want ban anyone,after all a blog needs contributors of all kinds for it to function well and flourish…
want to ban
I agree Helvi, but to ask a question, receive an answer and then not respond is rude (or belies an inability to challenge the answer provided). On these very pages Bob demands responses from his legions of fans if one is not forthcoming.
Ah, yes – “This hurts me more than it hurts you”.
Like the person who first used that line, Bob does enjoy banning people.
I think that’s a pity. I don’t know of another blog which bans so many.
Bob, would you like to call the roll and see how many dissenter are left?
If we were to call the roll of the reasons given for “dissent”, or even clarification as to the nature of the dissent, it would make for a gruesomely flacid and threadbare tome.
And if I understood what you are saying, R1, I might argue with you. But as I don’t, I won’t.
It doesn’t count as dissent unless there is a valid argument attached. If you were to break down the writings of the various banned dissenters and try to eke out of them an identifiable line of reasoning, you’d be left with the tiniest jot of piffle that evaporates on contact. Something like, “I am obsessed with myself, fear a world without the certainty provided by Murdoch and inexplicably adulate Campbell Newman”.
You need to decide what it is you want to talk about because this isn’t anything. What do you have to say off your own bat leaving all personality aside? One suggestion might be real world issues, considering the subject matter of the blog you are currently, bewilderingly, choosing to read. Just a thought.
No, it’s nothing.
There’s nothing to evade.
Thanks for the explanation R1. It doesn’t sound like anyone I know.
If your thesis represents Bob’s view of things, I suppose he believes that speech is only free if I think you make sense.
Is that what you believe R1?
There is no independent, objective concept of “free speech” floating across the universe. What you require is that this blog, a private blog, remain willfully defenseless in the face of sabotage or derailment in a bombardment of meaningless repetition of the unrelated or unspecified. Possibly half these people are Gerard Henderson, (Bananamoron definitely is), and another two thirds are no doubt David Williamson. You’re asking people to make a sitting duck of themselves in the face of wilful enemy pursuit.
First Rule of Fightclub – You’re not allowed to wage your own little bizarre personal vendettas with strangers via copious entries spread out over months and months and you’re not allowed to say “I love The Liberal Party”, giggle and then run away, only to emerge a couple of entries later to play out the whole scene again. It’s not that hard. Conditions in the Gulag were a tad more stringent than this.
Second rule of Fightclub – there are no rules.
You really believe that Henderson and Williamson comment here?
R2, there was post by Cristy(?) Williamson here once, but I don’t think Mr Williamson has written anything here,some posters write reasonable English but would we not spot a well-known playwright…
Another seamless redirection by those of dubious motive. David Williamson and Gerard are symbolic of a greater truth. There was an overt air of inhouse joke in that particular reference, with the subtext alluding to the very real empirists and contrarians that get more vocal in direction correlation to how political Bob is being and come and go accordingly. How you all admire his “writing”. How you all wish he would stick to film and theatre reviews (non-political ones). Some don’t even maintain the “I’m only here for the writing” facade. How did Glinda even find this place? What pleasure does Bananaman derive from the articles? Who is the real Frank?
There you go again, R1. Please slow down and choose your words more carefully. I am sure you have an interesting idea in there but if you gabble like that we won’t understand it.
Look how simply and clearly Bob writes. No risk of misunderstanding there.
Use him as a model.
Another trick, a crude one two manoevre this time. You get taught these things at Murdoch bootcamp, I know. Patronise and dismiss, patronise and dismiss. Wax on, wax off. Remind me again of the very important point you were making about the nature of free speech and how Bob banning Bananamoron somehow endangers this pristinely transcendent concept.
Patronise, put down, dismiss…
Sounds like R1…
You once told us that you have seven tricks, yes tricks, to live by…no need to list them here, they are obvious…
List my tricks, Helvi. I don’t know what they are, I just pulled the number out of the air when making a sideline reference to the inherent evil or otherwise of tricks-as-such.
Frank is Macabre’s piece of rough I fear.
A character mention in one of Reader1′s postmodern raves. I feel so….important.
Just another wrong turn on the yellow brick road is the answer, of course. (It’s not on Wikipedia, though, true.)