Category Archives: Modern Marketing

iPhone? iPhooey!

I understand fanaticism.

As a kid, it was a footy team – my beloved Subiaco. In those days, the WAFL was all-consuming in Perth. The match of the day would draw 25,000+. A grand final 50,000 – these were the days of the outer, where you’d have to stand all day, wedged vertical like pencils in a quiver case because it was too packed to sit down. Subi games didn’t often draw big crowds, though. The Mighty Maroons, as they were known then, customarily languished at, or near, the bottom of the ladder. But my father, brother and I, and perhaps a mate or two as we got older, would religiously attend week after week and barrack ourselves hoarse, and when a win came it was joyous – it would make your week.

It was the losses, though, that were the real measure of supporter character. Year after year, there’d be that game – the long trip out to Bassendean Oval where the Swan Districts supporters occupied their covered home stand on the wing, and ne’er a more one-eyed pack of footy terrorists has scorched God’s earth. Continue reading iPhone? iPhooey!

Pedo Pawn

This is a PS to yesterday’s post.

My comments yesterday notwithstanding, I found it galling to watch the Art Monthly Australia cover kid at the centre of the current “controversy”, Olympia Nelson, now 11 years old, mouthing off in earnest defence of the publishing of her 6 year old naked form as art and claiming she was “really, really offended by what Kevin Rudd had to say” about her picture. (For those who came in late, Rudd has been variously quoted as stating that he “can’t stand” and “hated” the picture…which means that the ALP marketing gurus have divined a positive electoral response to the PM’s moral posturing on the Henson naked pubescent pics and told him to keep up the good work). Continue reading Pedo Pawn

Peds Under The Bed! Yesterday Henson, Today…

Pedophilia is to now what “commos” were to the 50s. And as with the 50s, McCarthyist paranoia and obsession abounds. Only difference is, it ain’t reds being spied under the beds of the nation – it’s peds!

Any herd obsession is, naturally, fed off and promulgated by political leaders anxious to be seen to be banging the drum of the righteous and morally decent. With the Henson controversy barely into rigamortis after police charges of indecency were thrown out, we have a new pedo outrage to deal with: the latest Art Monthly Australia magazine features nude shots of a little girl snapped by her mother.

In one, at 4 years old, she is shown wearing her grandmother’s jewellery. In another, “perhaps the most provocative” according to a Sydney Morning Herald online report, she “lies back with her arms behind her head and her legs folded.” Interesting, the mindset of the reporter that is betrayed by this wording. Firstly, by whose judgment are any of the pictures “provocative”? Secondly, how can a 4 year old girl be provocative? That’s just not possible. Provocation requires wilful intent, which leaves only the photographer – the girl’s mother – as the guilty party. Her art critic husband, Robert Nelson, dispels that with his comment that the photos were instigated by his daughter and that “her mother saw nothing wrong with making them.”

The cover of the magazine shows the subject at 6 years old against a backdrop alluding to the work of Lewis Carroll. Here it is:

Art Monthly cover

Is there anything remotely provocative about that picture? 20 years ago, before all this pedo obsession nonsense started, it could have featured on one of those tins of biscuits some old lady from England used to send your family for Christmas. But NOW…well, the pollies are scrabbling for front baying position as they decry this affont to public standards of decency. Hark at this… Continue reading Peds Under The Bed! Yesterday Henson, Today…