Education Minister Alan Tudge (Image: AAP/Private Media)

Danstanflimflam “The Age cartoonist Michael Leunig axed after anti-Dan Andrews cartoon” reads the headline of the lead item on today’s Media Diary, before giving over several paragraphs to the cartoonist’s complaints, presumably to get complaints about “wokeism” and “out-of-touch inner-city elites” up to The Australian‘s daily minimum. Anyway, have another look at the offending cartoon, depicting a syringe mounted on a tank aimed a single twee figure. Like all good parodies, it requires a photo of the thing it’s parodying in the top corner:

Would you say it’s likely that the reason the image offended The Age‘s management was that it was insufficiently grovelling toward Dictator Dan?

Not Tudging While Education Minister Alan Tudge renews his attack on free thought at school in the name of liberal democracy, damning those who would obsess over our violent colonial past, he might want to have a word with the PM over his shortlist for the prime minister’s literary awards.

In the history section, Morrison — or his representatives — have chosen five out of five books dealing with First Nations people, including questions of ownership of taken artefacts, and the frontier wars in western Victoria. Bravo, say we, but if the PM himself can’t find any volumes of straight Anglo history to honour, what hope the curriculum? 

Ads that to the pile The United Australia Party’s ads have been showing up on the front pages of Australia’s major newspapers with dispiriting regularity. The latest iteration shows some of the limitations of grievance politics — what happens if that grievance passes? With most of the country moving swiftly to a post-lockdown reality, the UAP’s main ad fodder — the evil of lockdowns — is suddenly gone, and that happened because the party’s other bugbear, vaccines, have been so ravenously taken up.

So what are they do? Promise that we shall forever be twirling, twirling towards FREEDOM FREEDOM.

Meanwhile, we’ve got a lot of respect for The Australian‘s commitment to both sides of any debate, countering the regular contributions from UAP vax hesitancy brigade with Australian Government ads reiterating that all “COVID-19 vaccines have be approved and vigorously tested”.

Weather or not? As we noted a while back, the decision of Fox News to launch a 24-hour weather channel is an interesting one, given some of the … interpretation of scientific data that News Corp in general has indulged in over the years.

Sharri Berg, the Fox executive handling the division, insisted to Variety “… climate change is part of our lives. It’s how we live. It’s not going to be ignored.” But that the question “Does your channel about weather accept the science of weather?” was necessary at all speaks volumes.

G(houls)OP Still in the US, if you want some indication of how far the Republican party has fallen (if the Trump years weren’t enough), you couldn’t get a better indication than the following. It should be beyond stating that the tragedy that befell cinematographer Halyna Hutchins, who was killed on the set of the film Rust when a prop gun held by actor Alec Baldwin misfired, is not joke fodder. And yet for some Republican party members it was just that, an event with no content except its potential for laughs at the expense of a political opponent.

“[L]et Trump back on,” Republican Senate candidate JD Vance tweeted. “We need Alec Baldwin tweets.”  Meanwhile, Colorado congresswoman Lauren Boebert tracked down an old Baldwin tweet featuring the phrase “hands up, don’t shoot”:

And as Jake Tapper points out at CNN, this is not a slip or gaffe on either Vance or Boebert’s part — it is a tactic. An open, gleeful cruelty that would previously disqualify someone from public office is now part of the hunt for votes.