Warnie’s final innings … Fullerton: a rap god? … Burnside burned

Vale Warnie Shane Warne has passed away at the tragically young age of 52. Warne was a combination of traits that you only get in sport, and not even in sport much anymore. On the field, he was an artist, capable of control and intelligence beyond the grasp of the vast majority of people. Off it, he was… well, he was a total drongo who couldn’t stop sending nurses mucky texts and thought Stifler from American Pie was the funniest shit imaginable. Alas, due to the nature of Crikey, our coverage doesn’t take in much of the artistry.

Warne shows up surprisingly early in Crikey’s life, with a January 2001 post titled “Foul-mouthed spinner a total lout”. It’s classic early Crikey, dedicated to a scattering of personal experiences (he was, we’re unsurprised to hear, a inveterate sledger since his school days), gossip (he tried to get it on with a department of foreign affairs and trade official) and personal swipes. Our main focus since then was future Power Index writer Paul Barry’s biography Spun Out — we covered the backlash (Paul Toohey called it “one of the most graceless and unfair pieces of investigative journalism ever pieced together in this country”) and ran an interview giving Barry the chance to defend his work, particularly the focus on Warne’s prolific sex life:

One could not possibly write a book about Warne without dealing with this stuff, unless you just wanted a scorecard of his cricket. You cannot understand the man or people’s reactions to him unless you realise that he has continued to “have fun” as he puts it, despite certain knowledge that he risked his career and his marriage by doing so.

Rap Rap Rappity Rap Rap Ticky Fullerton has, like so many before her, reached the point in her storied career as a respected business journalist and commentator when she can only adequately express herself through song. And by song I mean a rap. A really, REALLY long rap that doesn’t have any music or for the most part rhyme in any conventional sense, but which does feature the word “daddy-o” — a sure sign of someone who understands hip-hop. Just how long? It has 1291 words, which puts it just behind “Rap God” by Eminem for word count. It took Eminem, with his famously motor-mouthed and dexterous flow, six minutes to get through his 1500-ish words (closer to 750 if you take out the homophobic slurs). Fullerton takes things at a steadier pace, but without wasting time on a chorus or any music, manages to get through her opus in 6 minutes 27 seconds. Which is still a very long time to listen to a slightly plummy voiced white lady in her late fifties rap about revitalising the central business district.

Burnside notice Human rights lawyer and frequent “dumb in a way only smart people can be” statement-maker Julian Burnside decided this week — with floods in Queensland and New South Wales leaving thousands homeless and war newly raging in Ukraine — was the time to call out someone in the service industry for an extremely minor inconvenience. Burnside announced he will “never book” at Shōbōsho again after they cancelled his reservation.

Burnside has an annoying talent for diluting his good works by having long-term membership of men’s-only clubs and a fondness for Twitter conspiracies, and this time managed to unite pretty much everyone on Twitter in piss-taking expressions of sympathy.