Friday, July 01, 2011

Rooted

According to today's Sydney Morning Herald 'Media' column:

The Diary: Black comedy

The bitter comic Austen Tayshus made a bit of a goose of himself on the ABC's Q&A recently, by talking over everybody unfortunate enough to have shared the rostrum with him. He even monstered the Greens Senator Lee Rhiannon, challenging her to go public about her Jewish roots, but the link is on her father's side of the family and Rhiannon does not identify as Jewish.
Do you get the impression Diary doesn't like Austen Tayshus?

I watched that episode of Q&A and don't remember any such comment, monstering, murmured or otherwise.

A quick check of the transcript also shows no such discussion whatsoever. As far as I can tell, the Sydney Morning Herald have simply made this up.

I emailed them earlier today but have not received a response. Now who's the goose? Honk!

I'm not a big fan of 'Austen Tayshus' and he did tend to be overbearing on the show, as is his schtick. However when he laid into Lee Rhiannon it was well deserved and his comments on her gross hypocrisy were spot-on. Specifically, demanding to know why she was shilling for a boycott of Israel, and a 'flotilla' of 'activists' to go there, yet say and do nothing about Syria and other countries far more deserving of opprobrium, yet completely ignored.

As expected, the best Rhiannon could come up with was a snivelling claim that it's not antisemitic to criticise Israel.

We know. The most obsessive narrow-minded critics of Israel continually remind us. However, as Thomas Freedman said:
Criticizing Israel is not anti-Semitic, and saying so is vile. But singling out Israel for opprobrium and international sanction — out of all proportion to any other party in the Middle East — is anti-Semitic, and not saying so is dishonest.
It seems there's quite a bit of dishonesty going around.

Update:

Finally received this via email.
Subject: RE: Query about today's Diary
Date: Sun, 3 Jul 2011 11:35:45 +1000
From: Diary SMH
happened in the green room before the panel entered the studio
Of course.

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2 Comments:

Anonymous Ian said...

You watched an entire episode of Q&A?

I dips me lid to you Dan - you really are prepared to suffer for your art.

2:15 AM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

If it "happened in the green room", then how could he be said to have "made a bit of a goose of himself on Q&A"?

12:14 PM  

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