He says that I called the Cairns Mayor's wife a lesbian - not that there's anything wrong with being a lesbian. Some of my best friends are lesbians. In fact, the jury's out on my neighbour's cat.
If Padraic even bothered to telephone me or read what I actually wrote some months ago, he would have understood that I made no claim at all. That's why, when the mayor got his knickers in a knot and tried - for the second time - to throw a defamation charge at me - he failed.
What I did write, was a number of parody headlines that I suggested the Cairns Post could run (instead of stories purporting to be stories). I claimed they were all false, besides the last one that referred to the illegal extension to the Esplanade restaurant Villa Romana, which, as we all know, is true.
Local legal defamation expert Robert Miller, says that there's is no way what was written could be considered defamatory, maybe just bad taste. Not if you're a lesbian though. Gosh, it's amazing how easy that word rolls off your tongue...
So, any normal intelligent reader would see it was a joke, maybe in poor taste - but that's debatable - but a joke all the same.
Furthermore, Kevin Byrne wants the Weekend Australian to believe that I was / am Val Schier's campaign manager. Well, that's not true at all. It's obvious that I'm a strong supporter of a change of local government, and anyone - even Padraic Murphy at the Weekend Australian - could deduct that from my writings. But I'm not Val's campaign manager.
All in all, The Australian gave a poor local election summary of the campaign, which could have compared two starkly different options between Byrne's Unity and Schier's Cairns 1st.
I used to think The Australian was one of the last bastions of good writing in our print media, but when I see ill-conceived and hasty put together stories like today's round-up of the Cairns political race, I doubt I'd fork out the $2.20 anytime soon.
2 comments:
Where did this Padraic Murphy learn his journalism? At Mickey Mouse College? Ugh. No wonder people are turning in droves to alternate news sites.
King Boobs finger is tired today But lets listen in " now you understand that the curfew for carrots is 6am to 6pm but broci is 6am to 8pm - the broci's are getting much too assertive, we'll show them whose boss he snarls, with a benign smile.
Post a Comment