As I’ve been engaged with other things of late (“I’ll have what you’re having, Anna Nicole Smith”), I thought I would dig into my oeuvre this week (also known as the crap on my C drive) to see what hasn’t been inflicted on Ambit Gambit’s reader(s). What follows is an interview I did before I was stopped from doing them after I drunkenly told Bob Brown his politics would stop being so nutty after he found himself a nice girlfriend.
Unsurprisingly, The Bulletin has a much larger budget than this blog, which doesn’t have a budget at all. While Jennifer Byrne can take her interview subjects to fancy establishments like a renovated McDonald’s, my companion for the afternoon, Janet Albrechtsen from The Australian, will have to be satisfied with Swizzlers, a shocker of a joint in which to meet with such a sweet lady.
Neglect by Swizzlers’ staff (it’s self-serve, but I was too afraid to tell her) quickly incites Janet to blame ACTU heavy, Greg Combet, for employees sitting behind cash registers instead of waiting on important customers. Her thesis that socialism lives on in the hospitality industry is the only sensible analysis of lousy customer service I’ve heard.
“Comrade, get out of that kitchen and take the orders of a couple of conservative columnists”, she bellows.
Janet discusses the controversy surrounding her article, Fatherless Aussie Kids at Risk of Becoming Murderous Muslims, while we’re standing in the salad queue.
“Malcontents taking a literal approach to the research I cite”, she offers with more charity than her detractors deserve. “A French sociologist revealed children raised by single mothers are 150% more likely to practise extreme versions of Islam than those from normal families”.
No right-thinking person could dispute Janet’s interpretation of Dr Jacques Smith’s findings after reading that “Iranian children in Paris have more chance of retaining their religion than the general community”.
The forced frivolity coming from table four drowns out Janet’s appreciation of data I’ve lent from a German expert about ethnic youth gangs.
“That’s the funniest gag you’ve ever told”. Sharing a restaurant with David Koch and the Sunrise crew is never easy, and less so when you can’t laugh on cue and look uncomfortable like that blonde co-host manages so expertly to do. “Bloody hilarious, Kochy, I know why I made the switch”.
“Anyway”, I yell, “Professor Von Kliegel is coming to Australia when he beats that holocaust thing”.
Janet believes that prior to 1996 powerful leftists like Ray Martin silenced right-wing commentators. “Even today”, she postulates, “you can’t pick up a tabloid, turn on talk back or watch current affairs without being bombarded with the progressive illuminati”.
Those ABC chatterers must wonder what ratings they’d have if Janet had become co-host of Media Watch, rather than the object of David Marr’s unwanted attention. Disgruntled viewers can only imagine a national broadcaster where affirmative action for failed advertisers and authors doesn’t apply.
“Good evening, I’m Janet Albrechtsen and tonight I hurl insults at ego-inflated, self-anointed champion of un-Australian causes and fitness campaigns, Phillip Adams, before finally finishing off the career of infamous homosexual and judicial activist, Michael Kirby”.
The post-traumatic stress disorder I suffered after brunch with Adams back in the 1980s threatens to return with the mention of his name. Criticising black armband historians is tough when there’s a voice in your head insisting God doesn’t exist and The Adventures of Barry McKenzie is a major moment in cinema.
Sanity is restored when Janet says she’s a role model and an example to talented girls everywhere that positive discrimination is for feminists who’ll never make it on their own. The manager certainly shares the opinion that nobody does invective better than Ms Albrechtsen.
“You self-proclaimed, unaccountable social engineer; I wanted mud cake not a brownie with no icing on top”.
Janet’s thanks for the interview is an invite to a reading of Sticking It Up the Toffs, an analysis of the damaging influence of elites by former ABA Chair and Emeritus Professor David, or “Davo” to his mates, Flint. The event is being put on by Quadrant, where “artz” funding from the Australia Council goes to the forces of good and not a performance artist who thinks wearing nothing but an oversized doily is a statement against the patriarchy (“this doily is not just representative of women’s oppression, it is an oppressed woman”).
Aware I’m going to meet Piers Akerman for the first time, I ring the office and give the new cadet my job because a stint as Barrie Cassidy’s sensible sidekick on Insiders beckons.
Read my other luncheon date interviews with Amanda Vanstone and David Flint here.
Next time I actually talk to a person and not a politician, uppity monarchist or conservative columnist.
Darlene can be contacted at darlene@onlineopinion.com.au or go to http://darlenetaylor.blogspot.com