Culture war conflagration
Over this century, Easter will have fallen on 33 different dates. So imagine the joy with which America’s culture war right greeted the realisation that this year it fell on March 31, which also happens to be Transgender Day of Visibility. When President Joe Biden acknowledged the day, as he has on March 31 every year since his election, there was confected outrage aplenty cued up and ready to go.
Trump campaign spokeswoman Karoline Leavitt called Biden’s acknowledgement “blasphemous” and demanded “an apology to the millions of Catholics and Christians across America who believe tomorrow is for one celebration only — the resurrection of Jesus Christ”. House Speaker Mike Johnson accused the White House of having “betrayed the central tenet of Easter — which is the resurrection of Jesus Christ”.
Former speech writer for George W Bush and torture enthusiast Marc Thiessen told Fox that “for years, we’ve been having a campaign to put Christ back into Christmas. Under Joe Biden, we’ve gotta put Christ back into Easter, too.”
Meanwhile, the world’s most addled man, Donald Trump Jr, increasingly resembling an AI generation of himself using out-of-date technology, argued trans people need no special recognition because they’re already allowed to straight-up murder people without consequence in the loony leftocracy of Biden’s America. He said on his podcast that trans people can “murder someone and have a journal and nothing’s ever gonna come from it”.
Just to add the chaos, Monday was April Fools’ Day, resulting in the day’s press briefing beginning, I kid you not, like this…
Awww, hey widdle guy! Hey, what’s the administwashun’s view on the bombing and siege of the al-Shifa pawspital using American suppwied wepuns? Are ya gonna keep side-stepping congwessional oversight? Answer the kwestyun!
Police Fools
While Australia’s politicians have steered clear of any April Fools malarkey, they’ve never been the primary culprits when it comes to tone-deaf “cute” posting in this country. The real criminals here are the cops. And so, just as last year we got promises of a squad equipped with roller skates in Victoria and a squadron dedicated to cracking down on paddle board crimes in Queensland, this year’s April 1 gave us something probably even more egregious: a video of WA cops tooling up before debuting the force’s new range of Crocs.
We can’t quite decide what’s the worst bit. Probably the “isn’t this cool?” close-ups of tasers and other paraphernalia. Adding to the insult is the decision to score it with KRS-One’s “Sound of da Police“, one of the most searing indictments of police violence against Black people in the history of hip hop. Just as the social media team obviously assumes no-one is going to google “WA Cops + Tasers“, they presumably hope no-one finds their song choice so fun that they listen long enough to get to the line: “There could never really be justice on stolen land.”
Singleton says sorry
Rounding out the real “last day of school” vibe that afflicted Australia’s media class over the long weekend, we’ll present without comment entrepreneur John Singleton’s full-page ad in The Weekend Australian.
Proof, if any was needed, money can buy you a platform in the Australian media, even if it’s to say “THANK CHRIST” for a competitor.
That was then, this is now
Part of the reason polling is such a gift to political commentators is that it’s apparently possible to make them mean whatever you wish. Case in point, here’s our old pal Dennis Shanahan’s analysis of last week’s Newspoll.
Under the headline “Anthony Albanese faces a greater threat to his reelection than his predecessors”, Shanahan writes: “This Newspoll result suggests that any momentum has stalled and Labor’s task for the election, due to be called in 12 months, is harder than ever”.
Labor’s primary vote had fallen from 33% to 32%. The Coalition’s primary is up one point to 37%, which the paper notes elsewhere is still not enough to form government. Also not mentioned by Shanahan is either leader’s net satisfaction rating (essentially their approval rating minus their disapproval rating). Opposition Leader Peter Dutton’s net satisfaction rating, which started at -4 in May 2022 and has never gotten near those lofty heights since, dropped two points to -15, while Albanese’s rose one point to -7.
Still, why would analysis of a Newspoll focus on an opposition leader? Who can forget the relentless coverage of Prime Minister Tony Abbott’s sustained run of Newspoll silver medals? Take March 2014, when Shanahan’s take on the numbers was: “Bill Shorten is failing the pub test. The opposition leader is shrinking in voters’ eyes at an alarming rate.” At the time Shorten had a net satisfaction rating of -10. Abbott’s was -12. In both examples, Labor led on the two-party preferred.
