Why do journalists and commentators who should (and do) know better insist on giving Smirko the 'benefit of the doubt' and a 'second chance' to turn around from being an obviously sociopathic jerk to being the daddy of the nation.
How many times are they willing to be fooled?
Morrison is not even a good communicator or seller of ideas.
He just recycles the same old rhetoric and polishes the same old neoliberal turds but far too many media people are going "Scotty's got this" and "He's turned a corner" and "He's refreshed."
Nah, you are being suckered.
Too many journos live in a 'perpetual present' where every new announcement is treated like pearls of newly discovered wisdom instead of the recycled trash and toxic waste that it is.
The journos are all "Nah taste this, it's delicious" while many of us are puking at the stench.
The gallery and the media establishment need to protect their insider status and so they pull punches, they convince themselves that 'up' is 'down' and they sugar-coat the turd with candyfloss.
That doesn't make it any less palatable it doesn't disguise the foul taste.
#Scottyfrommarketing didn't actually say anything or deliver anything today. He spruiked 'reform' as he's done a million times before. He postured about getting together with union leaders (sans weapons) but he doesn't mean it.
He wants tax cuts for business, less 'red tape' and
cuts to wages and conditions for workers, yet he won't accept even a modest, short-term pay cut for himself.

He knows the media will spin it favourably.
Why?
Very simply, they are not fit for purpose. They are too close to the powerful and they don't understand economic theory
Most reporters are educated in how to 'do' journalism, they get very little social science, philosophy, political theory or other useful knoweldge along the way. This is true for at least three recent generations of journalists and it is peculiar to the Anglo education system.
Our university journalism programs do not value a broad and critical education. This is not the fault of the staff, many of whom are actually reasonably left-liberal in outlook (for better or worse).
The problem is the limitations imposed on tertiary courses by external factors
Education is now seen as completely transactional and instrumental.
The 'value' of a degree is that it is a ticket to a (low pay, low status) job. There is no value attributed to producing capable and critical thinkers.
Education is geared towards serving up apprentices to bosses
This makes it hard for staff and students to break the straitjacket market forces and it produces cookie-cutter conformity in graduates who are forced to compete for a shrinking pool of jobs.
A crisis in the news industry makes this even worse. Anybody who rocks the boat is out
Hundreds of young journalists have lost jobs in the last three years and older, experienced reporters have been pushed out through redundancies.
The media is being dumbed down and there are consequences for democracy.
There is no Fourth Estate accountability now for politicians.
They know they can lie without consequence and just brazenly stare down any media questions.
This is precisely how Morrison and his thieving gang behave and they are confident that their actions will go unsanctioned.
People have been commenting this week about how the ABC is lost
And how programs like Four Corners, Insiders, QandA, News Breakfast and 730 are now hollowed out lame shells. The same has happened on ABC radio where we get a regurgitation of government talking points and hardly any coverage of oppositiond.
We have tame stengraphic journalism.
Commercial media (non-Murdoch) is worse and #NewsCorpse is just a feral band of graverobbers and ghouls where sucking up to power and shitting on your ideological enemies is rewarded with a gig on Sky After Dark and a column in Australia's least read newspaper.
It's depressing.
It is also an ongoing crisis for our civil society that is not going to be easily or quickly overcome.
As Orwell says via Winston in 1984

"If there's any hope at all, it lies with the Proles".
Stay focused and educate yourself.
We are on our own now.
You can follow @ethicalmartini.
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