On this day, December 31, 2012, a Murdoch employee called Piers Akerman (actual facts will have to wait for a change in the libel laws, or the grim reaper) took a pop at the Greens. Of course he did. With a sprinkling of condescension that a mere woman – and a Tasmanian at that – should dare to lead a political party…
“FACING falling support, the Greens are trying to find a different colour scheme to fool the voters.
They want to be seen as green but perhaps not as deep a green as their party policy platform paints them.
Their problem, of course, is that they are not really green as much as a murky red and even their hard-core support base is fracturing under the pressure of adjusting to the shrill leadership of Senator Christine Milne after 16 years of former Senator Bob Brown’s more avuncular style.”
Akerman, P. 2012. Greens’ true colours come shining through. Hobart Mercury, 31 December p.16.
[The amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere was 394ppm. At time of writing it was 419ishppm- but for what it is now,well, see here for the latest.]
The context was this –
The Greens had arrived, and weren’t going away, so Akerman (and his ilk) instead needed to create a soothing (to them) narrative of imminent demise. You see this again and again…
Why this matters.
We need to remember that rich white men with incredibly brittle egos are constantly proclaiming the imminent demise of their political/cultural opponents, hoping that if they say it often enough, loud enough, then at least they themselves might come to believe it.
What happened next?
The Greens, fwiw, doing quite nicely, thank you.