LEAVE KEVIN RUDD ALONE. Okay? Can everyone just lay off him? It’s like watching a 13-year-old victim of an arranged marriage to a 77-year-old sex offender be stoned to death for escaping.
I want to wrap the poor guy up in my loving arms, hold him close to my heaving bosom and sing him some John Denver. David Marr, ACNeilson polls, TROTW (The Rest Of The World), look what you’ve done now.
In 2008 the Pope came to Sydney, petrol prices soared and Australia proudly became the fattest nation on earth. Big Brother got the chop, Sam Newman mauled a mannequin and the Logies were as wonderfully bad as ever. Thank goodness for Catherine Deveny. Always ready with a subversive aside or a provocative question, each week in the Age she brings her passionate, irreverent wit to bear on the big issues of the day.
Say When collects Deveny’s funniest, sharpest and most outrageous columns from the past year – and some unpublished work, as well. Whether taking on God, climate change or Kerri-Anne Kennerley, she is sure to leave you begging for more.
“We’ve won the battle of the fatties. Australia is now officially, according to some bunch of folk with clipboards in one hand and flab pinchers in the other, the world’s fattest nation. Go, you good thing! Get stuck into those pies! Potato cakes? I’ll have three. One for mum, one for dad and one for the country. Let’s use our newfound status as the Tubby Country as a tourist pitch to attract chubby chasers and fat fetishists. Where the bloody hell am I? Down the shops, buying dim sims.”
Each week in the pages of the Age, Catherine Deveny tackled the big issues of modern life with hilarity and passion and in her own inimitable style. From 4WD owners to Nick Giannopolous to women who take their husband’s name, Deveny isn’t backward in coming forward. It’s Not My Fault They Print Them collects Deveny’s funniest, most biting work, published and unpublishable (till now). Bound to spark heated debate and riotous laughter, it includes her views on elective caesareans, private education, McLeod’s Daughters, Sam Newman and much, much more. Prepare to be tickled, cajoled, outraged, baited and amused.
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Good Morning Angels,
Here is my official statement!
Don’t fight this for me, fight this for the principal. If we don’t imagine the voices we’ll never hear, the columns we’ll never read and the ideas we’ll never be challenged by. How Sam Newman, Kyle Sandilands, Chris Smith, David Oldfield, The Chaser Boys etc get suspended for behavior deemed offensive but a woman gets sacked.
feel free to hassle The Age. Send emails to newsdesk@theage.com.au or pramadge@theage.com.au
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Deep thanks friends, fans and supporters. I won’t let you down.
Now go forth and roger a gerbil.
Dev xxxx
By Lachie McKenzie
Catherine Deveny should not have been sacked from The Age. The paper has lost support from her fans, and gained no new readers from her dismissal. From their point of view, a devenstating mistake.
From ABC’s The Drum
By Jonathan Green
May 5 2010
Even as I write this The Age website is spruiking its story on the sacking of columnist Catherine Deveny and the attendant controversy. Her face is just above the fold (as, endearingly, we still say of websites) on theage.com.au homepage, with the headline “Deveny dropped: editor acts after Logies storm”. The comment counter is sitting at 567
Hello darlings,
What a day! I’ve been sacked from The Age.
I’ve adored every moment of my time with The Age. The Age is the heart and soul of my city and Melbourne is the love of my life.
Every column I have written for The Age was prepared like a meal for close friends.
I am disappointed. To my beautiful readers of The Age, I will miss you.
Can somebody write me a reference?
Dev x x
One of my favourite people is an old boyfriend’s mum, Marijke, a stuttering Dutch psychologist, heart of gold, body of a Veronica and a penchant for buying old furniture, painting it beige and re-upholstering it in calico.
Meeting her in my teens was a revelation. The women I knew mostly fell into the category of teacher, housewife, mother, nurse or tuckshop lady rather than fiercely independent, free-thinking European woman who cooked lentils, travelled the world and danced to her own tune. Clothes optional.
I caught up with Marijke a while ago to meet her new man, Rene, a Dutch cardiologist. The little boys and I rolled up to a breakfast by the sea. Whole-wheat pancakes, bowls of stewed fruit the colour of jewels, fluffy clouds of yoghurt, steaming cups of coffee and light streaming in. At the moment I was reflecting on what a healthy sight it was, Rene pushed his chair back and lit a cigar. At the table.
I love Europeans.
He turned to me and said: ”Cathy, did Marijke tell you how we met?”
”No, she didn’t.”
He took a drag of his cigar and said: ”I killed her father.”
Rene had legally euthanised Marijke’s father in the Netherlands, where euthanasia is legal. A death with a happy ending.
I thought of Marijke and Rene when I addressed the Dying With Dignity Rally on the steps of Parliament House last week.
Passionate supporters huddled together on the steps like many Melburnians past. I hoped this was the last rally for euthanasia ever, but infuriatingly I knew it wouldn’t be. Despite the need for our laws to catch up to reflect social progress and our community values, 85 per cent of people support voluntary euthanasia.
I was disappointed by the turnout – about 150 people. Some 10,000 rocked up to the Save Live Australian Music Rally when they closed The Tote. But the collective age at the Dying With Dignity Rally was probably twice that of the Slam Rally. Perhaps it’s a good sign – maybe people were thinking: ”I don’t have to turn up to a rally for voluntary euthanasia. Clearly it’s going to happen; they legalised abortion.”
WAKE UP everybody! Politicians know 85 per cent of us want euthanasia. BUT WE DON’T HAVE IT! Shirtfront your local member and say: ”Pull your finger out, sunshine, and speak up. Because you’re just The Honourable Member For People Dying in Pain.”
Dogs can be legally and peacefully put to sleep, (sure, many of them we’re more fond of than our relatives). Other countries safely administer voluntary euthanasia, so don’t give me any bull about it being dangerous or us not being responsible. We all know doctors, thanks to the benign conspiracy between the legal system, the police and the Victorian government, euthanise people every day.
So why is it illegal? Blame religion. Yet 85 per cent of people support euthanasia, while only 9 per cent of people go to church. The majority of people with faith believe in voluntary euthanasia.
I don’t care what you believe, but we all must fight for a secular state to stop religion influencing our policy. And I don’t care who you vote for, if you believe that Jesus was sent to Earth to die for our sins, clearly Tony Abbott was sent to Earth to live for our sins. Not having access to voluntary euthanasia is an infringement of our rights. Article Five of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights: ”No one shall be subjected to cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment.” I would proudly, safely, euthanise a loved one who needed it. And happily be fined, prosecuted or incarcerated as a result.
Turn up to the next euthanasia rally. Because there are people lying in hospital, at home and in palliative care who would streak down Bourke Street to shake up this mediaeval mentality of a few. Otherwise we may all have to become veterinarians so we have access to Nembutal.
”What do we want? To die. When do we want it? When we choose.”
That’s me, attempting to sex up euthanasia. Everyone deserves a happy ending. Not just Marijke and Rene.
Catherine Deveny is a Dying With Dignity Victoria Ambassador.
I THOUGHT it was a joke. A talk radio station with Steve Price (a man, according to Wikipedia, widely known as the Poisoned Dwarf), Jason Akermanis (footballer, half man, half punchline), Andrew Bolt (right-wing tabloid hack), Sam Newman (Melbourne’s favourite misogynist and bully), Chris Smith (serial creep and ugly drunk from 2GB) and Steve Vizard (who, despite his extraordinary cultural contribution and his corporate crimes being dwarfed by the daily social atrocities committed by every second corporate maggot on King Street, is now known as ”disgraced businessman”) is starting up. In Melbourne. Yeah, right.
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Note this moment. Because there’ll be a day when you’re asked, ”Where were you when you first heard of vajazzling?”
I thought if I alerted you to the existence of vajazzling here in the privacy of our one-on-one reading communion, the damage would be contained. It would mean your shock-induced coughing fit resulting in latte spraying out of your nose would occur here, preventing you the public humiliation of spitting your drink into someone’s face when the conversation turned to vajazzling and you innocently asked, ”What’s that?”