The Government’s Lackey

On Listening for the First and Last Time to Jon Faine*

I’d never heard in all my days
such foul, pathetic, pathic praise,
and hope I never hear again
agagic moans from fervid Faine.

When Gillard calls, Faine’s one of those
who swiftly bend to touch their toes;
but critics he must mock and smear,
calumniate and domineer.

A proctoleichous poodle, he
conceals corruption willfully.
One fact, however, Faine can’t hide:
that Gillard, with aforethought, lied.

*  Jon Faine, an oleaginously partisan presenter in Melbourne for ABC Radio, is known, according to the ABC, “for his quick wit and willingness to ask the stickiest of questions”—except when his interlocutors are federal ministers or awarmist lunatics whom he must coddle and obsequiously defend.

For those with strong stomachs, go to Michael Smith’s “Jon Faine of ABC Local Radio Melbourne was my gracious host on the radio today”.

UPDATE I:  see “Jon Faine Doubles Down”, by Prof. Bunyip:

it is a good thing Jon Faine found paid work as a toady on ABC Radio 774, rather than remaining with the law, because a compulsion to connect dots is generally regarded as an asset amongst learned friends.  Faine, whose preciousness needs to be valued in carats, displayed none of that this morning, despite the oft-thwarted attempts of Michael Smith and The Age’s Mark Baker.  Each attempted to address the increasingly insistent question of our Prime Minister’s fitness to hold the highest elected office in the land, and neither could get a word in edgeways.
Smith was seldom allowed to finish a sentence and, when he did, his point was engulfed by the shill’s interruptions and poo-hooing.

UPDATE II:  the correct link for Jon Faine’s monologue (briefly interspersed with comments from Michael Smith) is http://blogs.abc.net.au/files/hectic-half-hour-23-11-12.mp3.

UPDATE III (24 November):  from the ABC’s Code of Practice 2011 (pp. 4-6): 

UPDATE IV (24 November):  see “Their ABC”, by Roger Franklin:

At about the same time Fairfax Editor at Large Mark Baker began looking into the “young and naïve” Julia Gillard’s past as a salaried partner at Slater & Gordon it should have been obvious to even the most blinkered eye that many questions about our Prime Minister remain to be answered.  Without stretching a point, The Age and Sydney Morning Herald have long been little more than house organs for the left, so a senior editorial executive’s decision to shrug off his incurious colleagues’ inertia and disdain, roll up his sleeves and begin digging came as a welcome change.  When even Fairfax catches the whiff of something rotten, then there must surely be more substantial than an olfactory phantasm of the conservative imagination.

There is, however, one place where the instinct to spin and belittle, to denigrate and dismiss, remains vigorous as ever, and that is the Southbank studio in Melbourne where ABC Radio’s Jon Faine puts on a show most weekday mornings.  His performance on Friday was a beaut, representing in less than 30 minutes, at least to this listener, not only the abrogation of a public broadcaster’s obligation to wield the straight bat, but also, and more to the point, why the ABC is seriously overdue for a very stiff dose of reform.  If and when the Coalition assumes the government benches, let Faine’s histrionics be Exhibit A.

UPDATE V (1 September, 2013):  I—along with many others, I reckon—lodged a complaint with the ABC, asking why it would provide “this contumelious, inept hack [i.e., Faine] with both a large salary and airtime?” and “Why do you allow such unprofessional bias?” I have not yet received an official response to my complaint, but the ABC has conceded that Faine must fain apologise for his unprofessional failure to act according to the ABC’s charter.  See Michael Smith’s posts here and here.