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[This edited version of the article has been prepared by Dr Robert N Moles]

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Justinian 6 February 2006 Bells and Catholics

Kenny Boy goes for the idiot defence  … Catholic majority on US Supreme Court … We don’t need Rupie or Jamie to have a multi-channelled world … Interruption in the church.

Dr (of economics) K. Lee Lay, 64, was on the Cheney-Bush transition team in 2000, and almost persuaded them to make him Secretary of the Treasury! Now Kenny Boy, as George, 59, fondly called him, is facing 175 years for alleged fraud and conspiracy, but on January 30 BusinessWeek reported in a piece headed “Ken Lay’s Audacious Ignorance”:

“It is entirely possible that Lay will beat the rap … Prosecutors have tacitly conceded the effectiveness of Lay’s use of what is known in legal circles as the ‘idiot’ or ‘ostrich’ defense.” Do we hear the tintinnabulation of a tiny bell? Who else plaintively insists no one ever tells him things are a bit amiss, e.g. Saddam’s extortions of millions from starving wheat growers?

Question for academics who teach fourth year How to Get Your Guy Off. Is the “pre-senile dementia” defence (“I don’t remember”) a sub-section of the “idiot” defence, or a section of its own?

It has been noted that Scalito has become the fifth Catholic along with John Roberts, Anthony Kennedy, Clarrie Thomas, and Antonin Scalia – on the US Supreme Court. This unfortunately but inevitably recalls the line in Chicago in which Miss Renee Zellweger (Roxie Hart) refers to Mr Richard Gere (Billy Flynn) as a “greasy Mick lawyer”. We can only hope that no one has the wretched taste to refer to the five as “greasy Mick Humpties”.

Changes to Australian media law are in the offing, and Quentin Dempster, who fronts the NSW version of the ABC’s Stateline, is at once excited and depressed. He sees the potential for free-to-air stations, including public broadcasters ABC and SBS, to benefit the community in an “extraordinary” way via digital technology’s capacity to split one signal into 35 channels. He wrote in the December issue of the UNSW Law Journal:

“We could have English and other languages channels; multiple education, technical, skills and further education channels; community access channels; arts, culture, documentary and innovation channels; as well as fully commercial entertainment channels.”

But he noted that pay TV’s Foxtel and Austar have a virtual monopoly of multi-channelling, and naturally want to keep it, and that Rupert Murdoch, 74, and James Packer, 38, own half of Foxtel, and may own the lot when Telstra, which owns the other half, is flogged off by the Hon N. Hugh Munchkin, 52, BEc LLB (ANU), Cert. of Law (NSW). So, Mr Dempster wrote:

“The choice is clear: 35 free-to-air standard definition channels for the once only cost of $100 for a set top box, compared with Foxtel or Austar’s pay TV channels for $50 to $100 per month...

”[But] it is certain that neither the Murdoch press, with 60 or 70 per cent of the print market in Australia, nor the Packer outlets (Channel Nine network, Foxtel, or the PBL magazines) will put the clear policy choices directly and objectively to their audience. The ABC seems too frightened to do it for them.”

On vital decisions such as media law, there is a view, no doubt wildly exaggerated, that our great helmsman, J. Winston Howard, 66, LLB (Syd), has such mastery of the Ship of State that he is a sort of de facto Minister for Everything Else as Well. Thus, some may assume that on the changes he will ventriloquially speak through the beautiful lips of Communications Minister H. Lloyd Coonan, 58, BA, LL.B (Syd). Or, if you insist, she is perforce obliged to play Trilby to the great, if bald, Svengali of Australian politics. Mr Dempster said Jamie’s [now late] father, Kerry, and Rupie “are known as the ‘gatekeepers’ of media policy … because of the testicular hold they have had on … prime ministers from Fraser to Hawke to Keating to Howard … If the federal government grants [the pay TV] industry’s wish [to retain its virtual monopoly of multi-channelling], it will amount to the technological betrayal of the people of Australia.”

You can call me naive if you like, but I cannot believe that the battler’s friend will allow media law to mainly benefit one American and one Australian rather than 20 million Australians.

Speaking of bells and Catholics, I have to pass on a poignant vignette lately reported by a chum. At Midnight Mass, he found himself behind a lad aged about six who apparently judged that the bells rung thrice for the Sanctus were a deplorable intrusion on the sacred ritual. So, when the bells again rang out in the solemn hush of the Consecration and Elevation of the Host, the little kid sternly demanded:
“WHO IS RINGING THOSE FUCKING BELLS?”

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