Published in Beat Magazine, March 25, 2009

Remember when former punchline-on-tap George W Bush announced that there were no weapons of mass destruction to be found in Iraq, two years after the rest of the world had come to that conclusion? The world was awash with a wave of “thanks for catching up, dickhead”. I got a very similar feeling, although on a smaller scale, on Sunday night. That's when I read of the apology by Neil Breen, editor of the Sunday Telegraph, to Pauline Hanson. The Telegraph was the first public noise maker about photos of Random Naked Person, who was alleged to be Pauline. Considering the snowballing effect, the initial apology should go to the public in general.

Reason One: the shudder sent through the population at the thought of a naked Pauline was seismic in proportion. Reason Two requires a little more suspension of cynical disbelief, and requires us to click our heels three times and transport ourselves to a world where Pauline was actually running in the Queensland state election last weekend because she thought she would win and would serve the people of Beaudesert well, and not because she wanted the cheque that would come with getting more than four percent of the vote (she actually got twenty-one percent, leading me to think that one in five registered voters in Beaudesert is a monkey. What was her campaign slogan? “Vote Pauline - because some people still don't get it”?). In this world, the Telegraph helped smear a candidate for democratic office without properly checking the facts, publishing a story that would be barely (no pun intended) relevant if true, and reprehensible if not. For Reason Three, we get to stay in this dimension – the photo story gave Pauline's run for (or more accurately near) Parliament greater publicity, and a potential sympathy vote as it looked like the big, bad media was picking on our redheaded victim. Reason Four: believing that the photos were indeed Ms Hanson required investigation that demonstrates the very pinnacle of half-arsedness. I saw that there were some in the media making the argument that the stockings pictured in one shot were not available in the period when these photos were supposed to have been taken – my problem is a little more fundamental; it's obviously not Pauline's head. There are some vague similarities about the facial features, provided largely by the eye makeup (not “makeup” as in “genetic makeup”... “makeup” as in “cosmetics”), but looking for more than ten consecutive seconds reveals this particular secret.

Of course, none of this is really Neil's problem. He gets to enjoy the bump in circulation provided by this “scandal”, and bemoan the deceptive nature of humans now that the obvious has been broadcast as such. This is where things get really ugly. With the deception being washed away more easily than a tissue paper dam, the strategy seems to have been to publish in a hurry, reap the benefits, and then weather the storm. Most people still believe in the concept of news, and will take what they read in the papers on face value. That gives the people who produce it a responsibility to not break reputations haphazardly. And while I've listed four reasons for Neil to apologise to the public, a reason has arrived for him to apologise to me personally; I hope that, in any potentially arising lawsuit, enough money is awarded to actually sting the Telegraph, and prevent a repeat of circumstances like this. This means that Neil has me barracking for Pauline, and that's not somewhere I want to be.