Jordan Peterson (Image: AP)

The return of Jordan Peterson Every teenage boy’s favourite pseudo-intellectual is back. After a mysterious hiatus, Canadian YouTube psychologist Jordan Peterson is back to write a sequel to his bestselling 12 Rules for Life, where he will dispense more folksy reactionary wisdom to hordes of adoring mouthbreathers.

And that’s exciting news for local media’s biggest Peterson fangirl, The Australian’s Caroline Overington. By our count, Overington, who once described Peterson as “easy on the eye” has published at least 15 pieces on him since 2018.

Meanwhile, the next 12 rules haven’t gone down well among the millennial staff at publisher Penguin Random House, who’ve raised concerns about Peterson’s transphobia and alt-right-adjacent politics. Then again if you had to spend the next few months of your life eyeballs-deep in Peterson’s turgid prose you’d probably have a meltdown too.

So, where has Peterson been for the past year and a half? Well, strangely enough for a self-styled self-help guru, Peterson had something of a breakdown. We know he got hooked on benzodiazepines. We know he was also on a ridiculous all-beef diet. We know he ended up in a medically induced coma in Russia, part of an experimental treatment. And we know that later, he wound up in Serbia, where he contracted COVID-19.

News Corp’s latest target If there’s anything News Corp loves more than spreading conspiracy theories about climate change and acting as a propaganda arm for the Coalition, it’s attacking young Australians of colour for the simple crime of speaking their minds.

When Yassmin Abdel-Magied questioned the sanctity of the ANZACs, the attacks from News Corp were so vicious she eventually left the country. So little surprise then that following last week’s damning Brereton report release, the dutiful scribes at Holt Street deflected their attention to an opinion piece in Meanjin written by Afghan-Australian artist Bobuq Sayed.

Sayed’s piece is scathing and controversial, pointing out that articles have been featuring defence force mental health hotlines, centring the ADF’s experience in stories about the murder of innocent Afghans. But many pieces written by white, Anglo writers have been similarly scathing and controversial, but are not deemed newsworthy by The Daily Telegraph.

For good measure, the Tele article includes a grubby little smear from the IPA’s Daniel Wild, who calls Sayed’s argument “unAustralian.”

Since then, the piece has been picked up by the Daily Mail Australia. We hope, for Sayed’s sake, that this is the end of the pile-on.

Trump goes out Oh to be a fly on the wall in the Oval Office right now. Donald Trump continues his long November meltdown, still calling the election rigged even as his Hail Mary lawsuits continue to be tossed out. But there’s still time for the lame-duck president to make a few changes on his way out the door.

For example, he’s asked the Department of Justice to look into bringing back the old firing squad. And overnight he pardoned Michael Flynn, his old national security adviser who pleaded guilty to lying to the FBI over Russia things.

Flynn is just the first in a flurry of pardons which will mark Donny’s final days in the White House. After all, Trump loves to look after his inner circle, and that entourage is absolutely crawling with crooks.

Former campaign chair Paul Manafort, currently serving a seven-year sentence for obstructing justice, is on the list, as are former advisers Rick Gates and George Papadopoulos. Steve Bannon, recently charged with defrauding investors over the border wall could be in the mix. And so is Trump himself — even though legal scholars say the president probably can’t pardon himself.