So much for ignoring Bernardi

Richard Markowski writes: Re: “Caro’s flotsam and jetsam: vale EJ Howard … 2013 or 1913? … Bernardi busted …” (Wednesday). I can only imagine Jane Caro’s delight in discovering that everyone she follows on Twitter was in furious agreement with her regarding Our Cory. Naturally, I love stream-of-consiousness missives re: whatever prejudices are being pandered to on someone’s Twitter feed because putting thought and research into it is too difficult … and anyway,they’ve been on holidays. But did Bernardi really pick criminality and promiscuity out of the air and apply them to random genders? Was he referencing any sort of statistical data? We’re not told, and who cares!

Ivan Milat was apparently raised in a nuclear family, and that “neatly reveals a flaw in [Bernardi’s] argument” … the same way of course my great-granddad smoking 30 cigarettes a day and living to 93 reveals the flaw in any link between tobacco and lung cancer.

What really irritates me, however, is that this has led me to align myself in some oblique way with the odious, compassionless oik that is Cory Bernardi, someone I’m frankly ashamed to have as a coreligionist (and the the less said about Scott Morrison the better).

As an aside, I’m also guessing that Martin Amis’ tribute to EJ Howard as being “the most interesting woman writer of her generation” is qualitatively different from Caro being, say, an ambassador for the Stella Prize, a “major literary award celebrating Australian women’s writing”?

Daniel Bond writes: I was quite pleased on Monday to read in your editorial,”When it comes to New Year’s resolutions, surely we can all agree to make 2014 the year we all ignore Cory. And whatever the vile, desperately inconsequential twerp may spout.”

Bravo! My favourite daily read would be leaving aside this distraction to focus on real news and issues. It’s a shame that, as with so many New Year’s resolutions, this one only lasted two days.

Michael Donohoe writes: People are being hard on Cory Bernardi and his gold standard families; a look at history shows the reasoning behind his views. I remember a story about an unmarried pregnant woman who married an older man, who was not the father of her child, and the family was less than functional. In fact, on a trip to a foreign country the husband and wife, who travelled back home seperately, left the kid behind — the communication between them was so bad that they each thought the other was looking after the kid. It did not turn out well — the kid left his trade, joined a bunch of trouble-makers and ended up being executed in his earily 30s. I think his name was Jesus.

Life imitating art

Betty Freud writes: “Rundle: a maddening refugee problem we should have seen coming” (Wednesday).  Reality is art. Watching Elysium is like watching the Libs “turn back the boats”. Jodie Foster is Scott Morrison. Even the dialogue matches. People wanting a better life on Elysium are called “illegals”. If you watch the movie and think of Abbott and Morrison it doesn’t really feel like it’s 2154. More like 2014.

Sue Hoffman writes: Rundle’s piece was a cracker — as if I wasn’t depressed enough about how asylum seekers/refugees are being treated.