In the excellent and highly recommended 1956 movie Invasion of the Body Snatchers (disregard the mediocre 1978 remake that everybody inexplicably raves about, where leftist Hollywood types inexplicably replaced the communist allegory with a Watergate allegory that made absolutely no sense), seed pods replicate ordinary Americans as soon as they doze off, replacing them with soulless socialist Doppelgängers who want to destroy the family unit, and mindlessly serve big government without question.
I’ve always suspected that somebody slid one of these seed pods beneath Sarah Hanson-Young’s bed as a child, and Canada’s Prime Minister Zoolander is definitely a Pod person, but lately more than ever, it seems that somebody is placing alien seed pods beside Liberal politicians past and present as they sleep.
I watched Beattie & Reith on Sky News the other night. I don’t know why. I must have been feeling masochistic, but not quite at the Q&A viewing level of masochistic. The show is a vanity project. A vehicle for the charismatic, yet always clueless and inept, former QLD Premier. His foil is retired Liberal stalwart Peter Reith, who is about as charismatic as a Russet potato. As near as I can figure, Beattie & Reith only exists to make Paul Murray Live look a lot better.
But the main thing that struck me as I watched was Peter Reith’s excruciating virtue signalling on everything from same-sex marriage, to a gleeful embrace of Islamisation. These weren’t libertarian ‘live and let live’ type opinions without judgement of those who disagree. This was textbook social justice warrior holier-than-thou virtue signalling that isn’t flattering from the mouths of leftists, much less conservatives.
The most insulting aspect to the intelligence of Sky viewers was the mouth from whence it came. This is the guy who was an instrumental player in the most prosperous and constructive government the country has ever seen during the Howard years. That didn’t happen with niceties and trigger warnings. The guy was an a—hole. We probably didn’t feel like having a beer with him, but we respected him.
Reith was instrumental in waterfront reform. But let’s make no bones about it. He was an a—hole through and through, and more sensible Australians realised he had to be. I can attest from personal experience that Unions don’t play nicely with others, and we shouldn’t either.
But like Hillary Clinton, who has literally been at least partly responsible for the deaths of hundreds of thousands of women and children in the Middle East due to evil and incompetence, Reith seems to think that incessant virtue signalling will fully atone for any real or perceived atrocities in his political past.
If you happen to be a Unionist, Peter Reith was complicit in what you believe to be some truly evil s— back in 1998, but like a sucker you give him a pass because he just trotted out some warm and fuzzy nonsense about the religion of peace to appear morally superior to the Sky News audience.
Who are these Pod people, and what have they done with all the Liberals? To see those whom you know to be very conservative in practice so shamelessly embracing this nonsense, really drags virtue signalling into the sunlight and exposes how disingenuous and self-aggrandising the practice is.
If the performance I saw is anything to go by, perhaps Peter Reith should go and hide beneath the same rock that Malcolm Fraser occasionally scurried from to lecture us on pet pinko projects, even though he himself benefited from conservatism far more than most.
The Liberals seem done like a dinner. Perhaps they should change the capital L to a small l and be done with the false advertising. Their last remaining hope seems to be Cory Bernardi, but I think it’s high time he started his own business. One thing’s for sure, Cory: if you notice a strange oversized seed pod beside your bed, whatever you do, don’t go to sleep!
Photo by cdrummbks 