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Paddy McGuinness
AO
(Padraic
Pearse McGuinness)
The Sydney Morning Herald's comic opera conservative columnist and editor of Quadrant, the low-circulation journal of the rabid right has often featured on these pages.
Scuttlebut has it that The Great Fulminator is paid $250,000 a year by the Herald. Nowadays he churns out but one column a week, so he's making something like $7 a word. Nice work if you can get it.
Alas, Paddy is now much overshadowed in the Herald by Miranda "Tilly" Devine, daughter of the Australian's veteran ranter Frank Devine.
Over the years, Paddy's convoluted logic has brought Nick much pleasure. Here's a selection ...
The
Great Quadrant Coup
Shock
Horror. The Paddy McGuinness/ Dame Leonie Kramer / Les Murray faction
wrest control of Australia's premier low-circulation right wing political
magazine from Melbourne's Tory intellectuals.
White trash faction captures control of Quadrant
30 December 1997
Fear and loathing on the fireline -- call for
conscription in the war against The Great Harlot Nature 13
January 1998
The
rampage goes on -- Hayden, Pearson appointed to Quadrant
24 January 1998
The
Clean Air 2000 affair
In which Nick exposes how the NRMA's hired spindoctors, the notorious
international PR firm Hill & Knowlton, were behind the phoney 'Clean
Air 2000' campaign ... and the Paddy McGuinnesses make a Gay Mardi Gras
appearance.
Greenwash 2000 24 January 1998
Somewhere
over the rainbow
22 February 1998
It's
no show without Paddy
3 March 99 In which Paddy McGuinness embraces Germain Greer and
Nick remembers a few of the ghastly words the old groupie and publicity
hound actually wrote in The Female Eunuch ...
With
justice for all and malice towards none
31 March 1999 Nick writes to John Howard about the proposed preamble
to the Constitution and urges him to find a better class of friend.
Night
flight to Timor
18 May 1999 Nick finds himself kicking Kalashnikovs and Paddy
McGuinness dolls out of a Cessna Cargomaster over East Timor.
The
Vichy Republic of Balmain Peninsula
21 July 1999 Joadja discovers the hidden agenda for the Great
Balmain Rebellion on Chardonnay-stained coasters from the Riverview Hotel.
Fats
in the ranks
11 August 1999 Nick gets totally confused trying to establish
just who Paddy McGuinness's financial advisor is in the Great Balmain
Burghers Rebellion ... and no wonder ... for a while the trail seems to
lead to the Macquarie Bank and naked bimbos at the Museum of Contemporary
Art.
Making
a wilderness and calling it Order
16 September 1999 The TNI continue their rampage and Nick is hired
as a security consultant for the big Save East Timor rally.
The
fart of darkness
23 September 1999 In which Nick, Joadja, and Old Possum discuss
the hurt feelings of the Indonesian military and the Javanese elite and
a huge inflated effigy of Paddy McGuinness appears in the sky above Balmain.
When
Push comes to shove
13 April 2000 In which Joadja discovers Paddy McGuinness is the attorney
for atavism and the Rumpole for the reactionaries.
Passing
the licence test
25 May 2000 Nick discovers a very curious defence of teachers who
have sex with their pupils in one of Paddy McGuinness's columns.
The
flight to Versailles
29 June 2000 Crazy rightist commentator Paddy McGuinness and Treasurer
Peter Costello fly to Paris for the high season.
The
times they are a'changing back
24 August 2000 The Brushtail Café is trashed by a drunken mob
from the new-look Sydney Morning Herald.
The
McGuinness nomination
28
January 2003
Nick accidentaly came into possession of rightist columnist Paddy McGuinness's
nomination for Officer of the Order of Australia. Now he's free to divulge
the contents.
