by PAUL COLLITS – ABC reporter Louise Milligan – the radical feminists’ go-to journalist – has written a novel.
Perhaps not coincidentally, the back-cover tributes come almost entirely from Leftie women – as well as Cardinal Pell-hating homosexual David Marr.
- They promote their own. All in the cause.
- Milligan isn’t transitioning to fiction. She’s been writing it most of her recent life.
- Her cheer squad elevates ideas friendly to their narrative, and silences those who question it.
Well, they would, wouldn’t they. Two are ABC colleagues, the inevitable Annabel Crabb and Patricia Karvelas. All very in-house.
The ABC has become a sheltered workshop for Leftie feminists. They promote their own. All in the cause.
ABDUCTED
Milligan’s book is about – wait for it – a female journalist abducted by a hideous male. On message, then, for Louise.
Here is the plot: Kate Delaney has made the biggest mistake of her life. She picked the wrong guy to humiliate on a girls’ night out and now she is living every woman’s worst nightmare. Kate finds herself brutalised, bound and gagged in the back of a car being driven god knows where by a man whose name she doesn’t know, and she is petrified about what’s in store for her.
“As a journalist who is haunted by the crimes she’s had to report over her career, Kate is terrifyingly familiar with the statistics about women who go missing – and the fear and trauma behind the headlines. She knows only too well how those stories usually end.”
Called Kate? Of course! What else? Haunted by the crimes she has had to report on? Louise not only feels haunted. She feels hunted as well.
The world of literary awards and the writers’ festival circuit awaits. Meantime, the accolades are already flowing.
The publisher weighs in: “A gripping, propulsive and brilliantly original debut by award-winning investigative journalist and writer Louise Milligan.”
For, as we all know, Milligan made her career as a small-j journalist as the CEO of the Pell haters.
Milligan moves comfortably, effortlessly and forever among non-critical friends, in what she and they see as a dystopian world controlled by evil men.
MATYR
For those unfamiliar with the case against George Pell – Australia’s Catholic Cardinal and Christian martyr – Milligan played a role in the conviction of an innocent man.
Her earlier book (Cardinal: The Rise and Fall of George Pell) was a virtual job reference for the complainant selected by VicPol to testify against the Cardinal.
This book was published – weeks before the Cardinal’s arrest – by Melbourne University Press’s Louise Adler, aka Mrs Max Gillies, another soldier of the Melbourne Left establishment.
Despite her nasty agenda, Milligan’s inevitable, upcoming appearance at the Sydney Writers’ Festival, has been heralded: “Louise Milligan is a multi-award-winning investigative journalist for the ABC’s Four Corners program and a Press Freedom medalist.
“Her investigation for ABC and for her Walkley Award-winning book, Cardinal, broke international news and led to her being a witness in the George Pell case. That experience formed the basis of her second book, Witness, which was People’s Choice winner in the Victorian Premier’s Literary Awards and won a Davitt Non-Fiction Award for Best Non-Fiction crime book.
“Her Four Corners stories have led to government inquiries, changes to NSW consent laws and historic cultural reforms. Pheasants Nest is Louise’s first novel.”
Spot the mistake – “first novel”. Err, no. Milligan isn’t transitioning to fiction. She has been writing fiction most of her recent life. This isn’t a career pivot. Merely a tip-toeing to another section of the bookshop.
Also note who gave her the award. The Victorian Premier.
Ah – that would be Daniel Andrews, who greeted the High Court exoneration of Pell in 2020 with a social media post, “we believe you”.
And he didn’t mean George. He meant the (still) activist blogger who claimed that Pell had assaulted him and a mate in 1996.
Whose identity is known by most of Melbourne. And, of course, no mention of the utter legal humiliation of Milligan and all her works that was contained in the High Court judgement.
Milligan is presented to audiences as triumphant. It is nice to have friends in the fembot network.
Milligan’s novel lands in a ready market. The feminism 4.0 zeitgeist promotes a world of horrid men. Paedophiles, sex abusers, rapists, priest kiddy fiddlers, domestic violence perpetrators.
We know this because, well, why otherwise would Airbus Albo, the feminist cosplayer, the political barnacle, storm the stages of rallies in its name? Did anyone say “toxic masculinity”?
The moral panic over male sexual domination and violence towards women will surely help book sales. There are some who have challenged the view at the heart of Milligan’s world.
Like the hated Bettina Arndt, who has repeatedly had her events cancelled by radical feminists.
She promotes a return to the presumption of innocence in cases accusing men of heinous crimes. For which she is shamed by the friends of Milligan as an enemy of women.
BANNED
Banned from venues. Beyond the bounds of civility. When all she is doing is reinforcing the precepts of the rule of law.
She calls out the feminists who are driving the “domestic violence industry”. These are Louise Milligan’s core readership who endlessly cheer for her.
Arndt calls out the creation of “toxic masculinity”, one of the great ideological inventions of this age. She calls out the demands for compulsory domestic violence classes in school. Stop the monsters! There is an epidemic of men’s violence, the Left repeats.
As it happens, there is another novelist who has just released a new work. One not so much a darling of the writers’ festival set.
That would be Lionel Shriver. One of the great modern novelists, and not a novice like Milligan. She has literary runs on the board. (She explains her treatment here.)
Shriver claims to be the only non-Leftist novelist currently writing. She is scorned by the legacy media and by her peers.
She doesn’t get invited to writers’ festivals. Why?
Her latest novel might help explain it: “In a reality not too distant from our own, where the so-called Mental Parity Movement has taken hold, the worst thing you can call someone is ‘stupid’.
“Everyone is equally clever, and discrimination based on intelligence is ‘the last great civil rights fight’.
“Exams and grades are all discarded, and smart phones are rebranded. Children are expelled for saying the S-word and encouraged to report parents for using it. You don’t need a qualification to be a doctor.
“Lionel Shriver turns her piercing gaze on the policing of opinion and intellect, and imagines a world in which intellectual meritocracy is heresy. Hilarious, deadpan, scathing and at times frighteningly plausible, Mania will delight the many fans of her fiction and journalism alike.”
Shriver’s next novel will tackle mass immigration. Oh dear!
Novelists tackle what they see as the big issues. Is Milligan’s choice the main thing on the minds of everyman? No, I don’t think so.
I am guessing that Shriver won’t be invited to the Sydney Writers’ Festival any year soon. For a city apparently committed to “dangerous ideas”, that would be just too dangerous. Perhaps, too accurate as well.
Instead, they will continue to invite “breakthrough” novelists like Milligan, ironically as much familiar with fiction writing as Shriver.
This is de-platforming 101. Elevate ideas friendly to the narrative, and silence those who question it.
DESOLATE
Milligan’s world as presented in her novel is a desolate one, inhabited by predatory men.
A great novelist, the late Cormac McCarthy, also dealt in predatory men. His world, too, is grimly dystopian.
Think No Country for Old Men, or, more especially, Blood Meridian, regarded by many as his magnum opus.
He took his canvas as the badlands of the border country between Mexico and the southern USA, (at times in the 1800s) of brutality and amoral lawlessness.
McCarthy explored the dark side of the human condition. His world strikes a few of us as portentous and a realistic portrayal of our coming Armageddon.
Victor Davis Hanson’s latest book is called The End of Everything. Where civilisations get crushed, forever. This is what he thinks we now face.
McCarthy and Hanson speak of civilisational collapse. We see it all around.
The Milligan class does not see it. Many think it is actively promoting it.
This is the collapse of tradition, of Judeo-Christian virtue, of the family, of heroic masculinity, now admittedly diminished and perverted by the 60s sexual revolution that the likes of the Milligan class championed. This is the point.
There is now an emerging world that suggests a real moral panic, worthy of our collective attention.
In this context, Milligan’s ideological world seems to be trawling the preferred, inconsequential, ideological weeds. Predatory men? Well, yes, but not in the way her limited and blinkered world imagines.
It is a world of making fools of males. She misses the point.
Is it unfair on Milligan to characterise her move to “real” fiction as merely an extension of her previous activist-journalist career, and a perverted attempt to advance her ideological career?
Well, this isn’t a book review. Pheasants Nest may, indeed, be a good read. Who knows? Who, in fact, cares?
But, we should see through the endlessly friendly, ruling class-engineered bluster about Milligan, and all it portends.PC
A nasty dangerous correspondent who brings journalists into disgrace!
One of the ABC feminist push!
At least this time, Milligan admits it’s fiction.
Straight male hating green sour fruitloop, damaged goods.
Q: What does one call an irremediably self-absorbed left-wing narcissist who is handsomely remunerated for being an opinionated functional illiterate?
A: A journalist.
Q: What did conservative pin-up boy and all-round super hero Tony Abbott do to close down the total waste of taxpayers’ money that is the ABC when he was sitting in the Prime Ministerial seat?
A: Nothing.
Q: How many people would reasonably believe that voting for the so-called “liberals” under Peter “I’m Going to Have Another Referendum” Dutton is going to lead to substantive change in this country?
A: Isn’t the answer to that self-evident?