The Angry Exile: Fairfax and its comments policy

The Hangman

Into our town the Hangman came,
Smelling of gold and blood and flame.
And he paced our bricks with a diffident air,
And built his frame in the courthouse square.
The scaffold stood by the courthouse side,
Only as wide as the door was wide;
A frame as tall, or little more,
Than the capping sill of the courthouse door.
And we wondered, whenever we had the time,
Who the criminal, what the crime
That the Hangman judged with the yellow twist
of knotted hemp in his busy fist.
And innocent though we were, with dread,
We passed those eyes of buckshot lead --
Till one cried: "Hangman, who is he
For whom you raised the gallows-tree?"
Then a twinkle grew in the buckshot eye,
And he gave us a riddle instead of reply:
"He who serves me best," said he,
"Shall earn the rope of the gallows-tree."
And he stepped down, and laid his hand
On a man who came from another land.
And we breathed again, for another's grief
At the Hangman's hand was our relief
And the gallows-frame on the courthouse lawn
By tomorrow's sun would be struck and gone.
So we gave him way, and no one spoke,
Out of respect for his Hangman's cloak.
The next day's sun looked mildly down
On roof and street in our quiet town,
And stark and black in the morning air
Was the gallows-tree in the courthouse square.
And the Hangman stood at his usual stand
With the yellow hemp in his busy hand;
With his buckshot eye and his jaw like a pike
And his air so knowing and business-like.
And we cried, "Hangman, have you not done
Yesterday, with the foreign one?"
Then we fell silent, and stood amazed,
"Oh, not for him was the gallows raised."
He laughed a laugh as he looked at us:
"Did you think I'd gone to all this fuss
To hang one man? That's a thing I do
To stretch a rope when the rope is new."
Then one cried "Murder!" and one cried "Shame!"
And into our midst the Hangman came
To that man's place. "Do you hold," said he,
"with him that was meant for the gallows-tree?"
And he laid his hand on that one's arm.
And we shrank back in quick alarm!
And we gave him way, and no one spoke
Out of fear of his Hangman's cloak.
That night we saw with dread surprise
The Hangman's scaffold had grown in size.
Fed by the blood beneath the chute,
The gallows-tree had taken root;
Now as wide, or a little more,
Than the steps that led to the courthouse door,
As tall as the writing, or nearly as tall,
Halfway up on the courthouse wall.
The third he took -- we had all heard tell --
Was a usurer, and an infidel.
"What," said the Hangman "have you to do
With the gallows-bound, and he a Jew?"
And we cried out, "Is this one he
Who has served you well and faithfully?"
The Hangman smiled: "It's a clever scheme
to try the strength of the gallows-beam."
The fourth man's dark, accusing song
Had scratched our comfort hard and long;
"And what concern," he gave us back.
"Have you for the doomed -- the doomed and Black?"
The fifth. The sixth. And we cried again,
"Hangman, Hangman, is this the man?"
"It's a trick," he said. "that we hangmen know
For easing the trap when the trap springs slow."
And so we ceased, and asked no more,
As the Hangman tallied his bloody score.
And sun by sun, and night by night,
The gallows grew to monstrous height.
The wings of the scaffold opened wide
Till they covered the square from side to side;
And the monster cross-beam, looking down,
Cast its shadow across the town.
Then through the town the Hangman came,
Through the empty streets, and called my name --
And I looked at the gallows soaring tall,
And thought, "There is no one left at all
For hanging, and so he calls to me
To help pull down the gallows-tree."
So I went out with right good hope
To the Hangman's tree and the Hangman's rope.
He smiled at me as I came down
To the courthouse square through the silent town.
And supple and stretched in his busy hand
Was the yellow twist of the hempen strand.
And he whistled his tune as he tried the trap,
And it sprang down with a ready snap --
And then with a smile of awful command
He laid his hand upon my hand.
"You tricked me. Hangman!," I shouted then,
"That your scaffold was built for other men...
And I no henchman of yours," I cried,
"You lied to me, Hangman. Foully lied!"
Then a twinkle grew in the buckshot eye,
"Lied to you? Tricked you?" he said. "Not I.
For I answered straight and I told you true --
The scaffold was raised for none but you.
For who has served me more faithfully
Then you with your coward's hope?" said he,
"And where are the others who might have stood
Side by your side in the common good?"
"Dead," I whispered. And amiably
"Murdered," the Hangman corrected me:
"First the foreigner, then the Jew...
I did no more than you let me do."
Beneath the beam that blocked the sky
None had stood so alone as I.
The Hangman noosed me, and no voice there
Cried "Stop!" for me in the empty square.

Maurice Ogden

Saturday 9 July 2011

Fairfax and its comments policy - UPDATED

The online editions of the Fairfax group, that is The Sydney Morning Herald, The Brisbane Times, Melbourne's The Age, WA Today etc., have a strange and unpredictable comments policy. They moderate, though of course many other newspapers, including the News Corp ones here, do the same thing. What's strange and unpredictable is that comments are often closed not long after an article is published, and that this can be a day or two or even a few hours, while other articles may remain open to comments apparently indefinitely and still others may not have comments enabled at all.

And so it is with an op-ed piece I linked to in yesterday's blog about the Screws of the World being closed down. Wrong red-top goes, by Tim Dick, the SMH media editor, went up yesterday morning, and pointed out the incongruity of Rebekah Brooks apparently staying put while the paper was being shut down. However, it was also a semi-canonisation piece about how wonderful The Grauniad have been.

The scandal has been in the making for a decade, with inquiries by a parliamentary committee, the police and the Press Complaints Commission unable to do what The Guardian eventually did through its own tenacious reporting.

There are few heroes in this story. The Guardian is one. It uncovered the sordid mess over years of real journalism, helped from time to time by The New York Times and The Independent - and only joined finally this week by the rest of the British media, even News's own title, The Times, once the game was up.

Not surprising sentiment in a paper that's virtually the upside-down version of The Graun and certainly a kindred spirit but it did make me chuckle a bit when I read it. I thought about leaving a comment to the effect that while I agreed with the point about Rebekah Brooks I thought it was naive to assume that The Graun, noted hypocrite that it is on matters of minimising tax liability, would never, ever have done anything shady in its own pursuit of a scoop. Unfortunately I also thought, 'Meh, maybe tomorrow.' And that was a bad idea because after what might have been as few as seven hours judging by the first and last comments' time stamps...

And this means that I can't now express my reservations about Tim Dick's adoration for The Graun or draw his attention and that of his readers to Guido's blog about The Guardian's own story hunting methods.

I'd like to say something to Tim Dick about how this is awfully like some of what the NotW was up to and that while he's not throwing stones from a glass house he's singing the praises of people who apparently do. However, thanks to Fairfax Media Group's policy of often closing the door on comments after less than a day I can't inconvenience him with the information that The Graun are less than saintly themselves.

UPDATE - here's an extreme example of Fairfax's comments policy from The Age. The article, about real estate agents seemingly being less than frank about the state of Melbourne's property market (i.e. fucking overpriced, struggling to sell and likely to drop) is dated today, Sunday 10th July. We can't tell when the comments were actually closed but we can see the times of the first and last, which were 9:20am and 11:56am. Of course it's possible that the comments just dried up and some time this afternoon they decided to knock it on the head, but in the two and a half hours between the first and last 65 comments - one every 144 seconds on average - were made. Draw your own conclusions but I'd guess it was not long after the last comment at 11:56. As for why they do it I really don't know. It can't simply be censorship when they moderate all comments anyway so unless there's a significant cost to keeping comments open after a certain point, which then raises the question of why some articles remain open for comments for ages, I'm at a loss to explain it.