The column that has fun with the smaller mistakes and missteps of Australia’s mainstream mediocre; that pays homage to those sweet little fishes that individually don’t amount to a full meal but collectively can cause a tummy upset over the overall state of the once great and noble craft of journalism in this country.

Most if not all our reader would remember those wonderful segments on the ABC’s Mad as Hell where Tosh Greenslade played Chris Lorax, the Daily Telegraph junior sub-editor trying to explain to Shaun Micallef why headings that made no sense at all were in fact the creative genius of brilliant wordsmith minds, often being very punny. 

We were reminded of that regular segment that basically wrote its own laughs when we spied this heading (above and below) in yesterday’s (Saturday’s) print copy of The Courier-Mail.

You can almost hear Chris Lorax explaining how a heading like this, regardless of which chump wrote it, and from the same Newscorpse stable as the Daily Torygraph is “just a bit of pun”, a slight twist on the saying Pulls up Stakes”. Harmless fun, really.

Have another look at it.

Can you almost hear Micallef responding: “Yes, we kind of get what you were doing there but for fuck’s sake, WHY? It’s still shit!

Over the years, the washed-up bitter hacks who compile The Bug’s media pisstake columns have also thought of themselves as journalism educators. We’ve explained that newspaper headings can be standard, clever or, sadly, sometimes too clever by half. Maybe we need a new category – Just plain fucking awful – for lamentable offcuts like Barnaby Pulls Up Steaks from Nats.

Here’s the bone we need to pick with the Courier sub that came up with that shocker in a rasher moment.

“Pulls up steaks” is simply no fucking good even if you read the last par of the Courier story that explains that Pauline Hanson had cooked Joyce a wagyu steak in her sandwich press in her parliamentary suite. It’s a shocker and someone should have their rump kicked over it.

Trust us, BUGgers, we’ll steak our reputations on the belief that no portion of beef made the cut when Joyce quit the Nationals. And even if Joyce’s former colleagues has farewelled him with a generous meat tray from a fellow MP grazier, it would have been left out in the sun for a few days before hand. If Joyce left with a stake, it would have been a prime rib tickler jammed up his ample arse.

Instead, we’re left with the dreadful gut feeling that somewhere in Brisbane, a subeditor who really is a silly sausage if we’re allowed not to mince words has pasted that heading in their electronic CV as something to be rather proud of.

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