The JBD of Seduction

"The seduction of Annabel Crabb was a civilised affair. Crabb is, after all, a proper woman, with more than a tint of Jane Austen: rosy-cheeked, hard-working, fair-minded, witty, articulate, a social satirist, educated in Adelaide, though, unlike Austen, happily married, with a second baby on the way. None of this prevented her seduction. Her suitor was tall, smooth, well-funded, cosmopolitan and determined. He was not the only alpha male trying to turn her head, but he had the most to offer and the most to gain. At first Crabb ignored the advances of this would-be tempter, this modern Mr Darcy. She was non-responsive to offers of greater wealth. She pointed out she was pregnant and that she loved to write for a living. None of this dissuaded Mr Darcy, who offered still greater blandishments. The pressure began to build. And why not? Even Jane Austen, a spinster who lived with her parents, was capable of abandon. As she wrote to her sister in 1796, after meeting her real-life Mr Darcy: 'I am almost afraid to tell you how my Irish friend and I behaved. Imagine to yourself everything most profligate and shocking in the way of dancing and sitting down together'. One can only imagine the amount of profligate and shocking sitting down together by Ms Crabb and Mr Darcy. So the slow and expensive seduction took place, leaving Mr Darcy, also known as Mark Scott, managing director of the ABC, to rejoice in extracting Crabb from her Fairfax family. Victory came at a price: about $250,000 a year, all underwritten by the Australian taxpayer." (The ABC of seduction: how Mr Darcy depends on damsels, Sydney Morning Herald, 25/1/10)

That was Herald columnist Paul Sheehan on a fellow Fairfax journalist's jumping ship.

Sheehan knows a thing or two about seduction. Not of the ABC variety of course - they have standards to maintain - but seduction of the JBD variety. A belated disclosure (of sorts) emerged in a 19/1/09 column, Obama is walking a high wire: "I had a briefing with [Khaled Abu] Toameh in November, though can claim no credit for finding him. It was part of a study tour for Australian journalists to Israel, sponsored by the Jewish Board of Deputies which was omitted from my column last week." (See my 19/1/09 post Oriana Fallaci Meets Israeli PR at the SMH 2)

To hell with the seduction of Annabel Crabb, if only Sheehan would titillate us with the juicy details of his own JBD seduction - all that profligate and shocking sitting down together by he and Mr Darcy aka Vic Alhadaff, CEO of the NSW Jewish Board of Deputies. OMG, I'm blushing already.