frotteurism: The act of rubbing one’s genitalia against another’s person, usually that of a stranger. Must be non-consensual and is considered a psychiatric condition as well as a criminal offense in most places.

So for this issue, scratch any reference to scholarly and substitute respect.
Entertainment is fine, if that’s all The Monthly or any similar publication wants to do. Though if there’s a pretense to be anything more, where we have an author writing a biography reviewing another biography on the same subject, it’s frotteurism. Standards/respect. Kind of go together, really.

And yes, watching what you say lest it be misused is very tiring. Seen Patchauri (head of IPCC) on telly lately? Bloke is absolutely fed up with providing the same careful responses to the same denialist rubbish ad nauseum. I love doing satire, but can’t mix levity, irony or black humour with any serious comment. It shows how important words and meaning are, and why people who rely on them can become tetchy when they’re used cheaply in what they see as an inappropriate context.

Surely context and conventions play a part? When you mention people who “have no respect for any scholarly medium or for scholarship itself” it makes me think: the authors aren’t scholars, the books aren’t scholarly, The Monthly isn’t a scholarly journal … so why would I expect the conventions of scholarship to be observed?

Look at another review in the same issue – Robert Manne reviewing Paul Kelly’s new book. Manne tells us that Kelly is a chameleon type who takes on the mindset of whoever is in power etc etc. This is not scholarly reviewing – but it’s the standard of discourse at The Monthly, a magazine that has a line, a point of view, a style. It might be bad mannered for Wallace to trash the other author’s book, but I don’t see it as much of an ethics issue since she doesn’t pretend that she’s disinterested.