Enough already

When I was a kid my sisters and I spent years being chucked out of Religious Instruction in primary school because my father had firm views on the subject and had instructed the school, probably in colourful language, that his children were not to be exposed to such a thing. I can't remember when this eventually let up; my mother probably intervened, not because she was any more Christian than he was (except in her values; he's more your rugged individualist), but because she didn't want to expose us to the humiliations of being thus singled out, especially in such a small town.

Not that I cared; it meant I got to sit under the pepper-tree, reading my book of choice, rather than listening to the tedious dronings-on of the RI teacher. If we'd had a good teacher who concentrated on the music and the stories, it might have been a different matter.

It is to this singular childhood that I attribute a paradoxical respect for other people's religious practices and beliefs, though not for the organisations to which they belong. And when I say other people I mean all other people, all over the world. Growing up secular means growing up with no barrow to push and no bone to pick about any religion over any other. Some of my best friends really are Christians, not to mention the Buddhists. And, unlike various other friends I've discussed this with, I have no problem with the concepts of the numinous, the spiritual and the sacred. It's organised religion I have a problem with, and even then I can tolerate it as long as it leaves me alone under my pepper-tree.

If the Assemblies of God, for example, want to turn up the lights and turn on the giant closed-circuit screens when they pass around the money buckets (one for each row) so that everyone including the pastors on the stage can see exactly how much money you're putting in the bucket, then it is the devotees' choice and the devotees' right to be thus manipulated, surveilled and conned. And if parents want to send their kids off to be sexually abused by priests, then nobody can say these days that they haven't had fair warning and it's no business of mine.

But in the spirit of 'Your right to swing your arm ends where it meets my eye', I draw the line where religion starts to influence politics. And as far as Australia is concerned, it's not too much of a stretch to say that John Howard's term as Prime Minister -- not his own colourless, constipated Methodism, but his vote-grabbing open collusion with religious loonies and his barely-concealed hatred of other cultures -- opened up a space in which Kevin Rudd's own much-publicised Christianity became far more acceptable to Australian voters than it might otherwise have been. We're living in a country where the doctrine of the separation of church and state is no longer, even in theory, a given. Naturally the cultural domination of the US has had a lot to do with this, although those who remember anything about the history of the DLP in Australia will know it's not new here.

Now, I've been unduly preoccupied over the last few days with Sarah Palin because the silly woman has invaded my darkest nightmares. I think she is more terrifying than anything the Americans have so far come up with, and that is saying a great deal. If they don't dump her, and the Republicans win the election, and then McCain drops dead of a heart attack that night from the strain, the most powerful person in the world will be someone who is not only dumb enough to believe that the war in Eye-rack is 'God's plan' and that fighting in it is 'a task that is from God', but is also dumb enough to say so in public. Not even Dubya, to my knowledge, has ever gone quite so far.

Yesterday I was mulling these things over in the supermarket carpark, as you do, when I heard a loud female voice behind me. 'PRAISE THE LORDJESUSCHRIST, THE SUNNAGOD!'

Turning to see where this exhortation might be coming from, I saw a large blonde woman in a strange and exotic assortment of clothing. She seemed quite mad, and was glaring straight at me. Why, no thank you, ma'am, I don't believe I will, I muttered -- well below the audibility line, for engaging with the mad in a public place is even more foolish than engaging with them online. But it shook me up a bit. Maybe she wasn't mad at all. Maybe this kind of stuff has just made its way across the Pacific and is infesting the suburban car parks of small Australian cities, and in five years we'll all be doing it.

If we're still here in five years.

Reasons why a blogger might suddenly not be blogging

It would be comfortable to think that the reason I've not had much of substance to say here over the last week or three is that life has been particularly busy, intense and fraught; several major tasks and crises have coincided, some of them not of a bloggable nature and/or in any case more likely to produce a thoughtful silence than anything else.

But I think the main reason is probably this thread and all that it implies. Regarding the original post, there are good arguments to make, and IRL in conversation with the author of the post one would probably at least try to make them. But any post about rape, abortion, breasts or any other area of contest and incomprehension between men and women is always going to bring misogynists, extremists and full-on florid nutters out of the woodwork and into the comments thread, and that is where you need to stop and ask yourself what on earth you think you're doing. Such is the charm of blogging that you sometimes forget how much precious time you're wasting in engagement with people you'd normally walk five miles through waist-deep mouldy custard to avoid.

Not always, though.

Horrorscope

'Don't make any long-term plans.'

It really does say that.

And I'm telling you now, if every Taurean gets wiped off the face of the earth in the next little while then every restaurant, every orchestra, every half-finished building and every bank on the planet will collapse.

More Olympic coverage whingeing

How can it be possible, given its well-publicised infamy and the number of times we heard not just any old North Americans but actual Texans pronouncing the name of the place at the height of its fame, that Bruce McAvaney -- a man well old enough to have been watching the news in 1993 -- thinks the Texas city of Waco is pronounced 'wacko', as in 'wacko Jacko'?

I mean, you can see the association of ideas. But still.

I can haz intertubes?

My internets, they sick. For a whole 48 hours.

Cold turkey city.

Autobiographical Wednesday Mogblogging

Another border skirmish in the war between men and women

Over at Larvatus Prodeo there is debate raging on several different threads about various things to do with sex, gender and feminism. Assorted male commenters who have not done the reading are doing what such commenters usually do and instructing the female commenters (who have done the reading) on what feminism is, what women are like, and how to define such terms as 'patriarchy' and 'the male gaze'. Most of the definitions they offer appear to be matters of personal opinion; most of their instructions about what women are like appear to be based on particular personal acquaintances.

The terms 'patriarchy' and 'the male gaze' are cornerstones of feminist theory that have, over the years, built up quite precise yet complex meanings within feminist (yes I'll say it, because it's exactly what I mean) discourse. Those who have been following the debates in feminist and gender theory since the 1970s, or who came to it later but have done the reading, have very detailed understandings of how these terms are used within that conceptual framework.

Now someone's turned up observing, correctly, that it's impossible to have a discussion en blog about things to do with sex, gender and feminism because people always end up getting heated and unreasonable.

I wonder why that could possibly be.

But he knows what he likes

The Northern Territory News begins its article on the current Art Monthly cover with the screaming headline NUDE GIRL ART OUTRAGE and concludes with an implied whine about arts funding, of the kind you get on the blogs of adolescent male libertarians. In the middle they brag that the Arts Monthly editor Maurice O'Riordan is a Territorian and former art critic for the paper. Confused much?

Not that I think putting the offending (!) photo of the then six-year-old Olympia Nelson on the cover was any kind of a good idea. It may have been meant to be a daring and defiant gesture and I am in sympathy with the various principles behind it, but in terms of smart arts politics it was a really, really stupid thing to do.

Among other things it has the Prime Minister, who during the Bill Henson furore revealed through his attitude and choice of language to discuss it that he understands nothing about the arts and presumably cares less, now harrumphing about requiring the Australia Council to direct its funding in accordance with his personal quirks. Remind you of any other Prime Minister we know?

When I first read this report of Rudd's plans for the Australia Council I was reminded of two things. One was his announcement that he personally will have the final word on the lucrative new Prime Minister's Literary Award, something the judges weren't apprised of until after they'd been offered, and accepted, their positions as judges; presumably he means to continue as he began, making arts policy on the run by fiat when he clearly doesn't know his chiaroscuro from his elbow.

And the other was an image of the entire Australian arts community represented by the outraged figure of Daffy Duck in one of many classic Loony Tunes cartoons: 'Of courthe you know thith meanth war!' [UPDATE: Bugs said it too.]

In the wake of the Henson debate there was urgent need for the arts community and the PM to mend their fences but this is just going to make it worse. You'd think, wouldn't you, that an Arts Minister worthy of the name might step in at this point and do something intelligent.

Oh well.

Merde: a list

1) Deadline day.

2) Skin cancer treatment (on face, though blessedly hidden by fringe -- sometimes) has now been painful and unsightly for over a month. (Painful and unsightly means it's working, but the longer this goes on, the colder the comfort.)

3) Member of inner circle of beloveds in hospital.

4) Harassment by phone and email from several quarters inc Animal Welfare League whose book of raffle tickets I have lost. Again.

5) House falling down around my ears.

6) Shocking news from bathroom scales.

7) Still no world peace.

Next week: pantaloons on the piano legs

Oh for crying out loud.

In decades of literary training I have never had reason to suspect that there was any category beyond farce. Until now.

Not even Ratty ever presided over anything as ludicrous as this. The Ern Malley hoax pales into insignificance as a demonstration of what a ridiculous country we can be when we put our minds to it. Imagine the international headlines: AUSTRALIA'S NATIONAL POLICE RAID ITS NATIONAL ART GALLERY. One can only hope that Barry Humphries is getting a lot of new material out of it.

Some time over the last 24 hours the Bill Henson fiasco has assumed the proportions and hysteria levels of a witch-hunt; one manifestation of this is that the discussion has broadened in some fora (see for example the link to Larvatus Prodeo, below) into accusations that Henson has also "exploited" drug addicts in Europe as subject for other photographs.

And despite the many precedents in various countries (notably the US and the UK) regarding art versus the moral-panic perpetrators, I am actually a bit frightened about what that says about this country and the people in charge of it. There are several different discussion threads on the subject over at Larvatus Prodeo; I've left a comment at one of them that I might paste in here as well.

... No doubt like many other tourists, I was and remain haunted by the addicts in Vienna’s underground railway stations, particularly those in the Innere Stadt. One in particular, can’t remember its name, was so full of floating, dazed, emaciated, deathly bodies that it looked and felt like some nightmare underworld. Some of them were begging. Some of them were unconscious. Some of them were vomiting and/or incontinent.

If representation of them in photography is ‘exploitation’, would representation of them in painting be any different? What if you wrote a song about them? I have been known in the past to write fiction and I hope to write more fiction in the future; If I put this vision of hell into a story or a novel, accurately describing what I saw, is that exploitation? If I write nonfiction in which this scene is described in a documentary manner, is that better or worse? If I refuse payment for these works, does any of that make a difference, and if so in what way?

Here’s another example: ten years ago Robert Hannaford painted a fabulous portrait of Robert Dessaix when the latter was very ill, with, at that stage, a not-wonderful prognosis. The painting is profoundly haunting. Was that exploitation?

My point, and I do have one, is that the logical conclusion of arguments like these is that all art depicting human subjects is exploitation and should be banned. Given the degree of hostility to art that is oozing out of public discourse as we speak, perhaps that’s the aim. I am so appalled by the federal police’s raid this evening on the National Gallery that I’m now prepared to believe anything.

On reading The Spare Room

There's a post about Helen Garner's The Spare Room over here. It hardly scratches the surface, but I hope to write at least one more when I've given it some more thought.

UPDATE: As you were. Yes, I'm sufficiently rattled by the viciously insulting (and, naturally, anonymous) comment that just turned up over there to take that post down. It was meant to be a particular kind of personal post about the experience of reading, of a kind that only a blog will let one write. But if that's the effect it has on a particular kind of troll then I would rather it wasn't there at all. I might try for a more orthodox post on the Garner book later.

I have a very good idea of who it was and why he did it. In fact, I am almost sure. But that doesn't actually help very much.

President McCain, leader of the free world. Sigh.

I just wrote that up there to start trying to get used to it.

Regular readers of Get Fuzzy will know that cartoonist Darby Conley unfettered feline Bucky Katt (from his Siamese POV of Republicanism) has lately christened his opponents the Demolitioncrats.

And ain't it the truth.

Experience is the best teacher, part 4,594: washing instructions

What they say: 'Handwash separately in cold water.'

What they mean: 'Handwash separately in cold water.'

Said it before, say it again: Red Symons is a genius

I think this is the best one so far. But be warned: it's incredibly depressing.

Pro-business = anti-worker, as everybody knows

Is it just me or is everyone else also finding the Coalition's saturation union-hatin' bogeyman's-gonna-getcha TV ad campaign intolerably crude and stupid? I've only watched an hour of commerical television (House, Wednesday night; does anybody agree with my best mate that House has jumped the shark?) since the election was called and by the end of it I was already climbing up the walls. The idea that this is going to go on without respite until November 24 (or whenever the blackout starts) boggles the mind.

The 'reasoning' behind these ads appears to be as follows:

1) All them Labor types are 'union officials' or at least used to go out with one which as we all know is the same thing.

2) Unions are there for the support and protection of the workers. That is, they are pro-worker.

3) As everyone knows, if you are pro-worker then you must be anti-business and vice versa, because, as everyone knows, the relationship between business and labour is always simply and precisely adversarial.

4) We haven't actually realised yet that running this argument makes it crystal clear that we are, in an absolute sort of way, anti-worker by definition.


Not being likewise a seer in black and white, I'm not all that thrilled about the unions myself. But that is strictly from a feminist viewpoint and based on bitter experience of masculinist values and tactics observed over many years -- values and tactics exercised mainly by those who have shouldered, bullied and bludgeoned their way into union officialdom in the first place. If I were in charge of an anti-union campaign, it would be run from a viewpoint even more horrifying to the current regime than that of the unions themselves.

They all look the same to him

Today at crikey.com.au, Mungo MacCallum summarises a recent monstrous bingle in the Coalition's Clayton's campaigning:

'Even [Howard's] shameless attempt to duchess the Chinese community went wrong: his staff produced a glossy invitation lauding the achievements of Chinese Australians, but through either blind racism or pig ignorance sent it not only to the Chinese, but to their sworn enemies, the Koreans and Vietnamese as well – after all, they all look the same and they all have funny names.'

Three questions:

1) What does he mean, either blind racism or pig ignorance?

2) Was there really no minion anywhere in the process of formulating and disseminating this message who heard alarm bells? If the answer is yes, then the Rodent has one or more, erm, rats in the ranks.

3) Does anyone plan to point out to Howard that if only he knew a little more about the postmodernism and/or the multiculturalism against which he so tirelessly rails and legislates (or even just about the history he never tires of talking up as though the rest of us didn't know any), he and/or his People would never have made this grotesquely insulting and, one hopes, fatal mistake in the first place?

Liveblogging half the AFL Grand Final

1.53 pm (SA time)

The teams have just come onto the ground. The Power are full of beans, leaping around like kids on speed, couldn't wait to get out there; Tredders led them out like a warrior expecting to kick butt. They burst through their banner as if it wasn't there.

Geelong by contrast looked as if they were about to get off the boat on the beach at Gallopoli. Some of them appeared to be praying, others to be trying not to vomit. They ran under their banner. Every one of them was wearing a tragic expression except for inspired feral redhead Cameron Ling, who looked like he couldn't wait to sink his teeth into something teal.

Port Adelaide Magpies legend Tim Ginever predicted yesterday on the radio that the first goal would be kicked by Port's Brett Ebert. We'll soon know.

2.09 pm Well, Ebert had two chances for it: the first was a point and the second a spray, and the first goal has just been kicked by the favourite for it (8-1 apparently), Geelong's Cameron Mooney. Geelong's Matthew Stokes has just been carried off the ground with a very nasty-looking knee injury.

2.19 pm Stokes is clearly not as badly hurt as he looked, as he is back and warming up to get back out on the ground. The Power's first goal has just been kicked by its captain; considering Tredders had just had his head pounded into the turf by an overnthusiastic Geelong tackler it's a wonder he was conscious, much less able to kick a goal. OTOH, judging by the volume and quality of the noise coming from the teeve, I fear Geelong may have just replied.

In other predictions, Gavin Wanganeen said earlier this week that he thought if the Indigenous players were in form then the Power would win. ('Maybe it's something to do with the spiritual side of things, who knows?' he said, thereby using a word I don't think I've ever heard a footballer use in my life before and probably never will again.) They're certainly doing well so far, especially Danyle Pearce and the magical Peter Burgoyne.

2.36 pm and as I was writing that remark about Burgoyne he kicked a goal, but it's now the end of the first quarter and the score is Geelong 5.7 to Port Adelaide 2.2, which is pretty seriously not good. Mark Williams will be having a few harsh words about now, I should think.

Matthew Stokes is back on the ground and not even strapped up or anything. Academy Award city.

The Burgoyne brothers and the Cornes brothers have seen a lot of action already, while Nathan Ablett has also been in the thick of things (no kicks but lots of hard work) but nary a peep out of Gary Jr to date. Chad Cornes just took a very nasty bump to the head so I hope he is all right. Brownlow winner Jimmy Bartel has had a hard time getting away from Kane but when he did, about a minute before the end of the quarter, he put it to very good use and kicked himself a goal.

Peter Burgoyne and Warren Tredrea appear to be the only Power players on the ground.

3.13 pm Half time and it's Geelong's 70-something points to Port's 20-something points and I'm going to stop now. It's too embarrassing.

Never mind. I mean, Geelong need it a lot more than we do.

*sigh*

Power Cream Kangaroos

It's a little one-line poem, isn't it.

And if the bloody Victorian commentators on Channel Ten's disgraceful telecast of Power v Kangaroos at AAMI Stadium this afternoon think that their sullen, dull-witted, mean-spirited, grudging and hopelessly biased commentary (or the way the afternoon was presented at the end as having been all about Glen Archer's final game) in any way spoiled South Australians' pleasure in the spectacle of the Power giving the Kangaroos an absolute bath, then you can forget it. It didn't.

Quite the reverse, in fact. We're glad we made you sulk.

September 29, Power v. Geelong: the Burgoyne brothers, the Cornes brothers and the Ablett brothers. Can't wait.

Hot August Day

Yesterday was Adelaide's hottest August day on record.

Not that I think the globe is warming or anything silly like that.

Why don't we just send them up the chimneys and down the mines?

From Anna Lamboys in today's issue of crikey.com.au:

'There’s a document circulating around Yuendumu, Central Australia’s largest Aboriginal community, that suggests federally appointed Government Business Managers on Aboriginal communities in the Territory will have the power to direct police activities on those communities.

Northern Territory coppers are to be ordered to round up kids wagging school and conscript them into work gangs so they are "worked until visibly tired" ... The document "Yuendumu – School Attendance Proposal" has been drawn up by Noel Mason, the newly appointed Government Business Manager at Yuendumu.

Explaining that the kids from Yuendumu "enjoy staying away from school in Yuendumu far too much", Mason states that "the names of children staying up late at night will be collected and those children will used to assist with the clean up the town site the next day ... The aim is to make children who want to avoid school, have a busy, tiring day."

He goes on:

"Children listed will be ... questioned about why they are not at school, then moved to an area of rubbish in the town site and will be required to collect rubbish as punishment. Family elders, Police, Night Patrol staff and CDEP staff, will manage the rubbish collection. Students will be worked until they are visibly tired. Water and fruit will be available for them whilst working."'


Great. How about rubber gloves, face masks, free antibiotics and emergency responses to needlestick injuries?

I don't even recognise this country any more.

One ray of light is that the Northern Territory police are already publicly very unhappy as it is about the Feds' latest foray backwards in time; many of them have extensive experience in the Aboriginal communities and already know what works and what doesn't. I hope for, and expect, harsh words from the boys in beige in charge.

UPDATE: Or, if you are obliged to use grown-ups to do your dirty work, here's another cool new bit of government enabling: now you can ensure that they are expendable icky foreign grown-ups that nobody cares about.