The Weight

Cartoonist Alan Moir in the Sydney Morning Herald, Monday 25 October.

Inferno

Last Saturday was the hottest temperature I have ever experienced. At our house, it reached 47 degrees, which I see is over 116 degrees in the old fahrenheit scale.

In the afternoon, after abandoning the house when it hit 30 degrees inside, we walked a hundred metres from the car to the entrance of a shopping centre looking for shelter from the heat, and I covered my little boy as if radiation was falling from the sky, which it was. Hot wind like a blast-furnace swirled around empty carparks. The sky was yellow and we could smell smoke. I had an intimation of armageddon.

Looking at the images of Marysville and Kinglake, armageddon is about right.


I have been preoccupied by thoughts about the effect of these public disasters and my reaction to them. I've been working in the federal Parliament this week, and the sense of despair has been overwhelming as the sheer size of the destruction and the number of lives lost rolls out over the media across several days.

I'm not one to emote very much when the public join in with these festivals of mourning over some dead celebrity, or even when lives are lost in natural disasters. Mostly, I've thought my reaction was reasonable and civilised, as these events are part of a larger picture of birth and death, creation and destruction, and a long way from me. And it's true, they are, but sometimes I have cause to doubt the self-satisfied veneer of my response.

Yesterday, on the plane, I felt an uncontrollable welling in me, a heaviness in the heart that I had to struggle to control. On the video screen, a shot from a helicopter of a large area of burned out grassland, then following a car's tyre tracks clearly discernable against the black earth. Pulling out to a wider view, a white car, pathetically abandoned at the very edge of a large dam still full of water. It was not known, said the voiceover, whether the person in the car had survived.

The last few days have been spent with the constant din of the television and radio news, cycling and recycling the same stories and bits of information that really aren't information at all. It's hard not be cynical as the commercial stations mine this disaster like a seam of gold, as they interview anyone with a story to tell or just an anecdote that will become worn with age and repetition, an emblem of an experience.

I haven't read anything as thoughtful as David Tiley's contribution, so I will link to it here.

Barista: 'We lived again but life was different.'

Economic irrationalism at Radio National

Nine’s ‘Sunday’ program axed, Fairfax cutting staff, one university after another announcing staff cuts and cuts of subjects, the latest: La Trobe University.

It reminds me of the counterintuitive line pedalled by several of the major banks years ago when they started cutting suburban branch numbers, informing us that it was to “improve customer service.”

I am further depressed by the news that the same dead hand is hovering over important programs on Radio National, including the Media Report. Without doubt, the best current affairs commentary to be found in this country is on Radio National’s World Today, AM and particularly, PM programs.

As Andrew Dodd, the Media Report’s founding presenter, wrote in Crikey today:

The Media Report has popped up in Hansard, the indexes of books, the curricula of university courses and the ipods of listeners. It has kept on keeping on for fifteen years with informed intelligent debate about the state of the nation’s media.

Not bad for a half hour show that’s staffed by one and a half people and costs much less to produce over a year than just one episode of almost any TV program you’d care to mention.

He concludes:

We are looking for media that starts where current affairs reporters finish and which challenges us with new ways of thinking about issues or which introduces us to ideas that we’d never thought to consider. These wonderful Radio National programs did this regularly and their loss is a huge blow to the diversity of our media.

It's rare that I agree with The Australian's editorial writer about anything, but I concur with every sentence of today's piece, except one:

The paradox of this media-abundant age is that the thirst for quality has never been greater, as the growing circulation of newspapers such as The Australian shows.

Yyyeeeeesssss.......

Bill Henson: Let’s have ourselves a hangin’!

"WHEN the forces of public order march into art galleries and walk off with exhibits deemed to be offensive, two things are certain: one, that images which the vast majority would never have seen or wanted to see will be made famous and will be looked up on the internet by slavering hordes, and, two, a great deal of nonsense will be talked by a great many people."

- Germaine Greer

My first reaction to the latest artistic moral panic was sadness and disappointment. Disappointment because the abduction of several Henson works by police was an extreme overreaction to a complaint, and sadness because I knew that when confronted all parties would scurry to occupy mutually hostile sides of the argument, neither side engaging with the valid arguments of the other. This has proved to be the case.

I have extremely mixed feelings about this latest episode in the intellectual life of the nation. Firstly because I dislike Bill Henson’s work. Unlike Sebastian Smee who published a defence in The Australian last week, I find it unconvincing, empty and pretentious, the very definition of mannerism.

I remember as a photography student reading a profile of Henson in a weekend magazine. This is probably unfair to him, but the thing that struck me the most at the time were the terms in which he chose to describe and discuss his work: parallels with classical music were evoked, with romantic poets of the past. I thought, oh dear…

This was an impression that only solidified with Henson’s career retrospective at the Victorian National Gallery I saw a few years ago. So much depended upon the massive scale, the all-enshrouding darkness of the photographs, with bits of pale flesh peeking out here and there from the gloom; large slabs of torn black photographic paper to no apparent purpose other than superficial visual effect, and most irritating of all, the generalised aura of sweaty ennui.

I came away with the feeling that what I had just seen was a contemporary equivalent of a Royal Academy exhibition of the 1880s; grand, very large, but equally cut-off from the currents of artistic history that really matter. We have seen this sort of thing before. Henson’s work echoes some of the most cloying and sentimental Victorian Academy painting, especially that which dealt with the ‘fallen woman’ and the sanctimonious claptrap of Victorian sexual hypocrisy.

Secondly I feel uneasy about this because I am a parent to a daughter and I find the assumptions his work appears to be based on extremely questionable. As images, they seem to me to belong to a rather unsavoury history of adult men musing at their leisure about the sexuality of adolescent or pre-adolescent children. At best, this mode of image-making is self-indulgent and at worst a kind of exploitation based on fantasy that at its extreme margins includes sexual assault.

That’s not to make the category mistake of saying that all art belonging to this history is itself a form of assault. It may be exploitative or it may not. Germaine Greer was admirably precise in unpacking the assumptions of gender and the (sometimes) unconscious habit of making allowances for no other reason than that something was painted and not photographed, coming with the patina of art-historical credibility, when its intention was sometimes literally pornographic.

In my opinion Henson’s work is not and could not be seriously confused for actual pornography. Not by either its dictionary definition or by the widest practical use of that word. To call it pornography is simply wrong in fact. However, it is, at least in my view, exploitative.

I have mixed feelings thirdly because I defend Henson’s right, and the right of artists generally, to explore difficult or contentious territory. In fact, I think artists have a moral responsibility to do so.

But since we’re talking about morality, I think artists have the same duty to operate morally in the world as everyone else does. That is, I do not think art occupies a special zone exempt from the moral precepts that bind the rest of society together.

This is an important point to make because many who dispute Henson’s right to operate in such an ethically complex territory (like, I suspect, the Prime Minister), apparently apply a burden of proof that doesn’t seem to apply to everyone. I mean that we accept different kinds of images in different contexts, without dispute. Society doesn’t seem to have a problem with sexually explicit imagery per se (we have censorship categories to deal especially with it) but we would not accept that imagery in all places at all times.


Henson’s work operates in special contexts. The first most important is that it is ‘art’. It is usually encountered in a gallery where people have to make a special effort to attend. It is a certain size, has certain characteristics, etc. That is, even though they are photographs and are reproducible, the artwork itself is the print, not the reproduction of the print. By endlessly reproducing the work or part of the work on websites, television screens and so on, the work is stripped of its qualifying contexts and presented as something else. This has important effects on what it is that we are arguing about. When the Prime Minister is presented on a morning TV interview where the discussion has strayed onto child pornography and the media’s creeping sexualisation of children, he responds that it is ‘disgusting’. It is entirely predictable that he would do so, no matter how much we might like him to be aware of its special contexts. The context has changed, and the man who is anxious to be seen to represent the population as a whole, reacts as the population as a whole reacts when such an image is seen in a new context. He might have responded very differently if he had been standing in a gallery before the work itself.

It is not pornography but unfortunately Henson’s work may still meet a legal definition of an offence at some point in the future. I have heard various legal authorities over the last few days make the point that he could be legally vulnerable if one of his models retrospectively decided to lodge a complaint. This seems to me to be credible and Henson is also morally vulnerable on this point. To what degree can a child give consent to participate in the making of an image that will have a life of its own forever afterwards? Henson’s work is freely reproduced without reference to anyone but him. This has been demonstrated to an almost ridiculous degree as the contentious images are endlessly reproduced on every newspaper website, the hypocrites claiming that the issue is one of ‘child welfare’.

It strikes me that there is an absence at the heart of artistic debate in this country, at least regarding the visual arts, and that is the artists themselves. I totally respect Henson’s decision to remain out of the controversy while he is burned in effigy by talk-back callers and tabloid TV (I think of what the 1943 Archibald Prize controversy did to the health and peace of mind of William Dobell). However, I can’t help but yearn for a visual artist at least as publicly articulate as so many of our writers. Celebrity is the language of the mass media, and while the subjects of the discussion remain absent, the wolves will go on playing with the corpse of their reputations. Artists don’t have to be celebrities to regard themselves as public intellectuals, just as writers so often do, with a role to play in informing and educating the public and fostering discussion. The result is that artists are regarded as little better than perverts and kiddie-fiddlers.

Believe me that I agree with John McDonald when he fumes that the Prime Minister should be aware of the name of one of his country’s premier visual artists. Where we diverge is that I think that visual artists are at least partly to blame. Visual artists (unless they are populists like a Ken Done or Pro Hart) will always be marginal with reference to the mainstream of popular culture, just as classical musicians are. The responsibility is not with the popular mainstream to understand how special we are and to respect our priorities; if we want acceptance, the responsibility is on us to explain, interpret and participate in cultural discourse in something other than a precious, resentful, condescending way.

Many of the defenders reveal their bad faith when, like John McDonald in the Sydney Morning Herald, they deny that ordinary people don’t have the right to an opinion at all. He said:

"It is no secret that rank populism is now a fact of life in Australian politics. But in an age when every message is refined and spin-doctored to avoid offending anyone's delicate sensibilities, it appears to be OK to pronounce judgments on unseen works of art in the name of public morality."

I can’t say whether he finds it worse that people can have an opinion about works of art in the name of public morality, or that they can have an opinion when the work is unseen. At any rate, the Prime Miniser was looking at an image when he gave an opinion (not, I add, the work but an image of the work), and he prefaced his remark with the words “I think…” My point is that he has every right to have an opinion, just as every talkback caller has the right to an opinion. They are not informed opinions, but then whose fault is that?

Most defensive discussion of the work has largely avoided facing the fact that while we so often denounce ‘corporate paedophilia’ and the creeping sexualisation of children in the media, the onus is on those who defend Bill Henson’s work to explain how or why it does not belong on this continuum.

A few things need stating, that despite the special art-context and all that that implies:

1. The images frequently depict children, and

2. The images are frequently sexualised.

These are almost statements of fact, rather than interpretation. The images are ‘about’ sexuality in a sense that includes adolescent sexuality. That is why they are so edgy. It is part of their power as images, it is also why so many find them disturbing, including some that were so disturbed they took their complaint to the police. For curators and the general art mafia is disallow this as part of the conversation is irresponsible and intellectually dishonest. This is why I find so much of the defence of the works unconvincing.

I find other artists and photographers don’t often have much to say about Henson’s work apart from noting his obvious technical mastery. Those that crow the loudest in his favour tend to be curators and the sort of people who get done for tax evasion. You would be mistaken if you thought that Bill gets down to the seedier parts of Darlinghurst to look for models, even though that’s just how he makes them up. Oh no. These are private school boys and girls, their parents the art equivalent of wealthy stage-mothers, lining up to pimp their kids for the social cache of being part of a ‘Bill Henson’. These parents have Henson’s work on their walls anyway – they can afford it. If you had any doubt, the Shadow Treasurer and wealthiest person in the federal Parliament Malcolm Turnbull had to ‘fess up the other day and admit that he quite liked Bill Henson’s work and in fact he had some on his walls at home. Was he hounded in the parliament as a pornographer? Of course not, he’s a Liberal and a toff and we expect that sort of thing from people like him, but woe betide any Labor politician who evinces any sympathy for the arts. Latte sippers! Elitists! Witness the abuse heaped on Kevin Rudd for the expressions of support directed his way by the ‘Creative Australia’ segment of the 2020 Summit.

I have heard talkback callers state simply that to photograph a child in any context without clothes is wrong. I can sympathise with those who hold this view without agreeing with it. This would include any image that is taken of an unclothed child for any reason whatsoever. It would also sexualise images that are in no way sexual, imposing such an interpretation on any image regardless of the context. We should avoid this extremism no matter how shrill public moralists like ‘Bravehearts’ may get.

To simply say that art can never intrude upon some aspect of life is a principle that we should never embrace. It is a statement like “No comedian should ever tell a joke about cancer, because cancer is never funny.” That statement is wrong not because cancer is funny, but because it remains to be seen whether a joke about cancer is funny. That is, we need to hear the joke first.

Similarly, art about adolescent sexuality may be smut or it may say something original, something affecting, something worth saying about that aspect of life. The point is, we need to see and judge the art first. Does Bill Henson’s art say something original about sexuality? In my opinion it doesn’t. This doesn’t preclude the possibility that it might say a few interesting things about adolescence, for example, and I have no doubt about Henson’s seriousness of purpose. Certainly he thinks it does and many people (Sebastian Smee, for one) believe he does. That should be enough for any community to tolerate its existence.

Henson’s work must also be seen in the context of his reputation, even though it doesn’t insulate him from criticism. He has represented his country at the Venice Biennale. His bibliography is several pages long and the list of institutions that own his work includes many of the premier art institutions in the world and in Australia. By anyone’s estimation, he is one of the nation’s most senior visual artists in any medium.

I have no doubt that the courts will find against the complaint. Henson’s work is plainly not ‘obscene’ in either the legal or the usual sense. More explicit images of adolescents can be seen on many newsstands and on television. This makes the whole affair potentially embarrassing for any politician or other public figure who may still have something even more inflammatory to say about the work, sensing that there is now a competition on about who can denounce pornography the loudest.

What we are left with is a sense of sadness that the climate of intellectual debate in this country is the loser. Bill Henson is a loser. Kevin Rudd is a loser. The only winners are those like commercial talkback radio, tabloid current affairs television, morals crusaders and media proprietors whose economic interests are served by a good old witch-burning.

A different kind of election?

Michael Leddy's comment to my previous post made me think that despite all the distance and the word-bites that constitute almost our entire picture of the American election, maybe it is possible to get the sense of it about right.

In what I have read and seen, I've been surprised and discomforted by the cynicism of the Clinton campaign, a kind of scorched earth policy that would bring the house down so no one else can live in it.

Yesterday, Guy Rundle was talking about the appearance of Hillary on Good Morning America, in which she apparently promised to "obliterate Iran". I'm surprised I missed it actually, as it's on at about 5.00am on our television and I'm usually up trying to get young Sweeney Payne, aged six weeks, back to sleep.

I can't imagine what she thought she was doing saying crap like that on morning television. I can only imagine the context, but it seems to me she often rushes to occupy the vacuum the failure of neo-conservatism has opened up, something Obama seems loath to do.

Hillary is angling to make Golda Meir look like a Geelong regional office special needs coordination program conflict resolution officer and part-time reiki masseuse, with an incredible ad which appears to suggest that Bin Laden started the War in the Pacific using Hurricane Katrina against Pearl Harbour, and the only person who can stop him/them/it is a pants-suited terminatrix from the future.

I was recently surprised to hear left-leaning friends of mine all enthusiastically endorsing Hillary, including Doug, whose passion for American politics and history should not be doubted. Even amongst informed people working in politics, the feeling seemed to be almost universal. I put it down to the powerful pull of the gender question. Does it look like a woman President is a more momentous leap into a progressive future than a black one? Given the economic and (there's no better word) moral state of America at present (I'm thinking of Iraq, Guantanamo, waterboarding etc, etc), it seems to me that Hillary the insider, behaving as she is, is not so much a step backwards but pretty much the status-quo, same-old same-old candidate.

In a comment, Michael says:

Here in the States (United, that is), the ABC moderators have been widely criticized for focusing the first half of the debate on distractions and nonsense — e.g., flag lapel pins. No one on the stage was wearing a flag lapel pin!

...And neither were most people watching the telecast! Surely that's the problem with the supercilious question: If a flag lapel pin denotes patriotism, and the lack of a pin suggests a lack of patriotism, then patriotism is in short supply on the streets of America given the woeful lack of flag lapel pins everywhere!

We could say a lot about the strange fetishization of the American flag in that country (without it, Jasper Johns didn't make any sense), except to note how very strange it looks to the rest of the world, if I can speak for the whole world for a moment. I'm trying to think of a flag that carries a comparable weight in the national consciousness - maybe the French? Certainly the tricolor is as symbolically loaded, but nowhere near as evident in their popular culture.

I say this as an inhabitant of a country whose flag is an image that is constantly under dispute. Statements of a Republican nature (yes we are still a nominal monarchy) always quickly lead to discussion of the flag. Personally I find the presence of the Union Jack on our flag bizarre. I'm always reminded of something my grandfather once said, that his Irish policeman father refused to acknowledge a flag that had the symbol of his enemy in the top corner.

There's no doubt that American political commentary goes some strange places. Yesterday 'The Australian' reprinted an op-ed piece of puffery by P. J. O'Rourke, who has at least the benefit of being funny, even if he often mistakes flippancy for wit.

Some people say John McCain isn't conservative enough. But there's more to conservatism than low taxes, Jesus and waterboarding at Gitmo. Conservatism is also a matter of honour, duty, valour, patriotism, self-discipline, responsibility, good order, respect for our national institutions, reverence for the traditions of civilisation, and adherence to the political honesty upon which all principles of democracy are based.

If you got through the second sentence without feeling nauseous, you're better than I. It follows that if you're Liberal, you must be dishonorable, cowardly, unpatriotic, irresponsible, with no sense of duty and so on and so forth. This is civilization?

Head of Ivan Pochitonov?

A fascinating suggestion in yesterday’s gossip column in The Age. Daniel Ziffer has reported the remarkable resemblance between the NGV’s ‘Head of a Man’, formerly attributed to Van Gogh, and ‘Portrait of Ivan Pochitonov’ by Nikolai Dmitrievich Kuznetsov (1882). I have mentioned the recent controversy about its attribution before.

Apparently someone called Bill Rawlinson tried to alert the NGV to his long-held concerns about the image on the front cover of the Wordsworth Classics edition of Dostoevsky's ‘The Idiot’. The painting is in the Tretyakov Gallery in Moscow.


The gallery's Sue Coffey said curators commented that it was an "interesting comparison" but the two works had distinctly different noses and coloured eyes.

Nevertheless, the resemblance could be a solid lead in what should be the most pressing question before the curators of the NGV, namely, who painted ‘Head of a Man’, in what circumstances, and why does a painting apparently done in 1885 without reference to the contemporary Van Gogh so resemble his style?

Wikipedia on Wolfgang Sievers

Just as, several years ago, I started hearing about Google and quickly began using it on a daily basis, the word about Wikipedia has spread in a similar way. Like Google, it is now ubiquitous. I recently warned Bec, who is teaching Orwell’s 1984 this year, to carefully read the Wikipedia entry, as she would undoubtedly come across the very same words in students’ essays. It hasn’t happened yet, but it’s sure to.

The viral nature of Wiki is fascinating, and it deserves an entry all to itself. I read an impressive article a while ago – I don’t remember where – about the evolution of the definition of ‘abortion’. By virtue of the ‘hive mind’ approach, and despite my immediate suspicion that it would have been a mess, what came out of the process was a very good, clear article.

I was impressed with founder Jimmy Wales on his recent appearance in Australia. The tabloids (both print and otherwise) attempted to catch him out with several gotcha stories. Ellen Fanning’s was the most transparent, when she demanded to know why Wikipedia had her as (Powderfinger singer) Bernard Fanning’s sister. Wales patiently explained to her how Wikipedia works and the error was corrected in minutes. She ended up looking self-promoting and a bit of a goose.

Even though the accuracy of Wikipedia is often defended by its contributors, I note that this is in regard to science and technical articles only. Even a quick review of humanities articles reveals that the quality is often less than ideal. I think those of us with some knowledge or expertise in the area should make it a conscious priority to contribute where we can, especially since Wikipedia is fast becoming the first port of call for information by students.

Lately I’ve been amusing myself editing and substantially expanding the article on photographer Wolfgang Sievers. I just barely know what I’m doing as far as the html code goes, but I’m finding that some nice person is watching the article and fixing up some of my errors as I go.

In the early nineties I lived with my uncle who was the photography critic for The Age at the time. He reviewed the major retrospective of Sievers’ work at the NGV, and Wolfgang made contact with him. Presently, we were asked over to his house in Sandringham for breakfast and to give our opinion of a new ABC TV documentary that Wolfgang was a little anxious about. Already in awe, I was astonished into silence when he mentioned that his very good friends Helmut Newton and June (known as ‘Alice Springs’) had been round the previous week for tea.

At the end of our amazing morning, Wolfgang mentioned that he was about to go into the darkroom to print some of his old negatives, and would Greg like to choose one for himself? We were in his attic studio and we were looking at a whole wall of folders containing carefully filed proofs of almost every negative he had ever exposed.

In an act of generosity I still find hard to credit, Wolfgang asked if I (a very lowly photography student) would like to choose one for myself? The floor opened up under me and for the rest of our time there, I found it difficult to concentrate.

The photograph has hung on my wall ever since, surviving even a burglary, when they cleared off with almost everything else I owned.

So writing an article on this great man was an honour for me, and I hope I have the details of his life correct. As more comes to hand, I will add more. I especially want to see some of his extraordinary images up there, as soon as I come to grips with how it all works.

To my surprise, I opened The Age on Saturday, to see a large photograph of Wolfgang, now in his nineties, and the news that an archive of several hundred photographs, worth up to AUS$1 million, will be sold to raise money for justice and civil liberties causes.

He said:

"There's a funny little word called compassion. It's the sort of thing that the present Government hasn't heard about, but that is what drives me on, because I had a most fortunate and wonderful life and I think it's bloody well my job to pay back for that."

Sulphuric acid plant, Electrolytic Industries, Risdon, Hobart, 1959

Dissent has its limits at Quadrant

In an example of obscene hypocrisy, a crowd of hand-picked Howard lickspittles lined up at a dinner last night to toast the 50th anniversary of Quadrant magazine, claiming that it was celebration of non-conformity and eccentricity.

Apparently though, non-conformism has its limits, as Quadrant’s most successful editor Robert Manne, a man who was forced from his position when his humanist views proved too much for the reactionary editorial board, was not invited.

Without irony, the whale-like Paddy McGuinness claimed:

This is our mission: to defend the great tradition of free and open debate, to make possible dissent, while at the same time insisting on both civilised discourse and rational argument.

This was probably greeted with self-congratulatory applause at this point, when instead the words should have provoked a long embarrassed silence, perhaps the odd cough, as the wind blew a lonely tumble weed across the floor.

Robert Manne was the editor of Quadrant from 1989 to 1997. I may be wrong, but I suspect the magazine achieved its greatest circulation under his editorship.

The magazine was the organ of choice for the anti-communist right in Australia for the entire length of the Cold War. Indeed, it was initiated by something called the Congress of Cultural Freedom in 1956 with funding from the American CIA by Richard Krygier and James McAuley, the man who, with Douglas Stewart, concocted Ern Malley and his accidentally great body of poetry.

Cassandra Pybus recounts the story very well in Jacket magazine. Apparently no one at the dinner, or in The Australian’s report of it, thought it notable enough to mention that one of the longest running of our cultural journals was set up by the CIA.

It’s certainly the journal with the ugliest cover in the rack, which shows how little regard it has for visual, as opposed to written, expression.

The UnAustralian, part 2

I have had a soft spot for ABC journalist and political commentator Barrie Cassidy ever since I overheard him in a Canberra pub telling someone his family were from Chiltern in north-eastern Victoria. I spoke to him briefly about it because my mother’s mother’s family were settlers in Chiltern Valley, just outside the small historic town. Meaningless in itself, it just reinforced my warm feelings for the man, who manages to dispense useful insights into the Australian political scene while remaining genuinely non-partisan.

My mistake, apparently. According to The Australian’s editorial writer, he is a Leftist.

The piece on the editorial page today is called ‘The Punters Speak: Left-wing spin won’t put Labor in the Lodge’.

It begins by making the point that Labor is routinely behind in opinion polls. Then this sentence, which must be read in the context of the headline at the beginning:

About the only way to put a happy face on the ALP's present predicament is to blame not the message, but the messenger. Which is exactly what Barry Cassidy did on the ABC's Insiders yesterday, suggesting that the news media has been manipulating opinion polls to make Kim Beazley look bad.

This of course implies that what Cassidy was attempting to do when he made the point that the news media have been misreporting polls was spin the message in the ALP’s favour. This is no small insinuation to make. I don’t know how long Cassidy has been a journalist, but as a political commentator, his reputation for impartiality is central to his worth. For the national paper to imply otherwise is a slur.

There’s more. Later in the piece, they ask “If Newspoll's numbers are not enough for Cassidy, perhaps he should do what Australia's Left rarely deigns to and consider the collective wisdom of the country's punters.”

Looking at the sentence carefully, it is clear that Cassidy is not being included in the group ‘Australia’s Left’, but the implication that he is a member of that group is not excluded. The reader is meant to make the connection.

The final sentence makes the rhetorical strategy clear: “Until the ALP stops blaming the media and recognises what everyone else can see - namely, that all the good ideas in the world won't work without leadership - the Opposition will remain just that.”

Who’s blaming the media? The ALP. Not Barrie Cassidy but the Party. Get it?

This is the sort of logical approach that now dominates right-wing commentary in this country: if you are not an active proselytiser of the right’s pet causes, like the war in Iraq for example, then you are a leftist. Simple as that.

This explains why a blogger like Phil Gomes on Larvatus Prodeo can see a quite reasonable question by Barrie Cassidy to the Prime Minister, phrased in inverted commas as it were, as if one is trying to trace an opposing argument and gauge one’s subject’s response, as actively hostile to the Prime Minister:

BARRIE CASSIDY: The argument is there are laws that haven’t been used so there is no need for them.

JOHN HOWARD: Hang on. No, no, no with great respect, Barrie, the implication being touted and the implication left in the minds of anybody following this debate is that we are introducing these new draconian laws for the first time. And if, in fact, they are laws, and if your question acknowledges, they are laws that in substance have been there for years, and haven’t caused a problem, what is all the fuss about? See, I have yet to see - let’s talk about the substance of the issue, as distinct from the rhetoric. Where, in the drafting of the sedition provisions, where are they in substance different, in substance, not in language, but in substance, different from what is already in the crimes act?

Howard is a tough old bird. He is not above confecting frustration in response to an interviewer’s question in order to leave the impression in the mind of viewers that the interviewer is hostile. That’s where “Hang on. No, no, no with great respect, Barrie” comes from. Obviously it worked where Phil Gomes was concerned.

The Australian lurches ever rightward

‘Bias’ is an over-used word in relation to Australian media. It is, as we all know, in the eye of the beholder. However, when a media institution shows evidence of a consistent and long-running habit of slanting news coverage with inflammatory headlines, unflattering juxtapositions of articles on the same page, or printing news articles consisting entirely of opinion, I think the judgement can be justified.

In this light, I claim that The Australian newspaper, the proud possession of Rupert Murdoch, has shown a marked lurch to the right in recent years. This bias is in evidence on a daily basis and gets more outrageous by the day.

For example, today’s target of the sub-editor’s hatchet is the federal Labor Party, and in particular its leader Kim Beazley. The first headline on the front page is “Beazley leaves voters in marginal seats dissatisfied: poll”. At the bottom of the page, we see by contrast “PM into battle to save Kokoda from goldmine”. Turning the page, we find nine articles in total, five of which are anti-Labor, and one supportive of the Prime Minister. One of the five is also highly misleading.

The headlines:

1. “Beazley avoids risk, says Jones.” This is code for “Beazley lacks ‘ticker’”, reinforcing one of the Prime Minister’s oldest lines of attack against the Opposition Leader.

2. “Voters in marginal seats dissatisfied”. So-called marginal seats are what any party has to win in order to achieve government in the Australian system. Are they dissatisfied with their representation by their government in the nation’s parliament? Of course not, the dissatisfaction is entirely with Labor’s leadership.

3. “Labor ‘employer’ not real deal”. (see more below).

4. “ALP fails to attract women”

5. “Company offers peace talks to illegal strikers”

6. “PM into battle to save Kokoda from miners”. The Kokoda Track is of course, one of the graven images of Australian nationalism, a tropical battlefield in New Guinea which has about as much resonance in the national psyche as Gettysburg has for Americans.

Article 3, by Matthew Franklin, is worth looking at more closely. The first paragraph reads:

“LABOR has cited the views of a Melbourne pharmacist, a Gladstone engineer and a Launceston hire car company manager to back its claim that big business is not wedded to the Howard Government's Work Choices program.”

There is already a problem. Labor is not claiming “big business” has a problem with Work Choices, but small business, as we shall see.

“But the Launceston company manager told The Australian yesterday that while he opposed Work Choices, he was not an employer.”

Hang on, who said he was an employer?

“Federal Labor leader Kim Beazley said on Wednesday that businesspeople had told him they did not press the Government to implement Work Choices, which encourages greater use of workplace contracts.”

Notice it is “businesspeople”, not big business. There is a difference.

“Asked yesterday to put The Australian in touch with businesspeople to back the claims, Mr Beazley's spokesman nominated three small-businessmen who gave evidence to a Labor backbench taskforce earlier this year.”

Notice it’s “small-businessmen” now.

“… and Hertz car rental employee Andrew Lovitt all told the inquiry they had reservations about Work Choices. … But Mr Lovitt also said as Launceston operations and marketing manager he was ‘not technically an employer’".

Again, who said he was an employer? Looking at the headline, one might think it was Labor who is claiming he was an employer. Yet Beazley never said anything of the sort. The rest of the article is taken up with statements by the head of the Australian Chamber of Commerce and Industry Peter Hendy, who was formerly a Government staff member. He says things like: “I don't know which individuals he's been talking to who haven't been arguing for industrial relations reform”. Yet the article itself already names the very individuals!

The contrast between 1 and 6 is clear, in terms entirely flattering to the government, and uncannily reinforcing two of its most persistent campaign slogans: Howard defends Australian values, while Beazley dithers.

I am waiting for the day when they replace the sub-heading ‘Keeping the Nation Informed’ with ‘Fair and Balanced’. It can’t be too far off.

Medcraft not so independent

On this blog I generally shy away from politics per se, except when it intersects with issues in the media. In that spirit I address the following issue which has arisen in my little corner of the world, and is being comprehensively ignored by my local newspapers, who never touch a story when it reflects on one of their most constant sources of inflammatory quotes: former councillor Jack Medcraft, also known as Steve Medcraft when he is dispensing his own brand of justice to the Herald-Sun or to one of the tabloid ‘current affairs’ shows.

What is known so far is that Jack either joined or attempted to join a political party called ‘People Power’ and run as their candidate in the electorate of Macedon for the forthcoming Victorian state election. He was glimpsed at the People Power launch, broadcast on the ABC's Stateline program. He was also quoted by the Hume Star to this effect, a paper which does not circulate in the actual electorate for which he’s running. Needless to say, this was not picked up by either of the local newspapers which do.

This is all despite Jack claiming many times that he was and always would be an independent, and now (apparently) crowing about that fact on GuruAnn’s blog, though no one can be sure that this is actually him speaking.

Now it appears that he has been spurned by the leadership of the party. This is not surprising, as Jack’s brand of right wing populist whining is nowhere near their area of political focus, and it is frankly weird that he ever thought they would be interested in him.

However, the interest they might have for him is obvious, at least to me: money.

Jack recently lost a court case he brought against Ann Potter, the current Hume City Councillor who beat him in the last ballot. Costs were awarded against him. He then declared that he would be running as a candidate in the next state election as an independent. It remains unclear how he would be able to finance this venture, since he doesn’t appear to be a wealthy man.

Jack is a member of the Sunbury Residents’ Association, who have endorsed candidates in the past. To my knowledge, they have not said who they would be supporting in this one but it’s not going to be Labor. Will they be financially backing Jack? If not them, then some other financially well-endowed supporter?

To make matters worse, it now appears that the Sunbury Leader contravened their own publication policy and ran an unattributed political letter to the editor in a recent edition. I have read enough verbiage from Jack in the past to know a Jack letter when I read one, with its characteristic approach to grammar, inability to distinguish personal abuse from debate, and lack of logical rigor.

I was under the impression that corespondents are always required to include name and address in letters to the editor. I know that in certain circumstances, the editor can act on requests to run a letter without publishing this information at his own discretion.

Now, if he used his discretion in this case and ran the letter without attributing it to Jack, what was the reasoning, given that it was (I strongly suspect) a letter from a candidate in an election attacking the policies and character of the other candidates? If it wasn’t signed by Jack, but claiming to be from another source, then surely this blatant misuse of the paper’s guidelines should be looked into?

Bolt at Pasquarelli's opening

Crikey! I heard the alarming news this week that the crocodile hunter will be holding an art exhibition at Lynne Wilton Gallery on the gold-paved art strip in Armadale. No I’m not talking about Steve Irwin, but the other crocodile hunter and former political puppeteer of Pauline Hanson, John Pasquarelli.

Mr Pasquarelli is the kind of man people feel compelled to call ‘colourful’. Former crocodile shooter, skin trader, art dealer, right-wing agitator and Member of the New Guinea Parliament, National Party staffer, Liberal Party member, One Nation political fixer and speech writer. To that list we can add a profession I had not previously imagined he would have much time for: artist.

It’s a pity really, since a quick look around Lynne Wilton’s website reveals that the galley represents Julie Davidson, a painter I’ve admired as doing interesting things re-imagining the Still Life tradition.


It’s not difficult to see what might be in it for the gallery, since this is too good a story to pass up, especially since the show is reportedly being opened by right-wing blow-hard Andrew Bolt. (See, I'm doing it now: talking about them. I can't help myself.)

I can see them now, the crocodile shooter with the new career and the ubiquitous opinionista, standing around with glasses of expensive Chardonnay in their hands, while the idol rich of Armadale compete with each other for Pasquarelli’s awkward pictures of rusty sheds and Hills Hoists. They would be congratulating each other, without irony, for not belonging to the hated ‘cultural elite’.


They certainly would be conversation starters, no doubt about that.

Smoke alarm

'The Australian' reported today that 40% of American kids who try cigarettes do it because they saw it in a movie. A Dartmuth Medical School study, described as the first national examination of the influence on youths of smoking in movies, urges Hollywood to cut back in depictions of smoking in movies.

I remember years go when I was teaching Media Studies students about the concept of product placement, their first reaction was to disbelieve that such a thing existed. Once I had convinced them that it did, mainly through a demonstration of the most outrageous examples of disguised advertising that I could find (like Marlboro advertising in ‘Superman II’), their next reaction was to say basically so what?

I had a lot of trouble getting over the idea that such a thing was potentially corrupting, both of a film or a TV show’s credibility as an artistic enterprise, and of the people and companies that made them.

I think of them every time I see characters in movies or TV shows light up, because I’m absolutely certain that more people in movies are shown smoking than is the case in every day life. I know that the studios do deals with cigarette companies to pad their budgets, and the cigarette companes look to enterprises like Hollywood movies and reality TV shows to sell their product, especially as more and more avenues of traditional advertising are closing to them.

Nicholson on Latham

Saddened and profoundly depressed by the pathetic spectacle of Mark Latham all over our media recently, I was determined not to say anything about it here. However, this cartoon by the wonderful Peter Nicholson manages to say so much so economically, I thought it deserved to be praised. That's all.

Parliament to debate prosecution of Hun journalists

Next Monday the House of Representatives will debate the pursuit of Herald Sun journalists Harvey and McManus for exposing its intention to largely ignore the Clarke review of veteran’s entitlements.

The motion by Martin Ferguson and Craig Emerson reaffirms the right of journalists, as provided by their code of ethics, not to reveal their sources.

Rather than a vendetta against a public servant and the pursuit of journalists, the Howard Government should apologise for attempting to deny $500 million in extra pensions to veterans and war widows.

The Howard Government should expedite law reform to protect journalists professional confidences and withdraw the vindictive pursuit of a public servant so as to avoid the potential imprisonment of journalists for printing a story that was clearly in the public interest.

Medcraft and local media

It looks like we've entered the era of local government by press release here in Sunbury, as one of our councilors has given up contributing to the online forum after it became too damaging for him to continue, and taken to using his media pull with local journalists by feeding them juicy content directly where he can't be openly debated.

There's no other explanation for two unsigned pieces appearing in the Sunbury Leader last week, one of which was essentially an unsubstantiated statement by the councilor, who alleges that there is a conspiracy by political opponents to silence him.

The very opposite is true, as those who are regularly entertained by some councilor Medcraft's more outrageous statements hope that he continues to alienate voters by exposing his opinions to the cold light of debate.

For those not familiar with the workings of the Hume City Council, Jack Medcraft, who is known as Steve Medcraft when he's fulminating on tabloid television against criminals, Labor politicians and other sundry scumbags, is looking down the barrel of council elections in November. His re-election strategy so far seems to be to avoid having to air his opinions in public in any forum which he cannot control or apparently threaten with legal action.

This method managed to shut down the 'Local Politics' section of Sunbury Online recently, after they gradually watered down the conditions of submission so much that any comment vaguely critical of the incumbent councilor was blocked or otherwise censored. There is now a war of spin being fought, after Medcraft (again) announced he was leaving the forum because the terrible bullies had made life impossible for him and he couldn't bear it any more. He was going back to catching butterflies and making dry flower arrangements for a quieter life.

It was difficult to take this latest pronouncement terribly seriously, as, like Dame Nellie Melba in her twilight years, he had announced retirment once or twice before, only return almost immediately, unable to cope with the loss of his adoring public.

Presently, various members of his cheer squad (known colloquially as the banana-munchers) compete to both condemn the terrible treatment the councilor received at the hands of his own constituents, and out-do each other in expressions of love and appreciation 'for all that he has done for Sunbury'. None of them actually say what this might be, however.

I would be happy to link to appropriate bits of business on Sunbury Online, but the powers behind the online forum have been frightened enough, not just to shut down the forum to further contributions, but make it impossible even for voters to see what their local representative has had to say on subjects that might interest them. Given that a few of these statements by Medcraft are actually under investigation by authorities, I would have thought the moderator of the forum was doing us a public service by allowing us to read what was said in a public place.

Dark mutterings are still made in other sections of the forum about 'legal advice' against critics. No one, however, is able or willing to say what this advice might be or even give us a ballpark idea of its content. It's enough to give readers, who might be ignorant of the law, the idea that defamatory statements have been made against this councillor, without once ever having to say which statements are defamatory, or in what way.

The most offensive aspect to this whole non-story, is that we are talking about a local government representative who systematically blustered and bullied his way all over the forum for the better part of a year against anyone who found his statements wanting. If political debate can be likened to a street brawl, then Medcraft goes in with the rhetorical equivalent of a broken bottle.

His favorite tactic, when he didn't like someone's contribution, was to make allegations about their identity. Many times unsuspecting people had contributed briefly to the forum, only to be frightened off by his hectoring and frequently abusive tone.

On one occasion, after I had posted a statement on the forum, he demanded that I answer questions he was putting to me personally that were irrelevant to the subject being discussed. Nevertheless, I answered them. Not happy with my apparent ability to answer his question directly, he changed the subject and asked a number of other irrelevant questions, and continued to do so over several different subjects under discussion.

After I had not answered to his satisfaction after a week, he demanded to know why I hadn't, asking where I was and even making insinuations about my place of employment. As it happened, I was on holidays! Instances of this kind proliferate all over Sunbury Online.

These tactics got him in a spot of bother when he began alleging that people were not actually residents of Sunbury, and were posting under assumed names, which was perfectly allowable under the terms of use. He managed to offend several women who were conributing under their maiden names this way.

He came a cropper when he alleged (during a non-political discussion by the way), that I did not live in Sunbury and was not on the electoral roll. I did, and do, live in Sunbury and I am on the electoral roll. This lie has been repeated in the Sunbury Leader, without correction. Did I get a retraction by my local councillor then or again last week? You can guess the answer to that one.

I call on our local journalists to put their thinking caps back on when talking to this man, and understand that a politician is seeking to use them to his electoral gain. I don't have a problem with this, actually. Any politician wants to get his or her view out there, but journalists do their readers and the political process no favours by allowing deadlines to get in the way of properly investigated reporting.

Local papers showed absolutely no interest when a local government representative in their town was regularly making public statements about everything except local government matters, which is what he actually has responsibility for. They allowed him to blame 'the council' whenever things didn't go his way, or when his failings as a representative were on show. Where were Medcraft and Ogilvie when the Ardcloney stables were being pulled down by an apparently unscrupulous developer? Why do they continually abuse the state Member of Parliament because a bridge is not built when they say it should be, while the beautiful Ardcloney House moulders on Macedon Street for the lack of a good idea what to do with it?

There may be good reasons for these things, but I haven't heard them from these two.

Why did the local press not think it newsworthy when Medcraft repeatedly called for the death penalty for drug traffickers including Schapelle Corby, before her Indonesian trial had even convicted her?

Why did the papers not explore offensive remarks Medcraft made about Muslim Australians, and connect this with his refusal to stand or even stay in the room when a Muslim prayer was given at the commencement of a council meeting?

Are the papers going to do anything with the rumour that he has written to the Minister asking her to exercise her power to sack the council twelve weeks out from elections? On what grounds?

I will gladly be corrected when local press reverse the lack of care and objectivity shown in their recent reporting of most things to do with this councilor.

AFR 'Re/view' section

In the first issue of the excellent new magazine ‘The Monthly’, Mungo MacCallum surveyed the graveyard of dead journals he had worked for over a long career; many of them burning very brightly before succumbing to the lack of sustaining oxygen that seems to be an consequence of our small population, or our traditional anti-intellectualism, or maybe a combination of both. Still, titles like ‘Oz’ and ‘The National Times’, ‘The Nation Review’ and ‘The Independent Monthly’ did manage to make their telling impression before snuffing out.

On the basis of two good issues, I hope ‘The Monthly’ goes on to join those ranks and keeps its nostrils above the water line long enough to count. In the meantime though, us elitists have got to take our kicks where we can find them, and I’m here to tell you that a moist oasis has sprung from the pages of that august journal of record, the Australian Financial Review, whose pages are usually as dry as a nun’s nasty, economically speaking.

Yes, pilgrims, I’m talking of the ‘Re/view’ section, which appears on Fridays, nestled in those cold dead pages somewhere near the stock market report and the lifestyle section. Don’t be put off by the dated backslash in the middle of the word thing, which I think is some elderly sub-editor’s idea of funky and postmodern. It has enough substance across its twelve tabloid pages to keep most of us chewing through even the longest of long weekends.

It arrived with uncanny timing in my bored and disillusioned consciousness. I had recently given up the habit of my entire adulthood and ceased even trying with the ‘Saturday Age’, which has increased in weight and girth in exactly inverse proportion to its mass, if you see what I mean. I was beginning to suspect that Fairfax publishers had created a secret monopoly by buying up a huge share in paper recycling interests.

The only thing stopping ‘Re/view’ from getting more attention as a journal in its own right, is that the major part of its content is reprinted from other sources, with original pieces from Australian writers making up maybe a quarter of its column inches. What it does have, however, are delicious samples of truly excellent essay writing from journals like ‘New Statesman’, ‘Prospect’, ‘The New Yorker’, ‘Washington Post Book World’, and ‘The Atlantic Monthly.’

The topics covered can be literally anything from the secret maladies of Samuel Johnson, the nuclear industry’s PR campaign, Jean-Paul Sartre, art on television, Charles Bukowski, the acting of Robert Mitchum, Indonesian politics, the campaign to end poverty, classical music in America, and the idea of sin, just to name a few recent articles that caught my interest. There’s a lot more where that came from.

Its reach is wider then, than just about anything in this country. You will find more rigorous academic discourse elsewhere, more learned foreign policy comment, more penetrating literary criticism, but you will not find all of these things discussed in the one place, in such a liberal and unpretentious way, in a newspaper.

With my brain softened by acres of right-wing opinionizing in the rest of the Murdoch press, and the regurgitated press agent’s fluff dressed up as celebrity feature articles that accounts for most of the weekend papers, I was beginning to despair that good writing with a generalist, civilised spirit could be found in Australian newspapers.

Often I skim over articles that don’t appear to hold much interest, and find that I’m riveted by the first paragraph and continue reading despite myself. Every so often certain paragraphs ignite something in my head and I find myself compelled to go back over them again. Like this one. It’s in an article by Matthew Sweet on the history of Batman in the context of his latest manifestation at the movies, with a stunning digression on William Shatner’s acting style:

“The Batman I knew best was the television one: Adam West, a burly American leading man, straining inside a battleship-grey body stocking and leather bat mask. His body looked as corseted as William Shatner's. Indeed, he shared something of Shatner's peculiar acting style - quivery yet rhetorical, with a fast-slow-fast pace that made him sound like a man at a lectern attempting to prevent his big moment being ruined by an inconvenient orgasm.”

Damn, that’s funny.