The Weight

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

Welcome, America

"Welcome, America, to the world of universal health care. It will be alright. Really. Trust me. We've been there. We've had it for years, and we're doing well, thanks very much."

- The Rest of the World

Design for Obama

It was an experiment in linking grassroots activism with the political machine using new technology, and it is being studied by wonks around the world.

Hundreds of artists and designers expressed support for the Obama candidacy by designing posters and submitting them to designforobama.org for free download. Many of these were actually taken up by the campaign, and others just travelled the superhighway as viral emails, making their point on their own.

Taschen is publishing Design for Obama. Posters for Change: A Grassroots Anthology This selection of the best, curated by Spike Lee and Aaron Perry-Zucker, is a visual document of this most inspirational U.S. presidential campaign.

Shorpy

Michael Leddy coined the wonderful expression 'dowdy world' to describe glimpses of bygone times that occasionally pop up in old movies, television shows, or anywhere at all. His definition: “modern American culture as it was before certain forms of technology redefined everyday life”.

Well, ‘Shorpy’ is the dowdy world on rollerskates.

It is one of the handful of websites I can't live a week without visiting at least once, and I love it with an ardent passion.

My favourites are the bizarre pics from from the archive called the National Library...


...and the breathtakingly detailed images of turn of the century city architecture, like this one of the Philadelphia Post Office in 1900.


The site describes itself: "Shorpy.com: History in HD is a vintage photography blog featuring thousands of high-definition images from the 1850s to 1950s. The site is named after Shorpy Higginbotham, a teenage coal miner who lived 100 years ago."

It appears to be a shared site where a very select number of contributors upload images in very high definition. They appear to have been scanned from the original negatives. This is astounding because the site has a large collection of truly classic images, including many pictures by the greats Walker Evans, Dorothea Lange and Lewis Hine.

Most of these pictures are not the recogniseable classics from photographic history, but the now vast collection is a more comprehensive picture of each photographers’ working practice than would be possible in even the biggest survey exhibition. In the case of Lewis Hine in particular, I've had to reassess my view of his significance to the medium.

When I was taught photography, the conventional view of Lewis Hine I intuited was that he was a great documentarian but whose credentials as an artist were somewhat in question. A view was that the haunting quality his pictures so often had was more to do with the heartbreaking subject matter of child labour and exploitation that he did so much to reveal than any completely conscious and expressed aesthetic intention.

Certainly the subject matter is compelling (and there is art in that), but there’s clearly more here than just the handprint of a great documentary photographer. Very frequently, too frequently to be an accident, he invests an apparently utilitarian image with the grace and insight of a true portrait.


The achievement becomes all the more awe-inspiring when we consider the circumstances under which many of the images were taken. His period of greatest activity in the social documentary field was the first decade of the century, when he worked for social activist magazines and for social documentary projects like the Pittsburgh Survey. He also worked for the National Child Labour Committee for eight years and published two books of his pictures, 'Child Labour in the Carolinas' (1909) and 'Day Laborers Before Their Time' (1909).

Taking these images often involved working under great pressure. To gain access Hine sometimes hid his camera and posed as a fire inspector.

In 1916 Congress eventually agreed to pass legislation to protect children. Owen Lovejoy, Chairman of the National Child Labour Committee, wrote that: "the work Hine did for this reform was more responsible than all other efforts in bringing the need to public attention."

Hine had great difficulty earning money from his photography. In January 1940, he lost his home after failing to keep up repayments. Lewis Wickes Hine died in extreme poverty eleven months later on 3rd November, 1940.

Here’s to Shorpy Higginbotham and to Lewis Hine, who sought to record his existence, reflect his experience, change the conditions under which he worked and to create art.

The ironic revolution

It was socialists who saw the dangers of Communism first and most clearly. In 1918, at the dawn of the Soviet era, Karl Kautsky, who had personally known Marx and Engels in his youth, wrote a diatribe against Lenin's use of the vague Marxist term "dictatorship of the proletariat."

Kautsky insisted it had been meant metaphorically, and that genuine class struggle presupposed genuine democracy. The so-called dictatorship of the proletariat "always leads to the dictatorship of a single man, or of a small knot of leaders" and to a situation where ordinary people "only become instruments for carrying out orders."

From Andrew O'Hehir's review of 'The Rise and Fall of Communism' by Archie Brown, in Salon.com.

One thing was not a historical fluke or accident, though: the fact that a political system based on some half-baked utopian musing by Marx and Engels, and their bogus claims of scientific certainty, was not going to work out well for anybody.

There's room for argument about whether it had to turn out quite as badly as it did, and plenty of room for discussing the continuing validity of Marx's insights into capitalism. But there's no denying that the works of a philosopher who championed human creativity became the basis for a social system devoted to crushing it. It's the platonic ideal of historical irony, to which other historical ironies can only aspire, and suggests some very dark possibilities about human nature.

W's tragic combination

Luke Davies anticipates a new Oliver Stone film and in asking whether he would give us some insight into George W's character, manages to answer himself in a way I found strangely compelling:

"Would [Stone] give us some insight into a man known, in personality at least, only through his comportment at press conferences? I had always thought that anyone with a competently functioning human radar would spot in Bush, in any given press conference, that unmistakeable mixture of feckless arrogance and happy-go-lucky thickness that would be priceless, were it no so tragic."

From "Big Thoughts, Empire Burlesque: Luke Davies on Oliver Stone’s 'W'" in The Monthly, December 2008.

Errol Morris for Obama

This is a very recent ad by the film maker Errol Morris for Barack Obama. You might know Morris as the genius behind films like 'Vernon, Florida', 'The Thin Blue Line', 'The Fog of War', 'Standard Operating Procedure' and so many others.

This ad again uses Morris' unique method of shooting through plate glass, which in concert with a large mirror, allows his subjects to be looking directly at him, while also looking directly at the camera.

Head of skate

Say it ain't so!

Christopher Hitchins

A question occurred to me in the middle of the night:

Would Christopher Hitchens have supported the US invasion of Iraq if, instead of a military dictatorship, Iraq had been a communist dictatorship?

Given his political and intellectual history, and his attitude to US anti-communist misadventures in the past, I think probably not.

Court cites Lewis Carroll as precedent

It's not often you hear Carroll's 'The Hunting of the Snark' quoted in open court, but it's a habit that should be encouraged.

An American federal appeals court found that accusations against a Guantanamo Bay detainee who had been held for more than six years were based on slim, unverifiable claims, the New York Times reports. A three-judge panel said the government was affectively contending that its accusations against the man should be accepted because they had been repeated in at least three secret documents.

The court compared that to the declaration by the Bellman in Lewis Carroll's 'Snark': "I have said it thrice: What I tell you three times is true."

The Justice Department declined to comment. It is known, however, what Lewis Carroll would have thought.

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?

Debates of the living dead

As usual, Guy Rundle's column in Crikey today made me laugh out loud. The zombie Barack and zombie Hillary as an old bickering couple, airing their ancient greviences in front of the guests. This is not a particularly original observation, but he sure knows how to spin it to comedic effect.

So was it really the last debate? Barack Obama seems to think so, saying in last night's Philadelphia slugfest that he could deliver Clinton's lines and "she, I'm sure, could deliver mine". That's sure what it felt like – the last arguments of a couple who are over, a couple whose dinner parties start tense and collapse into the recitation of ancient wrongs.

First time it happened, it was buttock-clenchingly embarrassing – boy these two either really really like angry makeup sex, or genuinely hate each other. You didn't know where to look, thought of setting fire to the tablecloth, made your excuses. But the years have gone on, and now it's got tired. You just wish they'd split up, or that one of them would clutch their chest and fall over.

Terrorism Claus?

Buying a car insurance policy on Friday, I had one of those zeitgeist moments. You know the sort of thing. You're trying to open a website for your eight year old son to play games online, you can't work it out, minutes go by, and then he calmly hits the return key. Presto! You feel the tide of history has suddenly risen up around your nostrils...

Anyway, I'm reading through the fine print and come to this:

TERRORISM EXCLUSION

This policy does not cover loss, damage, liability, injury, illness, death, cost or expense arising directly or indirectly out of or in any way connected with:
a. any act of terrorism arising directly or indirectly out of or in any way connected with biological, chemical, radioactive, or nuclear pollution or contamination or explosion; or
b. any act of controlling, preventing, suppressing, retaliating against, or responding to any act referred to in (a) above.

An act of terrorism includes, but is not limited to, any act, preparation in respect of action or threat of action, designed to:
a. influence a government or any political division within it for any purpose, and/or
b. influence or intimidate the public or any section of the public with the intention of advancing a political, religious, ideological or similar purpose.

I note that under the second section, clause b, I would have been guilty of an act of terrorism by handing out How To Vote cards on the 24th of November.

I find this difficult to respond to without simply shaking my head in disbelief. If ever a claim was made on these therms, I can just imagine the fun to be had in the courts over the definition of "terrorism."

Mad Mal

My favourite Australian blog is certainly Barista by David Tiley.

If I may quote a wonderful paragraph from a recent entry:

Every time I think the Howard government has gone too far, the whole creaky ship sails through the roiling ocean of political outrage into some lagoon of public indifference.

I was put in mind of the same principal when looking at ‘The Australian’ newspaper this morning.

A favourite recent habit of theirs is to place an outrageous scream headline above the masthead, visible to anyone walking past any news-stand at any train station, shop or street stall, lodging in the mind as a disembodied thought for the rest of the day, like some horrible piece of viral marketing.

Something like “Hijabs Hide Bombs” or “Paul Keating, Kiddie-fiddler”. You feverishly turn the pages looking for the sensational story, only to find that it is in fact a small opinion piece reprinted from a conservative American journal or rightwing think-tank, holding up the bottom of page 214.

Today’s example is a classic of the genre: “Mad Mal: Accuses ABC host of doing Howard’s bidding.” This is accompanied by photos of former Prime Minister Malcolm Fraser and ABC broadcaster Virginia Trioli.

For those not in the know, Virginia Trioli is the ABC Melbourne drive-time announcer and author poached by a station in Sydney earlier this year. She is universally reviled across the rightwing spectrum for being some sort of lefty harridan, an accusation which can only be maintained by those who don’t read her columns, listen to her programs or watch her TV spots. It seems her major offence was making a goose of Peter Reith on air by questioning his assertions that photographs proved refugees threw their children in the water a few years ago.

‘Mad Mal’ is of course the second longest serving Liberal Prime Minister, whose chief offence seems to be that he has remained a genuine Liberal while all around him in the Party have turned to the dark side. Which is why he is ‘mad’. See, simple really.

The central trope of this bit of journalistic thuggery is the sheer perversity of the headline, implying that Mal is such a lefty these days that he thinks even a hairy-legged feminazi like Virginia is too close to Howard.

Who is making the imputation? Why the newspaper is, of course!

Labor's outlook a little brighter

While I don't envy the the responsibility for a moment, I think the federal Labor caucus chose well today.

Yesterday I was considering the various future scenarios with friends, including the possibility that Kim Beazley may be re-elected to the leadership of the Labor Party. A quote from the comic genius Peter Cook came to mind:

I've learned from my mistakes, and I'm pretty sure that I can repeat them.

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?