Gerard Henderson had a night at the theatre:
At the start of the second act an Arab-looking male suggests that the contemporary problems of the world turn on the fact that the issue of Palestine has not been resolved - without any mention of the notorious corruption of the Palestinian Authority during Yasser Arafat’s time.
Then, at the end of the play, an Iraqi female condemns the policies of the coalition of the willing but does not address the fact that without the invasion Saddam would still be in power and without making the point that, right now, the resistance in Iraq is primarily killing Iraqis.
I haven’t seen the Hare, it did cross my mind reading about it over the past few weeks that it might be tiresomely predictable in its targets. Hendo’s attempt to smear those evil educated, middle class theatre goers however as somehow blase about the London bombings is typically ridiculous though.
But, I did actually pretty much agree with all his bullet points at the end of the article.
It’s probably a boring and over-earnest play, Amanda. I doubt that I’d pay to go and see it. But the resemblance between Hendo’s theatre review and typical RWDB comments struck me.
On Sheikh Omran (Hendo’s bullet points), I had a surreal experience last night. I watched him interviewed on Lateline, where Tony Jones seemed relatively contented with his clarifications, then flicked to Channel Nine where he was being denounced.
Is this the Hendo I know and love? I thought these points were really good, actually:
“‚ñ† Some citizens will overreact to the crisis. Already the former National Party senator John Stone has argued that Australia “must sharply reduce, indeed virtually halt, Muslim immigration inflow”. This is a grievous insult to law-abiding Muslims which does nothing to prevent a London-style attack by young Australian citizens who have been indoctrinated into the jihadist cause. The task of government is to support the moderates in the Islamic civil war, in Australia and overseas.
‚ñ† Others will seek to point the blame at the wrong causes. Multiculturalism has worked well in Australia. It is not a factor in the rejection of Western societies (including those, like France, which are monocultural) by jihadists. Also, asylum seekers are not a problem. As former ASIO director-general Dennis Richardson pointed out during a speech in Hobart on May 8, 2002, security checks on asylum seekers entering Australia have not found any terrorists or potential terrorists. Terrorists are invariably either native-born or enter a country on visas.”
I saw this last week at the preview. The acting is superb. The play is no doubt anti-war, but gives I think some of the pro-war case fairly well.
I think Hendo’s point about the only two good characters is just wrong. The two parts he mentions are trying to give the points of view of a
typical Palestinian and a typical Iraqi who play no other role in the
play. What the palestinian character says is that the palestinians view the Iraq war in terms of our own struggle and are cynical about why some resolutions are enforced, while others are not. The road map for peace etc and the fact that is was being undermined by rumsfeld while powell was out promoting it is also dicussed so I think this was relevant commentary and persepective.
As for others characters being all bad. Colin Powell came of reasonably well, earnestly trying to put together something reasonable, but broken in the end. Blair came off as going in with earnest intentions to use this opportunity to right numerous wrongs in the world and then being forced into progressively more machiavellian schemes as he gets bullied by the yanks into doing stuff he doesn’t really want to.
Rumsfeld-Cheney would be the only people who I think really appear as being genuinely bad. Wolfowitz came off as being an out of touch ideologue. GWB I think was portrayed with the outward appearence of stupidity but in many respects not. In particular the fact that he gets the best of Blair and gets Blair essentially to do his bidding. The fact that the play concentrates very much on this makes it very much a British perspective of the war.
Kate, it’s more like the old Hendo of a few years back. I think he’s sharpened up his act after being sacked from The Age.
Kate and Mark
That is a low blow and quite insulting to a well-intentioned fellow. Hendo, like his fellow neocon Greg Sheridan, has never been a racist, unlike, say the sainted Gough ‘Bloody Vietnamese Balts’ Whitlam.
Hello? When did Kate and I say he was a racist, Jason? Just because we’re not in the Hendo fan club?
hendo is the best columnist going round and he aint no neo-con.
He is in fact a con and has always been so and thus cannot be neo!
Jason, Hendo is as apt to rubbish on as Philip Adams is, but far less so than Bolt or Pearson or Devine.
I am pleased to see him advocating a sensible position, that’s all. I reserve my right to disagree with him in future.
I doubt Whitlam is a racist. The context for his comment was the political climate of the time - he assumed that Fraser supported the entry of Vietnamese refugees because they would be reliable Liberal voters because of their anti-Communism. Just as Eastern European immigrants tended to be (hence the “Balts” remark).
That’s not to condone or excuse him. But I don’t think that he’s a racist. Given that there’s nothing I can see in my or Kate’s comments that implies Hendo is, it seems to me that it’s you who are tossing around epithets, Jason.
Incidentally, I am not a particular fan of Whitlam’s either. There’s a certain irony in his canonisation by the Left. He stood resolutely with the Labor Right. There are good and bad things about Whitlam’s political record. His personality I’ve never found appealling.
the implication of your comments was that his talking points about overreacting against Muslim Australians were somehow out of the ordinary. I can disagree with Hendo on the war without resorting to character assassination like some on the left seem to do who have a visceral hatred of the man simply because of that and the Galloway incident. Hendo and Sheridan have both been consistent conservative multiculturalists who have stood up against bigotry when it counted. contrast this with the left’s fawning over the man who said “I‚Äôm not having hundreds of fucking Vietnamese Balts coming into this country with their religious and political hatreds against us!”
http://64.233.179.104/search?q=cache:DvnQ_aCBimIJ:www.abc.net.au/rn/deakin/docs/le.doc+hundreds+of+fucking+vietnamese+balts&hl=en
Well, that’s not the implication that I intended, Jason, and I can’t see how it can be reasonably inferred from what either I or Kate wrote. I said nothing about his talking points except the comment about Sheikh Omran which was just an aside. I agree with Amanda and Kate. I don’t have a visceral hatred of Hendo at all - I used to quite like him as a columnist, but think he declined badly over the past few years. Of course his multiculturalism is to be lauded.
I think you’re assimilating my views to those of the straw LEFT, Jason.
Fraser had a lot of faults but on the Vietnamese he offeredc them shelter because they were fleeing a tyrannic regime.
They came from to Australia on leaky boats from different countries and via people smugglers.
if the Vietnameses voted liberal after that then good on them.
It is a great pity howard’s policy is so different these days!
Whitlam on this was a disgrace as was most of the left as I not so fondly recall!
Homer, I said on another thread recently that Fraser deserved a big pat on the back for this one.
Jason’s comments are bamboozling. There’s no textual support for them whatever. He must be thinking of THE LEFT in Rafean style.
Okay Jason, perhaps I should have written: sometimes Hendo writes stuff I disagree with and stuff I think is downright stupid, as is the case with numerous commentators in the media, on the left and right. This is called ‘my opinion’ and I reserve the right to hold it.
This time I thought his points were good, even though I disagree with him about the war in Iraq in general. And as I haven’t seen the play in question I can’t comment about the content and any bias it demonstrates.
Hendo’s diatribe is predictable. It’s the old boring predictable ‘lovvies types’ being out of touch with the majority of Australians who support Howard (and therefore the Iraq War - I’m shocked he didn’t manage to mention the ABC in this). Henderson goes even further. He says that the whole Anglosphere is right behind our fearless leaders freeing the world from the evil islamists
Does this imply that the rest of us who haven’t been ‘lucky’ enough to be born in the Anglosphere come from to flaccid, easily scared, meek, weak as pissed nations? Is this the Europe from Venus argument? Henderson’s argument seems a slighly more sophisticated version of the old Italian tanks have five gears, one forward and four reverse joke. Anglosphere Uber Alles!
My post this morning on Hendo.
……oh, and I did Sheridan as well. Must be something in the water.
Guido, the “Anglosphere” is a heavily ideological concept and any mention of it should make us suspect a political point is being driven home rather than an argument made. This is certainly something I am not in agreement with Hendo on.
Of course, using that argument the Russians did not pull together to fight the Germans in WW2, and countless other examples.
Mark I didn’t think Tony went easy on Sheikh Omran nor was Tony content. Like the small audience at our place Tony was perplexed, pissed off, confused and rightly sceptical of the mumbled nonsense the Sheikh was spouting. No point in persisting in asking a nincompoop like that to clarify.
I saw an old war movie on the telly the other week - Kelly’s Heroes.
I found it inexcusable that there was no mention of the involvement of the brave diggers fighting the Japanese in New Guinea, or the gallant Aussie airmen huddled in the gunner’s seat in the rear of the Lancasters flying overhead.
Damn this art thing. It has no right to be unbalanced.
FXH, I wasn’t sure that I believed the Sheikh but it did seem that he was trying to back away from some of his earlier statements - not so much on Bin Laden - but Tony seemed happy that he’d got him to say that Australians shouldn’t go and wage Jihad overseas.