The op/ed pages of The Australian have reached new heights of right wing absurdity today. Going beyond the culture warriors’ pathetic campaign to seize upon the Cronulla riots and the responses to denigrate multiculturalism and the Left, it seems that racial tension and disorder are now merely convenient hooks for embittered and pompous pundits to push their own boring and tired obsessions. Former Howard government board appointee turned blogger, David Flint fulminates against leftie journos and praises shock jocks. Although he has – conveniently – very little to say about the actual comments made by Alan Jones, whose repeated reading of the sms that inspired the Cronulla “rally” might be deemed by anyone reasonable to be unhelpful to say the least. In retrospect, one can only applaud the rare soundness of the Howard government’s decision not to reappoint this learned gentleman to a position where he was in charge of regulating the media.
Flint makes this stock standard and disingenuous and deceptive characterisation of multiculturalism:
If it is used to mean that people should be classified and then advantaged or disadvantaged according to some ethnic tag, or that the essential principles and values of our Australian culture must give way, this is unacceptable to most Australians.
Australians have never agreed to this and they never would. The problem is, they have never been asked. No wonder they recorded their vehement opposition to the doctrine on one of the few places where this was tolerated: talkback radio.
Piffle. Multiculturalism has never meant this, except in a sort of hysterical threatened nativist culture, which is fed by talkback radio and Hansonism, and in turn feeds them. The key here is Flinty’s failure to specify who determines “Australian culture”. This is how he slips in an automatic identification with old Australianism and its eternal essence, which in turn rests on a series of denials (there were “ethnic” immigrants in Australia long before WW2, and Australian culture developed in tension with Indigenous culture and history). What he really means is the dominant culture. The Australian is right about one thing. Aggressive masculinism is part of the problem. The trick in the history wars has been for the elites such as the learned Professor, pollies and media barons to identify themselves with masculinist Aussie culture, and to shift its radical content to a “one nation” essentialism. You have to wonder if there’s not a certain worry deep at the heart of some of these elititists that they aren’t blokey or Aussie enough themselves. John Howard, the small guy with the big glasses at the barbie, Flinty with his elocution lessons and silk ties, strolling the Cronulla foreshore.
Speaking of the History Wars, former MUP Publisher Peter Ryan uses a perfunctory reference to Cronulla to rant about the “persecution” of Geoffrey Blainey. Anyone who’s read anything about this (outside the pages of Quadrant) would spot a myth that’s been retailed and retold as fact. Go ask Peter just when Blainey’s “eventual” retirement from Melbourne Uni was – it’s significant that he doesn’t tell his readers that it was in 1988, making a misleading and specious inference that Blainey was driven from his Chair shortly after his comments in 1984.
Pathetic crap. The Australian has published some decent stuff on Cronulla on the op/ed pages from Mike Steketee and James Jupp, but these two articles are pointless, egotistically self-serving and have no place in the objective of analysis and action of the causes of the riots.
Elsewhere: Tim Dunlop does a superb job of deconstructing Ryan’s rot, and Andrew Bartlett (among other things) points out Flinty’s hypocrisy. Andrew Norton also discusses Peter Ryan, contrasting his column with Marilyn Lake’s in The Age.
Ironically a commenter on Catallaxy effectively referred to The Australian as a PC leftie paper just because I cited that article discussed by Rob in your Cronulla thread.
Flint’s working definition of multiculturalism sounds a lot like Strocchi’s.
The Australian print media has some of the worst standards for editorial content. I don’t know why. On the other hand we’ve got some of the best cartoonists in the world:
Saw Professor Flint on TV the morning after the riots; for ignorant me it was the first time I’d actually seen what he looks like. He doesn’t sound Australian to me, he’s got this unnerving pompous royal kind of accent. He had little to say, except that the riots were not due to racism and that it was the fault of the Iemma government’s lenient approach to crime – harsher penalties needed.
It will be interesting to see what the mushy response from Howard will be on the electorate. The Morgan poll out tomorrow won’t reflect these attacks (they’re taken from data before it). The earliest will be the Newspoll out next week. (Nielsen may also have a poll.) I think that there will be little impact, certainly no negative impact on the present regime. Call me cynical, but I’m of the opinion that many people in this country don’t believe these attacks are due to racism, and that a large proportion of them think they’re at least partly justified.
is my memory failing me or did Blainey complain about the high rise of asian immigration?
Lebos and asians is a stretch.
complaining about Jason is fair game though!!!
Since dispensing with the services of Gerard Henderson last June, The Age in Melbourne no longer publishes a conservative columnist on its opinion page.
Personally, I would never have picked Tony Parkinson for a closet lefty. Well, you live and learn, don’t you.
Lord Flinty was on ABC World Today or whatever it is called @ midday to 1pm. Intoning and defending Alan Jones (well he would say that wouldn’t he) and having a jab or two at Labor State Governments and Muslims.
He was on Delroy last night praising the Queen ( he seems to love all old queens) and showing up Republicans for being anarchy loving knee jerk destroyers of all that real australians stand for.
“Go ask Peter just when Blainey’s “eventual” retirement from Melbourne Uni was – it’s significant that he doesn’t tell his readers that it was in 1988.”
That’s soon enough for “eventually”, Mark. It’s nonsense that Ryan gave the impression you attribute to him. His position became progressively more untenable for the reasons Ryan cites, but his staying on for three to four years shows he was a pretty gritty character.
Ryan is quite right. Humanities departments have a well-deserved reputation for vicious antagonism against anyone who doesn’t toe the predominent politicallly correct line. Forget about free exchange of ideas and debate. It just doesn’t exist.
I suggest you have a read of Macintyre’s quite balanced account (long after passions cooled and some had regretted initial reactions), whyisitso, in The History Wars.
Ryan’s account is biassed and full of misleading implications and generalisations.
It’s also very hard to see, as I’ve suggested, how it contributes in the slightest to commentary on Cronulla.
Isn’t Flinty from Sri Lanka? I believe he attributes his toffy accent to “elocution lessons” to overcome an ethnic accent. Pity he assimilated in the 60s when ABC announcers still used Beeb voices and not now when he’d much more appropriately talk surfer strine Sutherland regional dialect style.
Flint is half-Indonesian on his mother’s side.
Jason,
I met him once and I could tell which half was Indonesian!
Bahasa humbug
Where did the idea that lefties are elites come from? Don’t elites have to have power in order to be elites?
“multiculturalism means whatever the user chooses it to mean”
Own goal Flinty.
“Pity he assimilated in the 60s when ABC announcers still used Beeb voices and not now when he’d much more appropriately talk surfer strine Sutherland regional dialect style.”
Just like you lot isn’t, attacking a man because of his accent and not debating his ideas!
Looks a bit of racism to me.
We’re not debating Flint’s ideas, we’re laughing at them.
Actually stick Lord Flint in a Cronulla pub on a Saturday night and then you’d see some kneejerk reactions to accents – on both sides.
It’s not his accent that’s being mocked as such, anyway, it’s the irony of the disconnect — which he so obviously doesn’t get — between his toffy accent and his endless banging on about those dreadful elites. Christopher ‘Bring Back the Latin Mass’ Pearson take note.
And it was Flint himself, I believe, who popularised ‘elites’ as a term of abuse (but only when talking about the left, or about people who can spell, punctuate and proofread, and the more time I spend in the blogosphere the clearer it becomes to me that there’s a very clear association between these two things, which of course is exactly the kind of snotty remark Flint is attacking), with his silly book. But Howard had been using it even before that.
“And it was Flint himself, I believe, who popularised ‘elites’ as a term of abuse.”
No worse than using accent as a means of abuse. You’d be the first to express outrage if someone was sneered at because of his or her Asian, Middle Eastern or other multicultural accent. Your hypocrisy is screaming out.
flinty is a high Anglican and loves one of the versions book of common prayer ( the one the Oxford movement loved.).
He Kirby and Pearson may have something in common
Gee you’re one steamed up little dim sim today, whatsit.
It’s Davo’s whole toffy-nosed persona, perfectly embodied by his hoary Received Pronouncation accent, that’s the subject of mockery here – because it is so at odds with his handwringing over those pesky “elites”.
But hey, if you want to wilfully misunderstand the point so you can take your high horse for a ride, tyhe knock y’self out Stampy.
Using Flint’s accent of a means of abuse? No, Mr/s. whyisitso. What part of disconnect don’t you understand?
Elitists who criticise elites are dodgy whatever their accent, but maybe if he talked like Pauline the way he walks like Pauline his accent wouldn’t strike so many as uproariously odd.
I remember Lord Paddy of Balmain writing he went to school with him and he had the accent there.
hey it’s better than Lord Paddy’s!
“Gee you’re one steamed up little dim sim today, whatsit. ”
That’s racist, Nabs. Racist! How dare you mock the cuisine of my ancestors. I should have known you lefties are all the same … yadda yadda Gough Whitlam ‘f***ing Balts’ yadda yadda East Timor yadda yadda … Muslims are your preferred minorities, aren’t they?
Flint, imo, is beyond criticism as much as he is beyond satire.
I love that story about him hiding in a closet before a speech so he could make a grand entrance..
I don’t understand Prof. Flint’s going on about the so-called elites! I think that he’s stuck on it and can’t think much. I don’t know why a newspaper publishes the same stuff.
BTW it’s sad when articles are advertised as “Why XXX is WRONG”, or “Why YYY was RIGHT” – yes, let’s have a black and white view of the world. Not for me thanks.
Dim sims are cuisine? I thought they were surfie fuel. At least I didn’t compare him to a chiko roll, the only snackfood that’s already been digested and excreted for you. Kinda took that comparison for granted.
“What part of disconnect don’t you understand” All of it. What the hell are you talking about. Is this elitist shit or what?
“Is this elitist shit or what?”
Why yes it is, my low-browed little friend. Look, love to chat further but I’m off to the opera tonight so I must dash and start numbing my senses now with a few peach bellinis. Ciao.
“Is this elitist shit or what?”
It’s what, why.
Maybe you should read all the posts from start to finish. Especially the ones you’re answering.
Example of the meaning of ‘disconnect’: “I understand all of it. What are you talking about?”
It’s funny when you’re called an elitist by someone who drives a flash car and lives in a flash house in a flash suburb, when you drive a crap old car, live wage-to-wage, and rent a falling down old cottage.
It’s funny to be called an elitist by a person who has a high flying media job when your parents are working class shop owners.
David Flint’s silver spoon upbringing and and plummy, dulcet tones don’t bother me. It’s the way he pretends that an ordinary person like me is somehow ‘elitist’ because my ideas don’t match his, when in every single sense of the word, he is way more a member of any elite than I’ll ever be.
Same with Alan Jones. There’s nothing ‘ordinary’ about these people.
Kate are you saying he is a flasher?
Nothing would surprise me, Homer.
More of a tosser, I suspect.
Example of the meaning of ‘disconnect’: “I understand all of it. What are you talking about?�
Cor, aren’t you a clever little vegemite. You must be an elite to have learned a hard word like that so well. And after only a few years getting a humanities degree – well done!
I’m pretty sure Flinty knows what it means, whyisitso. Do you have anything relevant or substantive to add on this thread?
I heard the call go up for elitist shit and came running!
Flinty is a gutsy lil battler, staying and he’s dead right about the twilight of the elites. Any humble bogan can participate at the highest level of a multicultural policy development these days, through the democratic means of a race riot. Thanks flinty!
Yeah! I loved hearing the fragrant DF on the ABC today. He’s a man of the people, salt of the earth, I tell ya!
Prof Flint and some of the people on this page would shit themselves if they were in a western suburbs pub on a Friday or Sat night, and the same goes for the beachside burbs,like most of what Flint says about working class australians hes speaking out of his arse.
I tried to find the trackback URL, how I tried. My thoughts here. Almost amusing to watch the conservatives line up to put the boot into multiculturalism. Good luck for anyone who mistakenly thinks there is an alternative to it that doesn’t involve rounding up all Australia’s ethnics and deporting them. (e.g. not far from the whole country).