I’m not going to get into the standard of Keith Windschuttle’s scholarship in his latest intervention in the history/culture wars. I’ll leave that to the historians. Given Windschuttle’s usual schtick of doing no original historical research with an open mind, but rather attempting to subvert others’ scholarship through terminological quibbling and general legalistic nitpicking in the best small minded tradition of John Howard, and always with a political aim, I’d be very surprised indeed if Peter Read isn’t on the money with his rejection of Windschuttle’s claims.
I’m much more interested in the timing.
The second volume of Windschuttle’s tome, The Fabrication of Aboriginal History, has been a long time coming. No doubt he was distracted by his many government board responsibilities. But it’s more than a little too cute by half that he finally comes out with some of his findings on the weekend before the national apology to the Stolen Generations. His degree of moral seriousness is evident in his risible call for there to be a $50 billion compensation fund – for something he either denies happened, or thinks was a good thing.
This is an absolute disgrace. It can only be intended to draw attention to his own grandstanding, and to distort the actual stakes of the apology, and to sow fear. Cf. John Howard. We’d be much better served by some honesty from those who don’t want to apologise, rather than political opportunism and cheap high school debating tricks. This debate deserves much better than some sort of repulsive rhetoric which tells us much more about the inability of some to transcend the juvenilia of their student politics Maoism of four decades ago than the actual importance to our national life of what will, justly and far too belatedly, occur on Wednesday morning. Windschuttle should grow up before he grows too much older if he wants to play a serious and ethically responsible role in national debate on serious issues which have blighted far too many lives.
Cross-posted at PollieGraph.
Update: Naomi Parry’s article, Debunking Windschuttle, has now been published at LP.
Superannuated contrarian self-publishes, unedited. Yawn.
It’s not *even* history; if it’s anything like his last one The White Australia Policy it’s just going to be an exercise in furtive guilt-relief. And nobody wants to watch that.
Any relevance apologiac arguments like Windschuttle’s had was smashed on the 24th November last year. His was an ahistorically partisan cause, propped up by a political will to powerfully listen which no longer exists, and the sick comedy (for bad-spirited people like me) is watching influence-junkies go involuntarily and retrospectively cold-turkey.
The louder they scream for the hit, the less likely they’ll get it.
BTW, here’s Windy from the link:
Funniest shit I’ve read for a long time. Scratch at those skin-spiders, get them all out!
Yep, in the past week we’ve see all kinds of odd arguments, Albrectsen saying an apology is “pragmatic” and banging on about some screwy idea about capitalism lacking romantic appeal, I couldn’t work it out. Then there was the idea of the Libs going along with the apology only because they could then argue from the high moral ground for the continuation of the intervention.
They are, to put it mildly, all utterly barking mad.
Is the average Australian that well educated now,that they can without much thought or reading of serious books,know as you seem to do,that reading a book is the same as purchasing it,and thus have the same values!?Seeing the so called history wars have still got combatants,and apparently both sides seem to think the outcome is as with waking up in colder months,with toes and head warm,is it stupid of me to think the issue is still alive!?
I question the timing of your questioning of the timing.
Now that’s top shelf banal sarcasm. I bow to a master at the top of his game.
I almost wonder if it is not high self parody. He could actually add to pressure for compensation. Even if compensation is not paid individually addressing Indigenous disadvantage to be effective has to be long term and will cost lots. The NT Intervention is a band aid relative to the need.
Windschuttle has carved out a niche as an irrational contrarian, determined to rewrite history and spread confusion. He isn’t about to change his modus operandi or his style.
The timing is interesting. Seems he is a bit like a fish on beach, flopping about and lashing out in frustration after the water has receded. Last gasps? Possibly, but he probably believes his own bullshit, so he may continue on with this tripe.
Mark: minor quibble, but Keith’s magnum opus is called The Fabrication of Aboriginal History, not The Fabrication of Australian History. (Library listing here.)
Thanks, Bryn. I think it must have been a Freudian slip, as it were…
Good thing you didn’t attack the standard of his scholarship then …it gather it has been along weekend starting with drinks on Thursday?
Yep, Liam, I read his thing in Sydney Airport yesterday and I was inclined not to bother with him, because this crap really has lost its main life support system – the artificial imprimatur it got as being serious from Howard (and the board appointments are important in that process). But reading through some of the pathetic attempts to keep the bandwagon of negative nabob-ism alive from certain quarters of the media and the blogosphere – well I really don’t think we can ignore the compensation thing. That seems to me to be an absolute act of bastardry, designed to muddy the waters and build opposition to the apology in the most disingenuous and bloody deceitful of ways. So if his ego is sustained by people talking back to him, I plead guilty. But that was a really very low piece of work indeed in my opinion.
I wouldn’t waste my time. The quality of his work speaks for itself.
All in good time murph. I can have a go at the egregious rubbish in his most recent one (The White Australia Policy) here if you like, but that’d be rather off-topic.
I’m prepared to bet that TFoAH Volume II never sees the shelves—the announcement (via Imre Saluzinsky) is just cynical attention-seeking. Actual publication isn’t the point.
I thought one of the other self-serving interviews with him by Devine or Saluzinsky mentioned how tragic it was that vol. II might have to go further on hold because of his new Quadrant gig. I imagine crusading against nudity in opera is a full time occupation.
http://larvatusprodeo.net/2007/10/24/culture-wars-target-opera/
Here’s Windschuttle in his own words:
Yes, Liam Efendi, that ‘never sees the shelves’ aspect is very interesting. Maybe it was only ever meant to see the pages of the Oz, on a well-chosen date. What Imre rather strangely calls the ‘preliminary extract’ from it that is published on p 21 of the Weekend Oz merely says at the end ‘Keith Windshcuttle’s The Fabrication of Aboriginal History, Volume Two wll be published later this year.’ Googling the title brings up only two hits and they are you guessed it, both the Weekend Oz.
Windschuttle’s name does not appear anywhere obvious on the website of his own publishing company the Macleay Press, which published Volume One. Nor does the title of this second volume appear there as ‘forthcoming’
To those in the book business, ’self-published’ is a synonym for ‘no publisher would touch it’. Any self-publisher looks, by definition, like a wanker. If Windy doesn’t know that by now, given how many positions of power and influence in the Yartz he has held over recent years, then he’s a disgrace before we even begin to consider the contents of his as yet unpublished new book.But then, we knew that; witness the staggeringly philistine quotation in Mark’s comment above.
PC, it’s struck me more and more in the last few years what a creature of the daily media Keith Windschuttle has become. I admire him for his ability to create and maintain intellectual loyalty amongst the people who support him—and I’m thinking as you are of Saluzinsky and Devine, and hope that when I’m KW’s age I have such reliable friends to sort me out with media gigs—but he’s made the classic mistake of all intellectuals who tie themselves to political movements of patronage and mutual support.
If you’re a parasite, benign or malignant, you have to accept that your lifespan is identical to that of your host.
Mark,
Other than professor Peter Reads research, do you if any other qualified historians or people who specialise in Aboriginal studies have conducted serious academic research (I’m talking about peer reviewed research conducted in a University) that definitively show that the motives behind the policy of removing mixed-race children from their Aboriginal mothers was to breed out Aboriginal people.
I’m not disputing this by this by the way. I’d simply like to read up on it.
It would be greatly appreciated if you could provide some links.
I know someone who’s completed a PhD thesis on this specific topic, kodwo – by definition serious academic peer reviewed research conducted in a University. I gather they may be saying something in the media, but I don’t want to pre-empt that. Suffice it to say that I’m satisfied from what I’ve heard that Windschuttle is wrong. Mind you, mere logic (and rhetoric – because it’s not hard to work out what he’s trying to do) suggests he is when reading the article.
In the meantime Read is obviously a good starting point, and following up his references is an obvious next step.
The difficulty here is that few academic journals are publicly available on the web, and in addition history is the sort of discipline that puts a lot of stock on the publishing of monographs.
However, here’s a link or two:
http://www4.gu.edu.au:8080/adt-root/public/adt-QGU20060720.105408/index.html
http://www.newcastle.edu.au/centre/cispr/conferences/land/butipaper.pdf
And here’s the Bringing them Home report:
http://www.austlii.edu.au/au/special/rsjproject/rsjlibrary/hreoc/stolen/
The first link is to a PhD thesis on forced removals in Queensland. Contra Windschuttle (and the point, as I say, is immediately obvious from reading his article), this is relevant:
Having said that, as I suggested, I’m not a historian, and I don’t particularly want to get into a critique of Windschuttle’s substantive case (such as it is). Outside areas where I have what I consider to be sufficient expertise, I’m happy to go with those whose work has stood the test of peer review and recognition – hence the comments on Read. I’d also prefer the focus of this thread to be on the issues I actually raised in the post.
Of course, in 100 years, nobody will recall tiresome self-promotional exercises by Keith Whatever and other assorted opponents of progress.
Mind you, thats not to say I won’t enjoy the “Basic decency, and why we’re against it” special issue of Quadrant.
I am a humble creature of my own age after all.
Yeah, that’s precisely what I was thinking. I think Bain Attwood has published some good stuff as well.
Dirk Moses made the point a while back that Windshuttle’s books are actually published with the family press, rather than an academic house, thus avoiding the quality control process that guarantees intellectual seriousness and rigour.
Sorry to divert attention from issues raised in your post by the away.
The “Bringing them Home” report isn’t exactly scholarship.
The standard of evidence required isn’t rigorous enough to get up in a courtroom.
I have no thoughts on Windschuttle, other than I am beginning to think he has something, as most criticism (if it could be called that) is of the man, & not the methodology behind his findings.
“The Liberal Party is voted out of govt, ergo Windschuttle’s findings should no longer be even paid lip service to”… is quite a novel way to prove his findings wrong.
It’s a collection of evidence taken from survivors. Such is the nature of government-commissioned reports. It is not meant to be a journal article. Why, which part do you object to?
The way in which testimony is elicited would differ somewhat given the rules of evidence in a court. The content of the testimony would not.
Oh my, there’s a psychological cornucopia there – penis envy, kinkiness, suppressed homoerotic lust, moral outrage…
I tell you what, let’s put large figleaves with Keith’s name on them on all exposed artistic male genitalia around the place. Statues of hoses would qualify as well I am sure. Doubtless he will appreciate his ensuing closeness to the problem.
Must go and see that particular opera
I started to read the excerpt of Windbags’ latest offering, but had to give up before I was halfway through it, owing to the red mist etc. Is this bloke trying to assume David Irving’s mantle?
The State-run child abductions were common knowledge when I was a kid. And we all knew that it was mixed-parentage kids who were targeted and that it wasn’t for altruistic reasons, which makes a mockery of Windbags’ arguments, IMO. It was like background noise in my life, but kid-like, I didn’t appreciate how cruel the policy was, nor the long-term consequences for the families.
The apology can’t come soon enough as far as I’m concerned and the naysayers should be bunged in the stocks and pelted with the rotting fruit of their mean-spiritedness.
Jane [25]:
Exactly. So where is the sense in denying it?
Mark, Liam, in deference to Windschuttle’s historiography, I would just like to point out that you and I couldn’t possibly have shared a beer last Thursday night, because no photographic or documentary evidence survives that the meeting ever took place. All we have to go on is the unreliable testimony and hear-say of ourselves, plus a bunch of other so-called “witnesses” who claim to have been present, but were intoxicated, at this event that never took place anyway.
Oh sure, there is written evidence from the week before that said you *intended* to meet for a beer, and there are flight manifests to show you were in Sydney at the time, and you have photos of Sydney to prove it, but that is all just circumstantial. Those photos of Sydney you have are miles from the site of the alleged meeting-for-a-beer. We also have claims from SATP that he turned up after midnight and found nobody present at the site of the alleged meeting. Since no photograph or document survives from this evening at the pub, it’s obvious that that whole meeting-for-a-beer myth is a ruse designed to engender a false picture of last week’s history, to elicit compensation from The Clock Hotel for our non-existent hangovers, and to entrench the power of the Left in our universities. QED.
Mark, so you disagree with Windschuttle. A shame you cannot actually mount an argument against him.
Fork me – read my comment #27. That is all the argument against Windschuttle one needs. Using Windschuttle’s historiography, I am unable to satisfactorily demonstrate that Mark, Liam and I met for a beer as recently as last Thursday. So what hope has anybody got of convincing Windschuttle about events of 40+ years ago? We simply don’t have the evidence that he would accept, and therefore he would conclude it never happened. This is an unreasonably positivist approach to history, in which evidence is always partial and fragmented. If historical evidence were always clear-cut, we wouldn’t need historians. Everybody would be able to simply look at the record and agree on it without discussion.
The methods Windschuttle employs for serious historical research are faulty. They are not suited to the task. They don’t produce reliable findings any more than does a badly-calibrated scanner.
BTW I also can’t mount an argument against Area 51 conspiricists and moon-landing-never-happened nutjobs. Because it’s a waste of breath.
Lovely pastiche, Mercurius.
It should be pointed out also that *if* our meeting for a beer happened, we certainly benefited alcoholically from it, and had we not met up for a beer, each of us would probably have wound up just drinking somewhere else, in some other licenced premises. People who aren’t us go drinking all the time. So we have no grounds for complaint.
Steve:
Lip service is a very polite way of putting it. He hasn’t had professional credibility for a long time, not since the totally derivative (of D’Souza) The Killing Of History, and the unplugging of his political lifeline means *exactly* that he should no longer be paid attention to. His tired schtick is the opposite of Keating’s description of lizard-on-a-rock Hewson: it’s dead, and only looks alive.
I saw the article heading on the front page of the Australian on the weekend, shuddered, and moved on, leaving Keith to occupy the caboose of history.
Ole ‘cut and paste; Keef does know how to generate publicity for his books ( and publishing company) doesn’t he? Why be moderate, thoughtful, analytical or gasp, scholarly? The public wont read that! Overstate, exaggerate, mock, deride, rail against an self created orthodoxy and above all keep repeating you message despite what ever anyone says which shows you are wrong. Curse those radical basket weaving elbow patch wearing dolphin worshiping historians! Get one of your mates – Imre – to ventilate the upcoming publication through National press and bobs your uncle.
Kodwo – For a look at National perspective on child removal see Anna Haebich, Broken Circles: Fragmenting Indigenous Families 1800-2000, Fremantle. ArtsCentrePress,Fremantle,2001. Its good.
There are alleged and suspected Nazi war criminals and Holocaust participants alive today (e.g. Konrad Kalejs) who are never going to be put on trial because of the practical difficulties of meeting a courtroom standard of proof in individual cases which occurred decades ago, where documentary evidence is incomplete and unreliable, key witnesses are dead or otherwise unavailable, other key witnesses’ memories are unreliable after so may years have elapsed, etc. Indeed, there are cases of accused Nazi war criminals and Holocaust perpetrators being acquitted despite the fact that it’s virtually certain they were guilty of something, because of the difficulties of proving in a courtroom that they were guilty of anything in particular. Nobody worth taking seriously puts this forward as a reason for denying the historical fact of the Holocaust and Nazi war crimes.
SImilarly, the difficulties of attempting to establish to a courtroom standard of proof exactly what happened in any one particular case of child removal which occurred decades ago, especially if documentary evidence is scanty, key witnesses are deceased, survivors’ memories are unclear after so much time has elapsed, etc., does not constitute grounds for disbelieving the general historical fact that there was a policy of removal of mixed race children from their parents simply because they were mixed race.
My problem with Keith Windschuttle is not that his approach is unreasonably positivist but that he chops and changes his approach according to the argument he wishes to make. In Fabrication Volume 1, for example, Windschuttle dosn’t much like historians estimating death tolls, but a few years later in Quadrant he dosn’t seem to have a problem with them doing so.
http://www.sydneyline.com/Mao%20and%20Australian%20Maoists.htm
Another example of this would be his demand in the White Australia Policy that historians looking to explain the policy carry out an extensive investigation of the parliamentary debate surrounding the Immigration Restriction Bill, which is followed by an analysis of the origins of multiculturalism which does not contain a single reference to a parliamentary debate.
If this is published its another piece of self-published junk, as others have noted. If Windshuttle thinks he has anything of worth to say,he should take the risk of having it peer-reviewed and subjrct to publishers’ readers the way the rest of us do. We might all think something we write is good/valid/a worthwhile contribution to our various disciplines etc, but we only really know that after its been through the peer review/reader process. If its junk, it rejected. If its junk, you self publish (poetry possibly excepted). Windshuttle3’s latest rant re a book which may never be written, is obviously a shameless piece of self-promotion timed to coincide with Labor’s apology.I even doubt that its political in intent; rather its symnptomatic of the mindset of any failed writer not prepared to face the rigours of publisherts or journal editors, and of the psyche of a pitiful person who has to rely on vanity press to dessiminate his major work. (I discount any of the gunk published in Quadrant.)
Mercurius [27]:
Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.
History is not confined to the halls of academia and the polite jousts of scholars.
History and “approved” documents – or more often, the alleged or supposed lack of them – are bludgeons used every day of the week by organized thieves in business and by government oppressors alike against those who lack the money, the knowledge, the influence and the power to defend themselves. Just ask any Aborigines making land right claims or seeking recognition that they were stolen from their mothers, ask any war veterans seeking pensions/compensation, ask any small business operators or sub-contractors seeking the honest completion of deals.
…. and as Paul Norton [post33] pointed out, those same bludgeons are also used to allow culprits to escape justice – and, if I may add, to egregiously reduce the penalties imposed on those who do get brought to justice.
Windschuttle says this, Windschuttle says that. Who cares? He is no longer part of the in-crowd. It’s unlikely even that anybody in the Liberal Party will be listening to him, apart from a handful of revanchists (”Why should I apologise?! I didn’t do nuthin’!”).
True, Windschuttle is still still on the ABC Board. But I doubt we will see him present his opus on the national broadcaster as a documentary, in the style of Ascent of Man.
So, let’s not obsess about yesterday’s man.
Was Windy ever considered a sound academic historian? I ask ass we used a text by him (”The Media”) when I did my arts degree.
Windschuttle did an honours degree in history at Sydney Uni. However I don’t believe he was ever employed as a historian as such during his time as an academic. I think he used to teach media studies (at UTS?)… I’m not aware of any publications of his on history before The Killing of History, which was a polemic not original research. But I’d happily accept correction.
Mark, I think Windschuttle also did some years of RHD research in history, but never actually completed his Doctorate.
Could well be, Paul.
I seem to recall reading Windschuttle averring, early in the history wars, that he had done some study of historical methodologies as part of his doctoral candidature (this was in response to the kind of query that Patrick B raises), and also in The Killing of History he claims to have been a postgraduate history student. That’s the basis for my previous comment.
Windy’s blog, in the title of which he arrogates unto himself the identity of an entire city.
Unsurprisingly it contains very full details of CV, publications and so on.
By the way, I note that Herodotus, Plutarch, Seutonius and Pliny (elder and younger!) all contain fabrications, embellishments, inaccuracies and outright falsehoods. Clearly therefore the Greek and Roman Empires are fictions designed to make us feel that we are the culturally superior inheritors of a great and glorious past.
A whole Pride Industry has grown up around the so-called Western Hemisphere. They love nothing more than to revel in the fanciful assertions of a bunch of long-gone ivory-tower scholars with over-active imaginations who led morally questionable lives.
Don’t listen to the Western Cultural Pride industry! It’s all a tissue of lies! Pass it on!
Huh?
The links from Sydneyline in the ‘Other Sites’ alone should disqualify him commenting on anything! Calling ‘Evil Pundit of Doom’ one of the ‘Compatible Sites’ unintentionaly hilarious.
“Mark, I think Windschuttle also did some years of RHD research in history, but never actually completed his Doctorate.”
Pretty understandable really, when he visited Freemantle WA, for instance, everybody would just snigger at any ‘Doctor Windschuttle’. Mind you, many people already do that, all around Australia , whenever they hear him or his present name, anyway.
A useful link in assessing the work of Windschuttle can be found at http://www.gouldsbooks.com.au/ozleft/windschuttleblack.html A scholarly work with lots of references.
Windshuttle’s book on unemployment, titled Unemployment, published c. 1975 wass considered an excellent social geography/economics etc. It had aq strong left wing bias, from memory. (ie about 1978). You wouldn’t believe the same bloke wrote FOAH.
I’m surprised at the surprise and wonder at the time of Windschuttle’s new book and article. It’s obvious of course.
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I actually wonder at the triumphal tone expressed by many here. The conviction that the revisionism of the Right has blown away with the denmise of the Howard government. I think not.
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The Howard goverment lost fundamentally because of WorkChoices, not because of his cultural position which has worked very well for him. I don’t recall the ALP drawing on their position in the History Wars as an election promise either. I’d wager there is still a lot of support for the positions of Windschuttle, Howard etcetera. And the Libs won’t be in opposition forever.
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BTW I’m not sure I find Windschuttle’s status vis a vis the Academy strictly relevant. There are historians who do fine work and aren’t University teachers. There are also University teachers who are intellectually worthless.
Windschuttle should be ashamed that he’s continuing to steal our oxygen.
sorcerer @ 24…. I’m off topic , but
“Statues of hoses”
Crikey, I’ve never seen such a statue. Where did you see them?? They say that in 2108, there’ll be statues of garden sprinklers in Melbourne, the way we’re going. But hoses?
I suppose, if the hose was painted gold and had an ERECTION, KeithW would rail against its iniquity
John Humphreys of LDP fame calculated that a broad-based carbon tax would lead to something like a 10-20c in fuel prices. A smart government would introduce it just before an election, knowing that electricity prices would not rise until later.
Hmm, wrong thread.
“The Howard goverment lost fundamentally because of WorkChoices, not because of his cultural position which has worked very well for him”
True, but beside the point.
The change of government opens the door for new cultural narratives, simply because of who is setting the agenda (or, in the negative, who is no longer setting the agenda).
Change the government = change the country.
kodwo @ 17
casey @ post [30] on the “Mealy-mouthed apologies” thread gave this quote:
“As Brisbane’s Telegraph newspaper reported in May 1937,
Mr Neville [the Chief Protector of WA] holds the view that within one hundred years the pure black will be extinct. But the half-caste problem was increasing every year. Therefore their idea was to keep the pure blacks segregated and absorb the half-castes into the white population. Sixty years ago, he said, there were over 60,000 full-blooded natives in Western Australia. Today there are only 20,000. In time there would be none. Perhaps it would take one hundred years, perhaps longer, but the race was dying. The pure blooded Aboriginal was not a quick breeder. On the other hand the half-caste was. In Western Australia there were half-caste families of twenty and upwards. That showed the magnitude of the problem (quoted by Buti 1995 on page 35).�
cheers
Elections aren’t won or lost on a single issue, Adrien, though WorkChoices was a very important one. There’s a broader shift of opinion – as Howard correctly recognised when he adopted Keating’s tag and warned that to change the government would change the country. Bob Carr, for one, was absolutely spot on when he identified Howard’s “praetorian guard” in the culture wars commentariat as a big negative – making him imagine that he had more popular support than he did for extreme positions, and fencing him into maintaining those extreme positions.
There’s still support, no doubt, for negativism about the apology. But it’s a minority sentiment – and it always was a minority sentiment, as Peter Costello (among other Liberals) realised. Howard was out of step with so-called “mainstream Australia” on it.
There’s likely to be a continuing market for populists of the Andrew Bolt stripe to articulate this – but Bolt is a long way away from Windschuttle’s pose as a public intellectual. That sort of obsessing about “teh evil postmodernists” etc. actually has a limited future – because its target is a straw figure, and it’s of very little interest to anyone anyway. One thing we can say for certain – the ageing ex Maoists obsessed with pseudo-Gramscian notions of being an “organic intellectual” have had all their oxygen sucked out of them now that their patron, Sir John of Wollstonecraft, is himself history as a political actor. It’s old hat, and it’s boring, and sooner or later the column inches devoted to that style will diminish. Probably sooner rather than later.
As to Windschuttle not being employed in a history department, I agree it’s not relevant. Though it might have helped him to be part of a community of scholars where his ideas and insights could be tested and contested.
But he doesn’t do primary historical research. He devotes his time to nitpicking and distorting others’ research in the interests of polemics. True revisionist history has its value, but it’s usually a sweeping reintrepretation based on new evidence or old evidence examined through a new perspective, not sniping at existing scholarship in a pedantic and political manner. We also usually observe a large number of historians reaching similar revisionist conclusions, not a few outside the academy lobbing bombs into the public sphere. As a number of commenters have remarked, let Windschuttle submit his work to the process of review if he wants to be an academic historian.
Crossed with Spiros at 56.
You would win the wager suggested in your first sentence – there was some discussion on the other Apology thread about the GetUp-commissioned poll which showed 36 per cent opposition to an apology nationally. However (and this relates to your second sentence in the quote) those people opposed to the apology are now the Coalition’s problem. The dilemma for the Coalition is how to find a position and a formulation which is credible with the moral middle class whilst minimising the risk of Hansonism redux.
Yes, that’s exactly right, Paul.
These 36% are likely to have a very strong overlap with the core support for Howard, and in any case, after the apology becomes fact, some who are less committed to opposition will probably change. Public opinion is always dynamic rather than static, even if the shifts are small and/or a long time in coalescing.
And they are Nelson’s problem – witness the fact that he’s all over the place again this morning. His inability to articulate a clear message – in stark contrast to Rudd – is symptomatic of the deep fissure in both his own Parliamentary party and the broader ranks of conservative and liberal voters.
Mark, a pedantic correction if I may. Windschuttle’s youthful ultra-left associations were not with Maoism but with a faction of Sydney Trotskyism which included Bob Gould, Hall Greenland and Sylvia Hale.
Spiros –
No I disagree. You don’t change the country when you change the government. The country changes its government. It authorises a different set of people to enact legisaltion. The Australian citizenry are not moulded putty and are not mandating anyone to regard them as such.
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As Rudd didn’t stress this aspect of ALP policy, I don’t think you can safely make the claim that citizenry in general find it desirable. I’m not certain on what basis we can relegate the Bolataburbian Opposition to the status of an insignificant and withering minority. I have my doubts.
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And cultura; narratives are set by the culture, not the government. I’m not a supporter, generally, of the Right wing revisionists. I haven’t read Windschuttle (except in The Weekend Oz last) but I’m no fan of historians who generate their preferred history and then proceed to find facts that support this.
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However in my experience there is something not too dissimilar coming from the Left.
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I do wonder if this schism in intellectual circles is wider than it used to be. If the Right and the Left decide to choose their own cadre of historians we will end up in a right mess. Perhaps all partisan historians should take a leaf out of Eric Hobsbawn’s books particularly The Age of Extremes. As a life-long communist it must have been painful to articulate the failure of the Soviet Union truthfully but he did. To be sure his take on that story, and his views on Social Democracy and the rise of neoliberal political economy are from the Left. Nevertheless he is true to his profession.
No probs, Paul, but I’m sure you’d agree the mindset is very similar.
On the basis of opinion polls, then.
You seem to have an odd notion that “the culture” proceeds along some autonomous track from politics, Adrien. That’s quite wrong. Though sometimes the causality can be more in one direction than another, it’s much more like a constant feedback loop. On your premises, it would be difficult to understand why politicians ever took a lead or struck out in a new direction. I also suspect the separation is a highly artificial one, and thus the analysis rests on an incorrect premise.
Mark, I’d certainly agree.
The apology has been part of official ALP policy since the 1990s. There is clearly a mandate.
On the basis of fact, Adrien, when it comes to the non-populists like Windschuttle (and to a lesser extent Gerard Henderson and Kevin Donnelly: Bolt is quite a different kind of reactionary). Unlike figures of a genuine social movement, ex-Trots like Windschuttle inhabited a sphere of power/influence created entirely by the last Government, with its throwback obsessions of lost student political battles of the 1970s, and informed greatly by the US academic wars of the 1980s.
When it comes to these kinds of cultural warriors, there is no hydra syndrome—cut off the head and the body will die.
Mark -
Didn’t say they were. WorkChoices was the main issue. The apology wasn’t a main issue. There was a feeling that Howard was old hat. I’d argue that he misread the mood of the electorate when he defeated Latham. Deft perception will tell you that altho’ the electorate rejected Latham they wanted an alternative to Howard. Latham scared people. One of the reasons he lost so badly is because people thought he might win.
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Rudd didn’t make any of the mistakes that Latham did in fact he went out of his way to project the same conservative persona (only younger and slightly less fuddy-duddy) as Howard. WorkChoices was a gift. People didn’t like it. And Howard was too tired to fight his way out of it.
Was he? Hardly a non-partisan observation. But that doesn’t discredit him. He’s not dumb and he did pick Kevvie as the next Labor PM. There was definitely a cultural shift. Howard’s pro-US stance had become a liability as people slowly woke up to the fact that the Bush administration is a disaster. There’s been a change of heart on refugees. But I reckon that the Boltaburbians are still significant. I’m not one of them mind. But I think it’s a mistake to think they will go away.
Disagree. On that Cultural Studies stoush you associated me with Windschuttle and the rest. I come from a totally different place. Think Ophelia Benson, Alan Sokal and Richard Dawkins. Their points are not based on any anti-Left agenda as they are lefties. And they’re not likely to build things out of straw either.
As it happens Bolt was on Insiders on Sunday morning and his main venom was aimed at the Coalition and its division over the issue, with his line being that it was split between people who were so transported by emotion that they are impervious to “facts” (i.e. supporters of the Apology) and peole who “base themselves on facts” and thus seem too harsh (i.e. the Libs who agree with him).
Sold my TV quite a while ago (feel the IQ surge) so didn’t see it. Is David Marr still cloberring Bolt or have they finally seperatd ‘em? They’ll never play nice those two.
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I think we can expect a shoring up of support for the right side of the Culture Wars. Rudd’s been smart getting the Apology over and done with now. The Left will perceive it as being in earnest. It won’t be an issue come next election so anyone it alienates will be paying attention to something else.
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For myself I wish this had happened with less diviseness. It would be better if it was universal. But what can you do?
If you really want to see how significant Windschuttle’s views are in 2008 I suggest watching the papers over the next few days. Back in the day everytime Windy popped up we would be subjected to an avalanche of adulation courtesy of his mates in the commentariat. Lets see how many people are still willing to make a fuss over him. Im willing to bet it will be at least one less than before, as Albrechtsen now favours an apology.
Sure, there’s a heterogenous set of people involved in the anti-po/mo thing. It’s not all the ex-Trot and ex-Maoist culture warriors, but I was careful to limit my remarks to them. But it doesn’t change the fact that very few people actually care. Remove the complex chain of emotive associations that tied some of this stuff up together in a neat little “people (ie Howard and the punditariat) v. elites (latte set etc)” bundle and the threads unravel very fast. Derrida isn’t a bbq stopper, for better or worse. This particular schtick has done its dash. Again, I repeat, that’s not to say that new right wing populist themes won’t emerge. But the particular set of characters and issues we saw in the Howardian culture wars are vanishing. And good riddance to them. The other big thing – aside from the loss of Howard to turn this nonsense into a political narrative – is that it’s far too removed from almost everyone’s perceptions of what is important and what is real.
I’m in 100% agreement with Comrade Liam on this one.
Chris, actually I think he’s going to sink without trace. This is the only thread I’m aware of in the blogosphere, and I was reluctant, as I said in early comments, to bother with him except that I didn’t think he should be allowed to get away with the incredible cynicism and extreme bastardry of his $50 billion compensation call. Otherwise it would have just been the usual turgid and pointless stuff.
“in the title of which he arrogates unto himself the identity of an entire city.”
Maybe that was just an error and what he really meant was the Sydney Institute Line.
I think we will at least see something from Christopher Pearson and Frank Devine. Will be interesting to see if Tom Switzer gives any space to Peter Ryan, who is no doubt busy penning an “in defence of Windy” type op-ed.
Mark -
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‘Comrade’ Liam’s pertinence notwithstanding I’m not sure it’s time to make that assertion. That really depends on how much support the right side of the Culture Wars has; and how much enthusiasm.
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Re the po-mo opposition. I don’t think so. I haven’t posted my CultStud diatribe yet but my so-far cursory researches have indeed shown that those aspects of ‘postmodernism’ objected to by both the likes of Windschuttle and by Dawkins et al have made their way into the secondary curriculum. This will continue to curry opposition.
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I should also point out that Dawkin’s objections to the triumph of obfuscatory discourse are not based on the same objections as Boltaburbian reaction. Dawkins would probably not object to the post-Marxian mission of culture studies. He might see the attempts to combine the literary and anthropological notions of culture for the purposes of study viable and interesting. So do I.
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Messrs Bolt and Windschuttle’s objections would primarily be to the implied political aspects of such a study. I would think they would have a greater problem with a deftly researched, elegantly scripted tome by a feminist historian who proves beyond doubt that 75% of Australian men throughout history were wifebeaters than they would with the latest opaque contribution in aid of composing new and ever more syllabled hypehnated phraseology. The thing is the latter is easier to lampoon and charicature than the former.
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Comrade? Are you being ironic?
#75 Chris Tom – Switzer ( Opinion editor) has apparently left the Australian ( to work for Brendan Nelson no less) so I wonder if this will get any air at all there.
Mark
An absolute disgrace? Should be ashamed? Are you on drugs? Given how trenchant you are about white culpability for the Stolen Generations and ongoing injustices against Aboriginals, why are you not supporting Windschuttle to the hilt? Reading through this thread and your rage towards me on the Apologies thread, I am worried about your sense of perspective.
Of course he’s going to shrink without a trace. His was the cry of a man who wakes up and finds he has been neutered.
The strange thing is, it took Windschuttle two months to realise it. I reckon he was in deep denial, but the awful reality set in at Paddy McGuinness’s funeral.
It’s a new day and a new game.
Adrien is correct. Isn’t Windschuttle’s work mainly showing up the falsifications caused by the ideological agendas of establishment academics?
Adrien
Wait until you read the QLD English syllabus. Orwell must regret that even he could not have come up with such nonsensical Newspeak.
Well if I’m correct I’m not so about that. Never read Winschuttle.
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I did I went and took a look at my old high school’s English course. Many currently fashionable buzzwords abound. Shame. The English course when I went was excellent and quite innovative.
HH
“absolute disgrace? Should be ashamed? Are you on drugs? Given how trenchant you are about white culpability for the Stolen Generations and ongoing injustices against Aboriginals, why are you not supporting Windschuttle to the hilt”
It is a disgrace etc because Keith has written tomes telling us the ‘Stolen Generation’ never happened yet he is now saying there should be compensation paid for an event that never happened.
It isn’t the compensation Mark is saying is disgraeful etc but Windschuttle’s hypocrisy in calling for compensation for events he denies occurred.
But hey, miss the point if you wish.
Harried Hermione, it’s time to come out of the closet, luvvie. While you got off to a good start distinguishing your new persona from your previous incarnations, you’re starting to sound one hell of a lot like one… John Greenfield!
Bored now.
Windschuttle isn’t calling for compensation personally. He’s saying that if Rudd means it he will compensate. The compensation thing is a riff designed to generate outrage and at the same time brand the Apology a cynical gesture. It’s not a moral premise but a well-spun barb.
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If his new book is coming out later it’s something that is in his interests to do. I guess how well that book sells is a good initial litmus test for those predicting his imminent disappearance from the stage.
Pollytickedoff
Ah thanks for the clarification. NOW we can see where these crazed rants are coming from. And you are all barking mad. Windschuttle is saying that he himself thinks the whole thing is wrong, but given the government believes Bringing Them Home then “”Any apology in the parliament that is not backed by compensation will be a PR gesture in the best tradition of spin-doctoring in politics,” he said.
http://www.news.com.au/story/0,23599,23182766-421,00.html
Why do you not agree with Windschuttle?
Missed you on Oxford St last Friday night, JG, but perhaps I wasn’t being sufficiently Bukowski-like (or lite?)…
Adrien, I don’t want yet another argument on this thread about po/mo or cultural studies and its merits or demerits. It’s been tangentially relevant up to now, but I think it’s starting to cross the line.
This is starting to sound like the Mandela is Dead thread. Grace where are you?
Sir, yes sir.
Cheers.
“……I didn’t think he should be allowed to get away with the incredible cynicism and extreme bastardry of his $50 billion compensation call. Otherwise it would have just been the usual turgid and pointless stuff.
I find it extraordinary how ABC News has constantly lead with the issue of ‘demands for compensation by the aboriginal community’ , on this one, over recent days. Just the kind of thing any right minded board member would approve of, in the spoiler role, for our first official sorry day.
Yes, it’s all fun and games until someone loses an irony, Adrien.
Without wanting to reignite a carefully sandbagged discussion of po-mo, I’d just like to note that Windschuttle’s and Bolt’s chosen fronts in the Culture Wars have always been quite different ones, not to be confused. Windschuttle chose a narrow set of enemies in tweed, and kept his vitriol relatively intellectual, even if he did import a North American fight to Australian history (as I said, read The Killing of History as a companion piece to D’Souza’s Illiberal Education).
Bolta is a far simpler and more comprehensive derechista anti-intellectual, whose fire ranges widely and generously. He’s a professional reactionary, and knows how to keep himself in work, whereas Keith was only ever a gifted amateur.
joe2, actually I think ABC radio has been the only news outlet to pick up on Windy’s crap about 50 billion.
Missed that Mark. Just heard a lot of fear inflaming nonsense as if reporters have gone out of their way to find windy material for talkback consumption.
I know I can’t be the only person in Australia who has had a family history involving a relation who “interfered with a native woman” or knows of someone else whose relation did. It seems to have been almost a sport amongst men who were either missionaries in the late 19th and early 20th centuries or who were doing work on the missions at that time. The seriousness with which these crimes were dealt speak for themselves. Five lashes for raping an Aboriginal woman? I wonder what the penalty would have been if he had raped a white woman…
A friend of mine had a great…something grandfather who was a Lutheran missionary and I remember her telling me that he was of the solemn belief – one that was shared by others of the cloth, apparently – that it was their God-given duty to bring Christianity to the natives, both through education and through “breeding out” the native genes. In other words, he pretty much porked his way through the local Aboriginal women in the hopes that his “seed” would eventually help to civilise this barbaric race. I don’t care how much you care to argue that this was the view of the day – sincere belief in eugenics and all – the fact remains that it was racist and inappropriate, especially in relation to the way this nation was “colonised”.
White supremacy is borne of ignorance, then and now, and in a civilised society it shouldn’t be tolerated.
Incidentally, if you read the history books (and old newspapers) there have always been those enlightened people who have opposed unnecessary interference in the lives of the indigenous people, and most especially at the time children were being removed from their families. If people could see it was wrong a hundred years ago, how the hell are there still Keith Windshuttles around to argue to the contrary?
It was put to Michael Mansell this morning, joe2, who dismissed it as a nonsense, but the insinuation was that there was some sort of secret agenda above and beyond his (modest) claim. Just what Windy wanted, I suspect.
Yuk yuk yuk.
I wonder do they have ads for that in classified section of News Ltd outlets. Wanted: an experienced senior professional reactionary. Interest in the Flat Earth society an advantage.
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What happens at the interview. I think Graeme Bird’s ion the wrong field.
Yep Mark. The popular term being used by Aunty on local radio is “compensation floodgate”, at any opportunity or whim, with regards to the apology.
Wonder who inspired that, stingy, mean spirited response?
It’s a lame joke, but it’s mine.
Comparing Graeme to Bolt does the latter an insulting disservice, I’d say, Adrien. It takes more than the talents of a sociopathic halfwit with a Caps Lock fetish to write good op-eds. I say this not only as a one-time antagonist of Bird’s, but also as an admirer of Bolt; he’s a lot better at professional reaction than his Sydney counterparts: Ackerman and Miranda Devine are more often incoherent than offensive.
Bolt manages to offend and inflame intelligibly and reliably, and I salute him for it.
Yuk yuk yuk.
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I’m actually still waiting for Graeme to get back to me. He says a carbon tax will increase our dependence on the Middle East.
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Your point about Bolt is apt. He’s many things but he does write well and cleverly. Last year he did a Pinochet hat trick deliberately designed to inflame the Left. It worked wonders. He finished up with a bit of chest-beating about how no-one arguing against could do so couteously and reasonable.
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I was put out by that, but not surprised.
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Still I think Graeme’s got a great future in ShockJock. For the people who’re sick of that bolshie Alan Jones and his cadre of bleeding heart bollocks.
PS I wasn’t being sarcastic with the yuks. I thought you were funny.
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And is ‘Comrade’ ironic? Enquiring minds wanna know.
If you liked Gramsci’s dictum, you’ll love Liam’s sequel:
Like, whatever.
Ne-ehvermind.
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Apparently it’s less dangerous with the lights out. I dunno what ‘it’ is but cleaning shotguns couldn’t be it. Obviously.
Comrade Liam [99]:
Comrade Graeme can be annoying at times and he does lack polish but he does have flashes of brilliance at times, otherwise I wouldn’t bother reading him; he may be exceedingly abusive but at least he is up-front about his stand-points …. which is more than can be said about some sophisticated dishonest commentors/commentators.
Hey. Fair crack of the whip.
Anyway, back to Comrade Windshuttle – would he be classed as a member of Australia’s Moribund Elite or just as one of the hangers-on and servants? Merely curious, that’s all.
Mark, Keith Windschuttle, has been given a bum rap I think with the Maoist label. And you repeat the calumny. He has also been accused of Trotskyism and Stalinism. Keith did knock around with Bob Gould and Hall Greenland so the Trot bit could pass but Keith himself freely admits to New Leftism though not as far left as the Baader Meinhof or the Symbionese Liberation Army. (Perhaps Theodore Roszak but that is all.)
See http://www.quadrant.org.au/php/article_view.php?article_id=1959
Not sure about the intelligence. he reminds me of Eric Baume without the obvious bile. He is also very arrogant and seems to be thin-skinned. And is it just me, or does he have a problem with women? As in feeling threatened when faced on a panel with one even mildly intelligent. One can almost see the prickles emerging, echidna-like, and the sneer is palpable.
Liam, I agree with you about Devine and Ackerman. She’s an airhead with surface polish (wonderful how those Catholic gels’ schools can turn them out by the tonne…all front and no substance. You can pick one a mile off…they always ask for the “bathroom” not the “toilet” :p)
Ackerman is getting more like Jabba the Hutt every day…he might soon pick up poor little Lenore Taylor and eat her.
“Ackerman is getting more like Jabba the Hutt every day…he might soon pick up poor little Lenore Taylor and eat her.”
Think more, ‘cane toad’ and just hope it does not move beyond Canberra.
Sir Henry, Keith is welcome to whatever obscure (and possibly obscurantist) brand of ultraleftist past he chose. But the sort of anti-humanism, “entrism” and general disregard for anything but polemical and crazed ranting that characterises most of these sects is common to all the turncoats who’ve sprung from them, no matter what fine distinctions they might draw between past allegiance to the fourth or fifth internationals or whatever.
Lenore Taylor spent her student days far more productively as editor of that fine rag, Semper Floreat, to which I’m proud to have been a regular contributor in 1992!
Not in the slightest! You’ve obviously never been a member of the Great Australian Labor Party as I once was… Liam and I are proud co-workers in the long march of the workers towards the democratic socialist millennium!
I’ll leave you to decide if that’s ironic, but ‘Comrade’ – no, never.
“And is ‘Comrade’ ironic?”
Not with a tres Che titfer and l’etoile rouge Commie-star background.
Or maybe my semiotics is as shot as my memory.
@92 “Bolta is a far simpler … anti-intellectual …. He’s a professional reactionary, and knows how to keep himself in work, whereas Keith was only ever a gifted amateur.”
Rolling-on-the-floor-splitting-my-guts (ROTFSMG). Can we frame this please, and send it to Keef? I think he’ll need it in his new role as a member of the Unemployed. (Didn’t he write a book on that once?)
Noel Pearson pops by with his usual constructive contribution.
Mark
Were you on Oxford Street Sydney on Friday night? Girlfriend, why didn’t you call? You never ring, write, or call; it’s so fun-ny how we don’t taaalk anymore. Though I must tell you, Oxford Street is frightfully bedint nowadays. Packed with marauding thugs and girls who work in building societies wearing white shoes (after Labor Day!) and vomiting all over the street, while their homeboys bash the crap out of gay men and each other. Tragically, there is no canopy of stars for the the gutter-dwellers to look up to on Oxford Street.
But I could have taken you to The Manacle (just off oxford Street) or to The Flinders, and maybe for a shimmy at Arq.
You could have been my date at luncheon at the Royal in Paddington on Saturday. Toute le monde des Greenfield’s Luvvies whooped it up over scampi and Sirloin. A heated debate ensued over Bollinger versus Veuve. I am Bollinger man myself; Veuve is too dry you see, sweetie. As the bubbles flowed earnest debates grew ever shriller: Barack or Hillary (I am in Hillary’s camp, bien sur), Ascham or SCEGGS, Grammar or Cranbrook, Lois or Noel for GG, to keep one’s name or not when one marries a member of one’s own sex, whether $300 per gram for the – admittedly facinorous – crop of Columbian marching powder currently doing the rounds in Sydney’s eastern suburbs is worth it (it is), and so on and so forth.
But I am sure you had an equally wonderful time with your own Luvvies.
Perhaps you are condescending to us once for The Gras? It’s too twagic. You see, Olivia Newton John is closing the show. Xanadu at 8 a.m? Quelle horreur!
Trying just a little bit too hard, Harried Johnny. Top marks for effort though.
For effort, possibly — that was certainly a very effortful effusion, like someone trying to vomit up a bad nut — but he gets a great big Fail from me in the ‘Imagining your readership and understanding the effect you’re having on it’ column.
Change your dealer, John.
And if you like sweet sparkling whites, go Tasmanian, you won’t be disappointed.
Careful John. Monster Metromickey will be over here fighting the forces of bigotry if you keep that sort of thing up.
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A question of etiquette and another to reduce my own ignorance a bit:
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1. Is it bigotry to poke fun on the basis of homosexual stereotypes?
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2. Where did this word ‘luvvie’ come from?
OMG, he’s back!
Mark/Pavlov’s Cat/Mercurius/Paul Burns/sorcerer
I cannot believe after all these years of never shutting up about Windschuttle you frauds have never read him!
Keith Windschuttle actually has a 1st Class Honours degree in History from the University of Sydney. He also has an MA (by Research) for a 100,000 word thesis on Australian Labour history, which was the basis for his highly acclaimed book, Unemployment.
He is also the author of the best book on historiography ever written by an Australian. The Killing of History, first published in 1994 has old over 50,000 copies outside Australia.
So those who argue he avoids this “peer-review” bullshit once more have no idea what they are talking about. Windschuttle’s books are among the most debated of any living Australian academic in fora as wide as academic journals, prestigious literary journals, MSM, broadsheets, and appear on advanced undergrad and masters reading lists across the globe. Of course, those whom you think are the very peers to review his work are precisely the dumbasses he so thoroughly bitchslaps. The academics he discredits had passed “peer review” for years until the whole scandal was exposed by Windschuttle.
Unilke anybody else on this thread, and most of the anti-Winschuttle bloviaters who litter The Luvviesphere, I have actually read Unemployment, The Killing of History and The Fabrication of Aboriginal History. Volume 1
He knows his shit.
Having gone into bat most stridently for Keith, I am not the greatest fan of the somewhat weak alternative histories W has thus far suggested, but I think he has been a godsend in rescuing empiricism from the contempt the ruling orthodox Australian historians had tainted this particular methodology.
For work that is more straight “history� than historiography, there are a million historians I would read before W. Perhaps my favourite Australian historian is Inga Clendinnen, for example.
I am much more a fan of his Killing of History than I am Fabrication. OTOH, we should remember that W did not write F as a piece of original “disinterestedâ€? research. It was realy a (very) extended review of the historiography on early colonial frontier conflicts. Its merits were more as a book about – I agree with him, it was indeed an expose – the state of scholarship among Australian university-situated historians.
For example that psycho Cultural Warrior Robert Manne – who has become the Glenn Close of Australian History wars, and has no research training in any discipline, let alone a Ph.D or Research Masters in History – like a lot of those historians W criticises, Manne continued to move the goal-posts of his tawdry and tragically unsuccessful attempt to dicredit W. The last time I checked, Manne had moved onto the “pitilessâ€? argument. While I agree that empathy, etc. are crucial for POLITICAL resolutions to current social problems, Manne gets far too close to Edward Said’s not-so-subtle demands that only the “victims” can write their own history, etc. OTOH, I do agree with the truism, “it is easier to attract bees with honey.â€?
But when all is said and done, you will not find me going into bat, for the alternative interpretations W has provided thus far. OTOH, I do not reject them out of hand, either.
Since so many of you are academics, here’s an idea. Get off your smug ideologically-inert and bigoted tushes, read the fucking book and peer review it!
Still trying too hard Johnny boy, but I do prefer your earlier persona, lacking as it does the pompous pontification of the above effort.
Your lame defence of Windshuttle is just going through the motions, if you’ll pardon the expression.
Try harder next time, but please don’t see me in my office.
Greenfield, your position on academia peer reviewing is all over the place. You seem to move between seeing the academic qualifications that Windschuttle has attained as legitimating (they’re not: just because I have a University Medal doesn’t make everything I write academically legitimate or scholarly), and disputing the value of any academic processes at all. I wonder at this ambivalence.
Also, the assumption that none of your interlocutors have read Windschuttle will almost certainly prove to be false.
*and*
Keith Windschuttle is a psycho Cultural Warrior.
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No! Robert Manne is a psycho Cultural Warrior
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No it’s Keef.
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It’s Bob!
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Keef!!
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Bob!!
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Keef!!
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Bob!!
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Well I dunno if these guys are psycho Cultural Warriors. I’ve only read Windschuttle’s piece in The W’end Oz and it was a political polemic but it did have a bit of empirical evidence. The evidence was hardly conclusive of anything and he did use language that was more emotive than reasoned. He didn’t seem insane however.
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I’ve read one of Manne’s books and a few of his articles. There is also quite a bit of polemic but there is solid history as well. For example his recent thing on the Armenian genocide. He doesn’t seem psycho either.
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But I think we can all agree that the Culture War is psycho. Wars usually are.
Update: Naomi Parry’s article, Debunking Windschuttle, has now been published at LP.
Uh no I was never in the ALP, lets just say my time as a student hack imbibed me with a certain contempt born of an over familiarity with routine shaky ethics.
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I did almost join the Comm Party however. Mostly for shock value. I liked ‘em they gave great parties. There wasn’t much that was ‘communist’ about ‘em ‘cept the workers often paid for my drinks me being the poor student I was.
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Also almost joined the Greens. But I declined as I’d wanted to make a contribution to good environmental policy not act as the ALP’s Jimminy Cricket.
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Used to get called comrade and even used it myself. But it’s very much ‘war’ terminology. What did Clausewitz say about politics and war? Anyway it’s easy to make war. Peace? That’s way more difficult.
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And there was something Kundera wrote about the notion that all the world’s troubles start with large groups of people shouting the same thing, fists in the air. It doesn’t matter what they’re shouting about. It’s the form, not the content. Something like that. It had something to do with a Czech artist who declined to show up to a rally in Zurich protesting the Soviet invasion of her country. Guess some people might regard her as apathetic, I kinda relate.
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But hey that’s just me.
Well, Greensleeves, despite your staggeringly dishonest assertions to the contrary when in fact you couldn’t possibly know what the rest of us have and have not read, I for one have indeed read about one and a half of the books of Windy’s you cite, which was about as much as I could bear.
And I agree that ‘He knows his shit’ is an appropriate response.
Bypassing the astounding breaking news that Cut ‘n’ Paste’s read three books—
Clausewitz’s dictum reads thus, Adrien:
He’s frequently misquoted and misunderstood. It’s not a statement about politics itself, it was a condemnation of the habit of his age to go to war for reasons of honour, and a lesson to his fellow officers to regard themselves only as part of a national trinity, consisting of Army, State/Government and People, as well as a warning to war planners not to engage in the act without a sound political objective. It’s an argument about means and ends, not about the nature of either war or peace or politics. And if you agree with von Clausewitz that War is a means not an objective, then is peace not also merely a way of obtaining a political end?
I disagree that “Comrade” is necessarily war language. It has a history of use in trade unions and social movements a lot older than the twentieth century.
I was aware of the original quote Liam but I was likewise referring to the popular abbreviation. It was a rhetorical question.
No. Peace is an objective. It’s also very high maintainence. My reference to Comrade as war language also applies to its history within social movements and organized labour as well as the Left generally. It is a mode of address that suggests solidarity in the face of conflict. Mass solidarity.
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That’s all very well. I’m not inherently hostile to it. I think it is a little naff tho’. A little 20th century perhaps? But feel free to disregard me I’m self-indulgent boho pain in the arse. Y’know what Marx said happens when you scratch one of us right.
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However given certain misconceptions re my ideological disposition I’m inclined to make certain declarations from time to time. I know. I’m a wanker.
If peace is an objective to you then you’re much more likely to be in Martin Van Creveld’s theoretical camp; but I’m not sure you’ll like the consequences of his rather good argument in The Transformation of War. If peace is, then war also must be, an end outside politics. But this is a topic for another time.
Quite, and hence the ambiguous irony of using it, brother Adrien, fellow-worker.
I’m a capitalist and a worker. It’s always a little harsh. I regularly oppress myself and by day’s end overthrow me. After all I’m evil and must be overthrown by me the good worker who is then put back in his place and cautioned for union thuggery.
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It’s a wonder I ever get any work done.
‘He knows his shit’
Yeah well, Johnny Greengo, you ought to know, sweedart.
So would anyone who stumbles through life with his head up his arse.
Apology text here:
http://www.smh.com.au/news/national/rudds-apology-revealed/2008/02/12/1202760286861.html
Excellent stuff.
JG – most of what your posted at 119, is cut & pasted from windy on himself (& manne etc.), in quadrant, that Sir Henry linked to at 105….
Surely, jo, ol’cut’n'paste wouldn’t be cut’n'pasting!
“there are no epistemological difficulties in historians’ dependence on documentary evidence or texts.”
Here is something from Windschuttle worth puzzling over. Actually, the Quadrant piece linked to by Sir Henry pretty much rehearses the misdirection, assertion and general shallowness that was ever-present in ‘The Killing of History’. For example, anybody who has actually read Hayden White will struggle with this stupefying reading of White: “that history was nothing but a series of literary tropes”. The distinction between expression and content would do wondrous work for Windschuttle’s comprehension.
And here, something else I was puzzled about:
“A description of the past is true if something happened in the past that resembled one of the conventional truth conditions of the description. We verify the truth of that description by directly observing whether the documents and artifacts that survive from the past correspond to those truth conditions.”
‘Conventional truth conditions’: this concept needs some serious work, or at the very least some serious justification. Truth conditions sounds a little Foucauldian to me, but I think it is used here as a weasel phrase.
Just some thoughts, hardly an in depth study, but the red lights were flashing for me in just about every paragraph.
“Conventional truth conditions” is a conventional enough concept from semantics.
Windschuttle’s use of the term is unobjectionable as far as it goes.
But, as is not uncommon for him, Windschuttle hides a deeper mendacity behind this trick of misdirection.
Here is the misdirection. Windschuttle asserts:
But these sort of statements about the past are not the only sort of statement about the past.
Windschuttle speaks of unrepeatable single events, e.g.,
“The First Fleet landed in 1788″ contains truth conditions that “The First Fleet landed in 1789″ does not.
But there are other sorts of statements about the past. e.g.,
“Aborigines were subject to racist attitudes” is a statement about the past that is more or less true according to time, place and circumstance. The truth condition of such a statement cannot be decided on a binary yes/no basis. Yet the degree to which a statement such as this one encompasses a truth condition comprises what is most valuable and most important in historical judgment.
Windschuttle’s oeuvre entails a deliberate evasion of such unavoidable complexities. And this is what makes him such a poor and trivial historian.
I had a feeling the concept came from some particular philosophical tradition (hence I would have liked some justification), but where it sits in the piece – its rhetorical deployment – is what I object to most, because there are no indications to readers that this is a particular way of understanding semiotics. It seems to me that this is linked to this assertion:
“there are no epistemological difficulties in historians’ dependence on documentary evidence or texts.�
This is a far from uncontested position on texts, and asserting a subscription to this or that philosophical position without posing it as such – as though it simply is and always was – seems inadequate to me.
And of course, you are right about deciding on the truth conditions non-binary statements.
I’m inclined, in reading Windschuttle, to consider Whitehead’s observations on half-truths being treated as whole truths.
The weasel-word here is “dependence”.
On one level it is a truism. For without evidence of a past time no statement about that past time can be said to be an historical statement. So historians are ultimately “dependent’ upon the existence of evidence.
Yet given the existence of evidence, an historian is not dependent. The historian can find all sorts of ways of torturing the truth out of a document that the creator of that document had no idea was there. For example, colonial ethnographers had no idea that they were recording the myths of continent-wide Aboriginal clans. Many thought that they were recording the quaint anecdotes of a primitive and stupid race.
Yes, that certainly makes sense.
Yes yes, all this business about historical epistemology is I’m sure quite fascinating in its way, but what I really want to know is, what was Windschuttle’s position on historiography, after he returned to the study of—
BUT HE NEVER RETURNED, NO! HE NEVER RETURNED!
AND HIS FATE IS STILL UNLEARNED!
HE WILL RIDE FOREVER ‘NEATH THE STREETS OF BOSTON,
HE’S THE MAN WHO NEVER RETURNED!
Of course, I knew that, but that isn’t what we’re talking about on this thread. What I mean is, did Windschuttle’s ideas change at all, once he returned to the notion that—
HE NEVER RETURNED! NO, HE NEVER RETURNED!
AND HIS FATE IS STILL UNLEARNED!
HE WILL RIDE FOREVER ‘NEATH THE STREETS OF BOSTON,
HE’S THE MAN WHO NEVER RETURNED.
*sigh* I give up.
See, this is what happens when you try to argue philosophy with a couple of 7-year-olds.
jo
Are you accusing me of having not read Windschuttle and Manne, let alone the rest of the History Warriors? Are you calling me a liar? If so, you need must apologise if you have even a hint of ethics in you. But I am prepared to forego an apology if you would just pick a bloody book and read it, so that you might actually contribute something positive for once on this site.
kim
As a mod on this site, for you to publish jo’s slander is equally ethically-bereft
Well given that just about every aboriginal leader has now endorsed Windschuttle’s position on compensation, I wonder if Mark is planning to publish an article telling them all they ’should be ashamed of themselves?’
You and your shadow selves don’t have to stay here you know.
The focus of this blog is clear and unequivocal
You know what they say about heat and the kitchen…
John, it could be that she’s merely accusing you of precisely and only the thing of which she is obviously accusing you. Just a thought…
Methinks you’re feeling a little harried. Or perhaps the lady protesteth too much?
Earth to John Greenwood. There’s such a thing as hypocrisy. Indigenous leaders believe there’s something to say sorry about and would like compensation. Windschuttle doesn’t, and was trying to play political tricks.
In any case, I note that Noel Pearson trumped him as the columnist of choice for Liberals (eg Tony Abbott on Lateline) to try to justify their confused position.
He’s old hat, even on the Liberal frontbench.
sorcerer
I know a hell of a lot of left of centre people who are not ethically-challenged slanderers.
“I know a hell of a lot of left of centre people who are not ethically-challenged slanderers.”
Get over it mate. You’ve dished out worse all over this blog. I think your de facto acceptance as anything other than a troll here was a bit of a mistake, in retrospect.
John – I didn’t say you hadn’t read Windy – I accused you of swiping SOME of your post about Windy himself, from his Quadrant piece – not exactly a hanging offence –surprisingly, I actually agree with some of the points you raise in different posts, except that two and two, often makes thirty-seven with you.
Anyway, these are the bits that I was referring to, I’ll let others judge:
KW:
I decided to switch my candidacy from history to politics and took an MA Honours, a research degree, from Macquarie University for a 100,000-word thesis on unemployment in Australia.
JG:
Keith Windschuttle actually has a 1st Class Honours degree in History from the University of Sydney. He also has an MA (by Research) for a 100,000 word thesis on Australian Labour history, which was the basis for his highly acclaimed book, Unemployment.
KW:
For instance, Robert Manne could buy into the Aboriginal history debate not only without a PhD in history but with no postgraduate qualification of any kind. He has two bachelor degrees.
JG:
For example that psycho Cultural Warrior Robert Manne – who has become the Glenn Close of Australian History wars, and has no research training in any discipline, let alone a Ph.D or Research Masters in History
KW:
He also wants to dismiss my 1994 critique of postmodernist historiography, The Killing of History. That book attracted considerable attention in the United States, where it sold more than 25,000 copies in both hardcover and paperback, and went through four separate editions.
In fact, The Killing of History did so well in the USA that between 1996 and 2001 I made regular lecture tours of American universities to speak on historiography….
In the UK, in the Times Literary Supplement’s annual survey of its reviewers in 1997, Hugh Lloyd-Jones, one of Britain’s great classicists and long-time Regius Professor of Greek at Oxford, listed The Killing of History as one of the two best books of the year. How many other Australian history books have made that list?
JG:
He is also the author of the best book on historiography ever written by an Australian. The Killing of History, first published in 1994 has old over 50,000 copies outside Australia. Windschuttle’s books are among the most debated of any living Australian academic in fora as wide as academic journals, prestigious literary journals, MSM, broadsheets, and appear on advanced undergrad and masters reading lists across the globe.
Johnny boy knows all about ‘ethically challenged slanderers’. His description of Lowitja O’Donoghue:
I would like somebody to say to Lois “Love, I don’t give a rat’s what your parents were like, but you are as thick as two planks and boring to boot. Now fuck off and leave policy to the grown ups.� Alas, I do not think this will happen.
Lois has also changed her biography from “stolen� to “removed� and now back to “stolen.� The ethics of an alley cat; a race-baiting alley-cat at that.
I hate to re-print such obnoxious tripe, but hypocrisy of this sort is particularly odious.
jo
Bloody hell. I did not even read that link. The data you link about his degrees etc. is common knowledge. If you were to post, “Kevin Rudd has a BA in Asian Languages from ANU” are you a sneaky “cut and paster?” The stuff about his book’s success I got from Lyndall Ryan, and W’s Killing of History, reviews of the books, uni. reading lists I know (including my own). Excuse me for posting accurate basic information!
Thanks for the Windy/Greenglass concordance Jo.
We have here in Greenglass a bizarre example of plagiarism of fact twisted to serve his peculiar compulsions.
And doesn’t Greenglass can make Windy seem balanced and judicious by comparison?
Terribly revealing.
His statement about Lowitja O’Donoghue says a lot about the man. None of it good.
jo
Swipe? You mean as in “steal?� Let’s see. The only similarity you note is that W wrote a 100,000 word Masters thesis. Could you explain to me how I might have responded to the incorrect claims of others above about W’s academic qualifications that would have you not try and paint me as an underhanded thief and plagiarist? For starters, this is a blog, not an academic journal. Secondly, I have stated such an uncontroversial well-known fact that naturally I had read SOMEWHERE.
Jo, your intention was malicious and unethical. Because I am able to show how misinformed and ignorant the REAL slanderers are by using actual facts, YOU, rather than do the honourable thing and post, “thanks John, I did not know that. It seems that many LPers and other History Warriors from Robert Manne to Stuart Macintrye, Dirk Moses, blah, blah are wrong,� chose to try and discredit any contribution of mine. Ordinarily, I would just roll my eyes and move on, but you have so much form with this sleazy tactic. It is all very well for you to run around as “jo� slandering people who post using their real names, isn’t it?
http://larvatusprodeo.net/2008/01/04/cultural-elites-dont-exist-study-finds/#comment-425549
And it worked. Kim sneered, “Surely, jo, ol’cut’n’paste wouldn’t be cut’n’pasting!
jo/Katz
And then Mr. “I never post on LP without first C&Ping from wikipedia first “Katz.� Katz’ atrocious ethics are even more egregious given he well knows that he and I had a very civil discussion about this exact topic over Xmas when there was no moderation.
Thanks for the Windy/Greenglass concordance Jo.We have here in Greenglass a bizarre example of plagiarism of fact twisted to serve his peculiar compulsions. And doesn’t Greenglass can make Windy seem balanced and judicious by comparison? Terribly revealing.
http://larvatusprodeo.net/2007/12/22/saturday-salon-124/#comment-422351
Yet perfectly OK for katz
Lord Acton opined in 1898 that in the projected Cambridge History:
Waterloo must be one that satisfies French and English, Germans and Dutch alike; that nobody can tell, without examining the list of authors, where the Bishop of Oxford laid down the pen, and whether Fairbairn or Gasquet, Liebermann or Harrison took it up.
http://larvatusprodeo.net/2007/12/29/saturday-salon-125/#comment-423737
See Katz C&P directly not only quotes but interpretation from a book I know well, Peter Novik’s That Noble Dream: The “Objectivity Question” and the American Historical Profession. It’s on p.73 in my copy.
Or this one on “bourgeois tragedy�
Wikipedia: “Bourgeois Tragedy (German: Bürgerliches Trauerspiel) is a form of tragedy that developed in 18th century Europe. It was a fruit of the enlightenment and the emergence of the bourgeois class and its ideals. It is characterized by the fact that its protagonists are ordinary citizens.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bourgeois_tragedy
Katz: “The bourgeois sense of identity, as expressed in artistic form, first saw light of day as trauerspiel — bourgeois tragedy.
This development began in England in the lateish 17thC and achieved perhaps its highest form in Germany in the 18thC.
Perhaps the most important unifying element of trauerspiel was the depiction of the protagonist as an outsider, excluded from public affairs. In response to that marginalisation the protagonist found his self-actualisation in the private virtues. Thus the bourgeois was establishing a genuine counter-culture of privacy, probity, thrift, loyalty to family, sentiment in contradiction to prevailing aristocratic and feudal norms.�
http://larvatusprodeo.net/2008/01/04/cultural-elites-dont-exist-study-finds/#comment-426079
There are stacks of other examples from all sorts of LPers. As you say jo, “not exactly a hanging offence.� However, it is wrong for you to do this to me when I have not even “swiped� anything, where your allies do it all the time.
You DO owe me an apology.
KW:
For instance, Robert Manne could buy into the Aboriginal history debate not only without a PhD in history but with no postgraduate qualification of any kind. He has two bachelor degrees.
JG:
For example that psycho Cultural Warrior Robert Manne – who has become the Glenn Close of Australian History wars, and has no research training in any discipline, let alone a Ph.D or Research Masters in History.
Actually jo, I DID “swipe� this. From myself! During the same December, 2007 discussion with Katz, Paul Burns, and Klaus, here is what I argued:
http://larvatusprodeo.net/2007/12/22/saturday-salon-124/#comment-422334
http://larvatusprodeo.net/2007/12/22/saturday-salon-124/#comment-422346
I posted:
Katz
I broadly agree with you, except for your final sentence which is a direct parroting of Robert Manne, which I PRAY, you have done unwittingly. Like a lot of those historians W criticises, Manne continued to move the goal-posts of his tawdry and tragically unsuccessful attempt to dicredit W. The last time I checked, Manne had moved onto the “pitiless� argument. While I agree that empathy, etc. are crucial for POLITICAL resolutions to current social problems, I am not at all persuaded that “empathy� is even remotely required for first class historiography.
This gets far too close to Edward Said’s not-so-subtle demands that only the victims can right their own history, etc. OTOH, I do agree with the truism, “it is easier to attract bees with honey.�
But when all is said and done, you will not find me going into bat, for the alternative interpretations W has provided thus far. OTOH, I do not reject them out of hand, either.
Oh gawd, now I am REALLY saying like an undergraduate who wants to be so balanced lest he pisses off whoever is grading his paper.
http://larvatusprodeo.net/2007/12/22/saturday-salon-124/#comment-422352
And where did I “swipe� this opinion of Manne. No one in particular. You see, I form my opinions by reading and debating with people. Like most people this tends to build a reservoir of facts, data, information, even poems and songs in one’s long-term memory. But off the top of my head try the “Cultural Studies Association of Australasia� listserv. I mean REALLY try it iff you want to see ethically-bereft types in full flight. For example, try this strategising session on “hoaxes� that academics should wage against Windschuttle to discredit him. Jo, are YOU a subscriber to this group? Have you decided to adopt this strategy on me a mere undergraduate student, for chrissakes?
http://lists.cdu.edu.au/pipermail/csaa-forum/Week-of-Mon-20050328/000726.html
Also check out The Bulletin by of all people, Catharine Lumby, where she had to retract false slanders against W’s supposed lack of academic qualifications. Elsewhere the twit raves about Robert Manne as ‘Australia’s leading intellectual.’ Or try any number of tragic outpourings about “real historians� by History Warrior Kommandent Dirk Moses in OLO or any of the books he has contributed chapters to and journals he has written.
Windschuttle, history warriors and real historians
http://www.onlineopinion.com.au/view.asp?article=3320
JG:
He is also the author of the best book on historiography ever written by an Australian. The Killing of History, first published in 1994 has old over 50,000 copies outside Australia. Windschuttle’s books are among the most debated of any living Australian academic in fora as wide as academic journals, prestigious literary journals, MSM, broadsheets, and appear on advanced undergrad and masters reading lists across the globe.
You will find the same data and arguments in Whitewash, MacIntyre’s History Wars, Inga Clendinnen. So get off your ass and read something, go to school, get an education! For the love of god! There have been dozens of articles on Manne versus Windschuttle’s qualifications. Another book I have read Is History Fiction by Commie postits Curthoys and Docker note that “over 100 substantial articles� appeared immediately following Fabrication. So get off your ass, go to school, read something, get an education! For the love of god!
“You DO owe me an apology.”
Ooh, sounds like someone’s feeling a bit left out of all the excitement over the past couple of days. Very well then.
On behalf of all Australians I apologise for John Greenfield.
There, that should stop your little bottom lip quivering shouldn’t it.
John, you take as evidence of ‘ethical bereftness’ on the CSAA listserv, a single contributor who was duly chastised by another contributor, as far as I can see. Also, talking shit on a listserv is hardly new or in any way limited to cultural studies academics.
Nabakov, my love, YOU do not owe me an apology. You are rude and disdainful towards me with no malicious agenda or disingenuousness. You just don’t like me!
However, I have grown to see you are an equal opportunity Stousher and smart ass, eager to dish it out to all eligible passers-by. So abuse away with impunity! 
Besides, I have learnt some first class put-downs from you. 
And by the way, I was a great supporter of the Apology and even got drenched watching it in Martin Place.
Klaus K
Now, now darling, I hoped you knew me well enough to know that I was deliberately baiting you, hoping you’d jump on that!
Manne’s BPhil from Oxford is not just a bachelor degree, I hasten to add. Apples and oranges. I’d hazard a guess that it is better regarded than, ah, say, a degree from the Mcleay College of Journalism and Hotel Management (owned by the Windschuttles). How would a B Phil Oxon stack up against a PhD from Bob Jones University Texas? Or from the University of the Sunshine Coast? Your argument is verging on the ludicrous, John.
Oh Johnny boy, the intertubes, the intertubes are calling,
from PC to PC and all around the world
Your reason’s gone, and all your glib ideas are dying
‘Tis you, ’tis you must go and seek some help.
But come ye back when reason has returned
Or Catallaxy has closed and all your friends have gone
LP will still be here in sunshine or in shadow
Oh Johhny boy, oh Johnny boy, please just go.
But if you stay, when all your words are merely carping
And your ideas are hollow and bereft
You’ll come and find the place where you’re not welcome
And wonder why you’re treated as a troll.
“Verging”?
“Argument”?
And talking shit on blogs is hardly new or in any way limited to John Greenfield.
Still, perhaps he can join the queue with Brendan. In 12 years time, Jo might apologise. On the other hand, JG might have stopped acting like a 12 year old by then.
Oh Adrian, your poetry’s appalling
It boasts not wit if you can’t manage rhyme
But if you must, please observe the metre’s timing
‘Tis off, ’tis off please go and learn to write
But come ye back when you have learned the meaning
Of the word ‘glib’ and what ‘reason’ endows
And I’ll be here to mark your dog’rel preening
Oh Adrian, oh Adrian, ’nuff said for now.
Sir Henry
And YOUR reading comprehension skills my friend are verging on the NSW public primary schools! NOWHERE have I dished Manne’s academic achievements, and I never would. They are much more impressive than mine!! I was merely restating the tone and positions adopted by OTHERS is a broader public debate.
And I agree with you. From what I know of both graduates and the syllabi, Oxford B.Phils are among the most challenging and respected degrees in the world; especially the B.Phil, a 2 year course-work plus thesis graduate degree in philosophy.
Glib:
3. Of a speaker or writer, of the tongue, etc.: ‘Well-oiled’, ready and fluent in utterance. Of language: Characterized by fluency and readiness. Chiefly in contemptuous use, implying lack of thought or of sincerity.
I assume this was the implied definition?
He’s not 12..he’s 16 or 17. Note the times when he descends upon the blog like a nasty miasma…schools out!
Nonsense.
I’ve never read Novik’s book. The quote comes via E. H. Carr. If memory serves me correctly, I followed links to a webpage that had the original Acton lecture.
The articulation of the argument is my own, as influenced by E. H. Carr. There is nothing particularly original about my opinion, and I don’t claim there is anything original. That opinion is broadly enough based to be commonplace among historians and students of history.
If Novik claims this idea as his own (and I am not saying he does) then he is committing plagiarism.
Careful, Adrien, your scansion and rhyming are fairly cattywumpus as well.
Au contraite PC they scan and rhyme well enough. It matches the tune jus’ fine.
Adrien:
Yeah but, see, you were trashing Adrian’s efforts, which is the ONLY reason I’m bringing it up. If you’re going to criticise and give marks to other people, then in your own version, ‘well enough’ isn’t good enough, see.
– ‘Rhyme’ doesn’t rhyme with ‘write’ (that’s assonance, a match of vowel sounds — here the long ‘i’ — which is not the same thing as rhyme). Bite, bight, cite, fight, height, kite, light, mite, might, night, quite, rite, right, site, sight, tight, white, alight, indict, incite, affright and the Isle of Wight all rhyme with write, but rhyme does not.
(NB neither do parasite, Vegemite or stalactite. For a ‘perfect’ rhyme, the primary stress of a multisyllabic word needs to be on the rhyming syllable.)
– ‘Endows’ doesn’t rhyme with ‘now’ (it’s got to be ‘nows’ or ‘endow’, neither of which makes sense).
– You’ve changed the rhyme scheme between stanzas 1 and 2. The original song has, all the way through, a regular ABAB rhyme scheme. Your version doesn’t have this, or indeed any, rhyme scheme.
– The original song is made up of 4-line stanzas each of which has alternating lines of catalectic iambic heptameter (lines 1 and 3) and iambic pentameter (lines 2 and 4), which is to say, 13 syllables and 10 syllables respectively, with a stress pattern that goes da-DA da-DA da-DA etc etc etc.
Your version does not have this structure.
In the wildly unlikely event that you or anyone else is interested enough to pursue this futher, I recommend Stephen Fry’s The Ode Less Travelled: Unlocking the Poet Within (Hutchinson, 2005).
Also, Windschuttle should be ashamed. Ahem.
ooh, I love it when you go all trochaic on his arse.
Heh.
Dactyls–R–Us.
Well PC I admit write doesn’t exactly rhyme with rhyme but it scans. Sing it, and it rhymes fine. In fact the ABAB rhyme structure is there if you sing it . On the other hand ‘World’ and ‘help’, ‘bereft’ and ‘troll’? I dinnae think so.
Does it? I don’t know about that PC. Y’see y’eve got tae sing it like lassie. This is how it goes when ye sing it:
That’s actually 12 syllables and then 10. Now what does mine do:
12 syllables followed by 10.
>
Now perhaps I’m sensationalising a quote outta context here so let’s pick another couplet from the famous Gaelic verse shall we:
Again 12 followed by 10. Incidentally the words spoken are 11 followed by 10. And mine:
Naturally of course the couplet betwixt these does have a 13 followed by 10 syllable metre:
So perchance you’re correct. Let’s look at the corresponding lines in mine shall we:
OMG!!!! ‘Tis correspondant fine. 13-10:
>
Haven’t read Mr Fry’s book, tho’ I gave it a quick glance i’th’ bookstore once upon a summer morn. However ’tis irrellevant. If Stephen Fry said “Oh Danny Boy” follows the metre you outlay he should learn to count. It’s in the music. Speakin’ o’ which. Johhny Cash never learned to read a note: but he wrote many a fine one.
>
Now to my poor namesake’s doggerel:
It’d really be better if it were:
I could re-write Adrian’s entire song so that not only was it musically correct, like mine (regardless the non-applicable dodecahedronmetre)and rhymed (shall I read from the thousands of examples where assonance is used thus?) but also poked fun at John’s real faults not those asserted like his being ‘glib’ or lacking ‘reasoning’. One doesn’t lack reasoning if one disagrees with you. And being bitchy isn’t the same as being glib.
>
But apart from all that I’m sure you’re right.
You are too deep for me, John. I naively glanced at this cut and paste inserted under your name, which seems, on the face of it, for an ill-educated and blinkingly uncomprehending oaf like me to be casting a negative light on Manne’s degrees.
Sorry for jumping to a hasty conclusion. I also made the glib assumption that “JG” was you.
KW:
For instance, Robert Manne could buy into the Aboriginal history debate not only without a PhD in history but with no postgraduate qualification of any kind. He has two bachelor degrees.
JG:
For example that psycho Cultural Warrior Robert Manne – who has become the Glenn Close of Australian History wars, and has no research training in any discipline, let alone a Ph.D or Research Masters in History.