Post of the day from Lyn Calcutt at Public Opinion.
These guys have too much time on their hands? Or the most pressing public issues of the day are related to positions adopted in the late 1960s on Suharto’s crimes in Indonesia?
57 Responses to “Australia is well served by its public intellectuals. Discuss.”
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I’m watching public intellectuals now on Q and A, or what passes for them in Oz, good show tonight though. I should add that I am a tart for this kind of stuff despite my better judgment.
I’m yet to be convinced that Henderson is an intellectual, public or otherwise, and that’s not because I disagree with him. And yes, they do seem to have too much time on their hands to perpetuate this to and fro, and worst of all, continue to publish it. Where’s the new edition of ‘Gangland’ when you need it?
It’s written itself, Klaus, I think, in those exchanges!
Its a shallow gene pool: much like Australian actors. There’s only 10 of them! And they all work playschool to cover their off days.
Look…. I dont tend to see our Public Intellectuals as quite as bad as our journos. I think our journos are deadset rubbish – as a rule. An absolute national disgrace.
Is it the Universities? Do I need to go kick arse in Journalism depts? Am I ranting at he wrong people – is it already to late when they get jobs> Or is just ownership in the most concentrated market in the west>
My eyeballs, they bleed.
Poor Sally Warhaft, eh? Imagine.
So has any producer managed to get these two old bitches in the one room at the same time with a camera present? Might call for a cage.
If Hendo is a public intellectual, then so is Graeme Bird.
I’ve sworn never to comment about Robert Manne.
Gerard Henderson a public intellectual? ha ha hahahah hah ha *groan*
No really, no more boring and tedious commentator on public affairs can be identified.
It would be better o’ they spoke like sea dogs and both keelhauled.
The difference, Laura, is that Graeme Bird actually believes whatever it is that he’s trying to get across. You get the feeling that Hendo refers constantly to folder full of crib notes, briefing him on who’s position he needs to oppose today.
But in any case, whatever the issue, Labor was worse, Bill Clinton did it first and Kevin Rudd is one of us.
Oh my god, they were crapping on about this rubbish before the election last year. I recall retching over it in Crikey. What pitiable, Lear-like creatures they are.
I think the topic should be “Australia is well served by its magazine editors. Discuss.” I mean, these two kooks can spend their time writing about whatever they want. It’s their time, they can squander it however they wish. But the editor of the Monthly seems to have decided this squabble should be broadcast by ‘the voice Australia needs’. That it’s ‘intelligent and inquisitive’ and ‘rooted in simple but powerful storytelling’. Because, you know, the Monthly doesn’t “get bogged down in bloated columns by boring hacks.”
http://www.themonthly.com.au/tm/node/354
d
What Darryl said.
I’m sure – in fact I know – that Australia has many fine and fierce minds that are capable of contributing competently and consistently to public debate.
They just never get published. In fact to segueway into Lefty E’s contention, such is the quality of our media, you can just about justify a belief that Australia has many fine intellectuals on the basis that they are never published. A negative correlation if you like.
Instead people pick up this drivel – hell when they published this unending inanity in Crikey, subscribers were literally resorting to begging in the letters column for it to be stopped.
Re Q@A- When Manne started defending our terror laws, and Maxine McKew started agreeing with the odious Abbott I decided I had more interesting things to do. Like washing up.
The e-mail correspondence published by The Monthly holds a certain morbid fascination as you watch two pompous twits fail to realise what complete fools they are making of themselves. But I challenge anyone to read every word and retain their sanity.
“I’m sure – in fact I know – that Australia has many fine and fierce minds that are capable of contributing competently and consistently to public debate.”
Agreed, and how rarely do we hear them on radio, or see their views in print? Same old, same old.
Manne and Henderson were frequent speakers in Melb Uni student debates (lunch time political meetings – motion: “It is resolved to occupy the Admin Building” or “It is resolved that the US invasion of Vietnam should cease!” etc etc; usually in the large PLT = Public Lecture Theatre; it held about 800 when full I think, and often it WAS full).
This is circa 1967-1969, from memory. They were rivals, but not [I think] antagonists. Both rather delighted with the sound of their own voice, but so were the lefties: Harry van Moorst, Ian McIvor, Garrie Hutchinson, etc etc
Stuart MacIntyre was an undergrad around that time too.
Darryl @12, very few (if any) magazine editors can do whatever they like. They are answerable to the magazine’s board and more specifically to the chair of its board. The chair of the Monthly’s board is Robert Manne.
They are also answerable to the money, and in this case that is Morry Schwartz, who is a member of the board.
What can happen when one resists and attempts to maintain independence is something that Ian Britain, the reluctantly-former editor of Meanjin, could tell you.
Ah yes. If they’re doing something bad, it must mean they’re coded female. Stands to reason.
By escaping to do dishes Adrian, you missed Maxine rip the Mad Monk a new one last night over the election loss, and the Libs failure to comprehend the reasons. It was delicious, articulate and passionate stuff. Her ability to relate her positions to “what she hears from people” is Politic 101, but so few seem to communicate it effectively.
Prior to hopping into Abbot, I tended to agree with her agreeing with him too.
And good on you Laura for the commitment regarding Manne. Must make life a lot calmer not having to address that particular elephant in the room!
Thanks for that potted history Ambigulous. It’s helpful to us under 35s to know; although I must confess that apart from as necessary contextualisation at times, I really don’t care in the broad about *who* our public commentators are, I care about the quality of their comment.
You know through my work I’ve heard Australian academics and others give some fantastic keynotes etc. on all sorts of aspects of Australia’s past and future (just recently had the immense pleasure of hearing Henry Reynolds in person, one of the last great old-style lecturers I think, who doesn’t need a bloody powerpoint and knows how to structure and deliver an intellectual narrative). But no matter how cogent, accessible or insightful they are, they just don’t seem to get a guernsey on the teev or in print. I was all excited about the Monthly when it first came out. Now, not so much. Alternative recommendations welcome!
In terms of what passes for a group of public commentators of ’stature’ discussing Australia’s state, and future, I feel like I’m stuck in a perpetual waiting room with the same 7 old farts (‘old’ in the sense of their thinking not age). Notably all men too.
Yes – we’re better served by our cartoonists… tho I do have a soft spot for Robert ‘Pompous Ass’ Hughes.
ta, myriad
it doesn’t matter much what they did in those days; i think mr henderson went on to work for a mr howard, whoever he was. i agree wholeheartedly that we hear too few differing voices
Try this.
Quarterly rather than monthly, but always chocker with excellent stuff and getting better all the time.
Thanks Pavlov’s Cat!
I do read the Quarterly essay on an as-I’m-interested basis too.
Australia is very well served by it’s public inna-lick-shalls.
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Bob: The kids were stolen
Keith: No they weren’t
Bob: Yes they were
Keith: No they weren’t. Name them.
Another Bob: I’m running for parliament because I don’t like women who wear beehive hair and pearls
Phil: We’re all becoming Americans. I’m a good socialist. Ask any of my employees.
Germaine: Folks are dumb where I come from.
Phil: Paul maaaate!
Yet Another Bob: No matter how far or how much I talk, I’m an Aussie but I ain’t leavin’ New York.
Clive: Ouch!
Phil: I’m strongly pro-feminist that’s why I married a model who doesn’t care what she looks like.
Germaine: Bored today I think I’ll play another trick and get those peons’ knickers in a twist again.
Yet Another Bob: Vote for Malcolm you pillocks. He’s my nephew and he’s beaut you should see his art collection.
Another Clive: Won’t someone please think of the trees.
Keith: These commies are feeding the kids commie lies. Outrageous. We need to feed the kids Tory lies instead.
Bruce: Strewth! Oi reckon the problem’s too much diversity in the names. Oi’m ‘avin’ probs pronouncin’ foreign soundin’ names loike Bob. ‘Straya, Straya, Straya! We love youse.
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Combining Mark Twain’s humour with Emerson’s beautiful prose, the courage of Orwell and the idiosyncratic heresy of Simone Weil.
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Not.
I assume the whole exercise is only available on the mag’s website, in which case all it wastes is pixels. I do like Jack Marx’s riff on it, though.
Everyone:
What really does distinguish a public intellectual …. from an accepted spokes”person” who “dissents”[wtf??] after being given approval in triplicate …. from an out-&-out propaganda mouthpiece?
…. and who decides?
Whenever the exercise of examining our public intellectuals or just our intellectuals is done, we realise just how thin on the ground we are. The top 100 public intellectuals was done in the smh 3 years ago. http://www.smh.com.au/news/National/Australias-top-100-public-intellectuals/2005/03/11/1110417674077.html. And if you look at the lists of the Fellows of the Academies eg the Social Sciences Academy http://www.assa.edu.au/Directory/fellows.asp#s, there is not much depth. It is so easy to become the Australian expert on one particular field of study. Its a bit sad, but I suppose the price of being in a small country.
Australia is poorly served by public intellectuals. Public intellectuals take the great ideas of the modern age and illustrate how and why they matter to people. There is a direct link between the paucity of public intellectuals and the apathy with which cuts to/derision of education is received publicly and politically.
In the SMH list johng links to, one (Horne) is now dead and had little to say since the early 1980s. I regard Karl Kruszelnicki as an educator rather than an intellectual, he basically relays others’ research.
Propagandists who are not intellectuals: Helen Caldicott and Keith Windschuttle.
Wankers in love with the sound of their own voice, skipping lightly over ideas they raise and hoping those ideas gain added importance by their noticing them: Bobs Ellis & Carr, Paul Sheehan, John Stone, Robyn Williams.
Probably nominated himself: Greg Barns, Clive Williams.
Not so far mentioned: Simon Chapman & Alex Wodak, drug policy; Steve Keen, economics; Peter van Onselen, politics (esp. conservative); Peter Laehy & Hugh White, defence; Tim Lindsey, Indonesia; Bernard Salt, demographics.
As Andrew E says there certainly were some poor quality ones on the 2005 list of 100. Peter van Onselen didn’t have much of a profile then, so thats why he didn’t make that list. Some of Andrew E’s suggestions for additions could be debated. I don’t know of any demographer who takes Bernard Salt seriously. Steve Keen has predicted 10 of the last 2 world financial collapses. Professional pessimism is not an intellectual activity -its a reflex.
A lot of people on that list of 100 are artists rather than ‘intellectuals’.
What about Peter Costello and the MUPpets?
With Steve Irwin’s demise and Sarah Palin a statesider, who have we now to turn to?
Pavlovs’s Cat [29]
Indeed!! Bull Artists!!
More than half of them are shonks, plagiarists, bigots, media artifacts and just plain ignorant boofheads. Given a line-up like that, you can’t call Australia “The Lucky Country”.
I like this quote from Sylvia Lawson.
A fellow sceptic, the writer Sylvia Lawson, put it like this: “I don’t think ‘public intellectual’ is a useful category now, if it ever was. It seems to mean mainly pundits, who are given authority by the media.
“Among the most obviously noted public intellectuals in our own landscape, there are those who don’t do that at all – their work is often marked by complacency, and they speak as though from pulpits. Consider the Boyer lectures.”
johng, I think you’re rating Keen by the criteria of punditry rather than academia. Many economists have studied debt as a phenomenon but Keen is doing so as it applies to consumer debt in Australia today – what I’d consider core business for a “public intellectual”.
Salt popularises the work of others, but he does reverse-engineer contemporary phenomena in demography with a bit of intellectual backup. At least he’s trying.
Everyone:
How come Bruce Ruxton wasn’t included?
L-O-L!! and rolling all over the ground = r.a.o.g. [Sorry, just couldn't help myself].
I agree Bernard Salt is trying. Very trying.
And anyone who thinks Peter van Onselen is an intellectual or even close to one doesn’t know the meaning of the word.
He only just scrapes into the pundit category on a good day.
Well, I am disappointed there are no tim & debbie videos on youtube.
Don’t be so sure Laura:LINK
Damn, did I miss out again?
And that follows hot on the heels of the 2020 snub.
Graham Bell: Given a line-up like that, you can’t call Australia “The Lucky Country”.
I may be wrong, but I think young Horne meant “Lucky” ironically. Instead of putting in the hard yards (intellectually, politically, strategically) Australia was just going to coast along on wool & mineral exports.
“Lucky”? yeah, as long as it lasted, she’ll be right; no wuckers.
Somewhat akin to the sarcastic “Honest John” attached to JWH by a newspaper editor, later sadly misundewrstood as an accolade, by some.
But you’re correct Graham: very thin on the ground. Why?
Why?
Who knows, but Australians as a whole have always been suspicious of intellectuals, or anyone who has pretensions to being one.
That is why the best often leave for overseas and we are stuck with the mediocre or the invisible.
Maybe as a nation we’re too obsessed with the material, with sport and with an empty kind of hedonism to sufficiently value ideas.
And as our universities become increasingly empty of intellectual rigour, this aspect of the country withers, with nothing much to nuture it.
Adrien held up for us to contemplate:
“Combining Mark Twain’s humour with Emerson’s beautiful prose, the courage of Orwell and the idiosyncratic heresy of Simone Weil.”
I second the list: ya might as well have a high aim, it may give pause before ya spend time on tawdry wrestlin’ in the arid, dusty bulldust yards (with a small, sweltering, thirsty audience). More heat and bulldust than light, as they say.
“Australians as a whole have always been suspicious of intellectuals, or anyone who has pretensions to being one.”
There is some truth to this, but it’s also a self-fulfilling prophecy. When our public intellectuals are continually derided and debate dumbed-down in anticipation – even celebration – of this suspicion, the potential to change it and engage people is lost. The material is simply too cautious and lame to inspire intellectual involvement.
I’m with Lefty E on this – fuck the haters. Let them play with their baubles in whatever intellectual gutter they’re currently slumming in. Call them on it. Have the conversation you think we need, and let the chips fall where they will.
You’re not wrong, Ambigulous, he did. And he spent the rest of his life intermittently shaking his head in wonderment at the way journalists in particular (one of which he was of course for many years himself) used the phrase as though he had meant it literally — thereby encouraging the populace to think so too, and demonstrating, among other things, that they hadn’t actually read the book.
It’s a book that’s well worth re-rereading btw! As Mark Davis says in his new book, there are a lot of parallels between the situation as Horne diagnosed it back then and the one we confront now as a nation.
I wish Id put it so eloquently FDB – but yes. The ‘evidence-free public hectoring, direct from a cloistered RWDB thinktank to the pro-Tory GG’ approach will be found rather ineffective under the new government. And thats a good thing for Australian democracy and policy making.
Try a policy submission. Warning/heads-up: new government may require evidence.
Mark: were you able to make it to (a) Mark Davis’ session at writer’s week?
danny, no, too busy to go this year.
Adrian, I don’t know how i missed that. Thanks. Now can you find me a Chunky Custard ad??
A little while ago I skim-read Stefan Collini’s recent book about intellectuals & anti-intellectualism in Britain – his argument that it’s long been claimed that ‘proper’ intellectuals exist anywhere but inthe here & now had obvious interesting similarities with the discourse on intellectuals in Australia. http://www.guardian.co.uk/education/2006/mar/21/academicexperts.highereducation
Embarrassing excrescences like that top 100 Aussie intellectuals list someone linked to a while back seem to arise out of the wish to prove intellectuals DO exist here and (contra Lefty E!) there are more than ten of them. But isn’t FDB right about this. Intellectual is as intellectual does.
Well, maybe laura: but Id persanlly struggle to name more than 10 who get regular airplay! I’ll even include journals that no one outside academia reads to make it easier (eg Monthly, Griff review, Meanjin).
here’s the test: you have 3 minutes only.
Name away.
Extra points if they aren’t baby boomers.
And no looking at that 2006 list now!
Here’s a kickoff (tick tick tick—- go!):
Robert Manne
Anne Manne
Tim Flannery
Germaine Greer
Helen Garner
erm…
Paul kelly (f*ck, desperate already)
Mark Davis (now cheating by looking at thread)
Um um survey guy, whats his name
Huw White (panic sets in !)
BUZZZZZ. You’re outta time Lefty E. and you scored maybe 5 and half!
Next ccontestant!
Well, I agree with you Lefty. I was trying, in as long a winded fashion as possible, to say that the top 100 list is supposed to prove there are *at least* that many public intellectuals.
You forgot Arena in your list of journals nobody reads
You’re right, I did forget it!
Which is itself instructive, one suspects.
Ambigulous[39], Pavlov’s Cat[43] and Mark[44]:
Indeed Donald Horne used the term “Lucky Country” with full-on irony. One of the best favours I ever did myself was to buy a copy of that book when it first came out, expensive though it was. Would recommend it to any young person in 2008.
Interesting parallel of the lack of understanding, by those who never read more the cover, of the two books “The Lucky Country” and “The Ugly American”.
Adrian [40] and FDB [42]:
It’s worse than that, ordinary Australians are driven, herded and whipped into that suspicion …. and heaven help anyone who questions this imposed group-think; anyone who wants to listen to what public intellectuals have to say rather than listen to “approved” commentators, spokesmen, shock-jocks, rabble-rousers, opinion-makers and authority-figures; anyone who wants to form their own opinion rather than have it manufactued and pre-packaged for them.
Thanks Graham, Pavlov’s Cat and Mark. Informative and perceptive as usual.
Yes, you’re right, Graham. Manufacturing opinions seems to be the meja’s main role these days, one way or another.
Ambigulous #41 – Cheers.
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I think Emerson and Twain are apt here. America went thru its colonial period and emerged from it courtesy in no small part of these two gentlemen. I think Australia is entering it’s period of cultural self-reliance (hope hope) fueled by the Anglo, American, European and Asian influences. In order to excel however we do need to raise the bar. There’s a clear distinction between our international names (like Germaine Greer and Robert Hughes) and the local ones. One thing the, now passé, early 60s bunch did was to establish that Australians could go out in to the world and be first class.
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However they did so within the context of older cultures. Those who remained behind were not of as high a quality.
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There still remains that vestige of resentful colloquialism whereby intellectuals are torn between wanting to be ‘nationalist’ and wanting to foresake their country of birth as hopelessly rustic. The question of nationality that one finds common to the under-rated Australian films of the ’70s I reckon has been answered somewhat. We don’t feel that we need to prove ourselves worthy as a country. As individuals however we still do. And so long as we build a hedge around our culture the distinction between domestic and international intelligentsia will remain.
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As to the question of Australia’s anti-intellectual bent. The solution might be in the production of high quality wit and observation with a feel for the common touch a la Twain.
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None of this can be accomplished by public policy. You don’t produce Emerson by restructuring the funding. You produce Emerson by, um, being Emerson.
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Ever see Dennis Hopper retorting to Robert Hughes’ assertion that Jean-Michel Basquiat was a mediocrity? He said: maybe Robert Hughes is a mediocrity. He is Australian.
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None of those mentioned in the above paragraph is a mediocrity.
Donald Horne used the term “Lucky Country” with full-on irony.
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No. That’s not true. Horne didn’t use it with irony. He meant it. We received it ironically. Horne’s description was entirely literal; we are lucky people he said. Small population, Anglo-Celtic, big country, bigger empire, shitloads of resources. That’s why we’ve got it so good.
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It was a criticism and a warning. You don’t deserve this lifestyle, it’s a fortune of history and one day the luck will run out. We didn’t heed that. We went yay! We’re the Lucky Country. Beaut mate. It’s Friday tomorra, let’s take the rest of the arvo off work and go fishin’.
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Grouse!
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One thing the Tories should stick up their posterior is that it was the ALP that alone heeded the warning and did something about it. They still want to altho’ I reckon gifting $35 mil to Toyota isn’t the way to go – Kevvie.
Adrien – “The solution might be in the production of high quality wit and observation with a feel for the common touch a la Twain.”
- which for me is one of the reasons for visting LP, where such gems are contributed so frequently (and so infrequently elsewhere). Is there a wider audience for these bons mots ??