How would you react if I told you in all seriousness that Peter Costello will win the 2013 election because of the sudden popularity of a contestant on a British TV talent quest? I hope you’d slap me in the face with a herring, or similar.
But if you were the SMH’s Opinion Editor, it sees you’d run the column and cut me a cheque…
…for just when you thought it was safe to read the intertubes, the lurking bulk of Paul Sheehan explodes out of the still waters, in a deluge of spray and froth.
Paul deserves an honourable mention in the 2009 Agincourt Awards for the Longest Bow in Journalism, for today’s column that segues effortlessly from the popularity of YouTube star-for-a-whole-entire-week, Susan Boyle, to inter-generational tensions between baby boomers and their successors, to why Peter Costello will be the saviour of Australia after Rudd wins the 2010 election and Turnbull crashes out.
I can’t work out whether it’s a death-defying leap of logic or a logic-defying leap of death. But it’s nice to know one can still get paid for free-association writing in today’s economic climate.
Whichever, it gets a polite *finger-clap* from me, a thumbs-up, and an instant Finalist position for the Agincourt Awards.
This George Will column. Take your pick…
The best bit about that Will column is his deathly grip on childish name calling, cf “St Barack”. The irony, it burns!
Peter Costello shouldn’t use the word ‘scarify’ again until he’s found out that it means to scar, not to scare.
Also, I reckon Turnbull is going to survive.
Heh … I like how Paul Sheehan goes from warning against a climate of conformity to extolling the wisdom of crowds in two columns.
It must be fun to write the first thing that pops into your mind and get paid for it.
The democratic will of the people bubbling up will one day mean, I hope, that the adjective “frumpy” will not be tossed around so easily.
The lady knocks Mr Sheehan into a cocked hat. Living in West Lothian, she need never read his column. Win-win.
Mercurius, thanks for the Monday humour. And yes, about the ‘frumpy’. The frock is very nice actually, and anyone who’s made such an effort can’t possibly be called ‘frumpy’. I do think the Susan Boyle phenomenon is interesting. Surely, if anything, it calls into question the ‘wisdom of the crowd’, seeing as the crowd was just about booing her off the stage before she started singing. It also shows how a less than glamorous woman is immediately treated with contempt, until she can prove herself to have some value.
Also Paul seems facinated by her failure to have had sexual intercourse. What a nice man.
Thing with a longer long bow is your arrow needs a much longer shaft and well, Costello hasn’t give any indications.
Dr.Cat, pray what puts the premonition in your whiskers that Turnbull will survive and perhaps prosper?
I’ve been watching his stint as Oppo leader with morbid interest…like seeing one’s parents dance to Bowie.
I got a couple of great laughs out of Paul this morning. His assessment of Susan’s charms was priceless, and his segues were marvellous – from one nonsensical statement to another his silken prose carried me along. I especially appreciated how cleverly he slipped in a barb at the baby boomers. I wish he’d write satire more often. And Mercurius, I think I resemble that remark about dancing to Bowie. It’s a baby boomer thing. Hmmmph.
Just M-H, please, not in front of the children…
Jesus, Robert. That Will column was close to the most idiotic thing I’ve ever read. (I have to ask why you did that to me.) He seems to be channelling one of the stuffier members of my grandparents’ generation. (You know, the ones who fought in the Great War.)
However, it wasn’t a complete loss. Amusingly there’s an ad for Walden College (which I seem to recall from Doonesbury), where you can purchase not only various flavours of MBA, but even a DBA or a PhD in Applied Management and Decision Sciences. [whistles.]
Now I have to look like Grace Kelly! Good God! And denim is to blame for the GFC. Save me from these people.
Indeed, Fine. I refuse to look like Fred Astaire. (I’m way too fat, and I can’t dance, just for a start.)
It must be nice to be paid to expose your brainfarts to the public.
Is George Will Rip van Winkle or something? Has he been asleep for the last twenty or thirty years?
If people had Edmund Burke reappear from the grave to hector them about matters sartorial, they’d probably be thinking ‘what the hell is that smelly old pommy git with the bad wig and the bad teeth going on about!?’
I dunno, Mercurius, it’s just a hunch. His only (visible) serious competition is Costello, and if Costello were going to step up then surely he would have done it by now. And don’t forget how many past polls have reconfirmed again and again that Costello is unelectable.
That said, a week is a long time, etc.
PC, I reckon the Libs could take a Dream Team to the next election: Botox Barbie as PM-in-waiting with $weetie as her deputy. (She’s got much bigger balls than he has, after all, and a thicker hide.) They can’t lose!!!!11!111!!
Petit Mal, otoh, is as much yesterday’s man as Dr Emo.
Of course the best bit is the large cartoon next to it. A red box marked “break in case of emergency” with Costello’s face on it.
It’s part of the narrative being created for what’s to come. Lib’s create surplus but asides from money don’t prepare us for the recession. Rudd takes over makes the tough decisions to become unpopular. Rudd gets dismissed and Costello newly elected as Lib Leader becomes the next Prime Minister.
It almost writes itself.
*headslap
I get it.
In 2013 Generations X, Y and Z will vote for Peter Costello on YouTube, sweeping him to power in Pollies Got Talent.
*/headslap
Suddenly, the politico-culturo-religio-economico reality of this broad brown, generationally segmented land is crystal clear.
Costello annoyed an irritated people (Tories, too, truth be told) years ago – way before the last election. Why would people warm to him after 5 or 6 years of high-octane, in-you-face pouting? Costello obviously thinks he’s a man of destiny, but everyone else can see he was just a second-rate, stolid treasurer who had the luck to enter government as the business cycle was on the up and we had a mining boom.
Aside from the off-putting bully-boy silliness in Parliament, I think the real reason he had so little support in the Lib party room was that he was seen as erratic (a feat in a party nowadays made up of very fruity right-wingers).
Only a few months ago Sheehan wrote about the “criminals” in Whitlam’s cabinet. Maybe the SMH thinks if it annoys its liberal-Left readership enough with this kind of drivel it will somehow make Fairfax a going concern again.
I think that award should go to Costello himself, whose most recent epistle links two ALP backbenchers and a tearful RAAF hostie with global warming as I’ve said elsewhere.
As for the Agincourt, there’s a pub by that name near the old Fairfax building in Ultimo and I bet it doesn’t serve Magic Water.
Sheehan isn’t the only one writing rubbish on the op-ed page, but he usually comes across to me as merely dyspeptically RW and for some reason I think of him as being one of those right-wingers from a working-class background.
Elizabeth Farrelly varies from impenetrable to excellent, but unfortunately the gauge is usually set at bland. Frank Devine’s daughter is coherent, from what little I’ve read: she just starts from inaccurate premises and an overweening belief in her own expertise. Gerard is as predictable as Adele Horrors, just in the opposite direction.
The Geek tells me he only reads Ross Gittins regularly. I also find Tanveer Ahmed interesting.
Aha! I’ve got it!
Noone alive NOW will vote for Cossie in a pink fit. However, if he waits around long enough, those yet unborn will (when it comes to vote) say to themselves, “I wouldn’t have to pay so much tax if, in grandpa’s time, Mr Rudd hadn’t taken out so much debt. So, instead of voting for PM Gillard, I’ll vote for whatsisname…Mr Costello. Never heard of him, but he’s been around a while so he must be OK.”
Thus, within a mere generation, Labor is swept from government and the rightful heir, 80 plus but still smirking, takes over as PM.
Persistence pays, Peter.
Chookie, I’ve only read a couple of the Devine Miranda’s columns (most recently the one about hanging greenies from the lamp posts, ’cause it’s all their fault that Victoria burnt to the ground), but please, please, please explain how she was ever coherent. She can barely string a sentence together.
Andrew E, thank you. Your putdown of Costello was masterful.
I do apologise for disturbing your equilibrium, David. I omitted to note that La Devina was more coherent than Paul Sheehan. I haven’t read one of her columns for a number of years but she appears sane but nasty. Sheehan reads as NQR to me. A few too many Unique Waters, perhaps?
On the wisdom of the mobs and talent shows.
The narrative is obvious. The dowdy singer is Costello. The judges are the elite ‘teh left wing media’ who tell us what to think. And the crowd is us. At first fooled by appearances but upon seeing the talent within making the judges redundent.
Remember, confromity is good as long as it’s the right type of conformity.
Re Chookie at 22: and they fired Carlton for refusing to cross a picket line. He was the only consistently sane and readable op-ed writer they had for mine, other than Ackland, and not everyone’s interested in the actual workings of the legal system. I mean, both have their blind spots, but they don’t just write declarative, English-seeming non-logic like these other expensively educated insane persons (Sheehan, Chookie, gives the very strong impression of having attended a school where they played rugby union).
“but have been distracted by a frumpy, unemployed, middle-aged virgin (diverting)”
Can I say this now? Such a mysoginist line. But the most interesting thing in the whole piece. The whole Boyle thing has been a case in point about mysoginy. Deserves a post in itself. And feminists, imo, have missed it by getting caught up in yes how exciting it is when ugly women surprise teh patriarchy al la Tanya Gold’s excruciating article were she draws from the same rubish lexicon: “She wore a gold lace dress, which made her look like a piece of pork sitting on a doily.” Or its interpreted as a battler narrative thing like Paul Potts. No such thing. Susan Boyle is getting attention because she falls nicely into that stereotype “the Spinster”. Women like Susan Boyle make both men and women very uncomfortable because she challenges the heteronormative values on which patriarchal culture is based. Its why everyone is interested. Her sudden fame is not a liberation for the ‘ugly woman’. Its a Youtube side show alley. Its spectacle dressed up as feel good fest for everyone. But its a mysoginist fest. Oh Look. The ugly old virgin can sing like that? She has been raised up only to be recontained within the terms in that line above. Her voice is average after all. Only average. I feel sorry for Boyle who has an identity beyond those key words – frump, ugly, virgin, old, catlover etc etc. She has been used by Britain’s Got Talent mercilessly. And so these are the terms she is imprisoned by now. Fame will always be about the ugly old maid who can sing. Not about Susan Boyle herself. Ugh.
What a shame it must be to be you.
“It must be fun to write the first thing that pops into your mind and get paid for it.”
None of that stuff just “pop into” his head. It more or less festers there for weeks until it’s all green and smelly.
Now that we know that the whole Sarah Boyle thing was a set-up, we need to revise the narrative a little: The dowdy singer is Costello. The judges are the meeja, except for one – Sheehan, who is the Simon Cowell of the piece, the only one in front of the stage who knows what’s really going on. And the crowd is us – fooled at first into deriding Costello, then fooled into hailing him as a great political talent.
Casey, I agree with your analysis. But I also wonder how manipulated the whole thing is. It’s tv, after all. Just call me a cynic, but I thought some of the judges’ responses wer a bit overplayed, and I don’t quite believe they knew nothing about Susan Boyle before she appeared. Certainly the producer would have been quite aware of who they had on their hands. I’m not implying that Susan Boyle was part of this, but I think we’re dealing with entertainment and the producers would have seen a tremendous publicity opportunity when they saw one.
Hopefully, Susan is canny enough to use this opportunity to make some money, have some fun and not get burnt by it.
I think you could safely assume it was totally manipulated with regard to everyone working on the show in the production team and the judges and probably a lot if not all of the crew knowing what was going on. Most of those shows are. The ‘ugly duckling’ and the ‘cute kid’ are standard tropes in that genre of TV along with the production assistants geeing up people with personality disorders before they go on, telling them how great they are, or how they really should use this opportunity to tell the world about the TimeCube.
Casey,
A abhor the term ‘frumpy’ too. But you wrote: “She has been used by Britain’s Got Talent mercilessly. And so these are the terms she is imprisoned by now.”
I wonder…. of course, every contestant, every audience member, is “used” by the show. That’s telly.
But I doubt that she is now “imprisoned”. Can’t she head out into an independent performing/recording career if she wishes? So much free publicity puts her in a strong position, doesn’t it?
I’m referring to singing, not to the possibility that she could be persuaded to star in the new, exciting, inspiring, stereotype-reinforcing Frump Makeover hosted by Trinny La TV Bitch. An unnerving prospect…
Ambi, it wouldn’t be surprising if she was heavily restricted in what she could do by the contract she would have signed before going on the show.
I would be astonished if she isn’t locked into a very poor contract for quite some time.
Fine, I agree. These people are auditioned and everyone would have known, Im sure. The over-reaction of the judges is ridiculous. The female judge looked just like Julia Roberts crying in the opera scene in Pretty Woman. She must have practiced it well. I have read that everyone is Susan’s hometown is not at all surprised she can sing like that as she sings everywhere she can. She does karaoke regularly as well as at church. The only thing that surprises them is the reaction she is getting internationally. Which goes to why is she getting it?
I think her voice is nice, but not exceptional. So what is this all about? A kind of entertainment that Britain’s Got Talent does well no doubt. They wanted another Paul Potts – and they got one but this time they have harnessed the power of an imprisoning and limiting stereotype, and they have hooked into the discomfort of the spectacle of all that feminine deficiency sounding out what is perceived as beautiful. So what if she’s never been kissed? So what? She might not think that an issue. I don’t. But we all, men and women together, we all shake our heads as if thats a terminal illess. We are so busy judging her in terms of these perceived deficiencies, in the guise of celebrating her voice, that we are missing a cultural imperative underwriting all this feel good fluffiness. Women like Susan Boyle discomfort people.
Her life story as defined by the media and the show depict a kind of Eleanor Rigby. But what happens when Eleanor Rigby sings? I have always been struck by the profound chords of loneliness in the Beatle’s “Eleanor Rigby”. When I was younger, I was never sure why Eleanor Rigby’s story had to be threaded with so much melancholic tragedy or why she ended up so alone. Or why that filled me with a strange dread. Later on I found that if you can get past the melancholy signalled in the chill vision of Eleanor “picking up rice in the church where a wedding has been”, or the abject pity of ”wearing a face she keeps in the jar by the door”, you will arrive inevitably to the deep reserve of social control and patriarchal values from which Eleanor has been conjured.
Eleanor is the Spinster. The shrivelled up, forgotten old maid. It’s the rice that does the trick. It signifies another woman’s impending fecundity while Eleanor’s own womb will remain sterile. And that is the sign of feminine failure. There is no worse fate than this. The same fate Susan Boyle has come to.
While loneliness is real enough, Eleanor Rigby does not really exist, of course. Eleanor Rigby has never ever existed, natch, though it is true she has frightened enough women over the years. She is the patriarchy’s big stick. This is what happens to the unattractive woman who will not conform. This is what happens to ugly girls, plain girls, quiet girls, prudes and frigid girls. While oversexed women are sent to a different hell alltogether, this one here is reserved for the spinster. Enter Susan Boyle, another Eleanor Rigby recycled for society’s consumption. Its just commercial consumption yes, whats the big deal right? I cant help but see the brushstrokes of this media manipulation as truly mysoginist.
Ambi, you are arguing to a line of thinking which suggests you can take the categories in which you are slotted into and use them so that they become an advantage. That you can take the power from someone else and wield it so that it loses its harmfulness. And that might be right. Its the thinking that underlies the idea of a discriminated against group taking ownership of degrading racial slurs and using it amongst themselves as a disabling of the power of the slur. She may make a lot of money and get a lot of fame. If thats what she wants, but it will never be free of the limiting stereotype in which she was first defined IMO.
Arguments are now raging over whether she gets a “makeover” or not with the female judge saying, no, it wouldn’t be the same if they made her over. Well no doubt. Its not about her singing is it? Its about her looks and about her failure to conform as a woman to partriarchal norms. The singing is just an excuse to examine the aspects of this stereotype. As I said, for the over sexed woman there is another assignation all together, as there is for the lesbian. Women are over sexed, under sexed, or wrongly sexed. Its just patriarchal culture making sure we understand the terms by which we must judge Susan Boyle. If a beautiful 21 year old opened her voice and sang like that, where would the story be?
Yes, dj, FDB: no doubt she’d have some restrictions (and a recording gig if she wins?).
Casey wrote much, including: “Ambi, you are arguing to a line of thinking which suggests you can take the categories in which you are slotted into and use them so that they become an advantage. That you can take the power from someone else and wield it so that it loses its harmfulness.”
Yes, something like that and beyond that. No person is a media creation. Persons have integrity and courage. Many persons ignore categories others “slot” them into: the onlooker has no power over most persons. Many performers and creators ignore reviews, criticisms, etc.
I’ll mention one example [gossip warning]: someone living in Edinburgh now told me that Susan Boyle had been a bit of an outcast in her village, considered strange. Well, was she “imprisoned” by that general view?
If she had been limited by it, I suggest she would NOT have entered the talent show. But I may be mistaken. Nowt queer as folk.
BTW Casey, I think a straw poll of LP readers would show the vast majority here utterly reject what you describe as “patriarchal culture making sure we understand the terms by which we must judge Susan Boyle”. We will judge matters according to our lights, not that tedious claptrap.
Oh well Ambi, I see what you are saying, just call me a cynic, and I think your lights are lovely. I swear it was 3 paras when I hit the button, but in the space between my computer and LP’s server, it seemed to have grown into a small treatise. Never mind. I was watching Paul Potts tonight. He’s had all his teeth veneered and sings in Italian. He is “serious” now. (to be said in a Heath Ledger’s Joker intonations). Lets see if Ms Boyle is allowed to make the same transition without comment on the change in looks, as Mr Pott did, eh?