I would put Pilger on a par with Noam Chomsky (whom some still regard as a “scholar”). Chomsky’s writings – outside linguistics – are characterised by quaint and blinkered misreadings on topics he knows but sparsely. He seems to operate from press clippings half-digested. No expert he. But idolised by many. As is Pilger. As was Burchett.

Pilger’s misbehaviour in Fleet Street many decdes ago was lampooned by “Private Eye” magazine. They noted the new verb: ‘to pilgerise’ [to exaggerate a story for emotional and political effect]. Come to think of it, Pilger’s a bit like Germaine Greer at her worst: unscrupulous and raucous.

epater les bourgeois is fair enough, but do it with style and substance ladies and gents!

It’s an impression people have about Rudd (mostly from being a churchgoer, I’d guess) but I don’t know what it’s based on when it comes to public policy.

But for the rest of the country, it’s slim pickins’. Gittins is great, but I’d still hesitate to think of him as an unambiguous Leftie.

Murdoch employs the odd progressive type, but they ususally fit a pattern. They’re the kind that spends all their time fretting – the type that wants a toothless Left that never does anything.

Pilger?! Pilger?! When Pilger was on Q&A a while ago he got stuck into Labor over Iraq. Apparently Labor wasn’t living up to its election promise because it was only pulling combat troops out of Iraq. The only problem is, Labor had lived up to its election promise – some support personnel would remain but combat troops would be pulled out. That was what Labor very clearly said it would do before the election. Argue against the policy by all means, but you can’t say Labor went back on an election promise. It didn’t. Facts are facts.

This is the kind of misinformation that makes people on our side of politics cynical – usually it’s based on twaddle. The sad thing is, if you were to ask people on the far Left who was more trustworthy – Rudd or Pilger? – Rudd wouldn’t even be in competition.

Very true, Adrien.

And from conversations on economics I’ve had with taxi drivers over the years, I fervently wish that economic policy will always remain an elite project!

Ginja, if Sweden counts as your definition of utopia, the public sector there takes and spends 48% of GDP (2007). And that’s only < 50% because of some market reform in recent years. My point being: the public sector in a “social democratic utopia” could easily account for the majority of the economy. Whether you think that would be a good thing or a bad thing is up to you.

“What I want to know is, why aren’t there any regular opinion columnists who are on the Left? I mean really on the Left, not just fashionably progressive-ish.”

Kenneth Davidson?
Ross Gittins? (Not necessarily pro-union, but certainly Keynesian.)

“Get Pilger back here and give him Philip Adam’s space in The Weekend Oz.”

Naah. Pilger’s only marginally better than Adams.

Syndicate Paul Krugman’s columns instead. Krugman’s the best left-wing opinionista I’ve ever seen, with a combination of firm views, clear writing, and very deep knowledge. Most opinionistas (left or right) have only the first of those attributes.

Quiggins would also be an excellent choice.

I think this is as good a definition of neoconservatism as any – a different but related term. Note the disdain for small-state solutions.

… statesmen should, above all, have the ability to distinguish friends from enemies. This is not as easy as it sounds, as the history of the Cold War revealed. The number of intelligent men who could not count the Soviet Union as an enemy, even though this was its own self-definition, was absolutely astonishing.

You wouldn’t have to be the smartest of smart-arses to ask which category Pakistan falls into. The last paragraph of hat article is telling for neoliberalism – the relationship between social conservatism and economic radicalism.

What I want to know is, why aren’t there any regular opinion columnists who are on the Left? I mean really on the Left, not just fashionably progressive-ish. And by that, I mean people who will come out and strongly argue the case for trade unions or progressive taxation or that government debt is a second-order issue at the moment?

Wherre’s our Polly Toynbee or Paul Krugman? Robert Manne is one of the few to come close, and he no longer writes a regular newspaper column. Doesn’t my third of the electorate deserve to have its views represented in the opinion pages?

All that many of us is that we have a strong public sector, unions that are allowed to do their job, and that the government concerns itself with the shocking level of inequality that has grown up since Thatcherist-Reaganism swept the world.

But as you seem to suggest, things won’t always move in the one direction – they rarely do. But the tide is with people who’ve always had a big problem with neoliberalism. And just out of sheer necessity, we’ll have activist governments trying new things because I can’t see us not being in a deep economic malaise for the next decade.

As for the power of the conservative pundits, which Mark also mentions, this is something I’ve been thinking about a bit lately. I tend to agree that they’re given too much credit, but I think their influence on debate is nevertheless powerful. There’s not space here, but I’ve tried to think through some of the complexities of the power dynamic here: http://thelandofplenty.wordpress.com/2009/04/25/no-power-to-the-pundits/#more-218.