There’s some very good coverage in Crikey today of the dispute which led to the resignation of Sally Warhaft as editor of The Monthly. Jonathan Green traces the ins and outs of the argument – which came to a crux, it’s said, over Manne’s desire to shape the introduction to a series of ‘responses’ to Kevin Rudd’s now notorious article/manifesto. Guy Rundle has a more clinical piece, questioning the value of a magazine of ideas whose main ideas appear to come from on high – from Kevin Rudd himself down, filtered through what he sees as the modest political ambitions of Robert Manne. Rundle also critiques the selection of writers and issues, arguing that both are somewhat bland, and that a real opportunity has been missed.
Interesting reading – if you follow Rundle’s take, arguably more interesting than some recent numbers of the mag itself.
It’s hard to escape the conclusion that The Monthly has become something of a personal vehicle for Manne. If it was badged that way, well and good. Or perhaps the bloke should get a blog. But – and I largely agree with Rundle’s take – there are also some cogent questions about editorial independence which need posing to a small magazine as much as to a large (N)ews empire. Particularly when that mag, in its own way, has also sought to position itself at ‘the heart of the nation’.
Update: Robert Manne responds.
Mark, I’ve just been reading that too. I was a bit surprised to see that neither Jonathan Green nor Guy mentioned Christian Ryan, who was The Monthly‘s first editor and had, for most of 2005, the thankless job of getting the magazine off the ground. His departure was, shall we say, not voluntary and AFAIK Sally Warhaft was appointed by fiat to replace him. It would have been interesting to see some comparisons.
Hey, Mark and PC you both got a guernsey in Rundle’s piece. I also found the Monthly bland, with some exceptions. But I think Crikey is being a bit too gleeful about its problems. And don’t they enjoy slagging off Manne. I also find a lot of Crikey incredibly dull. Schwarz is being misrepresented as a propoerty developer (god forbid) turned publisher. He did start back Outback Press back in about ’73, so he may have some of his own ideas and not just be Manne’s cipher.
“Academic politics are vicious because the stakes are so small”. LOL. hell yes.
Gawd, look at my rotten tyos. That’s what happens when I’m in a rush.
Fine, strictly speaking he’s not being misrepresented — he really is a property developer. The point is, he’s not just a property developer; as he’s quoted saying in the Green piece (I think), he was a publisher first and became a developer to support the publishing. But he was called ‘a property developer’ as an unambiguously pejorative term in print by a bitter Peter Craven addressing the ready-made sympathetic lefty booky readership of the books pages after Craven and Schwartz fell out, and I think it stuck.
“Gawd, look at my rotten tyos”.
There’s some law at play here. What’s its name?
Gutenbreg’s Law.
The “I’m having a day when I’m doing way too much” rule.
Slagging off Manne is a recreation enjoyed right across the political spectrum: Gerard Henderson and Andrew Bolt enjoy it too. Unfortunately, I haven’t been able to Google up the article which I consider the best of the Manne-slagging genre – it appeared in The Age on the Saturday after Manne’s debate with Andrew Bolt at the Melbourne Writers’ Festival. In lieu of that link, here’s a strong second best from The Age’s letters page.
As for The Monthly, it’s a boring mag and a boring topic. It’s going to be much more interesting to see what Sally Warhaft does while The Monthly goes down the gurgler.
Rundle is right, I initially liked the Monthly when I first started reading it about a couple of years ago, but my interest dropped off pretty rapidly after the election.
At the moment the issues it covers do seem to be preciously esoteric and marginal, and from a very narrow set of ‘establishment’ style writers – I find it hard to articulate but I certainly don’t feel invigorated or challenged by The Monthly anymore, and have redirected the $$ for occasional Quarterly Essay purchases instead.
heh. Very good Pav.
Fine, as a serial non-proofer of comments, my advice is dont apologise. Or you’ll always be doing it!
@2 – Fine – yep! Flattering!
I did actually think of pitching a thing or two to The Monthly, but what made me hesitate was that I didn’t think it would fit. Part of the problem, and Guy alludes to this wrt the ‘little magazines’, for writers in this country is not just an absence of outlets but an absence of outlets who’ll publish anything unexpected – and pay. I did think of something bland that might have fitted, but the time involved wouldn’t have received its proper compensation if the interest wasn’t there… if that makes any sort of sense.
I don’t think there’s a lot of gloating going on @ Crikey – Green’s piece seems fairly straightforward to me, and Rundle, well it’s his style, isn’t it?
This seems to me to be spot on though:
Whatever we think of The Monthly’s content (and I share a lot of the opinions that have been floated, esp. Guy Rundle’s), I think most would have to agree that for a magazine with unashamedly progressive, liberal politics, to do away with the appearance and seeming the practice of editorial independence is pretty fucking poor.
Yep – and I think that’s an important point both Green and Rundle raised, Laura. If it’s just to be a vehicle for Manne/Schwartz/Rudd, then that’s something very different from a magazine with editorial independence. I also tend to agree that if that does become the case, then it may not be doomed because it has deep pockets behind it, but it won’t make an impact.
Whatever whatever just as long as they keep Robert Forster.
Yes, Robert Forster is the only reason for buying it at the moment, but unfortunately an insufficient reason.
I actually thought he might be a precursor for things to come – a writer with fresh ideas and insights, who as an added bonus could write. Sadly not.
Robert Forster was the only thing I ever read in it. Think he even won a prize for his The Mannethly work.
Agree on everything said by everyone in this thread, ever.
The Monthly is on the long and pathetic road of becoming a Quadrant for lefties. What a horrible spectre; an ancien regime circle jerk. These people need to be trying to connect with reality, not run away from it.
If it was any good at all, I would have been a regular buyer. But seeing the same eight names every issue writing about either a) the same things they always do, everywhere or b) issues they know absolutely nothing about, was depressing and boring.
I’m glad Rundle mentioned the ‘the publication has no letter/comment/reply section’ because that was one of two reasons I cancelled my subscription. The other reason was that I found the magazine just plain and simply boring for the most part.
I find it hard to articulate but I certainly don’t feel invigorated or challenged by The Monthly anymore, and have redirected the $$ for occasional Quarterly Essay purchases instead.
Well doesn’t Maurie publish that too? He’ll be laughing his way to the bank.
Pretty interesting discussion; and Manne is looking nasty and petty, although of course a good deal of what is being said about him could be rumour and hearsay.
The Black Inc publications all seem to have that slightly boring, slightly predictable, but worthy air about them: Schwartz not only publishes the Monthly and the Quarterly, but also ‘Best Australians Essays 200_’, along with best poems, and best stories. And of course to regularly publish material like this you would tend to rely upon well-established writers, those who are regularly published and well-known in the Australian literary scene. As a plus, it makes for a good economic product. I imagine a lot of what Maurie has done would come straight out of the Business 101 textbook – find a need in the market, try a product out, experiment with it at first until you find the right model, then mass produce the hell out of it.
To see a magazine that actually engages with its audience, confronts the issues affecting its readership, and offers (generally) quality writing, look no further than The Word.
OK, it’s aimed at the music market, but it does so with such pinache and verve that it’s a guide to what The Monthly could achieve in a different field.
And its circulation is increasing.
Although I should add, I do like the fact that a lot of the Black Inc publications can act as some kind of record of Australian culture at any one time.
A lot of commentary seems to focus on the political material in The Monthly, though personally that doesn’t interest me so much – political commentary is ubiquitous. I’d like a publication that focuses on culture, like The New Yorker or The Spectator (two magazines that are politically quite different, but nevertheless have a strong focus on the cultural)
Credit where it’s due – over the past couple of days, The Monthly has generated some interesting and entertaining writing. Of course none of it will show up in the May edition.
Actually I disagree with this. I’m not bagging those publications necessarily but arguing that they are representative of Australian culture (whatever that is
) is a bit of a long bow.
Representative of a much smaller demographic, yes. But my problem with those publications is that same as with The Monthly – though in spite of this handicap they do manage to get interesting out there occasionally.
That problem being: a small stable of
1. mostly academic
2. mostly old,
3. mostly the token intellectual on various papers’ editorials or weekend liftouts
4. almost always deeply bourgeois writers writing – invariably – about
5. the same bloody themes regardless of the topic (story about budgerigars mating in western queensland? It’s actually about the realisation of mortality. Story about witnessing a fight on the train? Same thing)
6. and exhibiting that weird fetishistic view of the working class/proletariat/whatever you want to call it, that so much Australian writing is enamored with.
Patrickg, care to expand on 6.? I’m not sure what you’re getting at with that one.
Good heavens, patrickg, have you really read all the Quarterly Essays and all the Black Inc anthologies of short stories, poetry, essays and political writing? Your reading is much more extensive than mine!
Of course I’m assuming that if you haven’t read them then you wouldn’t be so unwise as to make such a wild set of generalisations.
The Monthly is too hit and miss to be worth buying more than occasionally. I actually think Manne’s stuff isn’t too bad (when he’s not fulminating on old obsessions), but needs to be balanced by some other political perspectives. Greater diversity in their choice of writers would be welcome, as well as more ideas at a basic level. Rundle’s list of possible contributors shows just how many talented people are around, and there were plenty of others who weren’t listed.
I’d like to see something more like the Quarterly Essay, but with smaller pieces, and broader scope (arts, social issues, etc). Maybe they need to gamble on some fresh writers and fresh ideas.
I like the sound of Rundle’s mooted article “Bonhoeffer with alcopops: a critical account of Ruddism.”
I first saw that attributed to Henry Kissinger, though the original version is “University politics are vicious precisely because the stakes are so small.”
In software engineering this has become known as the Boatshed Problem. What colour will we paint the boatshed? It matters very little to the important qualities of a boatshed (how good it is at containing boats, how convenient, how safe etc); but people will spend a lot of time in heated debate about what colour it should be.
It’s counterintuitive that many times, it’s the unimportant problems that occupy most of the attention. Kissinger’s quote fits neatly into the Boatshed Problem.
Well I don’t claim that they’re a definitive record; that’s why I used the phrase ‘some kind of record’. But I think that’s one of the obvious aims of those publications, and one of their obvious appeals to the market.
Forgive me, PC, I didn’t realise you had to read every book by Georges Simenon to make a statement on his work. I find that comment a bit snarky and condescending, but more importantly this is old territory for us: Let’s just agree to disagree. It’s my opinion and I’m entitled to it (fyi I did go through a stage of about four years where I did read all of those anthologies).
Mark, I guess what I’m meaning by that, is that I feel there is sometimes a (slightly creepy in my opinion) thing going on where many of those writers will write an essay or story focussing on a very working class, or even bogan, subject matter, and write about it in a way reminiscent of cross between a Victorian monograph on ‘savages’, and a some kind of misery porn like A Child Called It.
This is all relatively ancillary to my main point, however, which is that I wouldn’t rely on any of those publications as a snapshot of Australian culture. Best Essays is lucky to make the bestseller list (circa 20 000 copies) most years, Best Stories even less so.
Patrickg @ 18, I agree. I think The Monthly is a complete wank. Sometimes Crikey threatens to go down that route too but IMO the value of Crikey is in it’s variety. I’ve found Dissent magazine to be a good informative read and got The Week when it was at it’s initial price of $2.
Guy Rundle’s piece was a brilliant application for the now vacant editorship. But he’s probably a bit too hard-edged leftyish for those Malvern antique shoppers. And somehow, though i am not acquainted with either gentleman, i can see him blueing with Manne in a jiffy.
Maybe we should be talking up the alternative small publications, like Arena and Overland. Though i confess i haven’t been reading them in recent years, they are probably more likely to be the repositories of alternative worldviews. But not as sexy as the mainstream Monthly. And maybe some of us are stuck on the net and can’t be stuffed reading the hard copies.
Is this a culture war?
And it’s only on the internet that you can find excellent educational videos about washing your cat. What good is the Monthly if it doesn’t do that?
Ah, but, Matilda, Overland is on the net!
http://web.overland.org.au/?page_id=574
Jacques,
I was told the quote was attributed to Herbert Hoover, but I’ve not been able to verify this.
Another favourite (pinned up on a noticeboard during some brouhaha): “They say walls have ears. Around here, ears have walls.”
I share the disappointment with “The Monthly”, of so many posters. It seems slight and pretentious to me. Expensive printing in marked contrast to “Quadrant”, but slim and light pickings. Boring? Yes. I prefer the occasional “Quarterly Essay”, though they vary enormously too, as you might expect. Could that be the problem with “The Mannely” – so heavily edited to even out the tone that it’s gone bland??
[Personal reminiscence: after buying a wetsuit a few years ago I obtained a questionnaire from the retailer. Among several Qq aimed at teenage customers: "What's your favourite mag?" I enjoyed writing "Quarterly Essay" in that space.]
Yes PB, lets get back to having a good old intra-left culture war – just like it used to be!
Kevin Rudd’s essay edition sold out at my local newsagent – so obviously a few people were interested in what the PM had to say. Any smallish intellectual journal would kill for that kind of impact.
Small literary-political journals usually come from a distinct place place politically. People wouldn’t put so much into mostly loss-making magazines unless they had a definite barrow to push. Magazines like The New Republic or The Nation have a distinct flavour. So perhaps there Guy Rundle has a point.
But I don’t think that is what this is really about. It boils down to a depressingly familiar theme: on the Left there is no worse sin than to say a kind word about the ALP. Never mind that Manne’s response to Rudd’s essay was hardly uncritical. Or that Manne has recently taken Rudd to task over carbon emission targets.
I wish people on the Left in this country could understand that you can occasionally say nice things about the ALP without turning into a party hack. In fact, intellectual integrity would seem to demand that you occasionally drop the de rigueur negativity and give credit where credit’s due.
Good on Manne and Morry Schwartz for putting out The Monthly. And I don’t care what the knockers say, the Australian Left is a much better place for Robert Manne being in it. I love his Monthly essays. And is it a bad thing to have a PM engaging in serious intellectual debate?
As the AFL ad says, i’d like to see that. I don’t think the attitude of the Monthly to Rudd and his policies is the main issue.
An aside: until the issue with the Rudd essay, my father had thought The Monthly was a womens magazine.
Well, the funny thing is, I’m looking for a new editor for ‘Piss Weekly’ – how’s the timing??!!
Applications at BmL.
sundry points
If my Crikey article came across as slagging off Robert Manne, that was not my intention. I really have no idea who is – or was – arguing for what direction (ideas vs reportage/style as the 2 poles), though it was my impression that Warhaft was keener on a less ideas-y publication. But could be wrong
If there was tension between the Board and the editor, well that does not automatically discredit the board. An editor has to be headstrong, audacious, the Board has to take a longer view, and something emerges from that. If it breaks down the editor has to go or the board has to be reconstituted. If the owner is the board then it’s only going to end one way
I have no doubt that Morry Schwarz knows his own mind – but twitting him about having a Man(ne) crush is fun.
As to gloating, it’s hardly that – tho letting off steam about the Monthly’s narrow elitism and starfucking, to the exclusion of so many good writers, feels gooooood. It was more that a magazine like that is a res publica, even if privately owned, so not saying anything for fear of looking snide is ultimately cowardice.
GR
PS. As regards Christian Ryan, I simply thought he was a mistake, didn’t find a vision. Sally did, so it was something that could be argued with and contested.
Still… buck a word! Can’t argue with that.
And the deputy editor has quit now:
http://www.smh.com.au/national/magazine-meltdown-editor-fired-deputy-walks-writers-quit-20090429-anf6.html
Well doesn’t Maurie publish that too? He’ll be laughing his way to the bank.
My interest isn’t really in who owns and makes money from the publications TimT, but whether they offer something I’m interested in paying to read. Hence the word ‘occasional’.
Too Mannely By Half
I liked Guy Rundle’s list of potential contributors, but would be happier with an even BROADER range (“if I were editor” fantasy….) with specialist contributors on topical issues – e.g. an epidemiologist writing on the WHO pandemic strategy (dissed by the Grauniad writer on another thread).
Having a List has the potential for exclusivity, coterie, mutual back-slapping, inwardness; the Rundle list is no more “from the ground up rather than from a self-appointed high elite” than was the Mannely Stable (which I agree has been too narrow).
Damn. To think that for three years I’ve thought I was just being tactful and grown-up.
Ambi, it’s a really good idea, but it’s surprisingly difficult to find specialists in particular fields who can also write well and work professionally: an editor’s dream/fantasy is an expert in the field who can use state of the art technology to put a sentence together, put a paragraph together, put an argument together, write to length, copy-edit it themselves and get it in on time. Even the legendary Don Dunstan, who used to write reviews of politics books for the Adelaide Review, turned in astonishingly wooden copy considering what a fluent and charismatic dude he was IRL.
I’ve just realised that the first part of that comment at #47 could be interpreted as snark, but it’s just a straight observation — I think Guy is probably right, at least up to a point. The trouble with even the most legitimate critique of something one has felt personally slighted by, though, is that writing out one’s views is a waste of time. Even if one is prepared to wear being thought of as snide, the real issue is that people will dismiss what you have to say, no matter how carefully, knowledgeably and/or time-consumingly you’ve said it.
I haven’t bothered to unpack the rest of the language but if Sally was a bloke they’d probably be calling her hard-nosed, not brittle. This insignificant little literary [?] squabble has a lot to teach us about the present state of gender politics vis-a-vis late middle-aged men of power, don’t you think? I’m sure some of you will find other examples.
Robert Manne? He’s gonna edit The Monthly? Oh Wow! Fresh face. New ideas. I wonder what he’ll say and who else will be saying it. I’m sure it’ll be a cast of dynamic young blood barely in their 60s.
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ZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZ
Adrien, no, Manne isn’t going to edit The Monthly. He’s currently the chair of the editorial board. They’re looking for a new editor.
Sometimes it helps to read the actual post and links before you comment.
Update: Robert Manne responds.
PC, when you mean “write well”, what’s your threshold level? If you’re expecting prose as good as professional novelists, you’re bound to be disappointed. But surely it can’t be impossible to find people whose writing, while perhaps pedestrian compared to a professional, is adequate to impart their expert perspective?
Have read Manne’s respons (whose work btw, I generally admire). So, was I wrong @ 49?
PC, Manne’s response just exemplifies what you’ve said above:
It reminds me a lot of the tedious stoush he and Henderson have been engaged in for the last millenium or so. (This is not intended to be a comment on the rights and wrongs of it, btw.)
Robert, I could give you a much longer answer on what I mean by ‘write well’, but it would bring down howls of execration on my head from certain predictable quarters, so I won’t. In this instance, I meant the qualities listed after the colon in that sentence in #47 (except perhaps for ‘get it in on time’ which is more the ‘professional’ part).
No, of course one does not expect specialists in their fields to write like professional novelists, but they do need to be able to produce sentences, paragraphs and clear well-structured lines of argument (Dunstan, for instance, could do all that) that are at least minimally engaging and readable (but not that, so much) for an intelligent general audience, and that don’t need hours and hours of structural and copy editing to bring them up to publishable standard.
Of course it’s not impossible to find such people — but it’s not that easy, either, and such people are often too busy doing their chosen work in their chosen field to stop the presses and churn out a non-specialist article or essay.
On this topic, has anyone noticed the Quadrant response? They’ve branded Sally a ‘dumb blonde’ with a video named exactly that under the heading ‘we’ve found a new editor for The Monthly’.
A boy’s club, Quadrant? Never.
http://www.quadrant.org.au/
According to Robert Manne’s version of events, the editor of The Monthly was embarrassed that the magazine would state openly that it published an unsolicited essay from the PM, yet was angry when the board of The Monthly turned down a potential contribution from Peter Costello (who already has a regular Fairfax column in which he rants).
This would seem to confirm what I said about left-wing intellectuals earlier: the worst sin is to be nice to the ALP. Yet after Tampa, Iraq, Work Choices, a decade of malign neglect on global warming, space is to be given to the likes of Peter Costello.
I’ll never work my comrades out.
Robert Manne is a left wing intellectual?
Who wants to pay good money for a mag full of “adequate” prose?
“Robert Manne is a left wing intellectual?”
Yes that struck me as a bit of a stretch. Small ‘l’ liberal, and read by some on the left, I would say. Maybe this intra-left stoush isn’t one?
Sometimes it helps to read the actual post and links before you comment.
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True and sometimes it doesn’t. Like when the topic is the OzKulcha Bitchfest Vol #12 516. It’s amazing how much time and energy is wasted paying attention to THE SCENE.
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I’m justa opportunistic renegade appealing to the downer freaks out there. Everyone is influenced by everybody but you bring it down home the way you feel it. Cabn you dig it? Even the President of the United States hasta stand naked sometime. I am the subconscious math’matician and Chaos is a friend of mine.
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Back up Chuck! It’s a trip, it’s a number. Ya dig! Go home and tell yer ol’ lady Bird lives man. Oh yass!
But Robert Manne is heading up the board ‘ey? Well that’s completely different in that case…..
I’d just
……haveta …………………………………sayzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz
Sorry about that. I forgot to take my bipolar medication.
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Yes that struck me as a bit of a stretch. Small ‘l’ liberal, and read by some on the left, I would say. Maybe this intra-left stoush isn’t one?
.
Can I just ask what demarcates the difference between a left-wing intellectual and a small ‘l’ liberal as far as people are concerned. If you tell me I promise not to do any Beatnik Daddy-O riffs for the rest of the month.
Manne doesn’t seem to advocate for or engage with the social movements associated with the left – he may have in the distant past, I don’t know. His conception of justice is liberal, he’s politically moderate, he’s humanistic in a fairly old-fashioned way, concerned with freedom but not with radical democracy. For Manne, the critic is non-partisan and (supposedly) fearless. Some of his concerns are shared with sections of the left.
Re Todd Jorgensen’s link at #57: the poor old Quadrant dudes don’t seem to have figured out yet that effective mockery requires some actual similarity between the victim and the parody. The idea of Sally as a ‘dumb blonde’ would send anyone who’s ever had anything to do with her, friend or foe, up to and including Robert Manne and Morry, into a fit of hysterical cackling.
What’s more, that TV feature appears to be a low-rent ripoff of The Monthly‘s ‘Slow TV’. Oh the irony.
Good on your for clicking on that, PC. My fingers unaccountably sieze up every time I go near…
To boldly go, etc.
I keep forgetting Quadrant exists until someone posts a link here!
Well, they haven’t been hoaxed in weeks – must be feeling cocky~!
Working at a magazine whose features are predominantly written by specialists in their field I can confirm what PC says. It’s not that there aren’t scientists (and presumably specialists in other fields) with the skills for writing. The problem is getting them to prioritise writing for the general public over all the other things they do.
Of course the fact the Monthly has a larger circulation than Australasian Science, and pays, would help. Nevertheless, you’ve still got the fact that most scientists, in Australia at least, regard public communication as the thing they slip into the time cracks left by their real work. A secondary problem is the tendency of so many specialists to lapse into jargon. We had a classic submitted recently – a long article which started and finished using an excellent metaphor and crystal clear prose, but spent most of the middle using terms incomprehensible to anyone without at least a second year major in the field.
It’s bad enough when the topic isn’t time critical. It would be hell to be an editor wanting a quick backgrounder on an issue that just blew up.
I’m rather amazed so many of you still take those solemn, ponderous and deadly dull old prints so seriously -regardless of idealogy.
Global civilisation is accelerating like stink into new smells, and more often than not into panicky masks, major industry icons are collapsing like houses of cards, private space travel is a growth industry, the single most powerful person on earth is a Hawaiian pothead and the most popular pop characters are teenage wizards and vampires. I personally think this is a bunch of good things. I welcome life getting really strange again
But an awful lot of people who make predictions upon which their livelihoods are dependent are totally baffled. Whether it’s The Monthly or Quadrant or et al, they really don’t have a fucking clue about what will happen next. Or even now.
Asking any of this crew make sense of the now and dowse what’s next is liking asking tea leafs how they ended up in the dregs of a teacup.
“The Future. Not What You Expected. Again.”
But an awful lot of people who make predictions upon which their livelihoods are dependent are totally baffled. Whether it’s The Monthly or Quadrant or et al, they really don’t have a fucking clue about what will happen next. Or even now.
As an older worker who could easily be thrown on the scrapheap tomorrow, with a VCE student daughter who wants to study Journalism, this haunts me night and day.
This would seem to confirm what I said about left-wing intellectuals earlier: the worst sin is to be nice to the ALP. Yet after Tampa, Iraq, Work Choices, a decade of malign neglect on global warming, space is to be given to the likes of Peter Costello.
I’ll never work my comrades out.
Oh, boo hoo. Do something about the Fersons and the people like them who seem hell bent on sucking up to corporations and large developers and keeping us firmly on the fossil fuels and digging-up-the-country track. The “New City” labor website, which has been taken down – because it was a bit too revealing, I think – shows a shockingly ignorant and smallminded vision for Australia’s future.
The fifth column are still fifth columning, alas, Helen.
Liam
Gah.
What a well designed website.
Yes, The New City is alive and well after a change of URL. You can now get your “shockingly ignorant and smallminded vision for Australia’s future” here: http://www.thenewcityjournal.net
Echoing Helen, gah.
I only had to read a couple of the headlines to realise it was serious Marn Fersn territory.
I should probably bookmark it (know your enemy), but it’s too much like Quadrant for comfort.
Adrian
You should have seen it before. It shares with the Quadrant website the bad web design values which seem to torture the Right (and those who have to read their stuff.) The Quadrant website looks like it’s put together by some young Liberals who fancy themselves as Chaser types and have just discovered Photoshop.
Helen and others: the building pictured in the centre of The New City’s header image is the Governor Macquarie Towers, home to the ministerial offices of the NSW State Government and the Department of Premier and Cabinet.
Make of that what you will.
Ferguson M. (Laurie seems brighter) is the last remnant of the old pro-Soviet ALP left centered around the BWIU, Pat Clancy, the pre-ACU SPA etc. Ferguson senior thought Gorby let down the cause of socialism and we know what Brezhnev thought about the environment. Curiously Lee Rhiannon came from SPA as well.
Helen, that’s exactly what I’m talking about! I’ll always give Rudd credit for helping to rid us of the worst government in Australian history. That’s not to say people shouldn’t take issue with various Labor policies. I just don’t get the wholesale, unrelenting hostility.
I was talking about Sally Warhaft when I was referring to left-wing intellectuals. But sure Robert Manne is a left-wing intellectual. He had a neo-connish period and hung around with some doubtful types at Quadrant for a while (out of disgust with anti-anti-communism), but even then he was no neo-liberal. He has described himself as “leftist” for a long time now.
I don’t know all the ins and outs of this kerfuffle. And, really, it’s a bit of a non-story – a falling out and two people resign. So what? The interesting aspect is that publishing an essay from our PM seems to be something to be embarrassed about. Yet card-carrying members of the left intelligentsia – who were called every name under the sun during the Howard years – would want to give space to the likes of Costello. Do we really need to know any more about how Costello invented sunshine and is the most wronged statesman in history? Isn’t a book, a regular column, Q&A enough? No doubt Sally Warhaft is a great editor, and it’s a bit unfair to single her out, but all this seems symptomatic of a general wishy-washiness on our side of politics.
I think it’s great that we have a PM who thinks ideas matter and could justly be described as an intellectual himself. On that last point, Howard took ideas seriously, too. Currently there is an interview of him at his true home – the nutty National Review Online.
Somebody above praised The Monthly as a “left/progressive” magazine. Is anybody else confused by this assessment?
Who is Robert Manne to deliver judgment on ETS? Manne is a very mediocre philistine. He knows little of history, nothing about economics, and even less about science. How can people justify describing him as ‘left wing’ or an ‘intellectual’?
He is another boring white ageing baby-boomer middle class male mediocrity. Surely we deserve and can do better?
Geoff R
that’s interesting. I understand SPA, BWIU, but what was (is?) ACU?
Sam, do you need special dispensation from the Queen to comment on the ETS? And you must be reading another Robert Manne to me. I think Manne knows a little about history. He was a firm anti-communist back when it was deeply unfashionable in academia to be one. Talk about bitchy. Do you people have anything good to say about anything? Lighten up and enjoy a few things in life peeps.
P.S. God only knows what Robert Manne is if not an intellectual. Robert Manne seems to come closest to the original meaning of the term intellectual – especially in the way Russians use it.
I think you may be confusing intellectual with specialist (Manne is also a specialist in his academic field). True intellectuals are generalists, people who know enough about a wide range of topics to offer an intelligent comment. Reading a good generalist can be as informative as reading a very narrow specialist.
As for ageing, what’s you’re strategy for avoiding that charge?
Can’t believe I used “you’re” incorrectly!….I’ll sit in the corner.
Good grief. 80-plus posts on this… um, topic, and so far (AFAICT) not a single joke about “World of Warhaft”. Too obvious for your oh-so-delicate sensibilities, praps?
Grade: You clearly have ability, but you’re just not trying. C minus. See me during office hours.
http://images.google.com.au/images?hl=en&client=firefox-a&rls=org.mozilla%3Aen-GB%3Aofficial&um=1&sa=1&q=%22best+handle+ever%22&btnG=Search+Images&aq=f&oq=
You think?
Sam @ 85,
You have no idea what you’re talking about. Robert Manne, if I’m not mistaken,(I didn’t Google it before I made this comment), wrote the definitive history (insofar as any history can be definitive) of the Petrov Affair (an Australian spy scandal of the 1950s that gave rise to many left wing conspiracy theories for some considerable time.) That major contribution to Australian historiography would suggest he knows a great deal about what history is. Just sayin’.
“He is another boring white ageing baby-boomer middle class male mediocrity. Surely we deserve and can do better?” – Sam
Deserve? WTF? Is that like the line from the TV? Because [you're] worth it? Fix up yourself man. And ‘can do better’? What, like the whiney clique of intellektules talking amongst themselves on, say, this blog? Jeebus eff, this confusing of inane bitchiness with cutting edge commentary seems so, well, mediocre. So what distinguishes you, and most writing here, from the ‘boring white ageing baby-boomer middle class male mediocrity’ tag, Sam? Not a boomer maybe? Or male? Or middleclass? Well dittos to all that. But if you want to be considered anything other than a boring mediocrity yourself you’ve got to be showing, not telling. So far, not so much.
Keep it civil, please!
There’s an interesting piece by Gideon Haigh in today’s Age on the whole affair, illustrated by a very witty mocked-up Monthly cover.
Sorry, forgot to link — the Haigh piece is here.
A bit harsh, Millie, but roughly my sentiments.
I can’t understand how anyone with left-of-centre views could quarrel with anything Manne has said or done since leaving Quadrant.
For starters, he led the counter-attack against stolen children denialism, has spoken on behalf of refugees since the days of Vietnamese boat people, set up an influential magazine. I could go on and on.
What’s more, he’s hated like poison by everyone on the right – John Howard, Gerard Henderson, The Australian.
I only wish we could clone him!
Yes Paul Burns
Manne’s essays on the Petrov affair and on Wilfred Burchett were forensic and clear-sighted. He has done equally thorough work in some other areas. I’d say political history is a forte of his.
But not sure what he knows of the ETS.
Geoff R, I googled “ACU” with SPA and read a long and detailed account of obscure byways circa 1986. What wonders did that nice Mr Gorbachev (and his Eurocommunist antecedents) perform in far off Australia!
Obviously, for me, ‘liberal’ is not in any way an attack.
The topic of the thread isn’t Robert Manne’s politics, but my observation would be that I don’t think he’s much of a lefty, at all, but a conservative who’s moved to a more liberal position. I think that can be demonstrated, but now isn’t the time to do it. Needless to say, I certainly have time for what he has done in terms of taking stands on issues such as the Stolen Generations, but that doesn’t imply that one has to automatically support everything he does. To do so, it seems to me, would be quite tribalist.
What is at issue here is the chain of events which led to Warhaft’s dismissal, which I might add is coloured by some (quite bizarre) sexism. Thanks to Dr Cat for the link to the Haigh piece in The Age, which I found illuminating. The points about the tedious correspondence with Gerard Henderson were instructive, as was the comparison with Manne’s article in Crikey. He obviously has a ‘take no prisoners’ approach to public controversy – but what of the ethics, as Haigh implies, of public polemics about matters which were subject to an agreement as part of negotiations about the cessation of Warhaft’s appointment and were supposed to remain private? I found some of Schwartz’ descriptions of Warhaft and the various alleged interpersonal dynamics quite astonishing stuff to be put out into the public arena.
Klaus – His conception of justice is liberal, he’s politically moderate, he’s humanistic in a fairly old-fashioned way, concerned with freedom but not with radical democracy.
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Well that’s a succinct run-down and accurate as well. I’d say I was pretty much the same except that I am concerned with radical democracy. And my ‘humanism’ is tempered the by Anti-humanists. I don’t see the Left really being all that radical when it comes to democracy. The ideas are still the same as they were a hundred years ago more or less.
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The Big Book of Rules.
Mark, Manne says he was a “neoconservative” but since 1989-ish? has moved firmly back to the left – he put out a collection of essays a few years ago entitled “Left Right Left” which neatly sums up where he’s been politically.
What’s wrong with belonging to a tribe? Subscribing to a broad set of beliefs doesn’t mean you throw away intellectual integrity. If someone suggested, as Warhaft did, that having a broadly social democratic viewpoint meant throwing away all independence, well, I think I would have hit the roof too. Are only people who beleive in nothing independent?
Perhaps the world wouldn’t be in the mess it is in – GFC, 2 wars going badly, serious growth in inequality, decades of neglect of global warming – if left-of-centre intellectuals had taken more of take-no-prisoners approach.
I can think of so many examples of how the right-wing intelligentsia hunt in packs. Since he moved back to the left Manne’s been on the receiving end of an absurd campaign of vilification by the right (a warning to others, no doubt). More intellectuals need to muscle up like Manne – serious issues are at stake.
But thanks for the Haigh heads-up. The dust-up with Henderson was a bit long-winded and indulgent, though.
To my taste, I always thought The Monthly would be a better magazine if only it was a bit more definite in its politics – so I hope Manne’s influence grows.
Subscribing to a broad set of beliefs doesn’t mean you throw away intellectual integrity. If someone suggested, as Warhaft did, that having a broadly social democratic viewpoint meant throwing away all independence, well, I think I would have hit the roof too. Are only people who beleive in nothing independent?
Yes, this! (as one of my favourite US bloggers tends to say. I think the answer to your comment though, Ginja, is that left and social democratic thinking was just too easy to vilify by the Right as long as the bubble economy and the resources boom was making the neocon story of the Best of All Possible Worlds plausible.
Sorry for always dragging off topic, Mark, most of us just don’t know enough of the publishing world to comment meaningfully!
But surely what is objectionable about the publication of the Rudd essay, and the way in which it was presented, was how The Monthly willingly became a propaganda mouthpiece for one of the most powerful men in Australia – and toadying to the powerful is hardly being independent. Rudd mouths the slogans of social democracy in The Monthly, but he is not speaking out of any coherent intellectual position, socially democratic or otherwise. He’s looking to shore up his power and influence in the Labor Party, and amongst voters.
Many have commented, here and elsewhere, on the absence of a “readers’ letters” section in the Mannely.
Every serious newspaper, most current affairs/politics magazines, have such a section. Even Quadrant. To dispense with this courtesy and service is a sign of a magazine which talks “down” to its readers, I think.
> To dispense with this courtesy and service is a sign of a magazine which talks “down” to its readers, I think.
Maybe they thought there was already enough long-winded self-indulgence, even without the inevitable correspondence from Windschuttle, Henderson etc etc.
Manne’s biggest need is for a public enemy number one. He is Jewish therefore somewhat paranoid.
THis is a sign of intelligence, but the downside is that he sees false positives: enemies everywhere. Hence his constant professional and political fallings out, magazine staffs and various party leaders.
Fortunately he seems to get on well with his wife.
He is a good public intellectual in the classic European sense. That is, of the Henry Mayer, Bob Santamaria, Frank Knopfelmacher sense.
The kind of, mostly Jewish, intellectuals who washed up on our shores after the HMS Dunera landed. Very brilliant but…a little touchy.
(Actually Santamaria was pretty well-balanced on a personal level. But then he had a real job as professional industrial union organizer, not an academic. Santa was basically a glorified shop-steward who went into politics. Also, he was Italian, which helps cut down the cost of pyschotherapy. No Don would ever have done a Tony Soprano and got out alive!)
Knopfelmacher nailed Manne nearly 40 years ago, describing him as a “Soft Left”. Always was, always will be.
Manne edited both Quadrant and the Monthly. In both cases he attempted to turn those magazines into hobbyhorses indulging his pet ideological hates.
Basically Manne trashes anything that contradicts his squishy brand of Left-liberalism. Even allowing for the disaster of the GFC (which Manne did not predict, correct me if I am wrong) this world-view was already looking a bit tired and dog-eared over 20 years ago.
Quadrant, under Manne, became a venue criticising Keatings economic rationalism.
Monthly, under Manne, became a venue criticising Howard’s cultural “corporalism”.
The only PM he really liked was Malcolm Fraser who was Manne’s ideal of a politician-statesman. Strongly pro-Israel, instinctively anti-economic liberalism and loads of political correctness on ethnic issues.
Of course Fraser was a disaster for Australia. He left a trail of cultural messes, rancourous industrial relations and a near open rebellion over the attempt to dismantly Medibank. Plus never doing anything serious about opening up goods and capital markets.
Australians dont really take to brittle egg-head types naturally unless they can value-add. Which the Mettle-Europeans Jews did on the subject of totalitarianism.
Once the Commies got beat Manne was left with very little serious things to complain about.
Manne is for obvious reasons obsessed with the Holocaust, ala Don De Lillio. Although I have some poignant reasons to be annoyed with Austro-German nationalists, somehow I just cant take them seriously. Visited Berchtsgarden not so long ago and it was like a comic strip version of folk German.
But the market for anti-semitism is a bit flat these days in Australia. Manne, using his special anti-semitic sensors, claimed to find some anti-semitic code in a book by Helen Demdimeniko about 157 years ago. As I recall Manne went after her – lock, stock and two smoking barrells. That’ll teach her to have blonde hair and take write from a Ukrainian nationalist point of view.
Then moved onto better things by blogging at Catallaxy. Good on her.
The emergence of Ms Hanson must have set his heart a-fluttering. But Ms H. never really got stuck into the Jews.
So Manne had to make do with Howard. Really tried his hardest too. But somehow the Howard-hatred never caught on amongst the general public.
Unfortunately for Manne, Howard was responsible for the greatest property boom in Australia’s history. There is no way the great Australian public can ever sincerely hate a man how did that.
maybe so, Mr Posters!
But they can always warn that they are free to cut or reject proffered letters. I reckon the response section of “Quarterly Essay” is good.
For the record, Sam @ 84 and 85 is not me. He/she is a new Sam.
I understand Manne voted for Howard in ’96 – as did others like Margo Kingston – but was quickly disillusioned by the Howard Government….and then horrified.
TimT: how much “toadying” to the ALP do you think actually takes place? There is nobody – nobody – in the media in Labor’s corner. The Libs have the Murdoch media (monopoly papers in most capital cities), commercial talk-back, Howard’s “Praetorian Guard” of right-wing “pundits”, whose whole raison de d’etre is to stick the boot into the ALP. Even supposedly natural allies like Fairfax and the ABC take great pleasure in sticking the boot into the ALP. The few left-leaning commentators around rarely go out of their way to defend Labor. It’s laughable to talk about toadying up to the ALP – it simply never happens.
I’d bet the Rudd essay edition was The Monthly’s best selling edition ever – so Rudd did a favour to a small-ish magazine.
In 2007 Rudd got the full Murdoch treatment – perhaps the most vicious campaign of personal vilification that any leader has ever been subjected to.
The beauty is, so far, it hasn’t made much difference.
I don’t see why a PM shouldn’t publish an article in a political journal. I think it’s a good thing to be able to read ones’ PM’s elucidation of his political outlook, so you know the back story, so to speak. It’s useful and it would be so even if you disliked him/her. You might be able to whinge about toadying if he had an article in there every month or two but since it’s a one-off, I don’t think that’s justified.
Yeah, the pro-ALP media meme is complete twaddle. Its just a ‘rinse and repeat’ neo-con talking point.
The most ludicrous version is actually the Italian one: Berlusconi still prattles on robotically about the “liberal meeja” – despite the fact that he personally owns 90% of it.
In 2007 Rudd got the full Murdoch treatment – perhaps the most vicious campaign of personal vilification that any leader has ever been subjected to.
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No that’s incorrect. Murdoch does of of course stir the pot politically and will instruct his interests to support certain policies, the Iraq War comes to mind. In ’07 however he left it up to individual editors. Given that he’s hired a lot of conservative pundits many were skeptical of Rudd. But overall the papers were fairly indifferent both to the fate of the Howard govt (whose time was up) and to Rudd.
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The Howard govt’s industrial relations laws made them, as the News Ltd crew knew well, very unpopular with the broad base that reads papers like The Herald-Sun. News Ltd like all media products can’t entirely dictate people’s views it has to pander to them as well. There were a fair few WorkChoices = Bad type stories in The Hun and early on.
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Thing is Rudd went and had din-dins with Rupert and got the stamp of approval. That happens a lot. Blair did the same. I’m not sure Obama did and that’s maybe one of the reasons why Fox News tried to pretend he didn’t exist until they were compelled by his momentum to finally grant him an interview.
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I must say I find it hilarious when Labor supporters whine about Rupert Murdoch. I remember the 90s after the Hawkeating govt had handed the guy 70% of the National Consciousness and, to every criticism of same, said: Well if you don’t get into bed with these guys then you can’t get elected.
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Well that’s all very pragmatic but the trouble with that is if you don’t get into bed with these guys then you can’t get elected.
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You made your bed people. Don’t complain if the sheets are scratchy.
Warhaft’s remark ‘I thought we were supposed to be independent’ might sound provocatively flippant but it’s quite a serious one. The issue is which takes precedence – your magazine’s editorial independence or walking the tribal line?
Since the February publication of the Rudd essay, it looks a lot like walking the tribal line has been a lot more important at The Monthly than the editorial independence of the magazine – we’ve already had one essay from Robert Manne lauding Kevin Rudd as our first seriously intellectual PM, and defending him against various attacks in the op-ed pages (from the usual suspects, including Gerard Henderson) and in the next edition there’s to be more of pretty much the same, apparently.
Who, beyond committed social democrats looking for some pleasant bed-time reading, needs a magazine that resolutely walks the middle path between Quadrant and Green Left Weekly? If you genuinely want a magazine of reportage and commentary that provides an independent, non-partisan view, then editorial independence trumps political philosophy – or do you leave it to Quadrant & News LImited to report the stories of social democrats behaving badly?
Ginja – What’s wrong with belonging to a tribe? Subscribing to a broad set of beliefs doesn’t mean you throw away intellectual integrity. If someone suggested, as Warhaft did, that having a broadly social democratic viewpoint meant throwing away all independence, well, I think I would have hit the roof too. Are only people who beleive in nothing independent?
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I have two responses to that.
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One is that simply not subscribing to any ‘tribe’ and deciding to make up one’s own mind about various matters does not make one a nihilist.
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The second related to the first is that, altho’ I understand that politics is mostly a group activity and that solidarity of the like-minded is necessary to be effective, it does produce a hive mind and a war mentality. If you join a party you automatically forfeit the option to voice dissent from the majority position of that party in public circumstances. Or at least make it difficult to exercise it.
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The trouble, as I see it, with tribalism is that one subscribes to a set of beliefs about policy directions as if they were the Word of God. Therefore, those associated with neo-liberalism, are busy repeating the mantra that the GFC was caused by govt interference. Those riding the newly risen Phoenix of Democratic Socialism, free at last from the shackles of right-wing moral ascendancy, repeat their mantra that Keynes is once more the Son of Man and all should kneel.
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The fact is that no-one, no program, no party is entirely right about everything ever. I find it frustrating that intelligent libertarians are so obtuse about the obvious links between the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act which removed one of the last New Deal safeguards and the GFC. But various dogmas obtain on the Left as well. And when one has the temerity to criticize the line that This is True Because I Say It Is one gets labelled a fascist, a sexist or any number of things despite the fact that all one has done is ask for an assertion to be backed with something other than hot air.
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During the neoliberal era there was all sorts of demonization of dissent from the program to the extent that Centre-Left parties were fighting to even justify their existence. And most of them just sold out wholesale (the aforementioned act was passed under Clinton). Now that the creaky wheel has moved forward a notch I see the same triumphalism, the same exhalation of dogma and the same total absence of reflection – of the questions: Am I right, How do I know I am right?
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Fact is just because the neoliberals stuffed up doesn’t mean the Neo-Socialists will not. And considering that politics is mostly a career, mostly engineered by people who see virtue in spite, you’ll forgive me if I keep it at arm’s length and treat all secular theologies with a healthy dose of skepticism.
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That doesn’t mean I don’t believe anything. Fact is my beliefs count for more than those in the Game. Why? Cause I won’t sell ‘em out for a vote, a consultancy or a cushy deal.
Shorter Adrien: “Everyone f**ks up occasionally, except, of course, me.”
Oh no Helen I fuck up all the time. I’ve made an art form out of it.
It’s not a one off, I think – wasn’t that his second article?
Contra Ginja’s arguments, a leftist paper or magazine that offers criticism of the ALP is hardly anti-ALP. If what the ALP expects out of a publication is complete and utter adherence to the party line, then it won’t be a democratic party but an incipient dictatorship.
Wouldn’t be enough to stop the endless cries of “my dissent is being suppressed!”. The shoot ‘em all and let God sort ‘em out approach saves paper.
Meanwhile, Crikey has what it says is the cover of the forthcoming issue.
I hope Crikey is taking the piss, cos that’s one seriously awful cover. I fear they’re not, though…
I assume they are going for a “academic journal” look for this cover to go with the neoliberalism and its discontents theme. It conveys the content in an arresting way and makes me interested to have a flick so why not. If you’ve got Eric Hobsbawm why hide your light under a photoshop.
I like this – I’ve stirred things up a bit.
Adrien: what do you call all that ridiculous nightclub stuff, dredging through Rudd’s childhood to prove he was a liar, and vague threat to somehow drag Rudd into that Qld child abuse scandal that had dragged on since the Goss Government? I call it vicious (though Latham got similar treatment). Has Turnbull been subjected to anything like it?
I don’t support everything every Labor government has ever done. And I was never very keen on Paul Keating or most of his works (to put it mildly). True centre-left parties did sell-out (though “wholesale” is an exaggeration). But using that as a reason to dismiss Labor seems a little ahistorical. In both Australia and the UK we had Labour governments just as the Great Depression hit. The response of both parties was a shambles. Yet by the mid-40s Labour was back in both countries with a reform programme that would radically change both societies for the post-war years. So never count Labor out!
You don’t have to belong to a tribe if you don’t want to, but don’t dismiss those of us who do as a bunch of hacks.
Gummo Trotsky: between Quadrant and Green Left Weekly – sums up my position exactly. I might use that in the future.
P.S. Helen talks a lot sense.
Yes, that cracked me up too.
I see from the cover linked to by Bill Posters at #119 that it’s another Con the Fruiterer* issue: contributions by Charles, David, Dean, Eric, Gideon, Hugh, John, Luke, Nicolas, Paul, Peter, Sebastian, Tim … and Alice.
*For those of you who are too young to remember Con the Fruiterer, he was in the habit of reeling off the names of his daughters: ‘Roula, Soula, Toula, Voula … an’ Agape.’
Ginja – Adrien: what do you call all that ridiculous nightclub stuff,
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News.
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dredging through Rudd’s childhood to prove he was a liar
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He made a certain appeal based on his childhood experience of poverty so they excavated it.
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and vague threat to somehow drag Rudd into that Qld child abuse scandal
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Sorry must’ve missed that one.
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that had dragged on since the Goss Government?
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Yeah funny that.
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I call it vicious
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I call it News Ltd.
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(though Latham got similar treatment).
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No. Latham was shafted. They had hi in his sights and ka-boom. Pity. Kinda liked the guy.
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Has Turnbull been subjected to anything like it?
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No. Why bother?
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Your point’s taken Ginja. You’re quite right of course. The News Ltd crew default to the Right. However Rudd was treated with kid gloves comparatively. As I said most of the senior staff at News Ltd are neocons more or less. This is the result of Murdoch’s hiring policy going back at east as far as the Reagan Era. The attempts to bust Kevvie’s childhood story remind me of Ann Coulter’s throw grandma under a bus routine when Obama had to explain his attendance at a certain church. Smears, lies, distortion etc. Y’know it’s the yellow tradition.
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This is standard News Ltd stuff. I don’t like it and wouldn’t regardless the political stance. I don’t like Mike More for the same reason.
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But using that as a reason to dismiss Labor seems a little ahistorical.
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I’m not counting Labor out. They are as they are. I don’t particularly like the culture of the ALP but that doesn’t mean they’re good for nothing…
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In both Australia and the UK we had Labour governments just as the .
Great Depression hit.
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Like taking the blame for stuff like that. Interesting how the ALP always manages to get elected when the economy hits the fan ‘ey? If I was a conspiracy theorist….
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That all said I merely point out that Murdoch didn’t have a Kill Kevvie campaign going. If he’d had one it woulda been a lot worse. Obama got totally wiped. But fortunately for him, in America there’s more than two choices.
OMG! They’ve hired Quadrant’s designer!!!
There’s a shorter Adrien?
Oh yuk yuk yuk
This has all ended on a pleasant note, but I’d point out that the only reason the media didn’t drag Rudd along to a war crimes tribunal was that they were shocked and awed by his poll numbers.
Rudd treated with kid gloves? Who believes that? Andrew Bolt?
And Eric Abetz.
I’d point out that the only reason the media didn’t drag Rudd along to a war crimes tribunal was that they were shocked and awed by his poll numbers.
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True. If by ‘media’ you mean News Ltd. Lots of folks at Fairfax have been, ahem, quite nice to Kevvie. They belong to the Please Anyone But Howard Club.
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Rudd treated with kid gloves?
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I believe it. Everything’s relative remember.
You obviously don’t read the SMH, Adrien, but don’t let that stop you commenting.
Day after day of negative government headlines, Rudd starting arms race was one of the more ludicrous, and now that Annabel Crabb’s back we’ll have her oh so funny fluff pieces, mainly directed at, you guessed it – Rudd.
And don’t get me started on the ABC.
You obviously don’t read the SMH, Adrien
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I live in Melbourne. We only read newspapers from that cesspit if we feel like slumming.
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I was talking before Kevvie got elected not afterward.
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One of the differences, I think, between the Right and Left in terms of discourse viz political leaders is that after a progressive leader gets into office a certain section of the Left can be relied upon to tear ‘em down because they inevitably fall short of the ideals. The Right tend not to do this as much.
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Before Kevvie got elected however those journalists that were, shall we say, a little tired of John Howard, were as supportive as they could be without being straight-up copywriters for the KEVIN 07 campaign.
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After all he was the best chance the ALP’s had in ages and if Kevvie got nixed there probably wouldn’t've been another one.
Day after day of negative government headlines, Rudd starting arms race was one of the more ludicrous
I’ve got a more ludicrous one. Not a headline, but the last sentence from Paul Sheehan’s latest effort. Check it:
Will “command economy” be the new wingnut buzzword?
Maybe they should hold a few ‘tea bag parties’. Worked well for the GOP in driving party identification down to 25% of the electorate…
There used to be a time when command and semi-command economies weren’t seen as a bad thing. Even here in Oz we had one run by a bloke named Curtin, and a semi-command economy run by one bloke named Chifley and another named Menzies. I actually remember the last one. [Sighs.]
That may be, Paul, but is Rudd really heading in that direction?
I rather doubt it, myself.
Ps – more from Haigh:
http://www.crikey.com.au/2009/05/05/gideon-haigh-manne-relishes-controversy-warhaft-does-not/
Also, what Mark and others said about the sexism and misogyny of the treatment of Warhaft. Though Haigh’s ‘knight with a white lance’ thing isn’t without its problems either.
But anyone who’s claiming Manne as some sort of progressive angel does need to confront the gender politics IMHO.
That well known attack machine… Annabel Crabb? Come on. I’ll cop that not everyone would find her brand of snarky humour funny but as a partisan hack?
I also don’t know whether to laugh or worry when i hear people complain of a biased ABC as a whole. Sure there may be some, i would argue more on the left, who you could guess the politics of. However i think most of the time so called bias is just journalists doing their job e.g. playing devils advocate.
Back on topic, I thought Gideon’s observation that Manne relishes controversy makes a lot of sense. Also i appreciated this from Gideon:
Yes, that’s one of the points at which Haigh puts his finger on a key issue (as opposed to reams of waffle and disguised character assassination from his usual high moral ground from Manne). I suppose I should add to what I said about Haigh’s position that he’s upfront about where he’s coming from, and perhaps resisting the ‘speaking for’ position wrt Warhaft, though I do reiterate that it’s a fine line to tread.
Agreed, although I do want to add that the time has come when if Rundle & Haigh are going to slag each other off they had better do it in limerick form.
I’d pay to see that. If it came down to a contest, I think Guy would win, despite the difficulty of finding rhymes for ‘Gideon’.
In the meantime, Haigh’s (and some others’) rhetorical conflation of Manne and Schwartz into one stroppy chest-beating silverback looks to me like an Oedipal attack from assorted young gorilla-Turks in automatic generational snark mode, but it muddies the waters, serves no useful purpose, and is rather unfair to Morry.
I agree Laura, it’s about time
For these blokes to do battle in rhyme.
If they want to take lumps
To expunge all their grumps
So they should. It’s their Monthly time.
is Rudd really heading in that direction
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Well may they say
We’re past McCarthy’s day
And tired are cries o’ ‘Commie!’
And now we needs
More trees less thneeds
An’ a civilize these Brummies
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But Kevvie’s hero’s the pious bosche
So hence now here’s the EverythingyWatch
And from China we get
The Tao of Internet
‘At tells us what we should
So don’t ye fret
The trillion debt
Is all for our own fuckin’ good
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Of what dismay expressed what voices
Upon reflects our s’posed choices
Between a boss’s Tory leek
And a puritan spendthrift control freak
Bill Posters, I’m afraid that Crikey was correct about the cover. (My copy arrived in the post yesterday.)
I’m still debating renewing my subscription, as i don’t find it as engaging as I did a couple of years ago.
“In the meantime, Haigh’s (and some others’) rhetorical conflation of Manne and Schwartz into one stroppy chest-beating silverback … is rather unfair to Morry.”
Why? Did you read his attacks on Warhaft? At least Schwartz was upfront in his criticisms, and didn’t hide behind pompous faux-moral outrage: he just told it as he saw it. It’s his mag, his vision; the hired help were, well, the hired help. Sally was brittle, inflexible controlling, attention-grabbing, blah blah blah. But the point was the same from both old men: this woman was trouble and had to go. Given this and the Craven debacle a few years back, it’s clear that when you get Schwartz you get a Manne. Why try to distinguish? Still, I suppose that Pavlov’s Cat might be hoping for more freelance gigs in the new Months. Good luck with that.
Limerick Liam
sly cad! A tale was told, that when Australian Women’s Weekly was intending to appear less often, that Ita Buttrothe had to explain to Kerrie Packer that his intended title Australian Women’s Monthly was infelicitous.
Deserves to be true.
Whoever you are, ‘Crisp Fight’, and I hae me suspicions, that was not only a truly vicious insinuendo from behind the cover of a pointless pseudonym but also, like, wrong; frankly it had never crossed my mind. Apart from anything else I already have more freelance writing work than I can comfortably handle, thanks.
j*nm*ro?
Getting sillier:
The Monthly’s old boss took a stand,
With a Jedi-like wave of his hand,
Exclaiming with glee:
“It’s clear, I can see,
“That your Schwartz is as big as Manne”.
“political hacks”? I’d be more likely to think of clowns like these
Second verse (in which we glancingly address the not unusual 12:1 gender balance in this month’s issue):
Then into the fray rode Sir Gideon
on prose well above the quotidian.
A voice from the crowd
(unbecomingly loud)
cried ‘He’s good, but he ain’t no Joan Didion!’
Monthly journalism’s better than yellow.
They won’t print just any old fellow,
Each page might be littered,
But think of who’s ommitted:
Waiting, mute, just as always; Costello.
Robbie Burns, from his cold grave:
“Ye see yon birkie ca’d a lord,
Wha struts, an’ stares, an’ a’ that;
Tho’ hundreds worship at his word,
He’s but a coof for a’ that.
For a’ that, an’ a’ that,
His ribband, star, an’ a’ that,
The man o’ independent mind
He looks an’ laughs at a’ that. “
*coof = idiot
I’m inclined to see Henderson/Manne as strutting lords (legends in their own lunchtimes)….. but Sir Gideon, now he has both a velvet writing style and a good radio voice. Arise, Sir Gideon!
White knights on their horse, who, belated
acknowledge the damsel’s related
cry “it was ages ago!,
what a scurrilous show!”
I’ve had my disclosures backdated!
Some kerfuffle with writers and Gideon?
WTF? Well, I guess, get your biddy on.
Please someone tell The Monthly:
Haste! Get thee to a nun-thly!
Now I’m bored. Will someone put P. Diddy on?
Biddy-on, ese? Nice work, jota p zeta. To follow Izquierdista:
…
Was she the ex-girlfriend, or wife,
Who is now centre-stage in the strife?
Between ten-yard posin’
It’s careful disclosin’.
You can’t stop these bad boys for life.
Liam — Crazy Zenger will not be undersold or out-rhymed!! Crazy Zenger: our rhymes and prices are insaaaaaaane!!!
(You would probly have to have heard NYC 70s radio to get this joke though.)
All this fuss for some cat name of Gideon?
Is he some kind of Oz prime meridian?
One can see treating journals
As an ideologue’s urinals,
But GH — name o’ God, please take pity on.
Beat *that*, sucka MCs.
You can’t stop the flow, JPZ, better fasten your lifejacket (which is placed under your seat).
After PC’s felicious neologism, and with an Ozzi-street flava:
…
Who’s left to climax this crescendo
Of def-slander and insin-uendo?
We’ve not yet heard four
experts of Culture War:
Andrew Bolt, Flinty, Kelly, and Hendo.
I think we should all quit while Liam is ahead.
“You would probly have to have heard NYC 70s radio to get this joke though.”
no, no, no
this is still heard on Aussie TV
It’s a habit
indeed.
There is a madwoman in the attic, and it’s Ken Bruce.
I see what you did there.
Well may’t cute like a dimple
But methinks the limerick’s too simple
‘Tis easy to do
Just like haiku
A function like squeezing a pimple
Did the rest of you catch on the air
The 20 year Media Watch fair?
Liz Jackson looked cheery
But I’ve still got one query;
WTF was with Chris Mitchell’s hair?
…
Thanks for your verse, A, I read it.
I’ll grant you, for rhyming, some credit.
I think you’d be wise
To redraft and revise
With a syllable-count and an edit.
Madame Pav suggests we all quit,
for too legit is Haiku’s wit.
But if you wish to savour,
The full larva flava,
You’ve gotta stand up and hit.
But syllables are just the start, and you
Should know there’s more for po’tic art to do.
No syllables, let us instead seek ‘feet’:
For iamb, dactyl, anapest bring heat
To verse, and should you want to set it free
Then start by knowing pyrrhic from trochee,
And should chiasmic lines be thrown about,
Let feet, not count; not count, but feet win out!
If syllabic verse is good for you then maybe
Some ‘Alexandrines’ would do, whatever they be.
I’ve always felt the accentual rhythm was
Better and more interesting, and that’s because
It moved lines forward in ways that were engaging
Where unwieldy hexameter was managing
Only to circle round the centre of a line
And possibly for early-modern French that’s fine.
Or even Baudelaire. But accent gives some days
To English verse an important trait: a sense of play.
That’s neeeded on this purpl’d blog (and how!)
And so I say: “Unshoe those feet, right now”.
Left undermines left once again
Ad hominems flood the campaign
Gerard looks at Andrew
While Keith looks at the two
And smiles as he pours the champagne
Sounds a bit sexxxy, james
One poetic form that this blog has neglected
Is one for want of a better word I’ll call the Ogden Nash, because that is a form peculiar to him, unless someone can think of another example and I’ll stand corrected.
The Ogden Nash form is very very simple:
First, you don’t have to take any notice of metre, because you just make the lines as long or as short as you feel like, unlike the Haiku, which, as Adrien says, is like squeezing a pimple,
Which makes me idly wonder why no parents these days ever name their babies Ogden,
And which brings me to the second characteristic and that is to stretch rhyme to ridiculous lengths so that in searching for the mot juste you don’t get boggeden,
So as you can see it’s very suitable for people like me who aren’t actually poets
As it’s possible to bang out an Ogden Nash even when your mental light bulb is running on low watts.
And I think I have illustrated the third characteristic,
In case you’re keeping count in the manner of lovers of the statistic,
Which is to go off on all manner of tangents and diversions and asides
And those who question its legitimacy as a poetic form can just suffer in their strides.
“Sounds a bit sexxxy, james”
I was thinking “conspiratorial”…but whatever consenting adults do in private is their own business!
Chris Mitchell’s hair,
Is styled for management flair:
The bigger the bouffant
The dimmer the savant.
I’ll admit to one form of neglect.
My verse is, so far, derelict.
It’s honestly tough,
To be dirty enough.
So to end: you can all go get fecked.
Helen, that cracked me up so much the cats came in to see if I was all right.
Allow me to recommend to all not yet familiar with it Stephen Fry’s brilliant book on the subject of poetic form and metre, The Ode Less Travelled: Unlocking the Poet Within. He has a charming habit of writing his own examples of different poetic forms and here is a doozy that I dedicate to the Devil Drink, should he happen to be about and reading this thread:
I’m not sure what all this has to do with The Monthly, except for those elegiac reports by Caroline Overington of happier days in Jimmy Watson’s where the editorial board would sit around drinking wine and dreaming up the next issue.
Manne and Gibbeon brachiate on cue,
Poor ‘haft is silent, far from view.
When push comes to shove,
Tear the wings off a dove,
And shout: “May the Schwartz be with you!”
PC, I think we’ve had this discussion before. Your cats weren’t checking if you were alright, except perhaps in the hope that you’d soon be edible. (I’m sure, btw, that that’s the reason Geoffrey the Serial Cat has taken to grooming me.)
No, Geoffrey the Serial Cat is engaging in dominance behaviour. He’ll keep doing it as long as you don’t assert your dominance.
Said Robert Manne once over drinks:
“That Peter Craven rather stinks,
And should he soon to go away
I’d rather like to see that day.”
Thought Morry long and hard on this,
and said to Manne, “Please don’t get pissed
While Peter’s doing an alright job
I’ll stick with you, although a knob.
After all you’re the name that sticks,
with lots of the blokes and some of the chicks.”
Said Robert Manne later at drinks:
“That Sally Warhaft seems to think
that she can do it all her way.
So will you make her go away?”
Thought Morry long and hard on this
and said to Manne, “She will be missed,
but sitting in another meeting,
and trying to work for all your bleating!
I’ll give her up for peace and quiet,
But please again don’t ever try it.”
And thought then Manne on young Chris Feik:
“Now there’s a guy it’s hard to like.”
To be continued…
She, Gummo.
Her real name is Kira, but I took to calling her Geoffrey the Serial Cat when (somewhat younger and an adept hunter) she started sleeping in a bed surrounded by mouse heads.
Class poetry guys.
.
Ah – let’s kick a fascist metre out; this
Ain’t the century of cards all night and gout
Is on this side the year 2000 that
You can free-form, fall, rap, spin some crap, cut-up an’ skat…
.
Jack; dig it…
.
I saw the best minds of my generation become a bunch of Wall St clowns
I got the school’s essaytopic an’ I analyzed this… do what you will:
.
You can rhyme
Every second line
It’s fine an’ easy, and…
it gives
_____you
_________an Excuse
____________to be a drunk.
.
(I drink beer cause I’m not queer and like to leer it was a good year gotta mind like the rear of a steer and I think cirrhosis is near.)
.
Merge words to an aural blur
Drone lugibrious or shout-out ‘n kick it
Ain’t no Man’s rules, No sir! – it
Makes you a Face not a ticket
.
But if’t comes from the heart not posterior
Then perhaps there’s one unmoved criteria
.
It can bop, it can rock, it can ballad;
You can do entire without scansion.
Sinalefa. Go…
And Cole don’t you know
Emily, Will, Bill’s Bowie-expansion
.
But one thing’s required
For verse to transpire
And give it the poetry kick
I tell you it true
What the bards they all knew
If ‘ere’s no music; then….
It.
Ain’t.
It.
Worthy of 1890s Bulletin verse stoushing at its best, Klaus
“To be continued…”
No please, I give in, it was my sim card.
The Tale of the Snarks in the Tree
Fiddle dee dee, three Snarks in a tree -
Morry,
And Sally,
and Bob,
They made publications, and by all observation
It was quite a wonder to see.
Fiddle dee dee, but they could not agree,
Morry,
And Sally,
And Bob.
Bob said, “Don’t you see? There’s not room for all three!
So one of you Snarks should make room for me!”
Fiddle dee dee, so they counted to three,
Morry,
And Sally,
And Bob.
They all drew a straw, and then squabbled, because
Bob’s was the shortest of three.
Fiddle dee dee, so… two looked away.
Morry
And Sally -
Not Bob.
Bob pushed Sally down, and she fell to the ground -
Thumpity-whumpity-whee.
Fiddle dee dee, I am sorry to say,
They got lonely, those two in the tree.
Morry turned to Bob, and Bob started to sob -
“Ah, no-one appreciates me!”
So fiddle dee dee, those Snarks in the tree,
Morry
And Bob
Sang out loud:
“O come be a Snark in this tree in the park,
Yes come be a Snark in the tree!
Yes come Snarks and join up with me!
O Fiddle dee diddly dee dee!”
Lol, adrian. Apologies. One more:
Not to write to
supposed music, rather
to write musically.
One hopes.
Apologies are necessary no,
For where your rhyme goes I cannot go,
Not really for lack of will
But fear of being a dill
And lacking the requisite skill.
Love a challenge, Pav
A valiant champion Gideon
hears the sacking of one he’d been smitten on -
two mouldy old cocks
throwing nasty sharp rocks -
He defends her from forces obsidian!
*obsidian*, very good!
Obsidian!
We are not worthy.
Best LP thread ever!!!!!
Gettin` old
Gettin` grey
Gettin` ripped off
Under-paid
Gettin` sold
Second hand
That`s how it goes
In small magazine land
Hey now you better listen to me everyone of you
We got a lotta lotta lotta lotta work to do
Forget about your woman and that water can
Today were working for the manne
well pick up your feet
we’ve got a deadline to meet
I’m gonna see you make it on time
Don’t relax
I want elbows and backs
I wanna see everybody from behind
‘Cause your working for the manne working for the manne
you gotta make him a hand when you’re working for the manne
Oh well I’m pickin’ ‘em up and I’m laying ‘em down
I believe he’s gonna work me into the ground
I pull to the left I heave to the right
I wanna kill him but it wouldn’t be right
Famous Grey Magazine
It’s 4 in the morning, the end of December
I’m writing some trash, trying to make it seem better.
The office is cold, and I really hate the editor,
There’s nagging on Flinders Lane all through the evening.
I hear that you’re building your little empire, deep in the board room,
You’re living for power now, I hope you’re keeping some kind of record.
Yes, and Sally came by with a list of demands,
She said you agreed to them then,
That night when you planned to come clean.
Did you ever come clean?
Ah the last time we saw you, you seemed so much quicker,
Your famous grey magazine was more than a flicker.
You’d been to every meeting to pass your agenda,
But you ended up without any staff member.
And you treated your editor to a taste of your vision,
So she decided to quit, and leave your mission.
Well I see you there with a stain on your teeth,
One more fat paper thief,
I see Sally’s gone…
She sends her regards.
Ah the last time we saw you, you seemed so much quicker,
Your famous grey magazine was simply published on flickr.
You’d been to every meeting to pass your agenda,
But you ended up without any stiff member.
hrrrumph!
I am the very model of a public intellectual
I’ve information economic, moral and effectual,
I know the facts of settlement, I fight the fights historical
From Sydney Cove to Hobart Town, I’m valued as an oracle;
I’m very well acquainted, too, with matters economical,
I understand equations, both the simple and Quadrantical,
About the ruddy Government I’m teeming with a lot o’ news
And really very keen you know the wisdom of my many views.
I scorned the lunar right you know, and dared to take up common ground
My exposés Petrovian were skilled and deft and very sound
While Burchett turned within his cask I dashed his works upon a rock
I pirouetted through a storm and struck a Windy shuttlecock;
And then sweet Morry passing by, did see my strengths political,
My fusillades of mockery, my disputes Jesuitical;
He proferred me his Monthly, and he pledged his troth perpetual
I sit upon my throne of words, a public intellectual.
Pav, having brought a smile to your face is a reward beyond price. I salute the excellent revival of this thread.
Seconded, and Zoe, you win the internets for that pseudonym.
The Jabber-lot (after Lewis Carroll)
I was going to pass on the poem thang cos hungover then i did this. Would save it for crikey, but if we put any more monhtly stuff in that the readership will lynch us.
Anyway, two things strike me about the discussion above. The first is that I find the whole notion of sexism in the whole process bizarre, since it seems to have no evidence other than that a woman happened to be sacked by a man, and a couple of comments by bitter anonymi. This attempt to construct some sort of structural argument around some of the snarky things that Schwartz said about Warhaft strikes me as the worst sort of 80s style identity politics.
The second bizarre thing is the idea that the onus of proof lies against someone who has done the sacking – particularly the fact that Schwartz had previously fallen out with Peter Craven. Unfair dismissal stuff is great for standard jobs, but sacking and being sacked is just part of media work – it’s simply how you get the best product. The Steely Dan principle (who once sacked 14 session bass players in a row day after day) is here – whatever it takes to get the best possible product. The sackee should simply take it like a soldier and move on. The reaction here seems to be in line with a ‘fair go’ ethic, the flipside of which is mediocrity.
Now, this:
The Jabber-lot
Twas chilly and the slightly known
Did gibe and grumble, Flinders Lane
Quite flimsy was the mock outrage
Of the pomo wrath outspake-
“Beware the jabber-lot my son
The bores that shite, the I’s that clash
Beware that Warhaft bird and shun
The frumious blackinc, natch”
He took his dollar-per-word in hand
Long time the mannesome foe he sought
So rested he by the watsonjimmy
And stood awhile in thought
And as in huffish thought he stood
The jabber-lot with eyes of flame
Came whistling from the Flower Drum
And burbled as it came!
One! two! one! two! and through and through
The dollar-word-paid went snicker snack!
He left it dead and with mast-head
He went galumphing back
“And has thou slain the jabber-lot?
Come to my arms old copy boy!
O frabjous day! Touche, G.Haigh!
He chortled in his joy!
Twas silly that they slyly honed
Their ire and flimsy mock outrage
All should know if that way you go
You’ll find yourself outplayed
Twas brillig, and the slithy toves
Did gyre and gimble in the wabe:
All mimsy were the borogoves,
And the mome raths outgrabe.
I wandered lonely as a cloud
seeking only half a dill
when all at once I spied a trove
of fully-dilled
all in a pickle.
For those who don’t know Melbourne, the distance from the Flower Drum to the watsonjmmy is a fair old hike. If you did it at any speed you would certainly be whistling and burbling by the time you got where you were going and possibly have eyes of flame as well. I recommend the tram.
Nice jabbery! Worth the trundle though Pav. Flower drum, then a few dry&drys and Jimmy’s is my idea of a pretty fair evening!
I grow old, I grow old.
I shall quit the business and become a scold.
Shall I blog about this feud?
Do I back Warhaft or Manne?
I will curl up on my couch,
And watch the films of Jackie Chan.
I think someone’s pinching bandwidth from my LAN.
Higgledy-piggledy
Publisher’s apoplexed –
Warhaft’s run off with the
Editor’s rolodex!
“Who can we call on?”
“Who will be next?”
“Who will fill chairs on this
Titanic’s decks?”
Jesus fucking H Christ.
*pauses to take up smoking*
*lights cigarette*
*sighs*
At least you get to smoke. I’ve just read the poetry without any substances at all. Man, mes Dieux. Well anyway, I’ve just spelt it right. Do I get to ride through Paris with the warm wind in my hair? No? What about Brighton Le Sands? Look, anywhere really – any place but this…
Applause
And that’s the only way to fly.
The Monthly is the cruellest monthly, breeding
Mountains out of molehills, mixing
Chit-chat with the headlines, stirring—
No! Stop! I won’t. I can’t.
How about something a bit more down-home instead…
Mini-stoushulus down at The Monthly:
Well it’s not very news-from-the-front-thly.
What’s the story youse ran?
Merely “of mice and Manne”?
Not what I’d call Attila the Hun-thly.
Pavlov’s Cat: who am I?
On the count of three, I want everyone to tell Crisp Fight who he or she is. Are you ready? One, two, three.
[the sound of beatboxing crickets, thmp, chirp, snap, chirp, tsh, chirp]
What time is it? Are we going out like that? Yeah, boyyy.
Liam, I think the question was poorly posed; it’s not “whom am I?” it’s, “what’s my muthaf**kin’ name?” as in — (hit it, girls)
CHORUS: Krisp Fighty-fiiiight…
It’s the K to the Risp
Talkin’ super flight risk
Cos my rhymes are so tight
It’s tha Krisp Fighty-fight
On tha muthaf**kin’ blog
Askin’ dis and dat,
Postin’ comments for my homie Docta Pavlov’s Cat
Like I said,
Bloggas can’t f**k wit dis
And bloggas can’t f**k wit dat
Comments that I post
Like a Friars Club roast
Turnin’ sucka LPers
Into morning toast
I’m so dope it’s a scandal,
Just some pixels and a handle,
Burnin’ muthaf**kas like a Roman candle,
Then I step thru the night
Got a geist, I’m your zeit,
Cos I’m Krisp Fighty
Krisp Fighty
Krisp Fighty-fight
What’s my muthaf**ki’ name?
CHORUS: Krisp Fighty-fiiiight
Yeah, yeah….
[breaks it down, cuts it up, steps up to hit it and quit it, gives the drummer some, and punches the beat with frenzy]
Zoe totally bitchslapped this thread into next week.
RESPECT.
Seconded!
White people
In the interests of releasing myself from the burden of trying to think up a poem and thus not being able to concentrate on my work can I just leave “quotidian” and “meridian” here, for whoever wants them?
Yep, that’s definitely jinmaro.
oh laura – write something! we love your stuff!
Here’s a toast to a fine name like Gideon!
Now we’ve poems we can cram “Walter Mitty” in!
Though this thread has been deft,
Not too many rhymes left.
(I suppose we could mis-pronounce “Titian.”)
I quite liked you in the morning as you chaired another meeting,
Though as you went on and on, the feeling grew quite fleeting.
Yes many have edited before us, I know that we are not new
In cities and in towns they groan like me and you.
But now it’s come to policies,
and both of us must try,
hey that’s no way to say goodbye.
I’ll look for another job, and I know it won’t be easy,
Please give me a good reference that’s not too cheesey,
You know my hatred goes with you as your hatred stays with me
it’s just the way it changes, like the by-line in issue 3.
But let’s not talk of hate and anger, and litigation I’ll try
Your eyes are hard with hatred,
Hey that’s no way to say goodbye.
I suggest we don’t mispronounce Titian; Titty-Anne is unwelcome in the rarefied air of this thread. She bad.
….”Life’s but a walking shadow, a poor player
That struts and frets his hour upon the stage
And then is heard no more: it is a tale
Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,
Signifying nothing.”
LOL, well not everybody has a straight-outa-Compton badass tag like you, erm, ‘Crisp fight’.
Yo, y’all keep it crisp out there, aaiii?
Peace.
As Larvatus Prodeo’s unrivalled inside expert on Australian Communism, let me help join the dots.
In 1968 the Communist Party of Australia supported the Prague Spring and condemned the invasion of Czechoslovakia by the USSR and other Eastern European states. This position was deeply distressing to a pro-Soviet minority of CPA members including some in leading positions in the construction and maritime unions. Said pro-Soviet people were also deeply distressed by other trends within the CPA at the time such as its adoption of a Charter of Democratic Rights which was condemned as abstract bourgsois democracy, its embrace of the new social movements of the late 1960s which was condemned as “the drug sub-culture”, and its support for more radical union strategies such as the Green Bans and the workers control movement of the early 1970s. These tensions culminated in a split of the pro-Soviet elements from the CPA in 1971, with the pro-Soviet people forming the Socialist Party of Australia.
Come the early 1980s, and the SPA was experiencing internal tensions of its own over (a) attitudes towards supporting the ALP in the 1983 Federal election (those controlling the SPA were opposed to this); (b) attitudes towards the ACTU-ALP Accord (the SPA leadership were opposed, the SPA-aligned union officials were enthusiastically pro-Accord); (c) attitudes towards other far left parties (the SPA leadership was pursuing an alliance with the Stupid Cult of Cuba a.k.a. the Socialist Workers Party since renamed the Democratic Socialist Party, whilst the SPA union officials had good relations with CPA and ALP Left union people and wanted the party to realign itself accordingly); (d) the extent to which the SPA party organisation should be able to direct the work of SPA union activists; (e) the democratic deficit inside the SPA and its human consequences for those who didn’t toe the line of the SPA leadership of Peter Symon and Jack McPhillips.
This culminated in a split from the SPA led by the trade union leaders such as Tom McDonald, Pat Clancy, Stan Sharkey, Wal Pritchard and others. This group, which split from the SPA, which had previously split from the CPA, titled itself the Association for Communist Unity with not the slightest sense of self-parody. After eight years of negotiations with the CPA, the ACU failed to unite with the CPA in the New Left Party in 1991, Tom McDonald being an honourable exception. Tom McDonald was also an honourable exception in that he did seriously rethink his politics in the light of the events of the mid-late 1980s and early 1990s to a far greater extent than most of his ACU comrades were capable of.
It should be noted that the CPA during the 1970s and 1980s was pretty much on pace with the leading edge of Eurocommunism, and for a time in 1988-91 many of us (myself included) were greatly heartened by the stated positions of the radical democratic forces in the USSR around Yeltsin (although not necessarily Yeltsin himself) and concerned about what appeared to be Gorby playing footsies with the old guard. That was before Yeltsin and his supporters renounced their previous avowals of socialism, and trashed their own democratic credentials, with the neoliberal “shock therapy” program and the resort to authoritarian methods to see it through.
Jesus, Paul, you couldn’t say it in a limerick? Let me have a go.
…
Our Commos no longer split-off,
Thanks to openness led by Gorbachev.
But whatever became
To the older Red aims;
Peace, land, bread and fraternal love?
Now do it in verse, Norto.
Notorious F.M.B., keepin’ it real.
“titled itself the Association for Communist Unity with not the slightest sense of self-parody”
heh!
Interesting to see the dynastic names Pritchard and Sharkey in your list: blood is thicker than intellect, eh?
Up there with the “Labor Unity” faction, whose sole motivating raison d’etre appears to be undermining other ALP factions.
Mind you, few can beat the Mexican Party of Institutionalised Revoution.
An interestin’ critter,
fit and ever fitter,
never bad or bitter
is the Lesser Commo Splitter.
His antics raise a titter
‘Mongst those who mope and witter
Or seek the gold and glitter
In the A, L, bloody P.
S.O.B. – your life, maybe.
In NSW, “Centre Unity”, Izquierdista. I always think of Yeats, you know. The blood-dimmed tide, the end of the ceremony of innocence, a gaze blank and pitiless as the sun…
OK, here’s the Battle Hymn of the SPA, ACU and Socialist Network c.1989, to the tune of “Wonderful World” by Sam Cooke.
I know all about history
And political economy
I know all about philosophy
And scientific methodology
I have memorised the classic tracts
So please don’t bother me with concrete facts
I’m an orthodox Marxist, you see
I’m not distracted by ecology
Race or national identity
The politics of sexuality
They’re all diversions of the bourgeoisie
I know the working class has centre stage
Because I read it page after page
I’m an orthodox Marxist, you see
There’s dialectic laws and the theory of value
And how the profit rate falls
So how many times do I have to tell you
Reality can’t breach my wall
I know all about history
And political economy
I know all about philosophy
And scientific methodology
So when the workers heed my battle cry
And let me teach them how to live and die
What a wonderful world it will be
The Maoist variation of the final verse goes:
Climate change is all mythology
A tool of whining fake left treachery
Dubya Bush was revolution’ry
When he bombed Baghdad in the year ’03
And when the peasantry is led to power
By all the bloggers at Last Superpower
What a wonderful world it will be
Nice Paul.
Your cheaper airline tickets are in the mail.
There’s dialectic laws and the theory of value
And how the profit rate falls
.
Except it doesn’t.
Adrien, I think that’s one of the reasons the poet wrote “Reality can’t breach my wall”.
I, at any rate, am not an orthodox Marxist.
Ambigulous – Everyone knows that reality is just a crutch for people who can’t handle drugs.
I, at any rate, am not an orthodox Marxist.
.
.
I am. All those books I wrote were just an elaborate practical joke. What kidder.
.
Rah!
.
Alrighty I’ll stop clowning around now.
I was going to comment on this thread when it was hoppin’, to say something along the lines of “there are plenty of good writers and would-be editors out there, but bugger-all successful publishers,” but I was a bit put off by the relentlessly off-topic stuff.
Anyway, Morry Schwartz appears to want to validate my theory by replacing Sally Warhaft with a guy straight out of uni.
none of us claims to be as smart as Mr Naparstek
So the Monthly’s now pretty much a men-only outfit now? Much as I heart Robert Forster and other contributors, that’s pretty sad.
men-only? no it’s worse and quite singular: manne-only
They have chosen a boy to do a manne’s job
What do you mean, “now”?
Those in the know confirm that Ben’s appointment is the next stage in positioning The Monthly as an international Zionist mag.
So multimillionaire seeking cultural/political clout hires nebulous whizzkid to curate vanity print publication after internal ructions.
This is not a new story. But hopefully doesn’t stop Ben from seeking new writers. But will he be willing to talk Morrie into subsidising the kind of long term investigative journalism/colour pieces that’ll really justify The Monthly’s existence for posterity.
Just been reading Claud Cockburn’s “The Devil’s Decade”, his take on the 1930s framed through his years as founder/publisher/editor of “The Week” which first directly broke the Edward and Simpson-Wallis story with all its constitutional implications, had its film critic, Graham Greene, sued for discussed pedophiliac tendencies in a Shirley Temple film, roundly damned Chamberlin’s appeasement policy before it was popular or profitable and finally got shut down by HM Government in 1941 for being too troublemaking at a time when ‘national unity” was called for.
Now that’s what I call a shitstirring journal of ideas and reportage.
If Ben Napster’s reading this thread now, here’s some suggestions for polemics and investigative journalism in the same spirt as “The Week” or “The Atlantic” or “Esquire” in their glory days.
Shooting Blanks:What’s gone wrong on the Defence Materials Organistaion
Idol Thoughts: Behind the scenes of manipulated “reality shows”.
Who Picks Up The Bill? The rise of lifestyle, food and travel pieces in the broadsheets.
I Started A Joke: The meme foodchain from print and wire “brights” to blogosphere back to op-ed pages.
Down the U Bend: How the dream of going to Uni became a nightmare.
Endorse This: Real life after Olympic Gold Medals.
I Was A Teenage Political Advisor: Well OK in my twenties with fuckall life experience.
The Fridge: Chilling stories from Australia’s Antarctic outpost (seriously, there’s some really weird things going on there now – both operationally and geopolitically which are getting fuckall proper coverage)
All these ideas would take very good writers working very hard for months. For a print-based publication in a shrinking market. I do hope when Morrie puts his hands into deep pockets, he finds some brains and balls/breasts there as well.
And for fucksakes Ben, get a decent art director. Find a 21st century version of George Lois.
A killer cover is a story in itself. Try any “serious” media outlet trying that editorial image on today.
In the celebrated experiments of Dr Pavlov, the subject dog salivated on hearing bells.
In the Antipodean variant the cat reacts to the word “men”.
Aw, come on, the Manne-boy has done some freelance lit-crit (or is it crit-lit? It’s been so long since I done English 100 I forget.
You’re dribbling, Bells.
Claud Cockburn eh, Nabakov? Did his journalitic instincts overcome his commie bias? Probably. He was cheeky and resourceful (and resource-poor in the pounds sterling department).
Interesting story ideas you suggested. But none of them sink to the tabloid depths of the netherworld of Melbourne University Press [Louise Adler in charge] – this from the OO:
Gatto spreads good word
WHAT’S a publisher to do after a monster such as Peter Costello’s (co-written) memoirs? How do you follow an act that tough? If you’re Melbourne University Press, you stick to your theme and go with another Melbourne hard man. Stand by for October’s Mick Gatto: My Story. According to MUP, “Gatto is now ready to tell all in an unprecedented and extraordinary insider’s account of Australia’s underworld”. Another parallel perhaps? And like Costello, Gatto will enjoy the services of a co-author.
Not so.
Pavlov used a metronome, an instrument designed to produce a reliably monotonous atonal noise at regular intervals. Hi John!
“a metronome, an instrument designed to produce a reliably monotonous atonal noise at regular intervals”
Aha! Also not so! The metronome is in fact designed not to produce monotony and atonality, but to make reliably possible rhythmically reproducible performances of exceedingly tonal noises, called symphonies and concerti and sonatas.
Even that arch-Pavlovian Ned Pointsman would probably agree, although Sir Stephen Dodson-Truck might offer a tad too much erudite nuance…
Pseudonymous pseud wrong again. The instrument described in this sentence is either a barrel organ, a pianola, or Sir Thomas Beecham.
Hang on, who was the first hard man?
Gummo — hmm, dunno ’bout that. Beethoven: a guy known for his pioneering use of metronome notations. (Walter Murphy made a lot of money by disregarding them.) Whether Karajan, for instance, ever conducted the Eroica with a barrel organ at his side is something I shall leave you to ponder…
Costello’s memoir was a monster, Ambigulous? I thought it had all been remaindered and pulped by now, rather like that other political blogbuster by Andrew Jones. (You younger folk may not remember him. He was the Federal Liberal
membertool for Adelaide in about 1969 or so.)You know some Winkel/Mälzel, the great-grandfathers of machine music…
That doesn’t alter the fact that Mälzel’s patented ‘metronome’ was very much, “an instrument designed to produce a reliably monotonous atonal noise at regular intervals”. BMCD’ULM stated its intended function, not its intended purpose.
Petty logic fail!
“Aha! Also not so!” he chimed (and the identity became obvious).
David Irving (not related to the ‘historian’)
I cannot be held responsible for MUP’s publicity puffs. Just as MUP cannot be responsible. I agree that the Costello memoirs were more whimper than bang. Never have so many remainder tables groaned under such weight and for no good purpose.
Apropos metronomes, but without wishing to resort to Katzian dictionary definitions, may I mention that ‘gatto’ in Italian and ‘katz’ in German, are feline? And does Mick Gatto purr?
As to desserts I prefer the superb but astringent Fontein to the rather sucremose Pavlova
Now, where were we? Was an Editor sacked?
To point out the obvious: The Gatto book will sell. Whereas the Costello book … ah, well, we can’t all be geniuses, can we?