Comments on: Grumpy is the new black

By: KEiThY

KEiThY — Sat, 07 Nov 2009 09:15:58 +0000

Alan Jones and co. are an absolute joke! They are holding us to ransom and the political parties that promote the free-market lie will face very testing times. They will be rebranding themselves soon I bet! Possibly already doing it!

By: joe2

joe2 — Fri, 06 Nov 2009 03:33:18 +0000

Just speculatin’….
The painfully big egoed prat was mostly chastised as “a wanker” in the earlier Australian scene. Now that sort is much more tolerated; probably because it is an American thing to do and we love to emulate – just like our cocky co-inhabitants. (You should not bring that sod down to size because blind confidence is an attractive characteristic in a ‘free for all economy’. Where to show doubt is seen as a definite sign of weakness.)

Skyhooks started the rot?

By: Russell

Russell — Fri, 06 Nov 2009 02:57:49 +0000

Earlier in the thread I posted a bit of Wilde, but it has a ‘your comment is in moderation” tag on it, so here it is again: indignation as social marker:

Lady Bracknell. Me, sir! What has it to do with me? You can hardly imagine that I and Lord Bracknell would dream of allowing our only daughter—a girl brought up with the utmost care—to marry into a cloak-room, and form an alliance with a parcel? Good morning, Mr. Worthing!

[Lady Bracknell sweeps out in majestic indignation.]

By: adrian

adrian — Fri, 06 Nov 2009 02:30:08 +0000

Maybe it also relates to the way children tend to be raised these days – to think that they are the centre of the universe whose every desire must be satisfied and every need met.

By: Russell

Russell — Fri, 06 Nov 2009 02:25:56 +0000

Isn’t the ‘fosters the desire’ part related to those advertisements that tell us we should have it/anything, ‘because you deserve it’?

Do your own thing has changed from growing your hair long, or nudity or other liberating gestures, to always do whatever you like because you should and you can. A bit like sport has become win at all costs – well that’s how you should live your life: winners are grinners and nobody else matters.

But living like this means we’re all constantly bumping up against each other’s selfish desire to have everything for our own personal convenience. Hence road rage, hence indignant outbursts when I don’t get what I want.

By: Katz

Katz — Fri, 06 Nov 2009 02:16:47 +0000

The key phrase is “fosters the desire”.

That is, sometimes, it is conceded, there is no choice but to be indignant.

Sometimes, however, folks go out of their way to express indignation even though they have no legitimate reason to be indignant. They are touchy and/or they express their identity (Russell’s egotists) through their indignation.

Mark’s implication is that this second group is unusually large and/or it is a growing part of Australia’s population.

To return to my original question, how do we know whether these touchy and/or egotistical folks comprise a large and/or growing part of Australian culture

(Note, I’m not denying that this may be the case.)

By: Russell

Russell — Fri, 06 Nov 2009 01:42:59 +0000

Well said, Adrian,

So back to Mark’s question ” what is it, precisely, about our culture that fosters the desire to be indignant?”

It’s ego, let off the leash of good manners.

By: adrian

adrian — Fri, 06 Nov 2009 01:23:22 +0000

Surely the point is that any country is capable of the kind of evil brutality referred to above, given the ‘right’ combination of circumstances. We are kidding ourselves if we think that any country is immune from this kind of barbarity. Which is why it is irrelevant to the discussion about indignation and outrage, which is a beast of an entirely different nature.

By: Russell

Russell — Fri, 06 Nov 2009 01:03:48 +0000

Fran – I was responding to your statistics and “you can’t blink your eyes and miss that, surely.” which is the common position of the left: “here is a statistic, 500,000 dead, hence Indonesians/Suharto = bloodthirsty, fascist monsters.”

My reading of Indonesian history, and experience of living there, is that it is much more complex than that – the statistics don’t explain what happened. Strangely, the people I know who do think that Suharto was a monster were also big fans of Paul Keating, who seemed pretty enamoured of the old dictator.

By: Fran Barlow

Fran Barlow — Fri, 06 Nov 2009 00:31:21 +0000

Russell — I wasn’t claiming that Indonesians had a particular propensity to violence. I was responding rather more to the ostenisbly perplexed tone you adopted when noting the attitudes of leftists to Indonesia.