Those who recall the furore over the hoax of Keith Windschuttle and Quadrant earlier in the year might be interested in reading an article by the hoaxer in question, Katherine Wilson, in Meanjin, wherein she discusses her motivations.
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This is not good writing. Gaza, global warming, hormones, wtf does this have to do with the hoax? It’s the kind of self-indulgent twaddle op-ed regularly indulge in; me, me, me.
I admit, it gets better towards the end, but 70% of it reads a craven excuse and very half-arsed apology. I’ve seen school kids produce better acknowledgements of bad behaviour.
Either it was a bad-faith action, or it was justified. Scraping together what other writers do/did, the parlous state of media in australia, how Robert Doyle was a cool teacher, some people said it was great, some terrible etc. etc. are all irrelevant.
All she did was produce more bullshit. So a dude with a bullshit fetish came and shovelled it up. Who cares. That’s what bullshit-fetish-dudes do. No one needed to make a big pile of crap to prove it. Doing so makes you part of the problem, not part of the solution.
I’m not going to comment on it, for a number of reasons. But I might just say that having read the said Meanjin on Sunday, and also Glenn Milne’s column which appeared to be based solely on some email some disgruntled Liberal had sent him, it was very tempting to hoax Milne! Someone could dodgy up an email from Godwin Grech, for instance. Or would that be too obvious?
This is Glen Milne we’re talking about, Mark. I don’t think anything is too obvious for him.
I might have just given the game away, though, patrickg! I was tempted to write some unintelligible gibberish along the lines of “deadline set for Turnbull’s leadership… feverish maneouvrings… sources say… Julia Gillard is North Korean… Costello might make a return”…
I thought it was interesting, myself. The rambling stuff is good context, something I notice certain commentators on this event have an inexplicable distate for… oh wait, its totally explicable, because said context hamstrings a lot of the whining about the hoax.
I don’t see any attempt on Ms. Wilson’s part at excuses, but I have noticed a whole lot of what she points out – loud condemnation for foot-stamping instead of cool-headed examination of what the hoax’s succecss says about the standard of public debate in Australia.
Don’t often agree with patrickg, but he’s dead right on this one.
Self-justification is rarely a pretty read; one usually gets the impression that its rationale is that the self-justifier recognises not very deep down that that the critics have it mostly right, and that hasty re-invention of history and of motivation is the main point. Self-justification of this rambling incoherence and approaching world-record length produces that impression redoubled in spades. At least for me.
Im not going to comment either (also for a range of reasons) – except to note that I like her new point in this piece that using the precautionary principle (re global warming) is entirely compatible with a politically Conservative position.
Shorter Katherine Wilson: Hoaxing Windy? Doyley (that panty-moistening spunk) made me do it. A girl can’t help it!
Oh c’mon Katz, it wasn’t that sort of eros!! It was the higher eros of the opening mind, the kindness to awkward young intellects, the fellowship of the quest for truths,…
Didn’t you believe her? The Doyley-Cart is a bandwagon worthy of operetta. Jump on!
Bit long. What I got out of it was people like W. don’t like people doing to them what they do to others.
There are two W.s in this particular performance, Paul…. I like Grumphy’s comment.
Fair crack of the whip, Grumphy, you’re aren’t looking very hard: Now, I don’t want to get all Garner about this, but by the time I approached Simons I was almost broken with grief. Loved ones and life plans were slipping away from me. In the scheme of things, as Israel struck Palestine and other mothers lost their husbands and children and homes and hopes, my woes amounted to not that much, but with a life-force multiplying in my womb and its attendant hormones surging through me, my anguish was keen.
It was in this state that email correspondence with Windschuttle started.
Robert Doyle’s career as an English teacher is good context for what exactly?
To segue nicely into blaming the media for covering Windy instead of global warming, “don’t blame me, guv, I was just gave em the gun, they pulled the trigger!”?
Also Wilson overstates the coverage this received, and understates the coverage other things (global warming, Israel, the price of eggs in Jamaica) receives.
Simons displayed fair more ethics than Wilson did. And as if any of Wilsons wan points about the media in general and Windschuttle in particular needed something juvenile like this to be made.
She feels guilty about it, and is trying to point out how much worse everyone else is, and that she was preggers when she chose to carry out this silly stunt. None of these things have any bearing on the act itself.
I think the thing you’re missing is that they’re not excuses because Wilson clearly doesn’t believe she’s committed wrongdoing. You may, but that’s not really relevant to her post.
True, although I don’t know where she got the notion it’s an “age old” scientific principle. Unless by “age old” she’s referring to the 1970s.
I hate to break it to you Tim, but to many people the 70s are now the “olden days”.
I was afraid that might be the case, Helen.
Grumphy, seriously, did you read the whole piece? It’s like you and I read a different confession.
All that stuff about Darville, etc.
If that doesn’t imply regret or guilt, I only don’t know what could.
I’m not saying the whole article was shit – as mentioned the last 20% or so is decent. But all that faff before it is gratuitous and self-serving in my book.
“Robert Doyle’s career as an English teacher is good context for what exactly? ”
Word count.
d
I thought it was badly written – in fact, I didn’t even get past the first five self-aggrandizing, self-indulgent paragraphs. Sounds like I haven’t missed anything.
And the brain-sex thing just grossed me out.
She felt bad about the personal side of things, as an ethical person should. Its always sad to have to kick an old person in the arse, they’re like big wrinkly puppies. I get the sense she also felt bad about having dive-bombed into a particularly deep and treacherous corner of the pool of public life, patrickg, of which many comments here are a fine example. But several times in the piece, she points out that the old codger had it coming and that it was about damn time.
Which it was.
I’m more disturbed by several of the comments above than by Katherine Wilson’s essay itself. Wilson’s writing is wonderful.
She’s a woman of course, a mother of very young children and therefore prone to those thoughts that we women tend to indulge when thinking and writing creatively.
I sense a touch of envy in some of the negativity I read above.
Wilson’s honesty about her vulnerability and her efforts to get at a certain emotional truth to me goes well beyond some of the simple black and white reasoning I read here.
I say more power to her.
Ditto #20
A wonderful piece of writing by Katherine Wilson that only a woman fully in touch with her emotions could write.
And a great comeback to all her mostly male (natch) detractors.
#7 Lefty E Sep 1st, 2009 at 2:52 pm
The precautionary principle is not only “entirely compatible with a politically Conservative position”, it is implied by it.
(I make an exception for life-saving revolutionary technologies which are, of course, dedicated to conserving human life.)
Ah, yes, thank you Elizabeth, I see my error now. I was foolishly looking for some semblance of reasoning in the piece, when I should have been looking for emotional truth and vulnerability.
I saw reasoning aplenty in the piece. Although I too was grossed out too by the references to brainsex with the erotic Doyle (Wilson, WTF?!) there was an interesting discussion of journalism, “objectivity” versus powerful interests, and the parlous state of reporting on science, something which Hoyden about Town and other blogs have discussed, but which gets very little run in the media. Some of the more academic commenters here might get plenty of that in their professional reading but remember some of us office drones are not so lucky. Some commenters also are cherry picking a few paragraphs on personal reactions to make it appear that the article is all personal waffling and that’s a distortion.
Ack, grammar fail – need second coffee of the day.
I’m also a mother of two very young children. I don’t know what thoughts I am supposed to indulge in when thinking and writing creatively, but obviously they are different from Wilson’s.
I hold no brief for Windschuttle. I’ve never read Quadrant, and I have no interest in reading its contents. I just don’t like self-indulgence particularly – I’ve read more of Wilson’s piece now, and it drips with it. Perhaps that’s just me. *Shrugs* Different people have different tastes in writing.
Oh FFS not everything’s about the patriarchy.
No need to be coy Helen, but those quotes, plus the Doyle-philia you mention, make up a good half of the piece.
Elisabeth Hanscombe @ 21
Has Elisabeth Hanscombe actually read the piece?
KW says here in so many words that if she had never met Robert Doyle, and if she had not just witnessed Israeli atrocities, and if she was not heavily pregnant, and even indeed if she were not even a woman, she would still have behaved in the way she did.
Even in the non “black and white reasoning” world all the above-mentioned detail is mere persiflage.
If you like reading less than frank accounts of persons’ motivations, then KW’s Meanjin piece is for you.
On Mr Doyle, Helen.
She was in his class, you were not. Don’t you accept that a person in a classroom many years ago could have been quite different from what we observe as his current public persona.
I do. That part of her article I must take on trust, not having been there myself.
cheerio
Elizabeth Hanscombe and Bat both have the whiff of Jinmaro about them. Probably best ignored.
I’m assuming it was the ‘J’ word that put my comment in moderation.
Jack Strocchi #23:
Quite so, Jack. I must point that out to my students the next time I’m called upon to lecture on conservatism or environmental political theory.
tl;dr
when is this coming out on DVD anyway? With the brainsex thing I think we should get Cronenberg.
hmm I like some of this essay, in particular her discussion about advocacy journalism. This in poarticular –
I have yet to see a convincing argument for objectivity in journalism, the concept seems flawed to me and I think Katherine’s essay illustrates some of the problems with the concept.