An open thread, where at your weekend leisure, you can discuss anything you like.
Life, Culture and Politics from BrisVegas
Larvatus Prodeo was an Australian group blog which discussed politics, sociology, culture, life, religion and science from a left of centre perspective. more»
First!
Locating the Kimberley gas hub at James Price Point on the Dampier Peninsula will be the first step in the destruction of this area.
The WA Government contend that this will have no environmental impact (Colin Barnett’s words) and that employment of locals will solve all the problems of the indigenous peoples in an around Broome.
Senator Bob Brown was in Broome during the week,/a> to offer his support in the campaign to stop this.
We need this campaign to say no to the gas hub to reach the attention of the nation.
Please write to Martin Ferguson and Greg Combet voicing your concern.
Please join Senator Bob Brown and lend your support to the campaign against the proposed Kimberley Gas Hub at James Price Point.
The WA Government has commenced compulsory acquisition of the land and time is running out.
Let Martin Ferguson and Greg Combet know that the Australian Community doesn’t support development at any cost.
I’ll take non-fracked, non-drain-the-GAB gas over coal any day. Of course, Peter Collier’s championing coal continuance in Collie.
Somebody will be spewing.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/australiaandthepacific/australia/8064148/First-edition-Nineteen-Eighty-Four-found-in-Australian-charity-bin.html
“Peter Collier’s championing coal continuance in Collie”
For someone interesting in linguistics, it’s hard to shake the feeling both he and the town have a strong interest in doing so.
Is it just my imagination or is Peter Hartcher becoming to Tony Abbott what Glen Milne was to Peter Costello?
A long bow I know considering their relative journalistic skills but more and more Hartcher seems to becoming the main Abbott aopolgist in the MSM.
http://www.smh.com.au/opinion/politics/abbott-sticks-to-his-guns-20101015-16nh4.html
Listen to an interview with Tony Windsor hanging up on Steve Price and Andrew Bolt. He wisely concluded, in the end, that he had better things to do with his time than talk to interrupting idiots.
Yet he did get his message across, on the Murray-Darling Basin plan, easily expose Bolt for the liberal stooge he is and convince the only talkback listener of his case.
Not bad, I would say, and maybe a good model for ministers on how to deal with shock jocks.
http://www.mtr1377.com.au/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=6672&Itemid=438
The fact there was only ONE talkback caller pretty much sums up MTR.
Anyone care to start a book on when they will finally wind up this particular waste of the airwaves? They’d get more listeners playing Richard Clayderman CDs all day!
After a wild night, with hail battering the windows and rattling down the chimneys, the sky … has suddenly clouded over again.
Ah, springtime in Melbourne …
Yeah Joe2 I hope it is a forerunner. Bolte was a rude disgrace with no intention of allowing any answer or understanding of what the MDBA was set up by the Libs to do.
Windsor has a tough enough job knocking a few hothead irrigators into line without having to deal with shock jocks.
Can somebody please explain to me why our national broadcaster feels it necessary to spend our money covering the bizarre medieval ritual goings-on in Rome? Add to that the ridiculous number of pointless stories on the website (see sidebar next to this one here – http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2010/10/14/3038121.htm – and I’m beginning to think the whole separation of church & state thing never really happened here.
Now I’m sure Mary McKillop was a good woman but rather than canonize her for the good work she did in her life (wasn’t she excommunicated for those?) they are citing a couple of people claiming that pretending to talk to her and fingering a few beads cured them of cancer or something!! Makes me think some parts of Australian society want to propel us back into the middle ages.
While on the subject of ludicrous catholic nonsense, what is it with those Chilean miners crediting their deity for getting them out? If I was one of the people who spent the last two months slogging away to save them I’d be pretty pissed off about now.
Rant over, I need a nice cup of tea now.
Thanks for that, joe2@6. I’m shocked
Could Bolt and Price have their heads any further up their own arses? “I hate interrupting…:, indeed!
Joe2 @6,
I don’t know what area the radio station would cover, but perhaps Windsor had the advantage that none of his constituents would be listening.
More problematic for Labor, in terms of hanging onto the swinging, median Westie.
@4 You just can’t make this stuff up.
Of interest:
Murdoch taken to task over Republican donations
Tony Windsor is not going to lose anything by refusing to talk to ill-mannered RWDBs. More politicians should take a leaf out of his book and tell these disgustingly rude ideologues they’re just not going to be bothered talking to them. Indeed, the pollies should go further. If these creeps appear on a programme, the pollies won’t. Black ban every organisation that give the likes of Bolt, Price, Akermann etc oxygen. Including the ABC.
You are right, Incurious and Unread, the station in question is a, newish, Melbourne based conservative radio station.
It is already bombing badly, ratings wise, and is unlikely to continue. Hardly surprising, if that was the standard of “interview” they are offering.
Important points that Windsor managed to relate, nevertheless, were that a) the authority was set up by the coalition with bi-partisan support, but not him personally, and b) their job was looking at how the river system could be saved not examining the social cost.
Basic facts that have been covered up amidst all the media inflamed hysterics.
There’s quite a bit to like about Tony Windsor. I met him in 1997 at a forum in Canberra about violence in the media in the wake of the Port Arthur shootings.
We had differing views on that issue – he thinks media violence is a causal factor in violence in society, whereas I’m sceptical of that argument – but I could respect the fact that: (1) he pursued issues in a genuinely non-partisan way; (2) he was interested in new ideas (in this case, discussions about how the Internet could be better used in education); and (3) he listened to his constituency. So the view he was presenting was not just his – it came out of a public forum at the Tamworth Town Hall.
You can start to see why Andrew Bolt would hate him, and also Barnaby Joyce. I’d be predicting that Glenn Milne will diss him on “The Drum” next week, based on a dossier given to him by some Coalition apparatchik.
Tony Windsor is my local member.
[Jumps, hoots, screams with joy and is very pleased with meself]
On a more serious level, one couldn’t have a better person representing one. Just sayin’.
I think that only two cats and a dog listen to MTR (John Singleton’s adventure in red-neck talkback in Melbourne) and the dog is thinking of changing back to Magic 1278.
Kuke @2 – the issue is not about gas vs coal, it is about the WA Government’s insistence that the only ‘viable’ location for a huge gas processing plant is on the Dampier peninsula at JPP.
Kuke @2 – the argument is not about gas vs coal.
The WA Government insists that the only viable location for a huge gas processing plant is on the Dampier Peninsula at JPP
That is simply not true. There is a campaign of misinformation about the scale of the project and bald assertions about the benefits. The community cannot make an informed choice when only one side of the argument is presented.
And those cats were littered in Sydney.
are my comments disappearing into the auto moderator?
Press Release:
The Australian Treasury has announced that its Gala Parity Party will be held at the SouthPac Peso Bar in Northbourne Ave., Canberra next Friday at 6 PM. Attendees are guaranteed to get maximum bang for their buck. All proceeds will be donated to the recently established Uncle Sam Foundation for economic basket cases.
Dress Code: green(back) tie
Charlie,
From the Age on Thursday “Since MTR launched, its average audience has slipped to 6000 and its market share is just 1.1 per cent. Many have blamed its poor ratings on its desire to be ”right wing and in-your-face”
Says it all, classic FM probably has better ratings
http://www.theage.com.au/entertainment/tv-and-radio/mtr-stars-wounded-by-criticism-20101013-16izq.html
Charlie, I think they tried something similar in Melbourne years back and it flopped. I wonder what they were thinking/snorting?
Yes, ‘Stan the Man’ Zemanezek (or something like that) visited our glorious capital (can you believe it was hailing this morning) to present Drive on 3AW (this was before Fairfax took it over).
Basically what happened was that people stopped listening to 3AW while he was on air. The other programs went okay, but Drive died. So eventually he went back to Sydney. Not sure if he lasted a year, maybe that, but not much more.
Actually interesting in one way, what we consider what is right wing – as a lot of 3AW’s usual content is cringe inducing and at time even emetic. But it does seem to pale when compared to the Sydney-style content of MTR. Funny listening to Price and Bolt rabbit on after Windsor has gone.
Price et al at MTR are blaming signal strength for lack of audience. The transmitter is down Frankston way. But the station in earlier incarnations rated 4-5 times higher than before it changed name/content. A salutary lesson. By the way, Price used to be Program Manager at 3AW before heading up to Sydney. Mind you, seems to be have advertising sales – a lot national – so I assume it is being sold in a package with Sydney stations.
The radio thing is interesting in terms of coverage away from Sydney. From memory John Laws was almost everywhere is his day, and I assume Jones is as widespread as patterson’s curse. So if a lot of the Sydney jocks are sent out to country stations, I am wondering if the carry-on in Deniliquin, Griffith etc has anything to do with faux outrage from the Sydney millionaire radio jocks!!
Charlie,
Yes John laws was everywhere in his day but as far as I’m aware Jones is only heard in Sydney, his Stable mate Ray Hadley however is heard through regional NSW, and if your on relay throughout the rural areas you at least have to pretend you feel your audiences pain!
You can get Jones in Armidale. Or you used to be able to. I heard him in a coffee shop once.
“The Caine Mutiny” is on ABC, great peformance by Bogart as the paranoid captain.
Any comment about the Port Arthur Massacre as it was called,and any resultant political self promotion on it,should be balanced by matters of Martin Bryant considered impossible of doing that because of his low I.Q. and the fact,that is rarely aired that the majority of victims were C.I.A. agents.An article in the Magazine NEXUS New Times some time back maybe still being referenced at http://www.nexusmagazine.com. Written by a anonymous school teacher in Sydney,gives people like Tony Windsor a choice,rather than capitalise on a simple persons’ suffering by a latent superiority that should never allowed its ugly head to raise.I doubt Tony Windsor has the courage,or ,the tenacity for truth, of much of any type.Simply engaging in the fantasy which is representative government,surely means positive conclusions about Representatives and media have to be ascertained outside the application of obscurantism implied in the generality.Laura Bush had an article up in the Sydney Morning Herald,so even that paper allows itself to be a conscious deriver of individuals willing to criticise the American Way.At least with the Conservative Australian voices of Radio ,one can ring them back,often see them in the flesh,and are quite often both patient pleasant and understanding to the Left,as they see it…if you can match their rules.Which are quite simple,in the job and off it.Can you see Gerard Henderson,print SMH taking a swing at someone physically,who is disturbed by his take.No!
I read today from my usual visits to Rense.com a number of fights over fuel is breaking out in France.How would the Australian public know if a shortage was taking place,if the players in the distribution and retailing are all locked in one chain of command operators!?You can be assured that, whatever,I will be probably working on farm,and thus, doing my bit to keep everything Australian as possible,and thus in a way keeping food prices negotiatable.Costs of inputs still rising.Academics forcing water costs up need to find ways of forcing other inputs down.I doubt they are doing anything like that.Some of those watering systems have very fine filtration spreader mechanisms in them close to fine spray useful in carburettor mist.Also Large contractor chemical equipment.Perhaps such can recover old fuels and replace some industrial process on farm.
Steve Price is now also the manager of disgraced former AFL player Jason Akermanis.
Hanging up on such radio “hosts” is the only way to deal with a technique of overriding the attempted answers with the superior power of the transmitter.
All the shock jocks do it. Moreover, quite a few hang up on the punter being interviewed.
Further, the radio announcer then has the luxury of indulging in slagging off at the person who was being interviewed but is no longer there.
Bearing in mind the potential for such unequal abuse, coming onto a program hosted by Price, Bolt, Jones and Ray Hadley invites on-air rape. They will never give a fair go to anybody with a view or a story to tell that is in opposition to theirs (that they are paid to promote).
Price was incredulous that Windsor hung up on him. Even Pauline Hanson never hung up, he blustered afterwards. He took it as a personal insult. Good. Bolt didn’t care because he is too mad to care – for him, someone hanging up is a good outcome -it means it was a vindication that he was right, not that someone expressed sheer frustration of not being able to get a word in edgewise.
Joe2@6 above has the link to the netcast of the segment. It is fascinating for the dynamics between the two hosts as much as between them and their victim(s).
This is a call to all politicians and people tasked with decision-making in the public sphere: do not come onto any program hosted by Price and/or Bolt. You do so at your peril. There is no point. You will not get your point across and you will held up for ridicule every time.
And the decision to damage you in the public eye will have been made well beforehand.
The program in question is a form of show trial. Price and Bolt = Vyshinsky and Rudenko.
This is because Victorians are nice people unlike the uncouth New South Welsh.
Sydney shock jocks get no traction.
Hmm, Tony Windsor did himself no favours by hanging up (or storming out of the room in a huff).
It was a tough interview, yes, but no tougher than many 7:30 report interviews.
Windsor is out of his depth.
Speaking of talkback …
I recall some years ago, back in my taxi-driving days listening to one particularly ugly shock jock — the late John Pierce. His actual slogan was remember, I’ve got the last word and he would simply talk over, gish gallop and verbal hostile callers at will with his onw brand of rightwing dissembling, including the sledge after they’d gone.
It was all part of what he regarded as entertainment.
There was one caller though who persistently got the better of him until he banned her from the show. This woman was either completely mad or brilliant — I was never sure which, and as far as I could tell, neither did Pierce.
She was the basic radio equivalent of a really clever and annoying troll. Her weapon was the well controlled topic hijack. Whatever Pierce was talking about, she would gently but inexorably divert into some totally pointless meander through something of absolutely no interest to Pierce at all, and just as he was about to cut her off, she’d hint at returning to the subject, only to wander off again.
Because she gave Pierce nothing to work with and had him and the audience guessing where she was going, he could never get off any one-line put downs or have an excuse for cutting her off and eventually he’d have to say err thanks for calling …” and looking down at his running sheet of paid announcements realise that he had burned much of the time he’d have been able to spend editorialising or listening to people brown-nosing him.
On one famous encounter, which Pierce had called “Dob in a druggie” based on a kind of Neighbourhood Watch concept of managing drug related behaviour, the woman rang up and within 60 seconds she was talking about Carl Jung, R D Laing, Timothy Leary, the counterculture and … []
She would do this on a regular basis, presumably because Pierce fancied his chances of getting even but eventually Pierce exploded on air at her saying “you don’t fool me… I know that voice and you are banned from calling here”. In talk-back land that is abject surrender. So much power at the microphone, and one radio troll renders it all moot.
I found it all very Zen …
A 61.88% primary vote at the last election, with daylight second, suggests otherwise.
But hey, I’m sure you know better, which is why you’re at the pub while he’s choosing which major party gets the supply and confidence votes in the HoR.
“Hmm, Tony Windsor did himself no favours by hanging up (or storming out of the room in a huff).”
I disagree. My hope is that he has set a new benchmark in dealing with obnoxious, shock jock, twats. These drips are lost, if the main act pulls the plug.
He showed no sign of “huff” and just let them know he has “other things to do with his time”. Politicians give these prize fools more power than they deserve and I reckon he has politely called their bluff.
I would like to see Windsor next do over Jones. He could do it.
Sydney shock jocks get traction, plenty. And what’s more to the point, politicians take big notice and pay obeisance to them. This is why Windsor’s response was so good and simple. I hope that this a start of things to come. A couple of hang-ups during a program and the shock jocks will get the message about respect.
All parties run their own media monitoring units, and governments have them going 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, with all shock jocks recorded, with pertinent summaries available via mobile and email at a moment’s notice.
That means that shock jocks matter, big time.
*****
What years, and for which cab co-op did you drive a cab in Sydney, Fran?
Great yarn, Fran Barlow. Very Zen, indeed, in a Johnny Appleseed kind of way. Reckon a team of motivated, well drilled, grab-primed, progressive, “idiot-savant”-style radio trolls could inflict considerable Ego Pain on yer average narcissistic talkback radio demagogue. Witnessing the cowardly bullies going Vesuvian when they twig they’ve been had, would induce pleasure beyond schadenfreude. Perhaps even be politically efficacious for those responsible for formenting such acts of “ruthless Machiavellian bastardry”.
Perhaps GetUp could fund a “Get Up a Shock Jock” program. Test and fine-tune the dynamic when no real pressure is on i.e. when most voters are “switched off”, then blitzkreig Parrot & Allied during the campaign proper.
Btw, bet you opted to work off-the-bag rather than the meter and you preferred to drive manageds rather than privately owned cabs.
You know, SATP, one of the many reasons that people right across the political spectrum like Tony Windsor so much is precisely that ‘doing himself favours’ is clearly not his top priority.
SATP,
I sent him an e-mail congratulating him for hanging up on that pair of pseudo-journalist bufoons. More politicians should do it. All the time.
Keep out of this car 633
Sir Henry asked:
1978-1993, sometimes concurrently with other jobs. TCS, ABC and Northern Districts before they went out of business. The last was sentimental because it moperated in the areas of my youth — West Ryde.
EC said:
I did drive managed cabs mostly (started at Glenmore Rd Paddo) though I did have the occasional private owner. I always ran off the meter, but in those days you simply paid a fee to hire the cab anyway (plus a wash) and brought it back full, so no questions were asked.
It has been a tough week for those of us irreligious types wanting to avoid maudlin discussion of Mary McWhatsername. ABC radio, that full paid up part of the Murdochracy, had gone into All-McWhatsername-all-the time mode. Religious fervour or more Jingoism? — you decide.
Even going to FM Commercial and steeling myself for various iterations of Radio Brainless didn’t work. The virus had spread there too. Ugh! I eventually decided that turning the radio off was best. Hopefully, it will all be over soon.
I visited my sister-in-law yesterday and my 8-year-old niece asked me as the inevitable story came onto the radio what canonisation was about.
Is it one of those gun shooting things where they fire all the guns in the air? she suggested.
At that point her older brother said:
Nah, I told you, they shoot her body out of a cannon. Don’t you listen?
Ah … a boy after my own heart. Never miss the chance for a pun.
I had been listening to a replay of a show recorded at The Wheeler Centre where Philip Adams had spoken with a panel including Julian Burnside and a couple of others on the morality of death last night, and they’d discussed secular rituals and the idea of shooting some dead person out of a cannon does have appeal.
Imagine if they had Mary McWhatsername’s ashes and say, some sort of fighter aircraft. They could fly it over some socially deprived remote area and fire it out at 10,000 feet. Imagine the miracles that could result?
I suppose you wouldn’t need an aircraft though? Why not get a priest (one of the non-dodgy ones, if such could be found) to bless the ashes and dump then in the water supply. Mary McWhatsername water. Imagine the diseases we could clear up. If she can cure leukaemia, then she’s bound to be good for whatever ails you. Morbidly obese people could get jobs as supermodels.
It got me thinking though, why stop at saints? I mean, once your dead, who wouldn’t want to be shot out of an aircraft cannon at 10,000 feet? I know I would, or maybe added to the vapour trail. Perhaps after I’d been reduced to steam I could have an aircraft draw one last hammer & sickle in the sky.
The nephew liked that one too.
The husband works at a large art studio which contains a bronze foundry which constructs large works (way cool). The denizens were all celebrating when Mary McK got shot out of her cannon. An outbreak of piety amongst the latte-sipping arty set? Not quite. They had hundreds of major orders on the back burner, statues mainly, which were sitting there waiting for the go from the Vatican. It’ll be a good christmas this year! Ah ’tis a miracle!
Cannonised – Hunter S Thompson style?
Funeral
On August 20, 2005, in a private ceremony, Thompson’s ashes were fired from a cannon atop a 153-foot (47 m) tower of his own design (in the shape of a double-thumbed fist clutching a peyote button) to the tune of Norman Greenbaum’s “Spirit in the Sky” and Bob Dylan’s “Mr. Tambourine Man.”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hunter_S._Thompson
Almost but not quite did our careers in the transport industry intersect, Fran.
At one time EC was car 633 and I was 309. Furthermore, EC and I were, for a time, well known, some would say notorious, radio operators (despatchers) at radio VH2EJ De Luxe and Red cabs, which ultimately merged with Yellow cabs, Green cabs ato become Taxis Combined Services. I was there when they combined – or to be exact, De Luxe and Red took the others over. Originally it was named Combined Taxis but I pointed out that punters wouldn’t find them in the phone book, seeking to look under “T” for taxi and so it became the ungrammatical Taxis Combined Services. This was a poor choice of words, as Tone would say, in retrospect.
This was also the start of the mogulship of Reg Kermode. But that’s another, fascinating story. When Reg sacked me (for an on-air criticism of the system), I walked away from a career in the industry.
With regard to John “Pierce”. John Pearce was one of the pioneers in talkback radio in Australia. But it appears that, arguably, Mike Walsh of radio 2SM was the first talkback star. When legislation was changed to allow phone calls to be put live to air in 1967, John Brennan, then program manager at 2SM, changed the station’s format to talkback by moving Walsh from the afternoon slot where he was king of the kids, to 9am. I say arguably, because Ormsby Wilkins, a radio editorialist, got in first, a minute after midnight of that day, just so he could be the first, but Walsh’s was the first program as such I think.
2GB had a long-standing morning program “Mornings with Andrea” – the star of which was Dorothy Jenner, an actress and sometime journo and propagandist for Frank Packer.
Andrea/Jenner terrorised guests on her program, and her offsider and handler on air was John Pearce, a professional radio announcer who was an ex RAAF pilot. Pearce, who was a war and defence buff and a wingnut on defence and Vietnam War, admired Jenner because during the war she had been a war correspondent in Singapore and was captured by the Japanese. She resisted being recruited for Japanese propaganda work – the Japanese wanted to make her an Australian version of Tokyo Rose – and she was badly mistreated for refusing point-blank to co-operate.
After the war she became a prominent socialite, a women’s pages editor and got a radio program which was a social round-up that evolved into anti-left wing propaganda that consisted of ranting and abuse of guests who dared to disagree with her. Pearce was her on-air producer and straight man.
Jenner segued into talkback, a natural progression, and a medium naturally suited for her ascerbic style but she only lasted a very short time at 2GB after giving it to some prominent worthy on-air – to give her due, she was no respecter of position or station in life. She moved on to to 2CH I think and eventually disappeared. Pearce took over her program and went from strength. He knew whom to abuse and who to suck up to – he was a notorious both for his brown-nosing of important people and for rudeness to ordinary callers.
Mike Walsh went on to become an extremely successful host of Midday Show on TV, which he cunningly owned and produced and onsold to the TV station and when he left he sold it and madfe a motza after which he bought a cinema chain, naming it after his mum’s maiden name, Hayden. Mike’s wonderful monument is the wild Deco restored Hayden Orpheum at Cremorne on Sydney’s northside. Mike, I understand, lives upstairs. He would be in his 70s I’d reckon.
I guess the good folk of the Division of New England have the definitive word on that matter.
In the meantime, Windsor has clearly pinned his colours to the government mast. I wonder if the Division of New England will benefit from a bit of contra as a result.
Perhaps the good folk of the Division of New England will drive to the polling booths on much improved roads next time.
Thanks tremendously for the potted history of talkback and the old days of Sydney taxis, Sir HC. I knew hardly any of that (and managed to misspell John Pearce!)
Inspired by your piece, I looked up Dorothy “Andrea” Jenner and found this.
I note in part:
Hmmm …
Later on her social attitudes:
Apparently she died in 1985.
I recall hearing that Pearce died some years back too but there’s not a lot on him.
It seems confusion reigns supreme amongst the (cough, cough) deep thinkers of this site’s commentariat.
Out of his depth means promoted above his level of competence.
There is no correlation between votes cast for a candidate and the candidate’s ability at anything.
I struggle with the concept that so many of the commenters here are unable to discern the difference.
I knew Andrea, way back. Met her at the Wayside Chapel in King’s Cross. John Singleton used to go there, too, but I never met him.
SATP,
You don’t know Windsor. I do, not well, but I’ve had a couple of longish conversations, and a cup of coffee with him, and let me assure you, he is extremely competent. Apart from which, refusing to put up with Andrew Bolt’s bullying nonsense, IMHO, shows a very high level of political competence, not quite lacking in our other politicians. (Have you noticed they don’t let him ask questions of the politicians on Insiders any more? Ever asked yourself why? Its clearly got nothing to do with his competence as a journalist. He doesn’t have any.)
Fran & 47.
Actor William Hurt was quoted as saying he would like to die by being sucked into a jet engine and vapourised!!
Re: St Mary McWhatsername
There has to be something ironic about the celebration in the Vatican of a woman who was excommunicated from the Catholic Church for dobbing in a pedophile priest and who dedicated her life to the poor/homeless and wanted her order of nuns to subsist by begging. Now she is being feted with all the riches of the Vatican.
I suppose we HAD to have some McKillop bashing. It was inevitable.
I’m a lapsed Catholic, just to put my cards on the table, and, apart from Vinnies, have very little time for the Catholic Church. Nowadays I hover between agnosticism and atheism, depending how I feel on a particular day. (and I do admit to regula=rly calling the present Pope Benny Whatever in all my comments.) However, lets just stop a moment and consider who and what Mary McKillop was, before we take out the baseball bats.
At a time in our history when the poor and dispossed are being persecuted in this country, as they have never been since after WW2 until the advent of John Howard, we are commemorating the life of a woman Catholics will shortly be venerating as a saint. She is being celebrated for her work with the poor, the homeless, Aborigines, etc, etc, all those people who have been victims, and are still victims in our present fucked-up neo-Liberal society. Now, I don’t care if Mary McKillop was a Catholic, a nun or a saint, but I do think its more than excellent that this country is celebrating the existence of a woman who throughout her life went against many of the things many of us on LP find abhorrent in current social policies of both major parties today. Sure, I don’t expect Abbott to follow her example – he didn’t even have the courage of his convictions to go to Rome for the canonisation. He’d rather stay here, and, in Catholic parlance, be uncharitable to Julia Gillard. I don’t expect the neo-Liberal Catholic dupes in the ALP to change their spots either. But at least there is some-one up in the public eye now, in a way that can’t be comnpletely ignored, who people can point to and say to the neo=Liberals, hey, you’re going the wrong way. Now, regardless of all the religious trappings, I reckon that’s something to celebrate.
As it applies to the deep deep effluence of shock jocks swimming in right wing coprology, yes.
And Timothy Leary’s body was sent into space in a capsule.
Paul Burns @54:
On the contrary Paul, you may be surprise who I know. Most every politician, celebrity & sportsman in the country has been a guest of mine at some point.
Windsor isn’t the dope he comes accross as on TV. He is very intelligent. Intelligence does not confer competence.
Well said, Paul, and I’m with you. If people feel compelled to abuse the Catholic church on a site run by someone we all know to be Catholic, which to my mind is just bloody rude, then could we at least separate out McKillop from her church in the general opprobrium?
I note with some sadness that that there’s been little if any mention, in the current public fuss about the canonisation, of that well-known secularist, the late poet, editor, columnist and profoundly influential bookseller Max Harris of Angry Penguins/Ern Malley fame, who has been officially recognised by the the Catholic church as the layperson who has done the most to raise McKillop’s profile and recognise the importance of her work.
Oh, give me a break. He comes across on TV as a laconic, shrewd, highly intelligent bloke with better manners and more good sense than most of the people he has to deal with. I bet he can spell ‘across’, too.
PC said:
I wasn’t actually abusing the Catholic Church in this post though I have often enough in other posts, and well deserved it is too. You quote Paul who did take a swing at the Catholic Church.
I had no idea that this site was run by a catholic though to be fair, that would not have changed what I said.
My basic point was my disgust at the notion of saintliness and the maudlin brouhaha surrounding it. I am an egalitarian and I always hate it when someone is deified — even when that someone happens to be someone of whom I broadly approve.
We are all but mere human beings. Some of us make an effort to leave the people we have lived amongst the better for our presence. Some of us are outstandingly successful and kudos to them in particular. But sainthood? Provable Miracles? That’s egregious in the 21st century.
PC @ 61,
I agree with you, but I do admit to occasionally poking gentle fun at the Catholic Church on LP. For the most part, unless its something incredibly right wing they’re doing, I hope I stay away from abuse.
The thing about the elevation of Mary McKillop to St. Mary of the Cross (for all you infidels out there) is, that it makes it just a little bit harder for the elites of this country to be bastards. Not a lot harder, since some of them seem to have bastardry in their genes, especially on the right of politics, just a little bit harder, and that’s a good thing for everyone, but especially the poor, disadvantaged and underpriviledged.
And if Mary Mckillop was alive today, I bet she’d be out on the barricades about the condition of the homeless, the treatment of Aborigines, the persecution of the unemployed and single mothers, the imprisonment of refugees, the denigration of the disabled, etc, etc, as, if my memory serves me right, some of her Order still are. And when I could I’d be right there beside her.
Ah, saintmaking. Don’t let it fool you. They glamour it in the new religion but she is the new face of the sacred Mother when the moon is round. Holy magicks abound. Saint Mary, Bloody Mary. The supernatural feministas sistahs. If she don’t kill you, she could cure you. Oh do you remember but? She brought out the best in us, Mulberry boy.
http://larvatusprodeo.net/2009/12/15/saint-mary/
Fran @ 63,
The notion of saintliness is to do with the elevation of some-one who is perceived to have lived an exemplary spiritual life, or suffered martyrdom for their beliefs. Saints are people who lived the ideal life which Catholics are encouraged to emulate. On the question of miracles, sceptical as I am, they apparently do happen. The scientific and medical scrutiny the Catholic Church puts claims of miracles to is rigorous and has to be backed ap by reports from the secular medical community. There has to be no other explanation, and if there is the slightest chance of any other explanation, it is rejected as a miracle. I know this, because, out of my never-ending curiousity about the spiritual I once read a book on the process of canonisation. (from which I deduced it is extremely unlikely that a martyred left winger like Romero will ever be elevated to sainthood, even if he does have miracles credited to his intercession.)
So, you see, it has nothing to do with the socialist egalitarianism we both share. And, in any case, the Catholic Church is a true 21st century absolutist elective monarchy, organised conciliarly in political terms, (I think I’ve got that right), so it has to be assessed in that light, by what it is, not by what it is not.
btw, Catholics and ex-Catholics are always having a go at the Catholic Church, if only because it hardly ever fails to disappoint us. Some of us do it with good humour, and some of us with great bitterness. It depends on what our personal experiences with the Church have been. Mine, apart from the excruciating boredom of going to most Catholic services, have mostly been good, (I’ve been lectured by one or two priests for my cavalier observance of both the Ten Commandments and the Eight Church Commandments in the days when I still had a smidgin of belief) so I’m rarely savagely anti-Catholic, except for political, not religious reasons, if only because I believe both freedom of religion for those who believe and freedom from religion for those who do not is one of the hallmarks of a modern democracy.
“.. people feel compelled to abuse the Catholic church..”
My earlier comment was about (my perception of) the irony of the situation, certainly not dissing Mother Mary MacKillop or her work… and not meant to be offensive.
In Rome, Cardinal Pell sits in the front row. At home, he refuses to give the body and blood of Christ to people wearing rainbow sashes when attempting to take communion… The ‘Church’ refuses to properly address the history of child abuse by priests…. Yes, all matters that could be discussed at another time…. but it is worth to keep in mind the reality of the situation as the festivities take place. History shows Mother Mary had many problems with the ‘Church” and its hierarchy herself anyway.
Yes, lets celebrate St Mary of the Cross (or just the woman Mary Helen MacKillop) and her life and work and try to emulate – each in our own way – the good she did for others.
But we’re not talking about “a” candidate. And we’re not talking about ability at “anything”. We’re talking about Tony Windsor, who wrested a seat that had been National for decades, and we’re talking about his ability to chair an authority that was set up by the Howard government to find out how to ensure the continued viability of the Murray-Darling basin as a riverine system.
And it was you who asserted he is ‘out of his depth’ on the strength of a single farcical interview on RWDB radio, so it’s no use you trying to weasel your way out of your original asinine assertion by appealing to some anodyne generalisation — we’re talking about a very specific individual in a very specific circumstance, and you know it.
Fair enough, I struggle with the concept that you can so blithely dismiss the twin achievements of winning (and holding) the Division of New England from the National party for nigh-on ten years, and then head up Howard’s MDB Authority, but maybe if you’d like to take five minutes out from all your tub-thumping and haughty paeans to your own intellectual superiority (OMG, your endless, tedious, repetitious insistence that we’re a bunch of dumbshits, for gawd’s sake get over yourself, will you?) , you could show us all how it’s done, hmmm?
Jesus, you’re a savage woman, Dr Cat. Remind me to never get on your bad side.
I’m just happy that we, who get cross about all sorts of things, now have our very own patron saint. Thanks for the info, Paul.
We’ll never find that out Cat, as Mr. Windsor doesn’t use computers, thus is not susceptible to sticking keyboards.
Mercurius @68. You are waaay wide of the mark. The size of Tony Windsor’s vote is irrelevant to his level of competence. My statement would apply even if he were unelected.
That Tony Windsor is out of his depth has been quite obvious to all since the most recent federal election.
His free pass on this site is more to do with which party he backed than anything else. Had he put Tony Abbott into govt, we would be reading in comments here about what a dumb backward rural hayseed is Tony Windsor.
He got 61% of the primary vote? Now that his electorate has been alerted to what they have been voting for all these years, if he were to stand again, those numerals will be reversed.
Focus, Mercurius, Focus!! I have made no comment on Tony Windsor’s winning or holding of the seat. It is irrelevant to this thread. However from the tone & context of your sentence it would seem you are more likely than I to be unaware of the dynamics of his winning & retention of the seat.
Self awareness isn’t something I expect much of from my fellow commenters here. Certainly plenty are nowhere near as informed or aware as they perceive themselves to be. Or if you like: One may be erudite on a topice, whilst simultaneously having little to no grasp of that topic.
Example:
as a description of just about anybody with a job and living west of a line between Moree & Mildura.
joe2 @ 70,
That she is. More so if we get cross about all sorts of things and then go and do something to change what we get cross about.
I don’t know exactly what she is going to be the patron saint of. Guess I’ll find out tonight when I watch Compass, which I wasn’t going to do out of some sort of irreligious protest, but now that I’ve got thinking about her, curiosity has get the better of me.
Maybe of Australia? (We already have two, Our Lady Help of Christians and Francis Xavier. Remember R. F. X. Connor?)Maybe more. I’m some thirty or more years out of date with Church teachings, apart from the bit of reading I do now and then. And reading and absorbing Hans Kung’s On Christianity probably made me some kind of heretic. (Bloody big book, too.) When I left they were still saying the Latin Mass, which has now become a symbol of Catholic conservatism, apparently. And I gather you can now eat meat on Fridays, except Good Friday, so I won’t be damned for pinching cooked sausages from my stepmother’s fridge on a Friday and squaffing them when I was fifteen. (stealing them was a venial sin. Was only sausages. OTOH, if I’d got into the roast beef …
I also know they abolished the Index of Forbidden Books. So I won’t go to hell for reading Joyce, Marx and Voltaire.
[Note to self: Stop this, Burnsey.]
From the Weekly Times:
Is Andrew Pursehouse the only irrigation farmer who thinks that Tony Windsor “has a good grasp on the water problem”?
Katz @ 73,
No. Probably most of the people around Moree and thereabouts. Katz. Windsor has been talking to, and most importantly, listening to them for years. SATP may be unaware that Windsor has been representing irrigators for years.
Dr Cat @ 61. One of the guests on RN’s Australia Talks last Wednesday brought up Max Harris’ championing of McKillop’s work.
I must admit I’d forgotten Harris’ efforts. And as you point out, mention of them has been notably absent from the current media narrative. But then Harris was 1) a church outsider/pariah and 2) a cultural figure from a provincial town – an influential one perhaps, but his exclusion from the emerging official McKillop story suggests–I think–another broader story about about social & cultural power and influence.
No doubt there is more than one canonised person who hid some very serious sins from the most minute of scrutinies.
Regrettably, therefore, those purported saints are, in parliamentary parlance, serving in “Another Place”.
Accordingly, prayers addressed to those intercessors find themselves in the celestial dead letter office.
Does that glum fact undercut the power of those particular prayers?
SATP @ 71,
Trouble is, Katz, since Sinclair left the only people running for New England from the Nats have been complete boofheads. Believe me, I know two of them. Windsor won, first because he had a good record as the state member for Northern Tablelands, secondly because, regardless of one’s politics, right, left or centre, he has been an excellent local member, thirdly, because the Nat candidates were never up to the job, and fourthly, because people resented the shabby way the Howard Government treated him. And the electorate haven’t forgotten that. In fact, they even resented it. he will win again, because, if my impression is right, and I do live in his electorate, they see Opposition attacks on Windsor as a personal attack upon them. Also, most of the time, if you bother to check his voting record, he votes with the Coalition far more often than he does with Labor. I don’t think that will change, unless its a vote of no confidence or a vote on money bills. Nor do I think the Libs will be savvy enough to stop attacking him. He’ll get back in, no worries. The Nats in New England are now so incompetent, people don’t want to go through that any more.
Ooops. That last comment of mine was for SATP, not Katz.
Yep, absolutely.
Only when riled, DI(nr). Only when riled.
Katz @ 77,
Well they did canonise the founder of Opus Dei.
Its an interesting question; probably some of the medievals shouldn’t have been canonised; one or two of the earliest monks were made saints for having lurid sexual fantasies. Canonisation in those days frequently was a pressure from below thing (Becket, who also was a political saintr, IMO) or in Rennaissance times, purely political (Edmund Campion, various Jesuit martyrs tortured and killed by Walsingham.) But then again the standards and morality of the Rennaissance Church and the post Counter-Reformation Church were vastly different.
In the 20th Century? No doubt there are political considerations surrounding every canonisation. The most obvious one with Mary McKillop is, we don’t have a saint and its time we got one. There are 3 more in the pipeline, Caroline Chisolm, and two others whose names I’ve only heard once and can’t remember.
But, generally, they’re probably a lot more careful nowadays.
More grist for The Book perhaps, PC? Or would that be straying too far from your brief?
http://sohowww.nascom.nasa.gov/data/realtime/eit_171/512/
You read it here first, folks
FA @ 81,
Far too far. Most of my people are 18C Enlightenment English or American Protestants. In any case, I don’t think any of them were saintly material. More the opposite. (I actually should be doing a close reading of a biography of Governor John Hunter right now, but Mary McKillop has made me waste the day on the computer.)
I have long had an interest in Medieval and Tudor history, but in the case of the former, didn’t have the language skills to specialise. And it would have taken too long to acquire them in my 30s. I’ve also long had an interest in the history of the Catholic Church, both here (arising out of my Catholic background and my interest in Labor history) and in England (mainly from my 18C studies, but also from my family background.) I suspect if I traced it back far enough, I’d come across ancestors involved in the Pilgrimage of Grace.
Katz @ 82,
So why hasn’t the sun turned blue in the southern hemisphere?
FA @ 81,
Or was that to PC. If so, sincere apologies to you both.
Sunspot 1112. A biggie.
I thought it was ironic, if not cynically exploitative, that the Vatican ceremonies associated with the canonisation of Mary McKillop featured indigenous performers, including the wondrous William Barton.
Nicolas Rothwell made the point recently that Christianity’s encounter with the Australian landscape has been shallow. And for the most part, to this day, Christianity has failed to develop a spiritual sensibility or relationship to the land, or country, that pays any tribute whatsoever, or shows an iota of understanding of indigenous history and culture. And I would suggest this fact alone explains a lot about why so many non-indigenous Australians think and feel all forms of Christianity are spiritually deficient.
http://www.abc.net.au/rn/encounter/stories/2010/3017762.htm
Katz,
No wonder the weather has been weird. Looks like we could be in for a hell of a time. And my TV was playing up last night too. I thought it was cars from other tenants driving up and down my driveway coming/leaving home intefering with the signal.
Sunspots!
Yep, Paul, I think that one was for me. TFA, my brief (unlike Paul’s) is basically to do whatever I want, and yes I do indeed plan to mention the Harris/McKillop connection. Harris gets tucked into a section that’s mainly about Dunstan, to whom he habitually referred in print as ‘Don Baby (glitter, glitter)’.
Actually deficient is too mild a descriptor. I would say spiritually “bereft”.
Paul Burns – yes, my question was directed to PC. No apology necessary.
Rather, my apologies for forgetting how many of the regulars here are engaged in writing The Book, & for spawning the consequent confusion….
PC,
Tell me more! (If you want to talk about it on teh Internet.) (Though I’m going off-line soon, so may not be able to reply till tomorrow.
No worries, TFA. My confusion.
I like that. Seems to me that although collectively we are all remembering the Dunstan era with nostalgia, that recollection is becoming lopsided and incomplete. Its all a bit too pink shorts, safari suits and al fresco eating, so a revisiting of the other characters and aspects of the period is certainly due.
But my (poorly-phrased) question was more about the circumstances of power and influence that lead to someone like Harris becoming retrospectively invisible, and about whether those cultural processes are in your opinion working at local or national levels. Or both.
“Sunspot 1112. A biggie.”
More here….wear sunglasses!
Philomena @86
Aboriginal people have as much right to choose or discard what ever religion they choose. To presume that they are being exploited by the Vatican infers that you don’t think they have the agency to chose to participate on their own terms….is that the case?
Clearly you haven’t spent much time in indigenous communities. Have you even heard of the The Coming of the Light Festival that is an integral part of the TSI contemporary cultural practice?
I’m on the record as wanting inter alia to put a strong and ubquitous cost on CO2 emissions. I stand by that, but in keeping with thinking outside the box …
I was listening to some free market guy talking on that right wing ABC Counterpoint show that happens on Mondays.
One thing amongst the usual blather caught my ear. He made the point that during the 1950s “government regulation in the market” involved setting a maximum price on gas. The result of this, free market guy said was that gas became uneconomic to supply with the result that coal came to dominate the market, to the detriment we now know, of CO2 emissions.
At that point an amusing idea occurred to me. On that logic, one could shut down coal fired power stations not by putting a price on CO2 but on doing something nearly the opposite: Denying the coal miners the right to sell their coal in Australia for more than a figure representing the world market price less the community cost of coal. You’d have to ensure structural separation and deny generators the right to import cheaper coal from outside Australia of course, but presumably, if you did this, those digging up coal would want to sell as little of it as they could locally. Pretty soon, the coal plants would become unviable and would have to switch to gas.
Nobody could say that the government had imposed a GBNT. Instead, the government would be doing the opposite.
It probably wouldn’t work for some reason I’ve overlooked, but as a whimsical idea, I rather like it and it would give the opposition a whole new problem with running a populist campaign against it.
If Emperor Palpatine really wanted to honour Mary MacKillop, he should allow women to become priestesses. The presence of priestesses would go a long way towards eliminating paedophilia within the church.
Mate, I live in his electorate. And let me tell you, the groundswell of outrage, condemnation and opposition to Tony Windsor that has emerged in this area since the election is…all in your mind.
SC, I know that some Aboriginal people have incorporated Western religious rituals and beliefs into their lives and culture.How could they avoid doing so?
That was not my point. My point is that Christianity has not done so likewise to any meaningfully reciprocal degree.
And I was specifically referring in my comment to the repercussions of this failure among non-indigenous Australians whose lack of connection to Christianity, despite being educated in that tradition, flows to a large part from this: Christianity’s marked lack of spiritual connection to or understanding of country or its peoples.
Philomena – have you read David Tacey’s ReEnchantment?
I think you would find it interesting.
Actually there is a whole body of work in this area that i’m sure would be worth digging through.
I’ll post some links if you are interested.
Silkworm: I wholehearted agree with your first premise, not sure about the second.
Paul, mine is the Adelaide book in the series on Australian capital cities that NewSouthBooks are doing — Hobart, Brisbane and, published just last week, Delia Falconer’s Sydney are the ones out so far. You might have seen them — smallish hardbacks with monochrome covers.
TFA — yep, I got what you meant, and meant to suggest that the issue of Harris and McKillop will be raised with some passing questioning of why he seems to be being left out of the current saintly narrative, but a good discussion of that more abstract and abstruse matter of power, influence and cultural processes would need far more research than the publishers have either given me time for or, I think, want. (And that particular line of thought is more about the absence/erasure of Adelaide than its presence, anyway.) My brief is more towards ‘a good read’ for the general reader than abstract analysis.
Re Dunstan, I’m sorry to say that pink shorts, safari suits and al fresco eating are all also getting a run, if only to discuss why they endure as points of memory.
Without wanting to prolong the argument with SATP, I am having trouble with his semantics.
When challenged by Paul, he admitted that Windsor is intelligent but that didn’t make him competent. I don’t think it does per se, but on the other hand transforming a blue ribbon National Party seat into a safe independent seat suggests some level of competence. Steve doesn’t seem to concede that this political success equates to competence.
What does he think competence is?
Btw, for all its problems, the Rudd Govt’s insulation plan appears to have worked on reducing emissions: http://www.theage.com.au/national/insulation-program-delivers-on-energy-savings-20101016-16odu.html
And these are Victorian figures – where the uptake was lowest.
Sublime Cowgirl – the last I read of Tacey was “Edge of the Sacred” which I loved. Thanks for the update, and any other relevant links, yes please.
Have you read South of my days : a biography of Judith Wright by Veronica Brady?
Thanks Dr Cat, the Adelaide book is sounding very interesting. I’m looking forward to reading it in due course. And perhaps it will go some way towards countering that erasure you speak of.
As for that big abstruse & abstract question, I do hope that someday it receives close analysis, if only to satisfy my own desire to understand.
…and a certain winemaker’s pink Rolls Royce?
This morning in Adelaide, the face of Mary MacKillop appeared in a bowl of dog food. And people say miracles don’t occur any more.
Funny, just recently found out that Judith Wright’s father, Phillip A. Wright, in his “Memories of a Bushwhacker” claims that his real name should be MacGregor, not Wright. He explains that MacGregors were outlawed in Scotland after the Battle of Culloden Moor and his ancestors changed their name to Wright once they fled to Cornwall and Nova Scotia and Australia.
Lefty E @ 103 – thats very good to see – I was one of those a bit skeptical about how much energy we’d really see due to behavioural changes – eg people with insulated homes keeping their houses warmer. The energy use of upcoming summer will be interesting to see if there is a plateau there from less a/c use.
I haven’t had time to read the auditor general’s report into the insulation problems, but I haven’t seen a positive news report about it anywhere – has anyone here had time to read it to see if it confirms any of the reports sites like Possum’s blog had which were quite positive about the scheme?
As a pupil at a Sisters of St.Joseph School at Ballan Vic. for about three years,I will say this.All those who didn’t go to such schools as Catholics are trumpeting their Catholicism rather than Mary Mac. with this Sainthood,unless they have strongly claimed a miracle in her name.That is few Catholics,and I am not ashamed to say,today, wasn’t like being taught by the Nuns.Latin Masses were going out,and replaced by something today,that boasts materialism whilst claiming spirit in the trials and tribulations of a good woman subjected to the worst treatment an Australian woman of her time could expect from those who claim closeness to God.The point of Sainthood,I think,may have been lost on many Catholics today.It isn’t a sports event. And I read with interest what Steve at his Bloody Pub had to say about Windsor.Blessed as I am not,by two Royal names Philip and Andrew,I unfortunately see him in that type of stratosphere.Which isn’t pleasant,but more to the point I think is this.At Ballan I was taught that rice can grow in cotton floss in the dark,and in a cupboard.The Sister who was showing us,by this experiment rice didn’t need sunlight to grow,shows how practically minded they were in presenting one of the key challenges now of this century.That is the problems of feeding people with limited resources including Sunlight.So I hope Windsor can see,another way of perhaps ensuring rice growing proceeding anew,if water and sunlight bedevil us as shortages. Perhaps Steve could dry experimenting with beer and cotton floss stuff as growth medium for other vegetables,spices,seeds cereals.
Re Andrew Bolt and Tony Windsor – if you want more hilarity, check out Bolt’s fisking of his phone call to Windsor on his blog (you know where to find it). Windsor really pissed him off and Andy is determined to make him pay.
Ah yes, Dr Cat, and are you going to finally offer an eye-witness account, with names, of a certain drowning of a certain academic in a particular river? We’ve all heard the rumours, time for names and all out in the open I trust.
Hmm, a good by line for me.
“Lurking troll spots reference to Harris (father and daughter, but even these have or had more ethics than the Devines, say) and the Advertiser”.
What a hollowed out caricature of what it once was, that newspaper. I understand Salmonella, Lloydie and the few other survivors there from the paper’s heyday are all carefully under lock and key in the “culture” section, well out of range of any word processors that could do much damage.
110, it’s most likely that three coppers were responsible for Duncan’s death. Von Einem was about, as you’d expect; it was his “patch” and he even participated as a witness. But no “family” was responsible for the undoing of Dr.Duncan, that I can ascertain.
Altho, I’ll stand correction on this, if others are more up to date.
pay #43 on Windsor’s character. My sentiments, exactly (so far).
Helen @48, that’s very droll.
Interesting snippet from the Australian Dictionary of Biography, published in 1996:
Is this report still secret?
If indeed this report did not sufficiently implicate any person or persons, what prevented its publication?
What do you know!
Drift over here for a geck and my new friend SL actualises.
Hi SL!
Since this a more relaxed and informal thread, with much space devoted to the Murdoch press already, I can mention Sauer Thompson’s take on them, including the first bad Bill Leak cartoon I’ve seen (gun at back of head?), at “Public Opinion”.
Also just out in the last hour, Quiggin presents Stutchbury’s current tendentious tabloidics, defending the QLD privatisation not for economic but ultimately political motives involving union-bashing and offers his considered thoughts on these.
Katz I’m almost certain the report is still secret. If I remember correctly, the case has been periodically reviewed but to date charges have not eventuated.
But if the report was made public, it would be fascinating to compare the quality of evidence it contains against other historic cases where charges have been laid.
Unfortunately, the Parrot also spews his bile in country SA. He and the rest of the RWDB shock jocks are an excellent argument for abortion on demand!
TFA, Katz, the thing has had a lid tightly clamped on it for over thirty years. Too many people from the nice side of town involved.
I’ll wager some of the journos around town know where the bodies are buried- literally- but it looks like Von Einem will take his furtive and strange secrets to the grave with him- he won’t open up on what happened despite the releif and closure it would bring to some folk still living, who have suffered as a consequence of what these elite gentlemen were really about, as to their victims.
An atheist’s perspective on the miracles of Mary MacKillop -
Paul W, its obvious that von Einem did not work alone, but I really don’t buy The Family stuff. Always seemed to me to be that nasty poison pen stuff that bubbles to the surface from time to time.
Look at the targets (and let’s not give this stuff more air by naming names here): an exceptionally bright working class boy who, by virtue of merit, makes it to the pinnacle of a profession that is the domain of the powerful; a handsome charismatic man of good breeding who casts his lot with the working classes and migrants of non-English speaking backgrounds… There’s a pattern and a warning: step above your station, or betray your class, and be the target of the most vile whispering campaign imaginable.
Friends of mine knew one of the alleged members of the alleged Family over many many years. I met him myself once or twice: a lovely generous old man by my memory. The accusations are simply not credible: they deserve to be treated as the sort of gossip that should never be repeated.
TFA, as you mentioned, the truth such as is known, concerning these events, is inadequate in the absence of the report and any clarifying statement from von Einem himself ( yes, I know, maybe he can’t add anything because there is nothing to add ).
I actually largely agree with your hypothesis, they loathed Dunstan’s abilty to flick them off with just a touch of that devastating wit and in the end, even he was hunted down, so to speak. Trying to sift through all the chaff for the truth, it seems there was a larger cell of playboys just in it for the sleaze. But closer in, were hard core disciples, only a few. These were the problem, but others less malicious were tied into it, quite true, by others with fish of their own to fry.
Trust Silkworm to present us this offering!
Funny and pointed and boy, is the comments box working overtime there, in response.
Like most here I’ve get a bit of time for McKillop.I go with the idea that she is a part of h(er)istory. To dig around the likes of McKillop, Louisa Lawson, Vida Goldstein and Catherine Helen Spence, for example, is to really add pertinent pieces of what becomes a more complete and properly coloured Australian, rather than just male, history.
They tenaciously dealt with serious day to day realities, against indifference at best; active obfuscation at worst.
They, as much as any one, are responsible for the (relatively) healthy society we live in today.
Am not Catholic, or even religious, and note also that the Josephites have had a bad press over recent times. But on balance I like the “true blue” and think there is enough of substance in her story for her life to be celebrated as an activist, humanitarian, thinker, reformer and battler who shifted enough real allegorical mountains to be respected and honoured by athiests and religious alike, even without the more mystical stuff.
Good on you Mary, hope you are sleeping well, as you should, with a relatively clear conscience. You seem pretty “Aussie”, to me and most of all because of your alleged faults.
Anyone who get themselves excommunicated from the catholic church, cant be too bad, anyway. Ok, so its a shrewd move from the church, to come up with someone Australians could actually respect, like and even identify with, but thats a differnt angle.
If she’s upstairs, maybe she’ll run into all those pastoral workers shot up in Latin America in the eighties, with their “liberation theology”, since disowned by the last two popes. The last catholic to be booted out here incidentally, is the Jesuit thinker Paul Collins, an individual who ought to be a cardinal in place of the one there at the moment.
Loved the look on the faces of Paul Kelly & Piers Akerman on Australian Agenda today when putting a few questions to guest David Suzuki. Kelly didn’t know what to do with Suzuki in full flight and Piers tried to take it off track with his trademark ridiculous assertions but glum faced gave up in the end. I don’t think he will be a guest on that show again.
Got a link Jacques?
PC @ 101,
I was looking at the Sydney and Hobart series of those books the other day in the bookshop and almost bought them but opted for a few DVDs instead. I will buy your Adelaide one when it comes out.
Thanks for info.
Fran #125, here’s the link.
Thanks Paul, that was most interesting. The panel looked very glum. They desperately needed a loose Bolt to interrupt the nifty Suzuki.
Casey #65, perhaps the real Mary McKillop is revealed here.
For those who have never read Edge of the Sacred mentioned by sublime cowgirl – there is a wonderful story in there about how as a child in Alice he witnessed the local priest, after have a revelation, doing a congo line of song and dance in praise of the lord with some local aborginals. Naked. He got arrested and put in a mental asylum.
On the other hand, I can’t remember which commentator said this Pope would be a real catholic – but they used the example of Pope JP2 wearing a rastafarian hat at an aboriginal christian ceremony as something the current Pope would never tolerate or condone.
Any chance we might be able to have a Proposition 20 thread?
Yes indeed Paul N. The sacred feminine.
This is a worry:
http://www.smh.com.au/world/multiculturalism-in-germany-has-failed-says-chancellor-20101017-16p7h.html#poll
Worth a thread on its own i reckon Casey. I was just reading European commentary around this one and this is a story that ain’t going away.
Heh Joe2 “…..needed a loose Bolt to interrupt the nifty Suzuki.” More than nifty, brilliant! Who could argue with the kind of stark realities listed by Takayoshi?
Thanks for the link Paul.
I have a lot of time for Suzuki but his stuff on population in that interview was all over the place. Parts of it were sound — female empowerment? — absolutely. But really, Australia doesn’t have a population problem. Certainly not yet.
FB, you’ve come to a conclusion I find a little adventurous.
“Australia does not have a population problem yet”?
apart from asking, by whose definition, I’d add the following:
The world does, have big problems in primary resource depletion with like water, soil and air as well as the problem of global warming. We are part of it thru globalisation. We don’t have a (severe enough or relative) problem here yet, altho the mess Sydney and so forth are already in hardly rates loud cheers from those inhabiting those environs. This is because history has us living high off the hog, partly thru western colonialism and imperialism.
But as you well know, given your own considerable inputs into enviro debates here and eleswhere, the wastage occurring in our system is profligate, often irreversible and likely to produce vast problems later on, which we just begin to perceive in our own era. Others will have to live with our mistakes, greed, profiligacy and failure to act on scientific evidence with responses governed by principle.
Paul Walters said:
Well mine, in tghe first instance. We have a lot of space to house, feed, water and clothe people, so no, there is not problem. We do waste a lot of space doing that now, but that is a different problem.
You speak of depletion, but how much less water does the Earth have than it did 4.4 billion years ago? (Hint: it’s almost exactly the same).
Yes there is a greater problem with topsoil but again, this is a problem mainly of inefficient usage and wasteful consumption patterns.
ok, glad to know is all is unky dory, in this post= cornucopian age.
And you thought Snakes on a Plane was far fetched?!
Croc on a plane
Life imitates art …
[just noticed the comments were closed, so will pop this here instead if that's ok]
Brian, thanks for the book suggestion. I purchased a cheap copy on eBay yesterday. And for unpacking a bit where Mark was heading later in the post – I admit it sailed me by completely the first few times I read it. As with all Mark’s posts, it was thoughtful and challenging, and I find I eventually learn a lot (or at least hopefully a little).
Fran @ 387,
“Common sense doesn’t really help us unpick this stuff. Carefully designed analysis does that.”
Of course not. Common sense may be misinformed, prejudiced, or just plain wrong, which is why (as Brian noted) it needs to be tempered and shaped over time by reason and ethics and the rest.
Nevertheless…
“I would find it better to avoid the term altogether given its currency.”
You’ll have to find another term to replace it with then – because it’s the basis why, for instance, the majority of people support action on climate change, an NBN network, and more money spent on public health and education. These policies, or any you might want people to vote in favour of *at the very time they vote* simply couldn’t happen without common sense – though it’s more than possible for them to not happen despite it.
Neglecting common sense has been argued was a downfall of the Rudd leadership – with both Abbott and Gillard at different stages claiming a version of it as what they’d offer a return towards.
I’d add that any one of these qualities (or the improvement of any of these qualities) neglected in favour of the others represents an ideological vacuum waiting to be filled.
Hence, the policy/political debacles/exploits of Big Australia, boat people and insulation.
Nick, speaking of the concept of common sense, quoted me:
It’s also the slogan used by those who oppose such proposals. For them, common sense demands that government not obstruct business, dictate people’s carbon choices, not do more than other states on mitigation, cut spending, allow personal responsibility in health etc …Common sense as currently used is really just an empty slogan pretending it refers to things beyond feasible examination.
I sometimes use the term good sense or rational public policy depending on the context.
On the contrary, I’d argue just the opposite. Everything rudd did was the product of common sense. It was common sense to negotiate with the Liberals over the CPRS because only the Liberals could pass the bill and it would probably wedge them and because the business folk would be reassured that it wouldf all be innocuous. It was “common sense” to be poll driven and ape Peter Beattie in apologising for the insulation scheme’s alleged flaws and to say “we will get a whacking in the polls” because supposedly, such things had worked in the past. It was common sense to appear to consult the mining thugs over the RSPT because they could hurt the ALP in the coming election and to pander to bigots over asylum seekers who thought we’d be flooded with refugees if Rudd didn’t stand tall on “border security”.
In the end, all this “common sense” policy did was to make look weak and vacuous and allowed him to be reduced to a talking head and encouraged every nutbag who could get in front of a camera to pretend there were waves of righteous opposition to the ALP.
What Rudd lacked was not “common sense” but sound analysis and a capacity to explain what he was doing and why he was doing it to people who were a fair chance of being persuaded to support it.
Much the same could be said of Obama right now. His use of “common sense” will probably see his party roughed up badly at the mid-terms by people who are also using the same “common sense”. For him, it would be far better if this sense were a lot less common.
It’s all very well to say that one of these things ought not to be separated from the other, but the term is so inevitably bound up in the usages of the dominant culture that one can scarcely use it without cringing and beginning to distinguish. Paraphrasing Lenin, it is time to discard the dirty shirt, and put on a new one.
Have to rush now to go out…
But, just briefly, vale Ari Up.
That sucks.