Author Archive for Kim

Would do anything for re-election

Published
by
Kim
16 hours, 49 minutes ago
in Asshattery and Budget 2008
. 37 Comments

If I were Steve Fielding, I’d vote for every government bill that comes before the Senate, because I’d be scared witless of a double dissolution. No one’s gonna preference you this time round, dude. And all the silly stunts in the world won’t save you.

Anyway, I’d have thought that generally Family First would oppose going topless in public.

By the way, Malcolm Turnbull has denied that it’s opposition policy to call for an increase in the aged pension. I guess that they’ll just have to drown their sorrows in alcopops, while Brendan parks his Tarago next to their gutters at 3am and comes in to console these “everyday Australians”.

Seriously, though, isn’t anyone able to comprehend that the Henry Inquiry will probably recommend a change to indexation of pensions, which will do far more to provide a decent standard of living for retired and older citizens than some John Howard one off cheque in the mail for a few hundred bucks? Continue reading ‘Would do anything for re-election’

Lisa Bufano

Published
by
Kim
1 day, 5 hours ago
in Culture, Disability, Feminism and Video
. 5 Comments

I’ve been wanting for ages to find a pretext for posting this, but I can’t, so I’m giving up and just posting it. Hey, it’s Friday night! Check out the amazing dance work of Lisa Bufano, a quadruple amputee who lost all her fingers and had a bilateral below knee amputation at age 21 due to toxic shock. I’ve been following her work as an artist - including her amazing dolls and her various performance art intertubes endeavours - for quite a few years now. It’s fabulous to see her now coming into her own as a recognised and celebrated dancer. You can read an article about Lisa at Girlistic Magazine’s Feminism and Fashion issue (scroll down through the pdf to page 24) - which looks at the feminist politics of her work - and you can have a look at her more recent dance work via vodcasts downloadable from her website.

Originally focused on animation and doll making as a means to explore her body, in 2005 she turned the tables and made her body the focus of her creative expression, exploring dance and performance.

Image courtesy of Strange Dolls.

She and I share a leg. In a way!

Continue reading ‘Lisa Bufano’

Class and Big Brother 2008

Published
by
Kim
2 days, 2 hours ago
in Astroturf, Big Brother 2008, Blogging, Consumerism, Culture, Politics, Relationships, Sociology, Television and Women
. 93 Comments

You can’t talk about Big Brother without talking about class, it seems. Over at Troppo, Ken Parish, who should be familiar with the BB concept of the grenade lob, lobs one in comments:

Far from being careful, I’ll throw petrol on the fire. I think the phenomenon of people who should have more taste and intelligence professing to like BB is just a pretentious affectation, like ending a post with “just sayin’”. Then again, all these shows (including Ladettes to Ladies and the assorted Gordon Ramsey shows) have a certain macabre fascination, sort of like not being able to resist looking at a particularly gruesome car smash as you drive past.

The really vexing thing is that these shows are also a calculated cost-saving gambit by the free-to-air channels. It doesn’t cost all that much to make them because they don’t have to pay the actors. A truly principled lefty would boycott them (although, as Jen pointed out last night, you can make a similar point about the employment effects of blogging on professional journalists).

I don’t know about the logic of boycotting tv shows for political reasons - I suspect it’s only ever invoked in this sort of context, and one could counter with the fact that a lot of writers and other “creatives” get employed by these mega shows (which are actually far more expensive to produce, but also more lucrative, than a lot of the cut-price free to air drama that’s around). And Corey Delaney is Worth(ington) 10 grand a show apparently. Though there’d be an interesting angle in thinking about how “creatives”, anyway, are self-exploiting - freed of career paths, permanent employment, and all those other things that go with not being a contract for hire and an entrepreneurial micro-business. And the lack of reflexivity that comes with seeing one’s endeavours as a big quest for that one big break has uncanny parallels with the show’s refusal of any solidarity to its Housemates. But, whatever, Ken probably thinks I’m displaying an “affectation” - while I think that the BB hatin’ *and actually I don’t enjoy this season, I just find it interesting* is a classic “that’s for the Bogans” Distinction. Proper people, of course, go to the theatre, dahling.

In a way, though, it was ironic that John Howard was a BB hater, because the Inmates couldn’t be more aspirational and individualistic. Some might even drive utes, and you can bet they’re big alcopop drinkers. I’m sure Brendan probably feels their pain. (And I’m sure that he’d probably jump at the chance to be an intruder. Might be useful training for all those frontbench wars.) But class is at issue within the House too, as another excellent post from Eye on Big Brother shows. Continue reading ‘Class and Big Brother 2008′

Talking heads

Published
by
Kim
2 days, 4 hours ago
in Budget 2008 and Video
. 22 Comments

This video is offered as a response to Brendan Nelson’s budget reply speech. Update: Nelson transcript here.

Burma: a case for humanitarian intervention?

Published
by
Kim
2 days, 4 hours ago
in Developing world, Disasters and International
. 34 Comments

Surely the bedrock responsibility of any state is to protect its citizens in the case of natural disaster. The bungling and incompetence shown in New Orleans was the lever for Bush’s free fall in the opinion polls. Far graver is the appalling regime in Burma, which has never shown any interest in doing so, and which held an absurd constitutional referendum to entrench itself in power and ban Aung San Suu Kyi from ever holding office even as many of its citizens were being devastated and killed by Cyclone Nargis and its aftermath. Its military is more interested in oppressing ethnic minorities than in disaster relief, and attempts at aid are failing because of the regime’s strict insistence on its border security and sovereignty.

Interestingly, there have been calls for humanitarian intervention from French foreign minister Bernard Kouchner, from dissident Burmese media and Gareth Evans. The legal basis for such calls is disputed, although it may have legitimacy from the “Responsibility to Protect” doctrine adopted by the UN in 2005. [The case for the invocation of this doctrine is discussed here.] But, while lip service is being paid to their own responsibility by the “international community”, will anything happen?

Offending national sovereignty is apparently fine when it involves oil, opium, Islam or a macho yearning to boast “regime change”. It is not to be contemplated when it is just a matter of saving hundreds of thousands of lives.

So how about that credit crunch?

Published
by
Kim
3 days, 16 hours ago
in Economics, Markets, Media and Sociology
. 85 Comments

Terms like “securitisation”, “derivatives”, “longitudinal diversification” and “dynamic hedging” would make most of our eyes glaze over, I suspect. Yet all this arcana is now having an impact on us - vie the subprime mortgage crisis and the shock waves it’s set off in the world economy. There are at least two factors which mitigate against discussion and examination of causes and solutions - the arcane nature of the math and language used by the finance wonks, and the reactive press coverage - attuned more to reporting on what pollies and regulators are saying or doing than assessing causes and debating the way forward. So I’d thoroughly recommend taking the time to read author and sociologist Robin Blackburn’s article The Subprime Crisis. It took me about half an hour to read, but I think it was time well spent, as Blackburn takes great care to demystify the nature and history of the crisis, and thus provides a basis for thinking about its implications which is far better than skimming spin laden or impenetrably written articles.

Continue reading ‘So how about that credit crunch?’

America NBC News decides

Published
by
Kim
4 days, 2 hours ago
in American election 2008 and Media
. 5 Comments

John Amato at Crooks & Liars has a really fantastic post about the media narrative on Hillary - first they crack the puzzle on how to anoint Obama as the presumptive nominee:

The media have figured out how to end the Democratic race. Declaring it over doesn’t work. Urging Hillary Clinton to drop out doesn’t work. Putting Barack Obama on the cover of Time as the nominee doesn’t work.

What does work–ah, this is fiendishly clever–is to simply ignore the race. Many journalists are just moving on. What will become a tsunami of speculation about whom Obama will pick as his running mate is already under way. That’s not to say the MSM isn’t reporting on Hillary’s campaign stops, her $6-million loan to her struggling operation, the trickle of superdelegates toward Obama and similar developments. But we are now treating Obama as The Man.

Continue reading ‘America NBC News decides’

Big Brother eats its own (princess): a cautionary tale of the S word

Published
by
Kim
5 days, 2 hours ago
in Australiana, Big Brother 2008, Ethics, Media, Television and Women
. 38 Comments

The Big Brother narrative takes yet another snarky turn. As Eye on Big Brother notes, all the glee on the panel show tonight (Big Mouth or whatever) was directed at the hapless Brigitte. The evictee’s privilege of doing something really nasty, not very well justified by the not so redeemed Saxon, was to take away her wardrobe and her makeup for the week indefinitely. This from part of the loathsome “Spa Mafia” whose idea of fun was hiding “Princess Sparkles” - her toy unicorn - as the first of their japes. I can’t help wondering if Brigitte’s failure to fulfil the FHM dream girl role of flirting with the boys - she’s too obviously occupied just being Brigitte (it’s a bit like Being There) - led to this particular nastiness. But as Eye observes, she’s quickly (and predictably) earned the ire of the other women in the House as well. Now Big Brother, in the form of the almighty narrative, piles on too.

And there’s another ethical conundrum here.

Continue reading ‘Big Brother eats its own (princess): a cautionary tale of the S word’

As Homer Simpson says…

Published
by
Kim
5 days, 4 hours ago
in Blogging, Budget 2008 and Life-Levity
. 0 Comments

…”Lisa, you know you can’t change the future!”

Zoe liveblogs the budget on the night before.

7:49 Partially or Somewhat Working Families who wish to become Fully Functioning Working Families will be encouraged and supported. With cash. Non Working but Caring Families will get some more help.

7:51 No more baby bonus for the toffs! No matter, they’ve already got a plasma telly. What’s this - childcare rebates through the roof! Non Indigenous parents who are on welfare won’t get the rebate because they are not Working Families and don’t use childcare. They may be send to the naughty step clutching their debit card just like the Indigenous parents because they are not Working Families either we are not racialists.

There’s much more at her joint.

Noel Pearson goes to America (well, not really)

Published
by
Kim
5 days, 7 hours ago
in American election 2008, Books, Writers & Writing, Culture, Indigenous, Media and USA
. 39 Comments

It must have seemed a bright idea at the time to get Noel Pearson to write an article for The Monthly on Obama. Trouble is - Pearson may or may not know anything about American politics, but almost his entire article is a discussion of Obama seen through the prism of a book written by Shelby Steele. Those who saw the recent (and totally disappointing) Four Corners show on Obama might recall that Steele was the dude from Stanford who kept banging on about how Obama was manipulating “white guilt”. You can watch (if you can be bothered) his entire schtick via this link.

Pearson has the answer for Obama - emphasise “Black responsibility” and end all that liberal rights claimin’… How boringly predictable. Continue reading ‘Noel Pearson goes to America (well, not really)’

Cuts both ways

Published
by
Kim
5 days, 10 hours ago
in Blogging, Media and Politics
. 42 Comments

Remember all the agonising when Tim Dunlop shifted from The Road to Surfdom to Blogocracy under the Newscorp banner? And remember all the loud denouncin’ when Mark wrote *one blog post* for the Higher Education Supplement and some were quick to assume that this meant LP was about to be swallowed by the Murdoch beast? Well, they were assured at the time it wouldn’t mean that, but that didn’t stop all the conclusion jumpin’… As it turns out, I think there was an interesting issue of trust raised - and one that went precisely to some people’s false assumptions about what exactly is at stake when bloggers get co-opted. We’ve always argued here that one of the most important reasons for preserving an independent blogosphere is not just analysis and posting without fear or favour but also the distinctly different nature of the community and commenting it can foster - there’s no doubt at all in my mind that the News Ltd blogs, while they’ve been quite successful in occupying some of the space the independent blogosphere might have taken up (and might still take up - watch this space!), can’t replicate the latter. Aside from the fact that there’s probably little loyalty to most individual MSM bloggers and blogs per se (particularly where - as with most of the MSM columnists who “blog”, there’s zero interaction with the audience and commenters are perceived as “the audience”), the whole set up - seemingly arbitrary deletion or non-appearance of comments, strict barriers for defamation and other legal concerns, time lag between comments being posted and appearing - means that it’s very difficult to lift the threads beyond the bulletin board model and foster genuine interaction and community.

So I think - anyway - the real issue here is not any moderation of the bloggers’ own politics, but the literal difference in moderation on MSM blogs.

What’s interesting to me is that this evidently cuts both ways - left and right. Tim Blair has moved his blog over to the Daily Terror website. And his commenters are well aware of what the implications for them are. If you don’t want to read the whole thread, there’s a neat summary at The Blair/Bolt Watch Project.

Update: More from Jason Wilson at gatewatching.

Just how low can the Liberals go?

Published
by
Kim
6 days, 3 hours ago
in Budget 2008 and Polls
. 38 Comments

Graph reproduced from Possum’s post.

Possum Comitatus has calculated what he thinks is the Liberal base vote - the number of voters who’ve never voted for Labor over the Coalition at any level of government, basing his estimates on the lowest the Tory vote has fallen in elections over the last decade.

Brendan Nelson is leading a party that is receiving a national vote share lower than all of the State Opposition annihilations of late put together. It makes the polling bleakness of early 2001, and that of March/April 2007 look like a golden age of popularity by comparison.

If that’s not bad enough, if we look at the way those State annihilations of the Opposition played out in practice, a sort of electoral hysteresis was operating. State ALP governments eroded the State Coalition vote to the point where the Coalition base started contracting, leading to an almost natural, lower long-term level of Coalition electoral support as a result - a level of support from which the State Oppositions have found it almost impossible to recover from, consigning themselves to a generation of political failure.

If you lose your base, you lose your political viability.

In a week when Brendan Nelson and Malcolm Turnbull’s performance is going to be as much on the line as Wayne Swan and Kevin Rudd’s, it’s interesting to consider this in tandem with what Mark had to say last week:

Continue reading ‘Just how low can the Liberals go?’

Legal eagles take flight

Published
by
Kim
1 week, 2 days ago
in Blogging and Law
. 33 Comments

… to establish a new star in the Ozblogging firmament.

Helen Dale aka skepticlawyer and Legal Eagle have teamed up to start a new blog - skepticlawyer by name.

Helen explains her rationale at Catallaxy. She doesn’t reflect on her old digs, and the following represents my opinion not hers. But having witnessed the degeneration of Catallaxian comments threads over recent years - yes, folks, once upon a time you could go over there and have an intelligent argument with the libertarians without being told you were a LIAR and a taxeater, being threatened with horsewhipping, having to endure reading your way around hundreds of piffle filled comments of hyperbolic idiocy, etc. - it’s a move I’m pleased she made! Although Helen’s politics aren’t to everyone’s taste, I don’t think there’s much disagreement that she’s got a fine analytical mind and can turn a neat phrase, so I am looking forward to watching this baby blog grow.

Howard preferred PM on economic management. 4 Eva!

Published
by
Kim
1 week, 3 days ago
in Budget 2008, Culture Wars, Howardia, Media and Polls
. 44 Comments

Howard’s talking again.

“Be proud of what we’ve achieved - don’t take any cheek from the other side.”

Andrew Elder wrote an interesting post the other day critiquing Gerard Henderson’s critique, and pointing to a fundamental problem the Liberals have:

The Liberals and Nationals do not take the intellectual debate seriously, which is why it is left to pinheads like Miranda Devine, Tony Abbott, Janet Albrechtsen or Gerard Henderson to carry the (empty) can of rightwing intellectualism. If you really want people to take on the challenge of right-of-centre intellectual development, create an environment conducive to it.

The point’s been made here a number of times that too much political commentary relies on stale analogies with the past, and a complete inability to grasp the challenges of the present. Perhaps that’s because no intellectual work goes into it. The Nelson/Turnbull mob have been talked into the view that they can’t “disown the legacy of the Howard government” lest they lose their advantage on “economic management”. Never mind the fact that ALP polling found last year that when the question was posed as “whom do you trust to manage the economy best for your family?”, Rudd was streets ahead. It’s the distinction between a “beautiful set of numbers” and paying attention to people’s actual financial struggles. In other words, you could simultaneously think the government was keeping the shine on the numbers, but managing the economy for the benefit of big biz and the top end of town. Howard understood that back in about 1996.

But the Libs are now stuck in some Shanahan of a universe where whatever wording Newspoll uses is gospel. Continue reading ‘Howard preferred PM on economic management. 4 Eva!’

Under the radar

Published
by
Kim
1 week, 3 days ago
in Activism, Howardia, Immigration and Media
. 29 Comments

… Maybe Kevin08 is one of those tricky housemates who tries to keep a low profile while attempting to snatch the big prize by doing nefarious work out of the gaze of the cameras.

I probably can’t stretch the Big Brother analogy too far, but one of the big concerns I had about the election of the Rudd government was that the momentum for campaigning around a whole range of vital issues would stall. That’s partly I think because elections provide a convenient end point - if you were horrified by what Howard was doing on refugees (for instance), the most immediate and pressing issue was to vote him out of the House. But it would be a fatal error to assume that’s the ball game.

Margaret Simons has a story in Crikey today reporting on the deep concerns the Asylum Seeker Resource Centre has about the exercise of Senator Chris Evans’ ministerial discretion on asylum seeker claims since the election. 42 claims have been processed, and 41 rejected, a 97.6% rejection rate which is the highest it’s been since 2001 (the year of the Tampa.) According to Pamela Curr of the ASRC, one of the claims rejected has been that of a woman who escaped captivity while her “owners” were in Australia on holiday - she was being held against her will as a sex slave. She was originally from Africa, and had been trafficked to the Middle East.

This may not be the intent of the Government. Continue reading ‘Under the radar’