Tim Blair has followed the lead of the Insiders - and that astute judge of comedy, Gerard Henderson - in deciding that Working Dog’s new series - The Hollowmen - is all about Kevin Rudd. Despite, as Grodscorp points out, the denials of its creators. I guess the intention of the author is irrelevant in a postmodern world. No doubt Kevin Donnelly and Keith Windschuttle will point out how this hermeneutical laxness potentially threatens all that is great about Western civilisation.
I think it’s reasonably clear that the proximate inspiration of the series - in development before Rudd was elected - is the Blair government, and more broadly, trends in governance and the media across the Western world over the last couple of decades. But its biggest problem is… it’s a one joke show which isn’t actually all that funny. It’s neither West Wing nor Yes, Prime Minister. I think we need a lot more political satire with a cutting edge - I’m thinking about the glory days of the Gillies Report which tore Bob Hawke apart just as much it did Andrew Peacock and Ian Sinclair. But The Hollowmen ain’t it. Pity.
Continue reading ‘Our dried voices, when we whisper together are quiet and meaningless’
Time was when it was easy to see where climate change denialism was coming from - corporate astroturf and the big biz of energy politics refracted through the media and the political sphere. What’s been puzzling me for some time is why there’s still a relentless drum beat of (increasingly nonsensical) climate change denialist posts coming from the likes of “Australia’s most talked about columnist”, Andrew Bolt. When he’s not in a tizz about those pervs in the yartz, Bolta repeats and repeats and repeats the climate change denialist message. Sometimes this is valorised as being a “contrarian”, a line we also get from folks like Keith Windschuttle - as if stupidity were one of the Great Western Virtues. But it’s not obvious at all to see - beyond the “bash the Greens and teh left” angle - why this mob think this stuff still has legs.
Continue reading ‘Climate change denialism - why now?’
I think I’ve figured out why Planet Janet is seeming increasingly irrelevant. Consider (as Paul Kelly would say) her latest column:
The leftist glitterati is justifiably upset about Mamet’s rejection of progressive beliefs.
Hundreds of words piled on top of each other about playwright David Mamet converting to Milton Friedman-ism or something. Earth to Planet: Couldn’t give a toss. Had never heard of Mamet. Don’t care what his political beliefs were or are. Don’t think a crusty old bloke’s move to the right proves some eternal truths about teh left or teh luvvies.
Aside from Planet, I don’t think anyone else in Australia has written a word about Mamet’s conversion experience.
Let me let you into the secret. Continue reading ‘Planet Janet located in the midAtlantic somewhere’
While some prominent pundits continue to fume over the apology to the Stolen Generations, and corners of the blogosphere seem less than willing to head The Australian’s call for a “New Civility”, it would seem that public opinion on the issue has indeed coalesced:
More than two-thirds of Australians support the apology, says a poll taken at the weekend. In total, 68 per cent voiced their approval, up sharply from the 55 per cent who backed the apology two weeks ago.
The Galaxy Research poll, commissioned by the GetUp political action organisation, also showed that the number who disagreed fell just as sharply - down from 36 per cent to 22 per cent.
Rod Cameron made the point on Lateline the other night that there had been a real shift in public opinion on Indigenous issues, and Kevin Rudd has taken it and run with it, in spectacular style. The evidence of this shift gathering further momentum is in, and it demonstrates that political leadership - in this case from the PM - is a powerful instrument in forming public perceptions. But what of compensation?
Continue reading ‘The case for compensation’
As a follow up to the recent thread on Keith Windschuttle’s Stolen Generations denialism, we’re very happy to be able to republish this piece from today’s Crikey with permission.
Dr Naomi Parry, author of “Such a longing: Black and white welfare in NSW and Tasmania, 1880-1940″, writes:
The Weekend Australian of 9-10 February brought news that the intrepid history warrior, Keith Windschuttle, bane of leftist historians, now has “the facts” about the stolen generations.
Like most conservative commentators, and the previous government, Windschuttle argues that the policies that led to children being separated from their families were benign in intent. Using the example of NSW, he says children weren’t stolen from their parents but apprenticed as adolescents, to give them “the opportunity to get on-the-job training, just like their white peers in the same age groups.”
This is another instance of Windschuttle taking information and skewing it to fit his particular political and cultural agenda, although he is kind of half correct when he says the focus of the NSW Aborigines Protection Board was apprenticeship. Where he’s wrong is in asserting that he’s discovered this fact; that it was a benign policy, or was in any sense equivalent to white children’s experience.
Continue reading ‘Guest post by Naomi Parry: Debunking Windschuttle’
I’m not going to get into the standard of Keith Windschuttle’s scholarship in his latest intervention in the history/culture wars. I’ll leave that to the historians. Given Windschuttle’s usual schtick of doing no original historical research with an open mind, but rather attempting to subvert others’ scholarship through terminological quibbling and general legalistic nitpicking in the best small minded tradition of John Howard, and always with a political aim, I’d be very surprised indeed if Peter Read isn’t on the money with his rejection of Windschuttle’s claims.
I’m much more interested in the timing.
The second volume of Windschuttle’s tome, The Fabrication of Aboriginal History, has been a long time coming. No doubt he was distracted by his many government board responsibilities. But it’s more than a little too cute by half that he finally comes out with some of his findings on the weekend before the national apology to the Stolen Generations. His degree of moral seriousness is evident in his risible call for there to be a $50 billion compensation fund - for something he either denies happened, or thinks was a good thing.
This is an absolute disgrace. Continue reading ‘Windschuttle should be ashamed’
I’m not sure if Quadrant is now under the editorship of Keith Windschuttle (whose 60s adventures are in the news today) or whether P.P. McGuiness is still in the chair. But their leader writer doesn’t appear to be such a Howard-hugger as you might have expected:
Howard’s behaviour throughout 2007 can only be characterised as hubris, and he can only be personally blamed for this. Whom the gods would destroy … This is a pity, since the former prime minister’s record remains permanently stained, and his record in government only able to be discussed through this defect.
I wonder if Howard still thinks this way?
Its free and sceptical spirit has contributed enormously to intellectual and political debate in this country. It has displayed in relation to each of the great philosophical challenges that have come along through their domestic manifestations here in Australia in my lifetime a tenacity towards principle, a consistency in advocating basic values and beliefs, and a broad-mindedness and an eclectic gathering of people from different backgrounds that does this magazine and the values that unite it great credit indeed.
As to the “free and sceptical spirit”, what’s quite bizarre is that the Quadrant crew appear to be the only mob left in Australia who actually believed and even more bizarrely, still believe, Howard’s dire warnings about the sky falling in under Rudd. You might well be sceptical as to whether this constitutes an enormous contribution to intellectual and political debate in this country. But - in a free market sense - I suppose that’s up to its tiny readership and its sponsors in the nanny state Australia Council to judge. Hang on…
Continue reading ‘Then… and now’
From today’s Crikey email. Cross-posted at LP in exile where you can comment on the story while we wait for LP’s server woes to be sorted:
There’s a now infamous quote from a senior Bush administration official which goes like this:
That’s not the way the world really works anymore.
We’re an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality. And while you’re studying that reality—judiciously, as you will—we’ll act again, creating other new realities, which you can study too, and that’s how things will sort out. We’re history’s actors…and you, all of you, will be left to just study what we do.
It may well have been Karl Rove.
If there’s one thing we’ve learned from the Howardian culture wars, it’s that postmodernism is evil. Stick to the facts and memorise the dates, get the narrative straight. That’s the mantra from the Windschuttles, McGuinnesses and Donnellys of the world. And it’s been chanted by successive Education Ministers as well as the PM himself.
But this election campaign is nothing if not postmodern.
Continue reading ‘The postmodern election’
Christopher Pearson joins his colleague Greg Sheridan in dissing the (formerly) Dear Leader for losing the culture wars. If only Howard had been more courageous the evil “latte-sippers” would really have been swept from their redoubts in the ABC, public service and universities (aka “37 publicly funded leftist think tanks”)…
You can see where all this is going.
From their own redoubt in the Windschuttle edited Quadrant (which as Andrew Elder says, is more “rant” than “quad”), the culture warriors are going to be spinning a tale about how Howard betrayed the true conservative faith, failed to seize the opportunities he had, blah blah. Sound familiar? That’s right - it’s what Howard said about Fraser. Presumably Tony Abbott, or someone or other, will seize the leadership boldly and vow the complete destruction of all latte-sippers everywhere…
On one hand, this will be completely irrelevant. Without the impetus of Howard hugging behind the culture wars, they’re likely to be seen for what they are - an imported potlach of doomsaying drivel. On the other, if a defeated Liberal Party were stupid enough to remodel itself in their hard right image, they will have the fate of the British Tories to look forward to. Years and years of opposition banging increasingly hollow drums while the “culture” that they seek to shape has long moved on.
Quadrant must be the only “little mag” that gets to run its job ads for free via laudatory columns in the press - witness Frank Devine in The Australian a while back:
THE worst paid - next to nothing as an informed guess - full-time job in Australian journalism has become vacant. It is editorship of Quadrant, a post also noted for attracting bitter enemies and for its insecurity, the monthly magazine of ideas still tottering financially after more than 50 tottering years.
But they needn’t have bothered. The editor’s gig has gone to… Keith Windschuttle. And the first target of the culture warriors will be… “decadence in the arts”!
Keith Windschuttle, scourge of leftist historians, will campaign against decadence in the arts when he takes over as editor of Quadrant magazine next year.
Consider Wagner’s Tannhauser, that myth of the sacred and profane now on show at the Sydney Opera House. “There’s a guy painted in gold (who) stands there with a giant erection - symbolises lust or something,” Windschuttle said yesterday. “That kind of gratuitous offensiveness is almost everywhere.”
As Andrew Norton observes:
That perhaps doesn’t bode well for the ’sceptical and non-ideological’ spirit Paddy says he has tried to revive during his editorship.
What’s the bet Quadrant won’t outlive Howard for too long?
Maybe the ABC board did push management to show this “controversial” documentary about global warming. Maybe they didn’t. I don’t know. What I am pretty sure of is that the program itself a dishonourable beat-up, as explained by George Monbiot here in The Age, and also here and here on the RealClimate blog if you want more details.
Andrew Bolt is rolling around in ecstasy over this, but he’s kidding himself. For what it’s worth, I think it’s too late for the greenhouse deniers - their efforts have indeed delayed action for a decade, but the game is up. The publicity surrounding the decision to screen has probably had the counterproductive result of ensuring that a) it was impossible for the ABC to bury this nasty little doco, and b) ensured a much bigger audience (in exactly the same manner as banning Ken Park - a terrible film - ensured that film a considerably wider audience). But, frankly, they’re getting to the point that they have the same amount of credibility as the people who reckon the moon landings were faked. The infamous Fox TV documentary on that topic didn’t do any lasting damage to space exploration, intensely annoying though it was. And that’s the level of credibility the denialists have reached.
Or is the real worry the thought of Albrechtsen and Windschuttle throwing their weight around on other issues where their lunar right views are not quite so trivially easy to refute?
UPDATE: ABC managing director mounts a a fairly predictable defence based on the requirement to show a diversity of views. Hat tip to Gummo Trotsky.
Niall Lucy and Steve Mickler, authors of The War on Democracy: Conservative Opinion in the Australian Press, recently produced a two parter on the postmodern left at On Line Opinion. Part one begins:
Pomo-bashing, like dragon-hunting, is an activity best undertaken in the suspension of disbelief. By imagining a world in which winged, fire-breathing reptiles with magical powers are real, it is possible to imagine what it might be like to hunt such creatures. Similarly, once you accept that postmodernism holds there to be no such thing as truth, you can bash it. (original emphasis)
Continue reading ‘Petard Watch’
The latest edition of Quadrant (available at all good newsagents, according to the Quadrant web-site) includes this transcript of a lecture by Keith Windschuttle (hat-tip to The Dead Roo for the link). Its title: “The Struggle for Australian Values in an Age of Deceit�. Keith’s third paragraph is an eye catcher:
The most powerful single device in the propaganda arsenal is the atrocity story. It can generate support for wars but can also end popular support. In 1914, stories of how German soldiers were bayoneting babies on their march through Belgium were important in persuading Britons to engage in the First World War. In 1969, the revelation that American soldiers in Vietnam had committed the My Lai massacre was the turning point in the erosion of public support.
Continue reading ‘Post-Modernist Relativism, Windschuttle Style’
Excitement!
For Brisvegas based LP readers, the twice yearly Lifeline Bookfest is on again, and it’s open til 8pm tonight and tomorrow and continues on til Wednesday. Over at the Convention centre - details at Our Brisbane. All proceeds go to support Lifeline’s counselling work.
I’m headed over soon, will post some snaps of snappy purchases later!
Update: I’m back - I concentrated on the priced and unpriced section and eschewed fiction tonight (except for some Jacobean tragedies). I tend to take advantage of the five day nature of the bookfest and preserve my sanity and my fingers from papercuts by doing about an hour and a half of browsing and buying each day (with the exception of the last day when almost all the good stuff is gone). Tomorrow’s mission is science fiction in priced and the high quality section. More photoblogging of the bookfest over the fold… but the first pictures give some indication for those who haven’t been how huge the thing is. I believe it’s the largest second hand book sale in the southern hemisphere. Which is why I get really excited when it comes around!
Oh and you can buy fluffy toys too.
NB: Post now updated with day two’s finds
Continue reading ‘Book shopping should be an Olympic sport! [Now with photoblogging]’
In today’s Australian, the Labor speech writer and author of Orwell’s Australia, Dennis Glover has played right into the hands of the very cultural warriors he so eloquently rips apart in that great little book.
In a column titled “Marxism in the unlikliest places”, Dennis argues, with some light-hearted qualifiers, that the true home of Marxism today is the Liberal Party. His argument, which is true as far as it goes, is that the conservatives are now the “true heirs of the power-obsessed psychology that once belonged to the Left”.
The evidence begins with the unstartling fact that many of the current crop of neo-con darlings are former supporters of the left in some form or another. I didn’t know that PP McGuiness once worked for the Soviet money-launderer the Moscow-Narodny Bank, but Peter Coleman and Keith Windschuttle both have form.
I don’t have any issue at all with Glover’s thesis that the Liberals and their fellow-travellers in all the right think tanks have set about trashing some of Australia’s democratic institutions (weak as they are), that they have a blatant disregard for human rights, or that they are indeed “market zealots”. However, where Dennis goes off the rails in my view is that he makes the same ideological mistake as the neo-cons when he equates Marxism with the legacy of Stalinism.
Continue reading ‘Confusing Marx and Stalin’
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