MRM -- NY

MRM-NY

2009-12-09T09:58:00.000+11:00

I have launched a new blog, www.mrm-ny.blogspot.com

I kept only one magazine from October 2006 -- the month I quit drinking -- and this was it

2008-06-04T19:55:00.002+10:00

MRM to retire

2008-03-10T14:37:00.002+11:00

Musings, Ramblings, Mumbings today goes to Bloggy Heaven.

Conceptually, the blog never worked. This is a medium that, at its best, provides instanenous and authentic insight, news and opinion in ways that the mainstream press is unable (see dailykos.com as an example of what I mean). At their worst, blogs are just vanity projects, inane, self-important and flatulent. MRM Central decidedly fell in the latter category, for all that it contained the occasionally well-formed sentence.

For that reason, I bid my small and never-expanding readership a fond farewell. Since I know most of you by name, and am related by blood to a large proportion of you, it is hardly Sayonara.

Sickness Irks

2008-02-29T12:18:00.003+11:00

Back when I was a chain-smoking alchoholic for whom the closest thing to exercise was occasional and half-hearted masturbation, I couldn't really get angry about getting sick. Flimsy as it may have been at the time, my self-knowledge was sufficient that I understood that a cold or flu was the least I could expect given my death-defying lifestyle.

Now that I am a non-smoking, non-drinking, daily working-out, just-lost-12kg paragon of human health, then getting a humdinger of a flu a'la RIGHT NOW is very, very annoying. It is Jana Pittman annoying.

Nick Lyon's Powerhouse Retort to My Retirement Musings

2008-02-28T19:09:00.002+11:00

Check this out from an old friend in reponse to my Bangkok Fever Post where I pondered hanging up my keyboard:

Phil

You’ve been in New York! New York! Crumbs man! Bill’s was growing horns while Hillary was hocking the family Halliburton stock to stay the game, Obama ‘The Hope’ was out now and appears to be heading for The Office, National Sorry Day unfolds with theatrics on a plate[PQ - this was a big miss], cats started kissing dogs, and where’s Musings? The silence was unbearable. Where? Swanning about in the eye of it all, having a crisis of confidence about whether or not to blog!

Whilst Musing’s occasional disappearing acts are definitely part of both its charm and a great source of material upon your return, the timing on this one hasn’t suited me, or I suspect, other Musings devotees at all. Whilst the race for Presidency unfolded, we discover after weeks of (una)Musing silence, that you’ve been phaffing about taking wheelchair rides in Bangkok twirling thumbs over whom to flog your next recovery piece to [PQ - my 'next recovery piece'? - you make me sound like an industry! I have published a total of ONE piece on recovery]. Musers have been adrift, adrift I tell you, doggy-paddling furiously in the high-seas of recent events without the smug intellectual boutique confidence afforded by our Musing’s water-wings [smug intellectual boutique finally gives the genre a name - well done].

So here’s some feedback.

In 2008 Musings is not only published in real-time, but also recycled. Your readers shamelessly flog your daily opinions as their own around water-coolers, hopelessly chic Sydney restaurant tables and (with highly-affected poise) from the darker corners of their Notting Hill members bars [great sentence]. The problem is that now there’s an expectation that Musers will ALWAYS be IMMEDIATELY armed with perspicacious insight and witticism regarding the events-du-jour. So whilst you’re sucking down Shirley Temples on unscheduled leave in the Big Apple [ha ha], LOYAL Musers, stark naked for an opinion when it's most expected from them, are avoiding their water coolers, excusing themselves from their restaurant tables and retreating into the dark corners of their members bars, only to be spotted as stressed faces lit pale blue by the glow from their Blackberrys nervously thumbing for a new Musing posting. In short, passing your material off as our own has raised an expectation amongst our contemporaries; disappear for 3 weeks and you hang us out to dry.

Personally I can think of few peoples opinions of New York I’d rather read than yours. As Musers we subscribe and visit your blog because we SEEK your opinions on whatever is crossing your bows. If we didn’t, we wouldn’t visit, so where’s your risk of inflicting anything unwanted? Your pieces possess the rarest cache of qualities; wit, alacrity, elegance and an enviable (Quin-esce) brevity-of-phase that seems to arrive online with a speed that’s suggests you find this level of quality effortless. More importantly, if PQ’s words cease to be written they’re most likely to be replaced by someone of a poorer quality. You’re heading t’ward the top of your game, get on with it man.

Thanks for the last year’ s blogging… wonderful, wonderful work old friend.

Nick Lyon

P.S. Involuntarily blew snot all over my keyboard in fierce spasm of laughter when reading the ‘You’re a Looney’ post.

Touché, touché and touché again.

No, You Weren't Mistaken - that was the voice of the fat lady singing

2008-02-26T13:16:00.002+11:00

Very quick note on the US Presidential race for those readers who rely somewhat on MRM to keep abreast.

Hillary is finished. Obama will be the Democratic candidate for President. The media is serving its own lust for a competitive contest narrative by pretending Hillary has a chance, but she doesn't. Here's why.

The Democratic candidate is elected by a combination of two kinds of delegates that attend the nominating convention: pledged delegates (two-thirds) and super-delegates (one-thirds). Pledged delegates are elected in the fifty primary and caucus elections that we have been witnessing in recent weeks. Super delegates are not elected at all; they are party officials, elected representatives, governors, Senators, etc. They are the party "big-wigs" who act as insurance in the event that the democratic process is indecisive or throws up an untenable outcome.

Hillary cannot overtake Obama on pledged delegates - his lead is around 150 and to claw that back, she would need to win every upcoming contest by 20 plus points. There is a candidate in the race consistently winning by those margins, but it isn't Hillary. She may win Ohio next Tuesday and may even scrape through in Texas (although Obama is finishing very strongly there), but the idea that she is going to rack up huge net delegate gains belongs in the realm of fantasy. Obama will remain ahead by roughly the same margin.

The only strategy left standing is for Hillary to rely on the unelected super-delegates to usurp the will of the people and swing their votes behind her. If this were to occur, I wouldn't be a shopfront in Chicago for all the tea in China. If a flatulent concoction of cigar-chomping apparatchiks wielded their numbers to snuff out an Obama candidacy, riots and party disintegration would follow as night does day. The fact is that super-delegates are politicians in their own right and, whomever their first preference, are not likely to compromise their own standing by becoming party to anti-democratic manoeuvring. The super-delegates will follow the votes of rank and file Democrats and elect Obama.

There is one other wrinkle that needs mentioning, and it relates to Michigan and Florida. Both these states timed their primary contests to occur earlier in the process than the Democratic Party found acceptable. As a result, all candidates agreed to boycott the states (i.e. not campaign there) and to the principle the delegates elected would have no vote at the Convention. In the case of Michigan, only Hillary had her name printed on the ballot. This seems fairly straight-forward -- but Hillary's people now need the Michigan/Florida votes and have obscenely contorted themselves to make the case for their inclusion. It is a despicable and desperate act of doublespeak that, thankfully, is being treated as such by pretty much anyone who isn't on Hillary's payroll.

So, my fellow non-Americans, forget the hoopla about Ohio and Texas. Obama has this thing won.

Airport Wheelchair Action

2008-02-23T00:05:00.002+11:00

My magical New York adventure is over. Sadly, I developed a fever on the last day and the flight back so far has been a complete nightmare. I was met in Bangkok (I am flying Thai Airways) by a wheelchair attendant who took me to the airport medical centre where they gave me drugs in rock star quantities. I feel somewhat better, although the final leg remains daunting.

I didn't post in NYC because I felt it would be the cyber-equivalent of forcing your neighbours to watch your holiday slide show. A friend of mine also made the point in passing about the fundamental narcissism of blogging, something that gave me pause. "How funny," she said, "that people think their opinions about stuff deserve publication" - words not directed at me, mind you, but pertinent nonetheless. This negativity could be the fever talking.

I plan to work on an essay entitled "The Unexpected Pleasures of Sober Travel" over the coming days - I guess the Canberra Times again? Any other ideas for publishing vehicles would be gratefully recieved.

Prediction

2008-02-05T22:34:00.000+11:00

I think disappointment beckons for us Obamaniacs. He didn't have enough time to ride the South Carolina wave into 22 states in a week. Momentum was his - and the Kennedy stuff was magic - but the obstables he confronted are too great -- white women, Hispanics, southern men, to name a few. He will fall short of expectations on Super Tuesday and Clinton will move into presumptive frontrunner status, a perch from which its hard to fall.

And my heart - and millions of similar hearts - will be broken.

Yes, He Could

2008-01-27T21:53:00.000+11:00

The other day I wrote of convetional wisdom and how its recent miserable record of getting things wrong was the last, lingering hope for Barack Obama's extraordinary and inspiring candidacy.

Conventional wisdom dutifully failed, and Obama's crushing victory in South Carolina has blown the joint apart.

I link to some smart analysis here, and here.

Here are the bare bones as to why this result matters: Polls said he would win by 10-12 points; he won by 28. He was only expected to win 10 percent of the white vote; he got 25 percent. Sixty-five percent of blacks were pegged to vote for him; over 80 percent did, and they turned out in unprecedented numbers to do so. More people turned out to vote for Obama yesterday than did for all candidates combined in 2004.

And then he gave this speech, perhaps his best so far this campaign. And, boy, that is saying something.

Next comes February 5th - Super Tuesday - when 22 states have their turn, including New York, California, Tennesee, Arkansas and Illinois. This is tough for Obama and he trails in most places, although by low double-digits which is surmountable given the Carolina blowout.

The two things that will drive the Super Tuesday strategy are story-line and momentum; whomever has greater control over both will prevail.

Rudd's G-G Form Guide

2008-01-26T22:02:00.000+11:00

Given that the PM chose country and western singer (emphasis on first syllable naturally) Lee Kernaghan as Australian of the Year and a professional motorcycle rider with the surname Stoner and the first name Casey as Young Australian of the Year, a good bet would be on Kenny for Governor-General. This would complete the Bogan Trifecta nicely.

This craven battlers-pandering would be understandable -- even admirable -- if this were six months before an election, but just a few months after taking office? Surely this is the time to reward precisely the kind of person who won't endear you to Puntersville -- an Aboriginal academic, perhaps, or a gay poet. This is the small window within which a centre-left government can hold true to their instincts before the inevitable posturing aimed at securing the fleeting and fickle affections of the kind of voter who would call their sons Casey and who fail to see Australian country and western music for the cultural fraud that it is.

We Got Another Future, Instead

2008-01-24T21:34:00.000+11:00

I own a book called Preparing for the 21^st Century by acclaimed historian and futurist Paul Kennedy. It was published in 1993.

I checked the index the other days for entries under:

Terrorism
Islamic Extremism
Internet
World-wide Web
E-commerce
Biotechnology

There was not a single entry. You would imagine that, for a futurist, writing a book about the 21^st century that fails to mention terrorism or the Internet would be a humbling experience, but not so for Mr Kennedy. He has kept writing books and making predictions. His latest, Parliament of Man (2006), predicts the future of the United Nations (the planning department of which should not invest too much store in its conclusions if his earlier efforts are any guide).

Preparing for the 21^st Century is a laughable failure of the book, but at the time of publication there was no way of knowing this: the 20^th century had seven years’ left to run and that is plenty of time to sell books, let alone conjure up even grander and more plausible-sounding predictions for future books.

This is awesomely unaccountable, and it is action of which I want a piece. I want to be both pundit and critic, gloriously unburdened by real-life consequences. I want the right to be wrong.

Taking the US Democratic Primaries as a current example, the disparate and multitudinous voices of the punditry are given vent through the Mainstream Media (MSM), cable TV, talk radio and Internet, and are eventually distilled into the conventional wisdom (CW). This is how it has played out over the past month, and where it points now.

CW #1: Hillary Clinton cannot lose Iowa because it is a state with an overwhelmingly white population that historically rewards establishment candidates in preference to insurgents like Obama.

Hillary Clinton lost Iowa by nine points, which left some explaining to do. No problem – blame CW, and move on:

CW#2 Conventional wisdom failed to take into account the unprecedented turnout among young voters for Obama. Obama cannot now lose New Hampshire because of the momentum and buzz generated by winning Iowa.

Obama lost New Hampshire by 3.6 points. Move on:

CW#3 Conventional wisdom failed to take into account the last-minute impact of Hillary’s emotional display on television and the late surge in women voters. Notwithstanding his unexpected loss in New Hampshire, Obama will still win Nevada because he has secured the endorsements of key unions in a highly unionised Democratic electorate.

Obama lost Nevada by 5.5 points. Soldier on!

CW#3 The unions in Nevada don’t matter as much as conventional wisdom suggests, and Hillary got a big boost with Hispanic voters. Obama will still win South Carolina but the Clintons have diminished the result in advance by making it about race (more than half the voters in SC are black) thereby limiting his momentum going into the 22 Super Tuesday states on February 5^th, where Hillary will clean up and clinch the nomination.

This is where CW stands.

The last, best hope for Obama is that it is wrong yet again -- it is fair to say that history is on his side.

Kim Beazley Extends Condolences to Ted Heath's Family

2008-01-23T19:42:00.000+11:00

Kim Beazley today expressed his sadness at the passing of former British Prime Minister Edward Heath.

"I offer my personal condolences to the Heath family whose shock and grief must be doubly acute since Ted Heath died previously in 2005," Mr Beazley said.

"Their familial angst must be further compounded by the circumstances of his most recent death. It is beyond comprehension that a British Tory octogenarian would be found naked in a New York apartment. The prescription drug part of the story is far more in keeping," Beazley concluded.

How the Word 'Pakeha' Makes Kiwis Seem Less Racist

2008-01-21T12:57:00.000+11:00

As I was leaving my local shopping centre on Friday evening, I noticed two young women of Chinese appearance standing somewhat pointlessly in the carpark surrounded by IKEA bags heaving with the sort of items one buys when one is building a household from scratch. Fresh off the boat, I thought. They must have noticed me noticing them because one of them asked “Is this where you wait for a taxi?” “No”, I responded, which was the polite way of saying “you would have as much chance hailing a taxi on the moon”. I asked them where they were going and they said Richmond and since we were already in Richmond, I offered to give them a lift. They readily agreed, which suggests they weren’t paying much attention during stranger-danger lectures at Primary School. Once we piled their new flat’s worth of stuff in my boot, we were on our way. I asked the girl sitting in the front which part of New Zealand she was from. She was amazed that I had been able to guess this from her accent which, according to her, was undetectable to most people she dealt with (which led me to surmise that most people she dealt with are hearing-impaired). She pointed to her friend in the back and said “She’s a Kiwi too.” I was struck by this.

The word Kiwi is a colloquial term for New Zealander in the same way that Aussie is for an Australian. But the Kiwi-Chinese girls in my car on Friday night illustrated a significant and revealing difference in the usage.

The word Aussie carries ethnic baggage in a way Kiwi does not. A fifth-generation ethnic Chinese is not, and can never be, an Aussie. A 2^nd generation Greek or Italian who, in appearance, is indistinguishable from his Anglo-Celtic neighbours, is also not an Aussie. An Aboriginal is by no means an Aussie. An Aussie is a white Australian, plain and simple.

The easiest argument here is that Australia is simply more racist than New Zealand, a view held firmly, and with considerable smugness, across the Tasman. The morphing of racial and national identity symbolized by the word Aussie – particularly in phrases such as Aussie values, the Aussie way of life, etc. – is just more evidence of Australia’s ethnocentricity.

I think there is an explanation as to why the words Aussie and Kiwi have evolved differently that does not hinge on Australian bigotry. It relates to the Maori word Pakeha, which denotes Caucasian. This is a contentious word among those it describes – many regard it as offensive and sinister and others find it useful and even affirming. The latter group – of which I am a fully paid-up member – tends to fall into the demographic category known as LSIUPM(PH)*

Whatever its merits, the existence of the word Pakeha as a way of describing white New Zealanders allows the term Kiwi an inclusiveness that Aussie lacks. To put it another way: if Aussie did not carry an ethnic connotation, the alternative means of denoting the same idea are each flawed in their own way: white (too racist-sounding), Caucasian (too ethnographic), Anglo-Celtic (too hyphenated). The term Anglo is used from time to time, but is vague and inexact (especially since it technically excludes everyone who isn’t English by extraction).

It is feasible to imagine that, if the word Pakeha did not exist or hadn’t taken hold in New Zealand, the word Kiwi could well have taken on a racial subtext like Aussie, or another such word may have emerged in its stead. What comes first, the word or the meaning? Deeply Orwellian territory, and too dense a subject for so dense a scribe.

*Latte-swilling, Inner-Urban, Post-Modernist (Possibly Homosexual)

Katsambastard

2008-01-17T08:57:00.000+11:00

When I worked for the Victorian Labor Government, my role had something to do with the Upper House -- I was drinking very heavily at the time so I can’t be more specific.

Through the haze, however, I can clearly recollect a certain Liberal Party Upper House member called Peter Katsambanis. During Question Time, he was directly in my light of sight and I took an instant dislike to him.

I don’t mind Tories that fit the Tory mould. Alexander Downer is one such example – how can you hold his conservatism against him? It is a genetic inheritance for which he cannot be blamed. He falls into the category, as memorably described by Blackadder, of fat Tory landowners who become M.P.’s when they reach a certain weight.

Such Tories tend to be politically moderate, respectful of the primacy of Parliament, and gracious to their opponents.

Those who chose conservatism as an ideology – as opposed to inheriting it as a fait accompli – are a much viler breed. They are to the comfortable Tory establishment what evangelical Christian fundamentalism is to the Church of England. They are driven, fanatical and absolutist.

As I surveyed the opposition benches of the Victorian Upper House, it wasn’t hard to see that Katsambanis was of the latter, evangelical ilk. He was young (real Tories make money and enter Parliament in their late forties or fifties), Greek (real Tories aren’t Greek) and snotty-nosed (Tories have hankies).

Having noticed that, I widely promoted the adoption of a nickname – Katsambastard -- which, for reasons I still fail to grasp, did not stick. I also fed a Labor frontbencher a line to use against Katsambastard’s constant use of a laptop in the chamber – “Is that the sound of one hand typing?” – which brought the House down. I considered him my nemesis but then shunned the word when I realized its Greek etymology gave him a head-start.

Katsambastard got booted out of Parliament and disappeared from public view – until today.

In today’s Age, he writes a first-hand account of his capsicum spraying at the hands of Police at the Australian Open tennis two nights’ back.

Never has police brutality caused such a warm glow inside.

The Age Bluett

2008-01-15T08:26:00.000+11:00

The Age scales new journalistic heights yet again this morning with its front page scoop on the drastic decline in Uni students opting for teaching as a career. The opening paragraph stings with impact:

Victorian students are turning their backs on teaching careers, with experts blaming poor pay and job security.

Wow. I can see how this bumped the Senate committee findings on the inadequacies of rural broadband off the front-page!

This is a big story: poor pay and conditions are driving young people away from teaching! And how do we know? Because EXPERTS are telling u!

The set-up of this story means its merit is largely dependent upon the credibility of its EXPERTS. Let me demonstrate what I mean here by playing “Who Do You Believe”:

UN Panel Warns that Climate Change is Accelerating

Richard Wilkins Scoffs at Climate Change Reports

Or, to be fair:

Richard Wilkins Predicts Big Box Office for Latest Will Smith Movie?

UN Climate Change Panel Predicts Will Smith Flick Flop?

Back to today’s Age scoop where EXPERTS have confirmed a drastic cut in teacher-trainees. We finally meet the EXPERT (singular) in the seventh paragraph:

Australian Education Union state president Mary Bluett said relatively low pay in state schools was turning Victorian students away from teaching in droves.

Mary Bluett's job is to increase the pay and conditions of teachers; it is why she gets out of bed in the morning. Teachers could be remunerated like neurosurgeons and Mary Bluett would still say it’s not enough – that’s her job. For the Age to dress her as an EXPERT to bolster a flimsy non-story is, alas, typically lame.

The headline should really be:

Mary Bluett Understands the Benefits of Pushing Out Media Releases in Early January

Speed Reading

2008-01-14T09:34:00.000+11:00

Drug addiction holds a morbid fascination for many people, which I suppose explains the otherwise inexplicable publication in today’s Age of “How it feels…to have your life destroyed by drugs” (I cannot find it online).

The article, ghost-written in the first-person with a sort of faux-street-authenticity, is useful to the extent that it summarises quite succinctly the fatuous mythology surrounding addiction.

“How it feels” is the story of a woman whose long-term addiction to speed cost her everything -- money, car, kids, home, dignity, etc. She tried and failed rehab repeatedly until she hit rock bottom and kicked her speed habit three years ago. She confesses to some heroin and prescription drug use since, suggesting a sobriety of the most tenuous kind.

There is nothing wrong with her story itself. Addiction is a bitch.

The problem lies in the narrative style and its flawed underlying philosophy. The problem starts with the title: “How it feels to have your life destroyed by drugs.”

Drug addiction, we are told from the get-go, is analogous to cancer or a car crash: it is a catastrophic event that happens to you. It is something over which we have no control.

The subtitle confirms the writer’s complete surrender to addiction mythology:

"An addiction to speed cost one woman her kids, her home and her business”

It is as if the women were walking down Chapel Street minding her own business and someone slipped a speed addiction in her handbag.

The woman herself explicitly warns “it could happen to anyone” which is demonstrably false when one considers my Mum.

The addict’s responsibility is minimized; the addictive power of the drug and the pain of withdrawal are grossly exaggerated.

The 12-step philosophy – promulgated by AA and its off-shoots – involves a substance-centred view of addiction that medical science does not, and will not, support. It is the disease concept that places alcoholism and drug addiction alongside diabetes and heart disease as incurable, inheritable and chronic conditions. This absolves the addict of responsibility and allows them to live with the consequences of their behaviour and explains their relapses.

As a self-help philosophy, it has been a qualified success. As a matter of medical science, it is a crock. The messy truth is that addiction is a behavioural disorder with deep-rooted social and psychological causes unique to each addict.

In the media debate around addiction, the 12-steppers hold almost complete sway, partly because AA members inhabit every newsroom in the Western world, and partly because the treatment industry profits from a thriving addiction mythology.

Sillification

2008-01-10T08:29:00.000+11:00

The stupefying arrogance and grotesque ugliness of the Australian cricket team is now well understood outside of only the narrowest Australian minds, so I will not bore you with highlighting it further. I will, however, touch on the specific matter of the alleged racial vilification of Andrew Symonds by Harbhajan Singh because it points to a broader problem with this 21^st century approach to addressing abuse of all kinds.

The alleged facts are clear: in the course of a heated cricketing contest, Harbhajan Singh called Andrew Symonds – whose parents are from the West Indies - a monkey. On paper, this appears a fairly open-and-shut case. It is probably – in a strict legal sense – racial vilification.

But let’s get real.

Andrew Symonds is a strapping 6’4” man-stud with abs you could bounce coins off, buns of moulded steel, and - in all likelihood – a package that would not look out of place between the hind-legs of a Melbourne Cup winner. He is prime alpha-man-meat who probably did it with identical twins three days after he reached puberty at the age of 10. He could impregnate with a sideways glance.

Harbhajan Singh is a bearded Sikh who would struggle to get in a root in a brothel. On a Tuesday night. In the midst of a recession.

One is a sex symbol; the other a Sikh symbol.

To suggest that Symonds has been “abused” or “vilified” by a spin bowler in a turban with a comical Indian accent is to defy common sense.

To me, it shares the hallmarks of the so-called child abuse involving 18 year old male students and 22 year old female teachers. We all tut-tut appropriately and talk about abuse of trust and pretend it’s no different to a male teacher-female student scenario. But we all know it’s not the same, and that the 18 year old in question is off signing autographs, and that his father is secretly very proud indeed.

Political correctness seems to hinder our ability to apply common-sense to accusations of abuse, which is dangerous because they are extremely easy to make.

The Bradley Effect in New Hampshire?

2008-01-09T21:24:00.000+11:00

Many years ago, an African American Democrat, Tom Bradley, ran for Mayor of LA and narrowly won. This shocked, because all the polls had indicated he would bolt in by a whopping margin. Hence the term "Bradley effect" was coined to describe a phenomena -- in parts psychology, sociology and psephology -- whereby voters overstate their voting intentions for black candidates because they want to appear racially tolerant, but in the privacy of the ballot box they vote against them.

The theory held for many years over a number of races where polls inflated the black candidate's eventual support, but was declared redundant in 2006 where election results in such elections produced no such dissonance. A charismatic black Democrat, Harold Ford, lost his Tennessee Senate race, for example, and the election figures were predicted accurately by pollsters.

Obama's shock loss to Clinton will give rise to prognostication about the re-emergence of the Bradley effect. People will point to the absence of secret ballot in the Iowa caucus as evidence for the oddly disjointed outcomes between there and New Hampshire. With a secret ballot in play, they may argue, the Bradley effect will imperil Obama's chances at the Presidency.

I hope to the non-existent God that it ain't so.

Hillary's Big Fat 35 Years

2008-01-07T20:06:00.000+11:00

Hillary goes on and on about her "thirty-five years" of experience that uniquely equips her to be President, and how this is a contrast to Obama who was still wearing shorts 35 years ago.

Let's dissect this a little.

Eleven of said 25 years Hillary spent as First Lady of Arkansas. This is a job currently held by Mrs Huckabee, a woman so spectacularly unimportant that I couldn't be bothered finding out her first (or Christian, as she would prefer it) name. For a further eight years, she was doing what Mrs Bush is doing now.

The combined experience of Laura Bush and what's-her-name Huckabee, plus some high-priced lawyering and a few years as a Senator thanks to name recognition and money made possible by her marriage, does not -- to quote political scientist Shania Twain -- impress-ah me much.

I hope she gets out before she trashes her husband's reputation as well as her own.

Obama Victory Speech

2008-01-04T18:58:00.000+11:00

This is surely the best political oratory since yours truly represented the Tairangi Ward on the Porirua City Council circa 1989.

I will just let one more thing stand for the record: since becoming a state in 1846, Iowa has not once elected an African-American to anything - not even ward councillor in a piss-ant local authority due west of Shitsville.

It is impossible to overstate the profundity of this moment. Conservative columnist David Brooks of the NY Times (reg req'd) pegs it best:

This is a huge moment. It’s one of those times when a movement that seemed ethereal and idealistic became a reality and took on political substance.
Iowa won’t settle the race, but the rest of the primary season is going to be colored by the glow of this result. Whatever their political affiliations, Americans are going to feel good about the Obama victory, which is a story of youth, possibility and unity through diversity — the primordial themes of the American experience.
And Americans are not going to want to see this stopped. When an African-American man is leading a juggernaut to the White House, do you want to be the one to stand up and say No?
Obama has achieved something remarkable. At first blush, his speeches are abstract, secular sermons of personal uplift — filled with disquisitions on the nature of hope and the contours of change.
He talks about erasing old categories like red and blue (and implicitly, black and white) and replacing them with new categories, of which the most important are new and old. He seems at first more preoccupied with changing thinking than changing legislation.

Cometh the Hour...

2008-01-04T16:35:00.001+11:00

Cometh the Man

Canberra Times runs Clark-Howard post

2008-01-03T10:28:00.001+11:00

Here it is.

The Age Misfires on Iowa and Money

2008-01-03T08:18:00.000+11:00

In the litany of American crimes held to be self-evident by many of my ideological kin, one is that US Presidential elections are hopelessly corrupted by money. It stands alongside the CIA props up dictators and US Foreign policy is driven by lust for oil as a foundation stone of the Great-Satan-Thesis so heartily subscribed to by the left-liberal elite.

When they were teaching the Great Satan Thesis at Left-Liberal Elite School, I think I must have been at home nursing a hangover. I don't think the US is evil at all. I think it is big, lumbering, stupid and flawed, as well as inspiring and remarkable. I think it has the best and worst of everything -- except scenery; New Zealand has the best scenery -- and it repels and awes in equal measure. It is flabby and indulgent and extroverted; both intense and intensely shallow.

The Age today pays due homage to Iowa Caucuses by running a front page article and photo-spread not given justice by the online version. As usual, the Age gets it half-right: the start of the Presidential primaries in Iowa is indeed a monumental event, the outcome of which will profoundly impact the world as we know it. Conjure in your mind a world with Obama as US President. Then think Huckabee. It is as if someone taped over your copy of Mr Smith Goes to Washington with Deliverance.

As I said, the Age got it half-right by dedicating their front page to coverage of the events in Iowa. But what of their angle?

The Age deemed that the issue of greatest significance is role of money in US Presidential races, by focussing on the personal fortunes and campaign war chests of the respective candidates.

How bizarre and revealing that the newspaper would resort to such a hoary old chestnut. Their timing, as always, is abysmal.

There is scarcely a day on the US political calendar where money has less influence than today -- that is the very point of the Iowa caucus.

It is a small state of 3 million people and only 10 percent or so of them turn up to the Republican and Democratic caucuses. This has a great equalising effect. Even a modestly funded candidate – like Huckabee – can compete with big money candidates like Mitt Romney or Rudy Guiliani (who is tanking in Iowa). In states like Florida and California, poor candidates cannot possibly fund the TV advertising necessary to reach voters; in Iowa, they meet them in small groups and one-on-one and make their case. The obvious example is Mike Huckabee, who arrived in Iowa with $12 and an expired Borders voucher and looks set to win or at least come second.

The day when money matters least in US politics is when the Age leads with how much money matters in US politics. If Editor Andrew Jaspan made lucid editorial judgement a New Year’s resolution, I hope he has better luck getting fit and spending more time with his kids.

John Roskam: Intellectual Helium

2008-01-02T08:33:00.000+11:00

John Roskam, executive director of the so-called Institute for Public Affairs, is nothing if not a wrath-magnet. His column today on religion and politics is easily the worst of the dozens I have read on the topic. It is little more than a motley collection of fallacies and truisms stitched together by bad ideas. The man is intellectual helium. (When I first read it I thought he must have been hungover from New Year’s Eve celebrations when he wrote it. On second reading, I think he was still drunk.)

Part of Roskam’s problem is that he takes all his cues from the right-wing noise machine in the States and then applies it to Australia, something he lacks the subtlety or dexterity to pull off. This is absolutely the case here, where, for example, he makes a turgid argument about the Left’s misreading of the constitutional separation of church and state in a way that is clearly meant for the US (this argument is yet another example of how Roskam attributes false ideas to his opponents in order to knock them down – the Left are perfectly clear on the subject of church-state separation). The whole article reeks of this kind of sloppiness. One highlight is his depiction of Opus Dei as a “social group”, a term even the most craven Vatican apologist could hardly use with a straight face. Later on, he writes that Kevin Rudd is a Christian socialist in the present tense. This is either careless or deliberately misleading and, either way, it reflects Roskam’s slapdash approach to the truth.

When he is not distorting for effect, he is making philosophical observations that are almost alarmingly unsophisticated. Today it is that all politics has a moral underpinning and therefore the secular left are wrong to disdain religion. The first part of the sentence – that all politics has a moral component -- is so screamingly self-evident that it is probably taken as a given among the orang-utan tribes of the Malay Peninsula. Roskam then attempts to pull a swiftie by equating morality with organised religion, a debating trick that would be discarded as too transparent by year 9’s. He then confirms his own muddle-headedness by castigating church leaders for taking stances on certain political issues – David Hicks and Work Choices he offers as examples – suggesting that churches should only engage in politics when it assists the conservative cause. Roskam has nowhere near the grunt to carry such an argument off, so the column winds up an incoherent space-filler.

I have written before that John Roskam is part of a scam perfected in the US: the formation of so-called think-tanks to provide a veneer of authority and independence as they go about promoting the political ideologies of the corporate big-wigs and reclusive tobacco billionaires that sign the pay-cheques. It is a shame that Australia’s right-wing lobby can’t scramble together enough dough to pay someone who can think and write at the same time.

It is important to note that Roskam also provides cover for the Age, a newspaper under pressure to demonstrate it is not entirely captive to the inner-city left. Roskam may be a tool, but he is a useful one.

MRM@themovies: Atonement

2008-01-01T21:04:00.000+11:00

Atonement is a lyrical masterpiece by any measure, but that it is achieved against the backdrop of Keira Knightley's epic vapidness makes it a true marvel.

Atonement is based on Ian McEwan's book of the same name and it is undeniably novelistic: the film's titles emerge on the screen as if by a typewriter the signature tap-tap-tapping of which features heavily in the film's score. The novel is extremely self-referential as it is, making this one of the most challenging of literary adaptations -- the film of a novel within a novel, as well as of the novel itself. Add to this McEwan's subtle and delicate emotional landscape -- not to mention Knightley's casting -- and the potential for a cinematic debacle was immense, forboding and well-averted.

Atonement begins with Briony Tallis, a thirteen-year old girl at her family's luxurious estate in the 1935 English summer. A curious and gifted child, she witnesses a series of interactions between her sister Cecelia (the shiteous Knightley) and the handsome housekeeper's son, Robbie Turner (James McEvoy, The Last King of Scotland). This culminates in an act of shattering consequence for which she is fated to spend the remainder of her life seeking the atonement in question; to say more would spoil things.

Director Joe Wright is a relative novice -- he is only 35 years old -- but inexperience is the last thing on display here. It is a virtuoso effort, elegant and seamless. The one-camera tracking shot at Dunkirk, which lasts for over five minutes, is a thing of rare and affecting beauty.

James McEvoy is outstanding here as Robbie, and both actors filling the role of Briony (Saoirse Ronan and Romola Garai) are superbly cast. Between the three of them, they manage counter the weighty awfulness of Knightley -- this is not to be sneezed at.

FOUR AND A HALF STARS
Oscar buzz: Big chance for Picture, Actor (McEvoy), Director (Wright) and Supporting Actress (Saoirse Ronan)

THE EERIE CLARK-HOWARD PARALLELS

2007-12-29T11:10:00.000+11:00

Over the course of their careers, John Howard and Helen Clark would have prided themselves on how profoundly different they are from each other. The trajectory of their respective declines, however, promises to be eerily similar.

If the BBQ chatter this NZ Christmas is any guide, the parallels are glaring. Twelve months ago, the mood that would dispose of the Howard Government was crystallising across the country: Howard had to go and Rudd was an acceptable alternative. There was no economic downturn or policy crisis, and the electorate showed none of the "throw the bastards out" anger common to change elections. Instead, there was steely determination that proved remarkably unshakeable. The Howard Government threw everything at the voters -- an astute and well-received budget, the Indigenous intervention in the Northern Territory, tax cuts with more promised, and the mother of all scare campaigns on unions and interest rates – but the poll numbers failed to budge.

One year on, and the New Zealand voter is now eyeing its chance. In power since 1999, the formidable Helen Clark faces the casual appetite for change that undid Howard. Thanks for your efforts, Helen, but it’s time to move on. The alternative PM, National Party leader, John Key, owes much to serendipity. He is a harmless centrist with an appealing personality that Clark would have disposed with before breakfast in past years, but not anymore. His uncomplicated style and reassuring message fits the mood and the moment.

Howard could have given his Party a chance at re-election by an organised handover to Peter Costello, but he baulked. He condemned his Party to a crushing loss, and – given his famed judgment of these things – it is impossible to imagine he was not aware of the stakes. Helen is every inch the political creature Howard is, and will also sense the ominous mood. She must know Labour’s chances hinge on its ability to satisfy the electorate demand for change – and that means new leadership, new priorities and a new look. Such a strategy may not guarantee success, but the status quo means certain failure – and that will not be lost on Clark. Her doing something about it is another question altogether.

One of the sure signs of too-long incumbency is that you come to hate your internal enemies more than your external ones. In the end, the Howards were probably more comfortable with the idea of Kevin Rudd as Prime Minister than Peter Costello. I suspect that, in private moments, Helen Clark would admit that she would rather lose to John Key than hand over to Phil Goff, the obvious alternative leader. In both cases, the egos of individual leaders has subsumed their better electoral instincts; in both cases, this has been made possible by decades-long campaigns to turn their respective parties into extensions of their own political identities.
Clark’s leadership is protected by forces identical to those that inoculated Howard: a party room gripped by misplaced gratitude for elections past, myopic factional fealty, and squeamish challengers constitutionally ill-suited to unpleasant internal ballots.

The Australian experience offers a road-map for NZ Labour, and the Howard route takes them straight off a cliff. At times like this, it is customary to call on leaders to step aside in the Party’s interests, but such pleas are largely meaningless when applied to Howard or Clark. The leader and the party are indivisible. Helen Clark and her surrogates so completely dominate the Labour Party that her eventual retirement – forced or otherwise – will leave a hollowed-out carcass in its wake, just as Howard has left behind state Liberal branches that are out-of-power, dilapidated and broke.

MRM@themovies: No Country for Old Men

2007-12-23T18:48:00.000+11:00

In the 2007 battle of a high-powered literary adaptations -- Ian McEwan's Atonement is in the opposing corner -- the Coen Brothers' No Country for Old Men is based on a novel by Cormac McCarthy, probably the hottest property in contemporary American fiction. McCarthy's signature style is the almost-parodic sparseness of his prose and, as such, it is an interesting choice for Joel and Ethan Coen, whose films are typically very wordy indeed (think John Goodman in The Big Lebowski -- he barely shuts up).

Given the source material, it is not surprising that No Country for Old Men is the least verbose of the Coen Brothers films. It is also the least funny and what humour there is feels obligatory and a tad forced.

The story takes place in the arid landscape of West Texas, and begins with the discovery of the scene of a drug-deal turned shoot-out turned graveyard. A local hunter and ne'er-do-well, Llewellyn Moss (Josh Brolin) first arrives at the scene and stumbles upon a suitcase carrying $2 million. Against his better instincts, he takes the money -- he seems acutely aware that it is an unwise and perilous choice -- and sets in train the events that follow.

The story is not complicated: a psychopathic killer, Anton Chirgurh, played by Javier Bardem in a ridiculous page-boy haircut is hot in pursuit of Moss and the missing millions; he leaves a gruesome and alarmingly expansive body count in his wake. The local cop, Sheriff Ed Tom Bell (Tommy Lee Jones, who was Al Gore's college roommate), follows somewhat haplessly behind the carnage, sort of shaking his head at what the world has become. Some Mexican gangsters play a cameo role, as does Woody Harrelson as a bounty hunter who seems closest to understanding Chigurh's bizarre and chilling psychopathology.

No Country for Old Men is supremely confident film, demonstrating a rare and wonderful cinematic fluency. It looks and sounds wonderful -- if it doesn't win the cinematography Oscar, then there are more drugs in Hollywood than I thought -- and the performances are pitch-perfect.

At the core of the film is a collection of suspenseful set pieces, each of which meticulously structured and beautifully timed. But in the end -- and I caution that I apply a rigorous standard to filmmakers of this calibre -- I felt it lacked emotional resonance when taken as a whole. I simply didn't care all that much what happened to whom and why. I felt as if I was watching the story getting told-- and told beautifully -- but not really engaging with the story itself.

The Academy may think it's time to acknowledge the Coen Brothers for their awesome body of work and award Best Picture to No Country for Old Men. It wouldn't be a travesty.

FOUR STARS
OSCAR BUZZ: Big chance for Best Picture, Adapted Screenplay, Supporting Actor (Bardem)

2008 Predictions: World Politics

2007-12-23T11:00:00.000+11:00

Al Gore will endorse Barack Obama if he wins Iowa (which he will), thereby catapulting him to victory in New Hampshire and -- check my earlier theory about the African American vote -- South Carolina. Obama will win the Democratic Party nomination.
Huckabee of family photo fame will win Iowa, Mitt - the Mormon from Massachusetts - Romney will win New Hampshire and Huckabee will take out South Carolina. By this point, the Republican Party hard-heads will get serious and determine that Huckabee has the Presidential gravitas of Zac Efron. Romney will win the nomination, meaning that, for the first time in history, a man who believes that Jesus hung out with Native Americans, has a chance to be President.
In the General Election, the Christian conservative base will forget to vote (the Mormon thing), minorities will vote in record numbers (the African American thing) and women will swing hard away from the Republican (the Obama/Sidney Poitier thing). Barack Obama will become the 44th President of the United States of America. The Democrats will retain the House and Senate with increased margins, especially in the Upper House.
Helen Clark will lose in NZ; Gordon Brown in the UK. Bland, small "c" conservatives will take their respective places ushering in another period of cautious, technocratic governance to replace the eras of cautious, technocratic governance overseen by Clark and Brown.
Helen Clark will be named to head some hugely important-sounding UN off-shoot. God knows what Gordon Brown will do.

2008 Predictions: Australian Politics

2007-12-23T06:41:00.000+11:00

In the second half of the year, with L-NP trailing 40-60 in Newspoll, Malcolm Turnbull will successfully challenge Brendan Nelson to become leader of the Liberal Party. This will immediately abort plans for a merger with the Nationals whose members would rather appear on a float at Mardi Gras dressed in buttless chaps than merge with a party led by Turnbull. Turnbull, meanwhile, will signal his own greatness in a series of keynote speeches entitled, Turnbull and Australia's Future and Vice Versa. Julie Bishop will remain as deputy because she is from Perth and is a woman; the cross-eyed thing will continue to be politely overlooked.
Kevin Rudd will continue to govern for all Australians, much to the chagrin of large sections of the Labor Party and the unions who would prefer he just governed for them. This will cause a number of high-profile spats with leftistas that will only shore up the centre and cement his position as unassailable.
Wayne Swan will make some embarrassing factual errors in Parliamentary Question Time, and his survival beyond 2008 will depend largely on how well his first Budget goes down.
In Victoria, the Libs will lurch from factional crisis to crisis as the demise of Costello creates threats and opportunities galore. State leader Baillieu will plead for unity which will have all the impact of a burp in hurricane. Labor will almost win the Higgins by-election - 48.5 - 51.5.
There will be a new G-G and it will be a woman.
Kim Beazley will be appointed Ambassador to the US.

Does AFP stand for A Faux Pas?

2007-12-20T18:06:00.000+11:00

Some Australian Federal Police official was just on Channel 9 news discussing the case of the smashed pedophile ring. In reference to a child who had been "groomed" by the perverts arrested by his colleagues, he said something very much like:

This Christmas, Santa will be the only stranger visiting her bedroom.

Worst grab of the year. Easy.

The Fundamental Tawdriness of Addiction

2007-12-20T11:40:00.000+11:00

Do you remember the scandal involving James Frey and his recovery memoir, A Million Little Pieces? The book, a graphic depiction of addiction and its aftermath, sold millions of copies and was heavily promoted by the Big O herself. Of course, it turned out that Mr. Frey's account was more fiction than fact and that he had made up or grossly exaggerated large sections of the book. Oprah brought him back on her show and drove a stake clean through his heart. Out of interest, I went to buy the book but demurred when I. Noticed. That he wrote. In Sentences. Like This.

It seemed obvious to me that any book about addiction and recovery must be made up because addiction and recovery are so fundamentally tedious.

Addiction is boring. An addict's life is a constantly repeating cycle of need and relief, need and relief. Their lives are one-dimensional and ever-diminishing. Addicts are incapable of saying or doing anything even mildly interesting. They lie, even when the truth would do, and have no insight into themselves or the world around them. They are dead-shits.

Recovery is just as boring. Almost everything you hear about withdrawal symptoms is bullshit. Properly treated, even the most chronically addicted poly-abuser will suffer withdrawal side-effects no worse than the symptoms of a mild flu. If you don't believe me, ask a doctor.

I witnessed it myself. When I was at a detox centre, a sweating, shaking dribbling mess of a speed/heroin/Xanax/cannabis/alcohol user called Chris was, after a night on Valium and a breakfast of muesli, and yogurt, playing volleyball with the rest of us. No-one likes to hear it, but coming off drugs and alcohol - as a physiological challenge - is just not that hard.

I can understand why James Frey felt the need to "sex-up" his own recovery story, but Half Nelson proves that the tawdriness of addiction can make for a compelling story when told with authenticity at its core.

This film explores the unlikely relationship between a crack addicted teacher (Ryan Gosling, in an Oscar-nominated performance) and a poor, black, female student who catches him smoking drugs in the school changing rooms. This is not a redemption story, at least not of a kind that comes accompanied by a moving score. It is about the small, even imperceptible, kindnesses that let the light in the darkened places; and about the parts of the soul that survive the catastrophe.

Addicition and recovery, unembellished, might be dull; but the capacity of the human spirit to outsprint adversity is about the only story worth telling.

This could have been a great post

2007-12-20T07:32:00.000+11:00

I have just spent the past thirty minutes researching what I hoped would be an hilarious post. I have been scouring the press releases issued by the Writer's Guild of America regarding the current strike in the hope that they are poorly written or contain grammatical errors. This irony would have sat nicely with my Gen X sensibilities.

Sadly, the WGA on-line press room is home to some of the finest writing of its kind on the planet. The absence of irony chills me.

Roskam update

2007-12-19T11:28:00.000+11:00

As noted below, Roskam claims that Australian academics believe that

...globalisation is a plot by big business to impoverish the world's poor

The phrase "impoverish the world's poor" is a meaningless tautology, revealing a shaky grasp of the basic rules of the English language. It is also a lazy expression that is in keeping with the intellectual vacuity of the column as a whole.

Roskam finally provokes me

2007-12-19T09:11:00.000+11:00

It is one of the oldest moves in the right-wing playbook. Collect some donations from like-minded corporations and crack-pot squillionaires, come up with a harmless sounding name and form a “think-tank”. Thereafter, the think tank creates an illusion of academic respectability as ideological combatants posing as researchers spew forth streams of bias, invective and distortions in the form of “research”, “reports” and “opinion pieces”. The Right in the US adopted this approach with a vengeance in the second half of the last century, partly because they felt their views were unrepresented in academia and the mainstream media, and partly because they could afford to.

To a very limited degree, the pattern has been followed in Australia – take the Institute of Public Affairs, the executive director of which, John Roskam, has an opinion piece in today’s Age.

For many months, Mr. Roskam’s columns have irked me no end, not least because he gets paid to write them by big corporate donors who would never dare utter such extremist nonsense themselves, at least in public. But I have resisted because he is ultimately such a predictable target.

But, his effort today on the so-called “culture wars” is so profoundly fist-magnetic that I am bound to strike back, notwithstanding the proximity of Christmas.

Taken as a whole, “Culture wars are good for society”, is a crock of shit – and I use the time advisedly.

It is wrong on fact, dishonest in presentation, and stylistically lazy – and this is before you get to the substance of the opinion piece – the actual opinion. Roskam’s views – or is it the views of his donors? – is so far to the right, the Age should publish ten Phillip Adams columns as penance. The substance of this muddled and disastrous work of prose is so fascistic that it would surely bring a blush to the cheek of even the most eccentric and paranoid millionaire on Roskam’s donor list. The essence of his argument is that ascendant political parties should rightfully have day-to-day control of the content of school curricula, university research, and arts and broadcasting bodies. He rejects the notion that independent, expert or non-partisan oversight in these areas is necessary or even desirable.

This argument places Roskam on the lunatic fringe of Australian politics (Lyndon La Rouche, anyone?) but he is probably saved from any long-term damage by the overall shabbiness of his column which obscures its own remarkable thesis.

The third paragraph sets the mendacious tone of the column:

In the weeks since the election, there has been a call for the opinion pages of the country's newspapers to be purged of non-left contributors, and for the Howard government appointees to the ABC board to resign or be sacked.

Firstly, there is NO call for opinion pages to be “purged” of anything, at least not from any credible source. Secondly, the replacement of party political appointments after a change of government is self-evident common sense.

This is typical of Roskam’s methodology: set up an imaginary ideological dragon and then slay it spectacularly. He does it again later in the piece when he writes:

Sometimes the claim is made that humanities faculties of Australia's universities are dominated by left-wing academics because conservative academics simply don't exist. Unfortunately this is true. Anyone who verges even slightly from the accepted wisdom of university staffrooms — which is that George Bush is an evil idiot, that globalisation is a plot by big business to impoverish the world's poor, and that terrorism is merely a political construct — is unlikely to gain preferment.

That is a veritable mountain of horseshit. His description of the politics of mainstream academia is simplistic, insulting and wrong – but it serves an argument that needs lies to work. And the notion that Australia is swarming with unemployed right-wing sociology lecturers is just laughable.

I understand that the Age is wary of its left-wing reputation and their desire to present balance. But surely they can do better than a corporate shill like Roskam who combines the intellectual heft of Kel Knight with the intellectual honesty of Henry Kissinger.

Fan Letter to Don Henley

2007-12-17T21:35:00.000+11:00

Don Henley
Singer-songwriter
The Heart of the Matter
Via donhenley.com website

December 17, 2007

Dear Mr. Henley

About six years ago, I was made redundant from a job I held for under a year and took the modest payout and went to Bali for five weeks. I had no savings at the time – as well as no job of course – so this did not rank as a sensible choice on my part. However, at the time I was drinking and thinking in that order.

For the first ten days of my Bali intoxication, I was with a group of 12 drinking buddies at a shabby resort designed for the kind of tourist who isn't planning much in the way of sustained sobriety. Once they stumbled back to Australia to drink in cooler climes, I stayed on. I found lodgings at a karaoke restaurant with some poorly appointed bedrooms on the second floor. I cannot remember exactly, but I think they charged me about $6 a night including breakfast, which was, according to a particularly tight-arsed German backpacker with whom I made acquaintance, a bit steep. The place was called Jesen’s and it was a spectacularly unsuccessful business – so much so, I hoped for the sake of its very kind owner and family that it was the cover for a lucrative narcotics operation.

I would start drinking in the restaurant at precisely 5PM (I discarded such niceties later in my drinking days). Without fail, every evening at around 6PM, they would play the Hell Freezes Over DVD from beginning to end. I am not sure whether it was a legitimate copy, the royalties for which have helped cover your children’s tertiary education, but I am guessing not.

I have never been a great Eagles fan; indeed, with the possible exception of U2, I can barely think of a band I particularly like. And I only really like U2 because of Bono’s politics and a residual Irish ethnic identification. Oddly, I am just not into music that much – it is a gap in my psyche like empathy is to a sociopath.

Back to Jesen’s and the probably-illegal Hell Freezes Over broadcast.

I was idly keeping an eye on the screen one night when you launched into Heart of the Matter. I don’t know what it was – the perfect constellation of music, emotion and inebriation is my best guess – but the song did not merely touch, it molested, my soul.

The more I know, the less I understand
All the things I thought I knew, I’m learning again
I’ve been tryin’ to get down
To the heart of the matter
But my will gets weak
And my thoughts seem to scatter
But I think its about forgiveness
Forgiveness
Even if, even if you don’t love me anymore

Mr. Henley, you broke my heart. You brought down on me the shame, the guilt, the loathing that consumed me and propelled the slow-motion car-crash that my life had become.

The heart of the matter, you told me, is forgiveness. I would think of the woman I had dragged thousands of miles to be my wife in a faraway place. I would think of telling her that I needed to divorce her because I had discovered I was gay. I would think of her returning to Japan to live in a tiny apartment with her mother, her dreams of children and a prosperous and exciting life smashed to smithereens. Forgiveness, you kept telling me.

I would think of the family that must have once believed they had something special in me. I thought of the ambitions, hopes and dreams that lay withered on the vine. Forgiveness.

I listened to the song a thousand times after Bali and never failed to cry. It never lost its power over me. As I started to put the pieces of my life back together, my ability to withstand Heart of the Matter without howly-bags became my own private mental health benchmark.

About two months ago, I was listening to the song in the car on a long road-trip, and there were no tears. I could hardly believe it, so I played it again – this time I sang along. Again, nothing. Far from crying, I actually laughed and smiled stupidly for some time. The heart of the matter is indeed forgiveness – and I had finally given it to myself.

So, Mr. Henley, I am writing to return the song to you. It appears I don’t need it any more.

Kind regards

Phil Quin

MRM Announces 2007 Award-Winners

2007-12-17T13:32:00.000+11:00

Film of the Year: The Lives of Others

A beguiling and evocative cinematic masterpiece. This exploration of life in communist East Germany is as good a film as I have ever seen.

Worst Film of the Year: Elizabeth: The Golden Age

Please note I saw (part of) Babel in December ’06.

See my review. Atrocious garbage that only one man could have made worse: Baz Luhrmann

Television Series: Summer Heights High

The whole package works, but Chris Lilley’s characterization of Jonah will remain one of the great comic achievements of any performer in my lifetime.

Worst TV series: Bionic Woman

It is amazing when you remember that this was made before the writer’s strike! What excuse could they possibly have for such dreadful dialogue?

Best Politician: Julia Gillard

She pips Rudd because I think she had further to go and made the distance. Her ability to remain on-message is awesome even by politician standards and her warmth and humour have emerged slowly but definitively throughout the year. She has Helen Clark’s brains and toughness, without the gigantic scrotum.

Worst Politician: Malcolm Turnbull

Readers will know I think Turnbull is a puffed-up fool, and his complete mishandling of his no-brainer leadership bid just confirms what a dumb-arse he truly is.

Worst Writing: Helen Razer (The Age)

Her Comedy Festival reviews were worse than so bad they’re funny, thus not even ironic. If she gets the gig again in 2008, this is a sure sign she is in possession of Christmas Party photos.

Best Writing: Jason Koutsoukis (The Sunday Age)

He Sunday Age federal politics columns contained the most dead-on analysis of the state of play to be found anywhere – despite being stuck in the vortex of the Canberra press gallery.

Runner-up: Catherine Deveny (The Age). A sort of female, lefty, greenie funny anti-Andrew Bolt, she gets it right more often than not. Sometimes misses the mark, and sometimes by quite a margin. I want her job.

Best Person (World): Barack Obama

Best Person (Australia): Maxine McKew

Worst Person (World): Dick Cheney & Tom Cruise (tie)

Worst Person (Australia): Jana Rawlinson (nee Pitmann) - again

First Birthday for MRM Central on Tuesday

2007-12-17T09:40:00.000+11:00

Tomorrow, Musings Ramblings Mumblings reaches its first birthday. Rarely has a media outlet survived this long with such a modest readership - a testament both to your loyalty and the amount of time I continue to have on my hands.

Thank you all.

Bali Bullshit Battallion: The Australian Media Gets it Wong

2007-12-17T08:29:00.000+11:00

The Australian news consumer could be forgiven for thinking that the Bali Climate compromise was single-handedly brokered by Senator Penny Wong, the new Minister for Climate Change. Reporting in the homeland has it that this political neophyte bravely wrestled the Yanks with one arm while cradling the Europeans and the developing countries with the other to force an unlikely and triumphant deal. This is indeed a great story, especially since Wong is a unique character -- ethnic Chinese, lesbian and from Adelaide. (I have been told off for suggesting that if she were wheelchair-bound, she would be Treasurer). I also like the woman a lot, and have every reason to believe she did a sterling job in Bali.

But the Australian media's narrative is just more Bali bullshit. A media search of Penny Wong's role tells two stories -- the Australian heroic narrative with full brass and percussion ; the other with barely the hint of a vibrating triangle. In terms of international coverage, Wong's role in Bali was mentioned only by one Malaysian newspaper (where her father comes from) and on MSNBC and CNBC, two 24-hour cable networks that will announce your Mum's birthday on air if you ask them. There is not one mention of her playing a deal-broking role on Associated Press, the best arbiter of these things going.

I write this despite having enormous respect for Senator Wong, and her work. But the Australian media were so desperate to wrap Bali in Dingoistic* cloth, they failed to report events as they actually occurred; instead, they gave us a story they thought we would prefer to hear. The Bali story will allow Wong to do her job with a supportive press - at least for a time. If you believe that the means justifies the ends, then all is good. But I don't, and it isn't.

* Dingoistic is my term for jingoism in an Australian context. You are free to use it.

Moderate Muslim Murders Metaphors

2007-12-16T08:49:00.000+11:00

I try hard to be a militant atheist but I am prone to letting the side down, especially when it comes to my misplaced tolerance of moderate believers. The High Priests of our movement - I think here of the unholy trinity of Dawkins, Hitchens and Harris - teach that moderate religionists are as bad if not worse than the so-called extremists or fundamentalists. The argument is two-fold: that moderate religionists provide cover for fanatics by lending a veneer of tolerance and reasonableness to their intolerant and unreasonable faith; and their moral standpoint lacks courge -- i.e., to be a Christian in favour of gay rights, you are either (a) lying about being a Christian, (b) lying about your gay rights views or (c) very confused. It is the moderates, too, who have successfully promulgated the absurd notion that we are bound to be polite, accepting and tolerant of others' religious views, regardless of how illogical, violent, bigoted or moronic they are. This toxic idea has permeated all levels of society in the guise of moral relativism and Multiculturalism*, and remains the most dangerous weapon left in the arsenal of those who will bother God.

In the West, so-called moderate Muslims are a prized commodity: in Australia, Waleed Aly is the poster-boy. Aly has made a journalistic career out of his moderation, delighting his hand-wringing, Bush-hating editors with his "terrorists are wrong, but Dubya and Howard are wrong, too" needle-threading. [I cannot find anywhere in his writing references to Mohammed's ascension to heaven on a winged horse, or the subjugation of women and non-believers, or the moral imperative to kill gay people -- but perhaps the sub-editors cut these due to space limitations.]

But as I said, I can be soft on the moderates and have become something of a Waleed Aly fan. After his effort in today's Sunday Age, no longer. And it has nothing to do with his religosity, and everything to do with this paragraph:

Ultimately, this is about imagery: here is the country's new Prime Minister opening with a flurry of symbolic thrusts, calculated to seize the nation's social imagination. Thus has Rudd emphasised immediately his clearest departures from the John Howard era. None of these policy positions is particularly new, but Rudd's choice to swamp the electorate with them up front is striking.

First things first: the analysis is simply wrong. Rudd has not kick-started his first term by unexpectedly radical social policy shifts. If he has appeared a little more left-wing than expected, then that is because he is now in Government and is not restrained by the "tack to centre at all costs" dynamic of election campaign -- this happens after every change of government everywhere in the world. Aly is now a politics lecturer - not only should he know this, his first-year students should.

But let's look at the language he uses -- in one paragraph, Rudd has opened (with a flurry), calculated (to seize), emphasised, departed and swamped. This has involved "symbolic thrusts" to do with the "nation's social imagination" and was altogether "striking". He opens with "ultimately, this is about imagery" and it's hard not to wonder whether he is talking about the Government or his ensuing paragraph.

Above all, it begs the question: How can you calculate a flurry of symbolic thrusts to seize a nation's social imagination and still be home in time for dinner?

* I capitalise here advisedly; I refer to Multiculturalism as a political agenda and public policy, not as the day to day reality of sharing the planet with all types and stripes, something that I love to bits.

Message to Email Subscribers

2007-12-15T22:01:00.000+11:00

Please visit the actual site so you can vote in the reader response poll to help shape MRM into the future. It is completely anonymous of course.

MRM proves fallibility

2007-12-15T19:32:00.000+11:00

I admit it: my previous post was wrong. The Obama quip didn't capture the media's attention as I had both expected and hoped. Who knows with these things -- two vital ingredients in a campaign news story are serendipity and momentum. Perhaps the travelling press corps thought he had been in receipt of more than his fair share of fawning coverage lately. Perhaps the Hillary people hosed it down in time by shaping the moment as a minor and ineffectual tit-for-tat.

Whatever the reason, I am disappointed that more people won't get to see Obama's acid-wit directed at the Bad Clinton.

Obama Reveals Nads

2007-12-14T22:59:00.000+11:00

Hillary walks into this.

It will get worldwide play with comment pieces galore about how this is evidence of Obama's toughness and willingness to tackle Clinton. Mark my words.

Bali and the Bullshit Batallion

2007-12-14T12:41:00.000+11:00

At the Bali Climate Conference, there is an army of talking heads firing quotable quotes across each other at any camera or microphone within cooee. This Bullshit Batallion comprises UN spokespeople, NGO mouthpieces, political spin-doctors, celebrity spotlight-hoggers and hysterical tree-huggers. All of them compete fiercely for limited media space so as to frame the issues in a way that suits their objectives. The degree to which they are successful depends largely on whether they are able to couch their completely unoriginal viewpoints in unpredictable ways. The technique most often employed is known as the sound-bite or the grab.

To cut through the static at spin-drenched place like the Bali meeting, the challenge for any talking head is to find a pithy, punchy and memorable one-liner that makes your case for you, as well as fit neatly into news reports.

Perhaps the most common of all the soundbite genres is the visually evocative metaphor:

The Treasurer is asleep at the wheel!
Winning this election is like climbing Mt Everest.
Many islands will beswallowed whole by the ocean if we fail to act on climate change.

Once again, I defer to Orwell on the question of dead metaphors in public life, and leave that for another day.

It was a quote from the spokes-individual for Greenpeace that caught my attention. Given its history and hard-won reputation, Greenpeace already had a head-start on fellow green groups when spokesman Stephen Campbell said of the potential outcome at Bali:

It will be like a pie without any meat.

This was probably the product of a discussion among Greenpeace activists that began with "let's come up with a line for the press" -- if so, Bali has the same effect on them as it did on me some years back. It has made them drunk.

This is a shocking grab and let me count the ways.

Firstly, a pie without meat can be an apple pie or a custard pie; is he suggesting that the outcome of the Bali Climate Conference is analagous to an apple or custard pie? If so, it is not clear precisely what he means by this.

Secondly, if he means -- and I think he does -- that it would be like a meat pie without any meat, it is a limp metaphor anyway: the notion of a meatless meat pie evokes nothing visually.

Finally, a grab must match the persona of the person delivering it. "We will fight them on the beaches" is a fantastic line, but wouldn't have had nearly as much impact if it had been delivered by Noel Coward. This is Campbell's problem. He sounds like - how to put this politely - a fairly committed vegetarian. I think he would be as likely to eat a meat pie as he would sit through a 24-hour Stephen Seagal marathon wearing only Homer Simpson boxer shorts. In his voice, the grab sounded hopelessly inauthentic and contrived. Perhaps he would have been better off saying:

The outcome is in danger of becoming like a frittata without semi-sun-dried tomatoes.

And you thought Chelsea Clinton was a Cesna!*

2007-12-13T15:44:00.000+11:00

Check out the family portrait of Governor Mike Huckabee who now has an outside chance of grabbing the Republican nomination for President. It would certainly be a national security challenge should this family move into the White House: the First Sons would be irresistible targets for hijacked airliners.

To make matters worse, if possible, he is a Baptist Minister who does not believe in evolution.

In Barack Obama, America the Beautiful has its candidate.

America the Fugly may have found its own standard-bearer in Mike Huckabee

(Non-existent) Heaven help us!

* a little plane

MRM gets business card

2007-12-13T15:14:00.000+11:00

My Eleven Alcoholic Brothers

2007-12-13T08:02:00.000+11:00

Before the Hadlee-Chappell Cricket One-Day series begins, and Australia does to NZ things that more typically occur in federal prisons under the cover of darkness, I need to lay my imaginary card on a hypothetical table.

My relationship with the Black Caps (as the NZ cricket team is known) resembles nothing more than that of brothers where one is a hopelessly relapsing alcoholic and the other is not. Ironically enough, in this metaphor at least, I get to play the sober one.

The Black Caps are a constant disappointment, but I cannot bring myself to stop loving them. They offer occasional glimpses of recovery and promise, but this only makes the sting of the inevitable let-down greater. At times, I promise myself to shun them from my life, as if my ongoing adherence is only enabling their appalling choices and disgraceful behaviours, but I always open the door to them in the end. They are the bane of my existence but, gall me as this might, they sit close to my heart and always will.

To stretch the drunk-brother analogy to breaking point, it is no exaggeration to say that, on current form, the Black Caps appear to be in the midst of a year-long fortified-spirits bender with a six-month wait on a detox bed.

George Orwell summed up the Black Caps -- and alcoholic brothers -- nicely. He was talking about the British aristocracy, but, even when recycled for other purposes, Orwell’s words ring truer than a thousand newly formed sentences:

They are not wicked, or not altogether wicked; they are merely unteachable.

Orwell, The Lion and the Unicorn, December 1940

Hacks Like Me

2007-12-12T08:43:00.001+11:00

To me, the term hack is not a pejorative one. I was myself a political hack for ten years, something of which I am not overly ashamed. For most of us, our hackery begins in our teens when we develop an unhealthy interest in politics at the same times our friends are discovering Dungeons and Dragons, smoking and masturbation. In my case, my first political act was to march in protest of the Springbok tour of New Zealand in 1981 when I was 11 years old. That same year, my parents let me stay up late to witness the election results as a child today might to watch the final of Australian Idol.

If we get lucky, hacks like me will land a job that takes us to the Hogwarts of Hackery: Parliament. There, we will master the dark arts of spin, counter-spin, spinning-on-the-head-of-a-pin, and non-actionable defamation. The whole time, we are angling to become MP's ourselves. Only a small number will make it; the rest will end up in unions and PR companies (Labor) or investment banks and PR companies (Liberal). But hacks we remain.

There is no dishonour in any of this, but Joshua Frydenberg, who has an opinion piece in today's Age, is obfuscating his hackery and needs to be called for it.

He is a Supreme Hack. He admits to being a past advisor to John Howard but this is tepid terminology (Sir Gustav Nossal also advised the former PM on some matters). In fact, he was a first-rank Liberal Party hack placed in Howard's office, from which perch he launched a failed bid for the Senate. He no doubt wants a seat in Parliament in the next round. His opinion pieces need to be understood in that context and, when they are, they can be seen for what they are: pre-selection campaign fodder unfit to print.

MRM@themovies - Bee Movie

2007-12-11T12:54:00.000+11:00

by Penelope Forbesdorian

If you love Seinfeld, there’s a pretty good chance you’ll like Bee Movie, an animated feature written by and starring Jerry Seinfeld (Barry B. Benson).

Following graduation, Barry, along with bee pal Adam Flayman (Matthew Broderick), must decide upon a lifelong career at the honey factory. Daunted by the prospect, Barry spreads his tiny wings to join the hive jocks on a nectar-collecting mission outside the hive.

The mission is Barry’s entrée to the human world, where he meets and befriends florist Vanessa Bloome (Renée Zellweger). At the risk of buzz kill, Barry soon discovers the mass commercialisation of honey by big industry and Ray Liotta, who plays himself in an amusing, if somewhat confusing, cameo. Was this a play on Paul Newman’s pasta sauces? Regardless, a lawsuit and environmental disaster ensue.

At times Barry channels Jerry at his Seinfeldian best, shrieking lines reminiscent of “look to the cookie”. The film delivers a few Seinfeld friends in the form of Patrick Warbuton a.k.a. Puddy, slightly typecast as Vanessa’s moronic boyfriend, Ken, and Michael Richards in a lesser role as one of the hive jocks.

The animated worlds inside and outside the hive are rich and colourful, just as you’d expect from bee eyes. It’s a great take on the man/woman/bee versus man story, and I particularly enjoyed the movie-trickery like the Ocean’s Eleven-style montage scene. However, and it’s a big one, I’m 39 not nine.

Sadly, Bee Movie misses its mark with its intended G-rated audience. How many Zzzzzzz-Gens share your passion for Jerry and the gang in a show about nothing? Hey, third-graders, put your hands on your head if you liked Goodfellas more than Casino.

While this is definitely a movie about something, I heard more laughs from the seven-year-olds during the trailers. About halfway through, I heard a pre-schooler on the verge of tears sulk “is the funny bit soon”?

What this film lacks is a Donkey. While Shrek gave us big kids pop culture references and cheeky asides, Donkey entertained the kids with face-pulling, slapstick and waffles. Don’t get me wrong, today’s kids are a sophisticated audience, and that’s why, pretty moving pictures, a solid story structure and a likeable bee just won't cut the honey mustard. Bee Movie seeks X-factor.

Three stars. Oscar bee buzz – perhaps in the technical areas.

The Particular Humilitation of the Mistaken Heterosexual

2007-12-11T08:04:00.000+11:00

The last time it happened, it involved my making eye contact with a woman in a car at the very moment she was devouring a banana. It was after work and I was standing at a tram stop, just one of a phalanx of commuters. The woman, who had the window wound down, issued forth a stream of invective that made it clear that she thought I was interpreting her action vis-a-vis the banana erotically. "You fucking pervert" neatly summarises her thesis. I desperately wanted to assure her that she was wrong; that I was not envisaging fellatio; that, in fact, I am gay and do not find women, even young and attractive women like her, remotely sexually attractive. But the tram had arrived, the lights had changed, and the world had moved on. But the visceral sense of humiliation was such that I jumped off the tram, and away from the prying eyes of those who had witnessed it, and dove into nearest pub, a coping mechanism no longer available to me.

On Sunday, I was shopping for perfume on Glenferrie Road, Hawthorn, when I found myself engaged in light-hearted banter with the shop assistant, a pretty young thing not long out of High School. I am a gregarious sort of chap, and rate my banter skills highly, and like to apply them to shop assistants and the like as a way of demonstrating my egalitarian values system.

This was different, though, because I caught an unmistakable look in the shop assistant's eyes. She did not think I was being funny and engaging at all.

She thought I was HITTING ON HER.

The familiar burn of shame rose in my cheeks, and I was stranded just as I was on that long-ago tram stop.

Her face said it all: "you complete delusional loser - I would rather set myself alight than engage in intimacies with a paunchy, middle-aged freak like you."

My face responded: "God, this is embarrassing"

My heart interjected: "Tell her you're gay"

My head piped up: "What a stupid idea."

My legs took me out of there as fast as they could without appearing to jog.

Oprah Whom I Love

2007-12-10T14:59:00.000+11:00

There is no job on earth I want more than that which is currently held by Anne Davies, Washington correspondent for the Age newspaper. The thought of it alone fills my heart with what if's, if only's, and woulda coulda shoulda's (the most prominent of which is if only I had chosen journalism over whatever it is I ended up doing when I wasn't drinking).

This is why it irks me that Ms Davies, possessor of that which I want so dearly, makes such a mess of what coulda, woulda, shoulda, been mine.

Today she describes to Age readers the significance of Oprah Winfrey's endorsement of Barack Obama in this way:

Oprah's audience is predominantly female, white and over 55. Nationally, 7.4 million people watch Oprah daily — about 2.6% of American households, but 4% of American women (about 5.7 million).

This, I'm afraid, is not good enough. She has reduced the awesome and unprecedented cultural power of Oprah to the tawdry rubble of ratings points and meaningless percentages. It is also a bogus presentation of ratings data because Oprah in on screen five times weekly, so the reach of her broadcast is far greater than one day's viewing numbers can attest.

She also slices and dices Oprah's audience to make them resemble those who, until recently, listened to John Laws: old, white ladies.

In every respect, she completely misses the point of Oprah; her transcendent wonderfulness; her great authenticity.

Oprah's full-throttle endorsement of Obama will go down in history, and Anne Davies missed the moment.

I wouldn't have.

Letter to the Victorian Minister for the Arts

2007-12-09T08:57:00.000+11:00

Hon Lynne Kosky
Minister for the Arts
PO Box 2797Y
Melbourne VIC 3001
via email: lynne.kosky@parliament.vic.gov.au

December 9 2007

Dear Minister

Last night, a friend and I paid $30 each to attend a performance called 'The Meat Show'. Without boring you with detail, it involved two militant vegetarians prancing around the stage for close to an hour displaying an almost heroic lack of talent. It was excruciatingly bad, exceeding in awfulness anything I have ever seen -- and, Minister, I have seen some rubbish.

Apart from anything else, it proved that calling oneself a performance artist does not make one one.

To be fair, some members of the audience seemed less horrified than I - a few even laughed and applauded -- but I suspect this was drug-related.

I noted that 'The Meat Show' received funding from Arts Victoria, which brings me to my question:

Minister, what can't?

Kind regards

Phil Quin
www.mrmcentral.blogspot.com

The Henry Decision

2007-12-07T14:11:00.000+11:00

I will not go on at length about the decision by NZ Rugby to reappoint Graham Henry for two years.

The decision is a logical extension of the no-such-thing-as-failure ethos that has permeated all levels of NZ society since the late 1970's. It started in Primary schools, where the ability to swing a poi began to exceed in status the ability to read. It moved up the education system so that you can now qualify as a teacher simply by walking past a Teacher's College three mornings a term (a bone carving around your neck will get you honours).

It accelerated with the emergence of the Helenistas whose nanny-statism has turned New Zealand into Singapore run by lesbians.

There is no such thing as failure in New Zealand. Just ask Graham Henry.

Justifying the Gym: A Case Study in Cognitive Dissonance

2007-12-07T13:17:00.000+11:00

Like the term post-modern, cognitive dissonance is a phrase often wielded half-knowingly by knob-shiners in pursuit of a high syllable count. But it is a genuinely interesting concept which, like the term haberdashery, deserves greater exposure.

This vignette explains the whole idea rather nicely:

A group of students is divided in half. The first group is instructed to write an essay proposing a point of view that is contrary to their own and given $100 to do so. The second group is asked to do the same, but is given a mere $10. After completing the essay, research has found that the second group is far more likely to have changed their minds and now agree with the contents of the essay. They have convinced themselves in order to alleviate the cognitive dissonance caused by writing something offensive to them. No such intellectual aerobics is required for the first group - the $100 is sufficient external justification (for lying) on its own.

In short, cognitive dissonance is that uncomfortable feeling when we do or say something that conflicts with our inner beliefs. We contort ourselves beyond recognition to avoid it (think the Nuremberg Defence) or we take pecuniary reward to grin and bear it (think lawyer for tobacco company).

I now go to the gym everyday. Those who know me will understand how explosive a sentence that is. I have spent most of my adult life - and some of my childhood - railing against gym-goers as narcissistic and shallow, stupid and vain. I prided myself on never having set foot in a gym, not even by accident. The animus I felt towards gym-bunnies was no less intense than that which I felt (and feel) towards conservative political parties, Afrikaners or Denise Drysdale.

Yet now I go every single day.

I ought to be Mr October in the 2008 Cognitive Dissonance calendar.

And this is how I cope: in my mind, I have divided the gym into two parts. One part is for me and other sane, reasonable people, who keep fit through moderate exercise. This is the good gym. The other part is where absurd people roam like predators, smooching biceps and feeling the burn in an on orgy of sweat-soaked self-love. This is the evil gym.

By dint of this (entirely fictitious) separation, I am able to go to the gym while minimising cognitive dissonance. It is a neat trick. You should try it.

Why Obama Can and Will Win

2007-12-06T14:14:00.001+11:00

It has occurred to me that reporting in Australia and NZ, where most of my readership reside, suggests that Hillary Clinton is a shoo-in to become the Democratic candidate for President next year. That is because the national polls put her well in front of her rivals, including Barack Obama. In truth, and if history is a guide, this means nothing. The real story is too nuanced for our media to report. Here is how Obama wins.

On January 3, he wins the Iowa caucus -- he is currently ahead or even with Clinton in polls so this is likely. The media goes to town on Clinton for losing and Obama gets a bit fat honeymoon.

On January 22, Obama wins New Hampshire -- he is only 8-12 points behind Clinton at this stage and the momentum from Iowa will push him over the line easily as the lower-ranking candidates drop out and endorse him

On January 26, he wins South Carolina -- he is behind there because many African American voters don't believe that whites will vote for him so are backing Clinton to be safe. This theory will be discredited by this point since there are no African Americans to speak of in Iowa or New Hampshire.

By this point, Obama has unstoppable momentum leading into Super Tuesday, 5 February where he cleans Clinton's clock.

This time in 1991, Bill Clinton had barely cracked single digits in the national polls. Obama has a clear run to the nomination but he MUST win Iowa.

MRM@themovies - Elizabeth: The Golden Age

2007-12-06T13:44:00.000+11:00

This perfectly formed turd of a movie left me aghast. The original Elizabeth was a seriously good film, and Cate Blanchett losing out on the Best Actress Oscar to Gwyneth Paltrow for her bland and insipid turn in Shakespeare in Love was one of the Academy's most infamous snubs. Blanchett returns for the sequel, as does the director and much of the original cast and crew. But the fault here lies with director who, in the nine years since he got it right with the first film, has either taken too many drugs or not enough. This is a profoundly inferior film.

There is a point where Elizabeth emerges on horseback to deliver a stirring speech to troops who are primed to fight the invading Spaniards. Historically, of course, the entire scene is complete bullshit. It is well known that Elizabeth: The Golden Age is rife with historical inaccuracies but, in this horrible film, even the factual bits felt like bad fiction.

This abysmal scene reveals Blanchett’s undeniable greatness. When she emerges atop this noble steed to let forth a battle cry, there can be no doubt that these thoughts were going around in her head:

I can’t fucking believe they are putting me on a fucking WHITE horse as if I’m Henry the fucking Fifth or Brave-Fucking-Heart and making me utter these shitful lines with this HUGE GINGA FUCKING WIG. They are just taking the piss.

But, to look at her face -- nothing. Stoic, heroic. In character. Focussed like a laser-beam. There’s our Cate – a true genius.

HALF A STAR

Opus Gay

2007-12-05T08:15:00.000+11:00

There are numerous places around town where employers can send you to learn how to better use Microsoft Excel. There are half and full day courses and they can be very useful should you find yourself in a job where Excel skills are imperative and you have none. Whichever course you take, this much is certain: you will receive a certificate at the end of it.

Yesterday, Victorian Attorney General Rob Hulls announced that the government will put gay and lesbian couples on a register of gay and lesbian couples.

You get no certificate and it will cost you – you personally, not your employer – a fee of $180.

Microsoft Excel workshops represent far better value for Victoria’s gays and lesbians.

This is all a colossal sell-out. It is not even civil unions, which is a sell out in itself. It is a sell-out on a sell-out. It is a charade and a grand disappointment. Hulls is very progressive on gay rights, and his reforms in 2001 that eliminated hundreds of discriminatory statutes, were laudatory. Brumby is no homophobe and, while Bracksy was uncomfortable with the whole subject, he was reliable enough, too.

Add to that, this: the majority of the Liberal Party, including the Leader and Deputy Leader, are openly supportive of more aggressive reforms.

The problem is that the Government is held hostage the religious zealots in the SDA, a Union that seems to believe that the tens of thousands of supermarket workers it represents are members of Opus Dei. Worse than that, it is too spineless to isolate these moralising half-wits, who number only a few in Parliament, by taking gay marriage to the floor of the House in a conscience vote when they know it would pass with many, many Liberal votes The Premier’s chief media advisor, Sharon McCrohan, will be leading the hysterical chorus against this idea: “JB, we can’t let the public know that part of our caucus lives in a Dan Brown novel. Let’s come up with a pointless compromise!”

So pointless compromise it is. It is like the “democratic” reforms introduced the South Africa’s National Party to ward off the inevitable demise of Apartheid.

It is not policy – it is PR, designed to simultaneously subdue the Vatican and the Melbourne gay and lesbian community.

It is morally and philosophically indefensible – which would be okay if it were politically necessary. It is not. We have the votes for meaningful change. We just don’t have a government willing to expose its own fanatical fringe in the process.

MRM@themovies -- Freedom Writers

2007-12-01T20:44:00.000+11:00

The inspirational teacher movie is a hugely underrated genre, and long a favourite of mine.

In order of neither chronology nor merit, some the classics of the genre include: Dead Poets Society, To Sir With Love, Dangerous Minds, Mr Holland's Opus, Music of the Heart, The Blackboard Jungle, Stand and Deliver, and The History Boys.

The genre components are typically:

Unorthodox and brilliant teachers
Students facing seemingly insurmountable challenges, most often poverty and dislocation and chronically low expectations
Rigidly conservative colleagues and/or parents
Quiet student who flourishes
An especially bolshie student who comes around in the end
Shameless tear-jerker endings

Tonight I watched Freedom Writers, the latest in the genre, and a ripper to boot.

Hillary Swank, who always looks to me about two bad career choices from guest starring on Brothers and Sisters, is the teacher with the inspiration. The kids are gang-bangers from LA's unspeakable bits. The modus operandi is self-expression through writing. The Holocaust plays a critical thematic cameo. It got widely panned for being simplistic, unsubtle and formulaic. I agree but don't care. I loved it to bits. I set a Personal Best by crying for 102 of its 123 minutes.

Imelda Staunton's performance as the department head is undoubtedly what secured her casting in the latest Harry Potter film where she tore up the screen as the Headmistress at Hogwart's.

MRM@themovies gives FREEDOM WRITERS 4 stars and we say....

HILLARY SWANK SHINES IN THIS MOVING AND INSPIRATIONAL TALE OF TRIUMPH AND REDEMPTION*

*we advise that this sentence is available free of charge for use in any promotional material for the movie concerned with attribution to MRM@themovies

Pharmasexual

2007-12-01T15:41:00.000+11:00

About a year ago, my psychiatrist posed this hypothetical question: If they invented a pill that made gay men straight, would you take one? (This is a generic question asked of gay patients by therapists the world over, and sparked a very bad movie, The Hard Pill, with a very good tag line: Queer Today, Gone Tomorrow.)

When put to me, my answer was "no, I wouldn't take one. I would take ten just to be sure."

He frowned at me in a non-judgemental way; this was clearly the wrong answer even though there is theoretically no such thing in a psycho-therapeutic environment.

He asked me why, and I let forth a veritable torrent of self-loathing and internalised homophobia. He continued frowning, only less non-judgementally.

I am hopeless at being gay, I told him. I get all the bad parts of homosexuality - unstable relationships, childlessness, societal disapproval - and none of the good - dress sense, tidiness and the ability to dance. I told him how I feel really uncomfortable around gay people; that I have only one gay friend; and that on the rare occasion a gay man finds me attractive it is when he thinks I'm a straight guy taking a walk on the wild side. And I understand the LBW rule, for god's sake.

"OK," he interrupted, " I will ask you that same question this time next year. That way, we can assess progress." Obviously, he said this in such a way as to not create unnecessarily burdensome expectations.

Chastened, I underwent a program of activity designed to eliminate this unhealthy homophobia. I called it Homo Improvement.

As it coincided with Melbourne's annual Midsumma Festival for Gay Bacon Lettuce and Tomato (GBLT) community, I was able to attend lots of various gay-themed plays and cabaret acts. I three myself into in the midst of it, trying to make contact with my inner-whoopsy.

It was a limited success. Along with ongoing non-judgemental mental therapy, it has helped me become far less toxic on the question of my incongruous homosexuality . I certainly feel less sorry for myself -- I may be gay but I am not, for example, a Ginga or a Christian.

But the shrink warned me the question is coming up on Monday: if I could take a pill that would make me straight, would I take it?

The response will be different in tone, but not in substance.

Trans-Tasman Sledge Sets Tone for Lord Nelson Tilt

2007-11-29T21:54:00.000+11:00

I am told that Malcom Turnbull had no interest in the Internet until someone showed him how to Google himself, after which time he became something of a guru. I am sure, therefore, that he read the strategy I spent several hard-earned minutes devising to destroy his soon-to-be leadership. Since I know he is reading this off a Google alert, I apologise to Malcom for wasting his time; and to my loyal reader(s) for the same reason.

When it comes to Lord Nelson, the scurrilous bastard who sold his soul to the homophobic worker-hating racists within his Party to actually become leader, I have no such strategy. I couldn't summon the enthusiasm.

[Quick note on political strategy here: whoever advised Turnbull that the best way to win a ballot of Liberal politicians is to disown Liberal politics is either a moron or a Labor plant].

A good friend of mine pointed out that Nelson's ascension is a sign of Rudd's popularity: even the leader of the Liberal Party is a member of the Labor Party, albeit a lapsed one.

But let the record show that the seeds of Lord Nelson's eventual, inevitable and spectacular demise can be found in the least likely of places - Waikanae, New Zealand.

It is there that my father - an old man, and farty - was watching the election coverage on Sky News.

The following day, he was telling me about the coverage and I asked who was representing the Liberal Party (it was, of course, Lord Nelson). He couldn't remember the name, nor did he recognise the face. He just said this:

Whoever he was, he was groaning under the weight of his own gravitas.

It is doubtful that this is his own -- Dad hasn't come up with an original joke since the Carter administration -- but it is a ripper nonetheless. I release it into cyber-space with Dad's express blessings.

Movie Review Segment

2007-11-28T16:22:00.000+11:00

Reader(s)

I have been planning to launch a movie review segment for the last month or so but two things have intervened: 1, the election, and 2, the incredibly lame run of recent releases at the cinema.

This will change, however, as we enter the Academy Awards season.

I am looking for contributors to the MRM@themovies section!

It is my aim that we will be quoted on a movie poster within twelve months (the way to do this is to rave voluptuously about a movie despised by every single other person using catchy and pithy phrases). Websites are now regularly cited along with radio stations that may or may not actually exist, like WKRP in Cincinnati. .

If you want to be part of this extraordinary journey to movie-poster-citation , leave a comment and we will coordinate our movie viewing and reviewing, and may even be able to scam some freebies.

Seriously, I think a movie reviews section could be fun. We watch movies. We write. Why wouldn't we combine the two?

Phil
Editor-in-Chief
MRM Central
"The Greatest Blog so Far this Year!" - Musing, Ramblings, Mumblings*

* see how easy it is!

Operation Fugu is Underway

2007-11-28T08:44:00.000+11:00

Quite often, I point to developments in the mainstream media as evidence of this blog's surreptitious power. Psychiatrists call this a delusion of grandeur and it is a high-profile symptom in a wide range of mental illnesses. It is by no means as impressive a symptom as impending sense of doom, but far more common.

I have had such a moment when reading Catherine Deveny's piece on the election in this morning's Age newspaper. My strategy to destroy Turnbull, the likely new Liberal leader, is outlined in a recent post (the same post that generated the vituperative "you're a looney" retort), and can be summarised thus: Make him a laughing-stock.

Deveny has this to say about Turnbull:

I can't really hate Malcolm Turnbull yet, I just like laughing at him in the same way I would laugh at a dog with a bucket on its head.

Bullseye.

MRMCentral Cops First Cyber-Sledge

2007-11-27T15:51:00.000+11:00

In response to my piece on the strategy to kneecap Malcom Turnbull as Liberal Leader, an Anonymous reader let loose with this three-word string of vitriol:

You're a loony.

This blog has recieved only a handful of comments in its time, all of them positive and encouraging, and often written by family members, friends or work colleagues. Frankly, this has been a piss-weak state of affairs, and the blog's failure to attract much of a readership can be attributed in large part to this kind of innocuousness. In short, it has lacked mongrel. An anonymous reader today changed all that; he busted my cyber-cherry with his 11-letter rampage of invective.

His four-syllable rant brings to this modest blog's belly the fire it craves.

Operation Fugu: How to frame Turnbull from Day 1

2007-11-25T21:41:00.000+11:00

This how Labor needs to take Turnbull on as Opposition Leader, should he get the gig.

Malcom Turnbull is laughable. He is like the first speaker in the private school debating team: a little overeager, comically pompous and thoroughly pleased with himself. He has a tendency to cite his own speeches in subsequent speeches. He uses the first person pronoun like a machine gun. He is rich and pompous, puffed up and preening. He is prone to overacting. He is a bit of a ham. He is inauthentic.

As Prime Minister, John Howard was always formidable, an adjective that doesn't live in the same suburb as Malcom Turnbull. He lacks gravitas. He is laughable.

----------------------------------------------

A young researcher should be tasked with keeping track of every word he says that reinforces these themes - his use of 'I' and 'me', his tendency for self-reference, his pomposity and overacting etc. Keep scorecards. Get a website going. Use YouTube. Find a backbencher in the Reps and a Senator who can run the issues out in Parliament. Get the Minister on message in response to his questions at Question Time. Keep it light and fun. Gentle mocking tones.

Examples of how this "death-by-derision" approach to flawed opposition leaders abound: Ian Duncan Smith, the British Tory leader mocked for his timidity and constant coughing; John Kerry as "flip-flopper" and pompous git; Neil Kinnock as a windbag; Denis Napthine in Victoria flayed by then-backbencher Tim Holding for his gaffes and inconsistencies.

Follow Operation Fugu, and Turnbull will be gone or damaged beyond repair within a year.

How Deakin Proves that Coalition Union-Bashing Failed

2007-11-25T21:06:00.000+11:00

Enter now the season of recriminations, blame-sheeting, contorted justifications and the wholesale rewriting of history.

As part of this, there will be an inevitable debate about the effectiveness of the Liberal Party's union-bashing campaign. Let's put it to rest now. It was a complete disaster that represented both a collosal waste of money and a criminally incompetent misreading of the electorate.

Union-bashing failed, and the ALP's win in Deakin proves it.

I lived in Deakin for twelve months until I could no longer stand it. It is the sort of electorate with lots of furniture super-stores and all-you-can-eat buffet restaurants. Deakin is also noted for its concentration of churches, often of the non-traditional, guitar-strumming, Jesus-lovin', poofter-bashing ilk. It is a quintessential marginal seat: chock-full of the kind of aspirational mortgage-laden, self-employed, slightly-thick voter that kept Howard in office for a decade.

It should have been fertile ground for the negative anti-union campaign in which the Coalition placed so much faith. The ALP played its part in making Deakin a litmus test on political potency of union-bashing. Not only did Labor select as its candidate a Union official, but they picked Mike Symon from the Electrical Trades Union, by reputation, the most feral, extremist and thuggish of them all. The ETU is the Taliban of the Australian Trade Union Movement, and Deakin is nothing at all like Kabul. Or even Ramadi.

Perfect conditions for the all-out vilification of unionists and their allegedly nefarious ties to Labor -- yet Labor won with a massive 7.5 percent swing. This proves without any shadow of doubt that union-bashing, into which the Coalition invested millions upon millions of advertising dollars, flopped on an epic scale.

I think it may have also demonstrated that voters were less concerned that 70 percent of Rudd's frontbench are unionists than they were with the notion that 100 percent of Howard's frontbench are members of the Liberal Party.

Some Election Observations

2007-11-25T17:31:00.000+11:00

I could gloat about both the result of the election, and the laser-beam like accuracy of my predictions thereof, so I will.

There is a book's worth of material in the election - the campaign strategies, the media coverage, the leader's performance and respective modus operandi, the role of Julia Guillard (high marks), the impact or otherwise of negative campaigning (low marks), the list goes on. Such books are no doubt on the way, and I would pen one were I not so congenitally lazy, poorly-connected and ill-informed.

However, I will make one or two observations in light of the result:

Peter Costello's announcement that he will not, under any circumstances, become Prime Minister of Australia unless it is handed to him on a gilded platter confirms his entry into the dubious pantheon of Great Australian Political Cowards.

Given that (a) Peter Costello clearly decided in advance of election that he would rather pash Jannette Howard than become Opposition Leader and (b) John Howard devoted at least three minutes of his concession speech to promoting Costello for that very same job, it is clear that (c) Costello did not tell Howard of his plans. Ergo, (d) it is clear that the depth and degree of distrust and dysfunction between those two was - and is - truly titanic.

Howard's speech was great - but concession speeches always are. On a general point, however, losing politicians must lift their game when it comes to election night interviews. When it became clear the swing was on, there were a series of parallel-universe-style live crosses with Liberal MP's who kept refusing to concede in the face of obvious defeat. It was such a river of denial, I thought I might be in Egypt (get it?).

A Bloodless Coup

2007-11-22T22:58:00.000+11:00

John Howard said today that there is no palpable anger in the Australian electorate of the kind that usually foreshadows a change of government.

I agree with him. The prevailing voter mood is something far worse than garden variety anger. Most governments on the nose arrive home on election day to find their belongings strewn across the driveway amid much wailing and gnashing of teeth. This is not the case here.

This Saturday, in a cold, deliberate and passionless act, the Australian voter will calmly pack the remnants of the Howard legacy in boxes and into the back of a removal truck. No tears, no hysterics; just bloodless determination.

Howard thinks that the absence of passion is good news. I think it’s good night nurse.

Wood Flays Cocks

2007-11-20T16:19:00.000+11:00

Rodney Cocks, the ALP candidate for the marginal Victorian seat of La Trobe, issued a direct mail letter that mistakenly claimed he is a parent when he is not. This was a proofing error - generic template mail flies around like confetti at this point - and a pretty embarrassing one. Whomever failed to prevent this letter going out deserves to be taken out back and flogged to within an inch of their lives. But for all that, it is an innocent mistake. Mail is distributed centrally by the Party and an assumption was made that candidates are parents. Silly mistake, but hardly Watergate.

Derryn Hinch on 3AW was first to uncover the gaffe and is milking it in a way only a fading talkback hack who can only break news by outing dead people could.

The incumbent MP, Jason Wood, got a free kick on Hinch's program today, where he said that:

The error with the letter proves that Labor cannot be trusted with the $1 trillion Australian economy.

Overstatement is a common feature of electioneering, and I am more guilty than most in this respect. I am responsible for some unspeakably overblown rhetoric and hyperbole over my time as a campaign manager.

But the claim by Woods that a proofing error in one direct mail letter in one electorate demonstrates that Labor is incapable of governing is so astoundingly overwrought that it betrays a panicked desperation that is almost sad to behold

I said almost.

Howard and Nixon: Will the Parallels Never End?

2007-11-20T11:26:00.000+11:00

In 1952, Richard Nixon was the scandal-plagued nominee for Vice President on the ticket of Dwight Eisenhower who, as historians agree, hated his guts. Not for the last time, Nixon's career teetered on the brink in the wake of corruption allegation involving inappropriate gifts, including a cocker spaniel named Checkers.

By all accounts, Eisenhower relished this as excuse to bounce Nixon from the ticket, but a cagey megalomaniac like Nixon does not lie down easily. He thought Eisenhower was a clueless windbag completely bereft of policy vision and unbearably pompous. Eisenhower thought Nixon evil, callous and ambitious to the point of mental illness. They were both right.

Nixon went on television to deliver a plea for survival, furiously denying any wrongdoing and famously invoking the cuteness of the dog named 'Checkers' to wipe away any stain of malfeasance. Sadly for America and the world, Nixon survived.

Howard and Costello's appearance on Channel Seven last night is eerily allegorical, and let me explain how.

Howard hates his deputy, regarding him as smug, vain and overrated. In return, his deputy regards Howard as evil, callous and ambitious to the point of a mental illness.

Like Nixon, Howard is desperately grasping for ways to rescue his career and legacy. Like Nixon, he appears on prime time television tobeg for electoral mercy.

And, like Nixon in the Checkers Speech, he invoked a dog for sympathy. This time, though, it was sitting right next to him.

Popstars Wrestle with the Truth

2007-11-18T21:14:00.000+11:00

Today, Missy Higgins has revealed she is a lesbian and Australian Idol finalist Matt Corby claimed that he toured Australia as a 14- year old as part of a "community rock band".

We are now in a world where, in the pursuit of public adoration, it is better to be known as a lesbian than a Christian.

Matt Corby has previously denied rumoured connections to the holly-rollers from Hillsong, but today's coining of the term "community rock band" deserves a mention in the Guinness Book of Obfuscation.

Back to Miss Higgins, of whom I am quite a fan.

Just an hour or so after reading reports of the interview in a lesbian magazine in which Higgins admitted she was "not straight", one of her songs played on my car stereo. The song is called "The Special Two", and I have enjoyed it as a lyrical and powerful love song for some time. But today, the lyric hit me with such force that I confess to coming over a bit weepy-eyed:

I've hardly been outside my room in days,
'cause I don't feel that I deserve the sunshine's rays.
The darkness helped until the whiskey wore away,
And it was then I realize the conscience never fades.
When you're young you have this image of your life:
That you'll be scrupulous and one day even make a wife.
And you make boundaries you'd never dream to cross,
And if you happen to you wake completely lost.
But I will fight for you, be sure that
I will fight until we're the special two once again.

Until today, this struck me as a pretty good lyric about depression, more or less. But how much more powerful the lyric is now! When taken as a coming out story, it is a sublime, evoking a familiar sense of angst and misery and regret and loss:

I remember someone old once said to me:
"That lies will lock you up with truth the only key."
But I was comfortable and warm inside my shell,
And couldn't see this place would soon become my hell.
So is it better to tell and hurt or lie to save their face?
Well I guess the answer is don't do it in the first place.

As a gay man, I know first hand about the unique form of torture applied to the soul of a man or woman in the process of facing down this unpalatable truth about themselves.

Missy Higgins' revelation today will, at the very least, soften my often uncharitable views about lesbians. I suspect this was not the main reason she did it.

Australia Smells Bacon

2007-11-16T08:31:00.000+11:00

A clean hit, let alone a knock-out punch, is a rare thing in politics. Warring parties' tend to fight themselves to a standstill: accusations meet with denial and counter-accusations and culminate in very little indeed. It is much like two endlessly articulate children in a playground:

Child A: Your mother is fat.
Child B: Yours is ugly.
Child A: Yours is fat, ugly and unhygenic.
Child B: Yours is fat, ugly, unhygenic and obnoxious.
Child A: Well, yours is fat, ugly, unhygenic, obnoxious and emotionally needy......

As with political debate, no one really wins an argument like this: you just agree with whomever you thought had the better Mum in the first place. Much political discourse, like this, is a zero-sum game. It changes more channels than minds.

As a veteran opposition researcher, I have a connoisseur's appreciation for an effective political assault when it comes along: the Audit office findings into Coalition pork barrelling in regional Australia is the cleanest, most decisive hit I have seen for a long time.

The impact of the story is nullified somewhat by the media's understandable reluctance to overplay such a damaging story so close to polling day.

One way to test the impact of a damaging story is by the insipidity of the response. By that measure, this is a Force 10 Hurricane.

The ANAO report states that the problem with the allocation process is that the Government regularly rejected recommendations to fund projects in ALP seats, and went against advice to fund projects in Coalition-held seats.

John Howard retorts that the regional grants are skewed to Coalition seats because the Coalition has more seats to begin with.

This is a complete nonsense. It is a non sequitur. And it is a knowing lie.

The Rain of Tony Abbott

2007-11-14T09:29:00.000+11:00

How quaint it is that such a thing as a Party Political Broadcast still exists. The tradition dates back to the Britain in 1924 when Postmaster-General, the pre-appeasement Neville Chamberlain, finally agreed to the idea of equal airtime for Labour, Liberal and Conservative in the lead up to that year’s election. The Post Office had been delivering party manifestos for some time, and this was deemed as no more than a hi-tech equivalent. It was the 1924 equivalent of Kevin Rudd going on Facebook.

As I say, it is a quaint tradition, and widely mocked. Party Political Broadcasts have been so remorselessly parodied that the words,”the following is a Party Political Broadcast”, when delivered in that distinct BBC voice, sounds for all money like the set-up for a gag.

The tradition found its way to Australia and NZ where it persists today.

The Liberal Party had its turn last night. It comprised sections from various speeches from the campaign launch in Brisbane, combined with one-on-one interviews with a selection of the frontbench. All Ministers, with one exception, were interviewed in the comfort of what appeared to be their own offices. However, Tony Abbott – whose election campaign performance to date could best be described as a shocker – was interviewed outside. In the pouring rain. Holding an umbrella. In the midst of a hundred-year drought.

If this were a fly-on-the-wall documentary being made off the smell of an oily rag by some Uni students and the only opportunity they had to interview the Minister co-incided with both inclement weather and a fire-drill, then perhaps this is understandable.

But this was not a post-graduate assignment, and an untimely fire-drill seems unlikely. The Party Political Broadcast was, by definition, produced by the Liberal Party itself, and the decision to film Abbott in the pouring rain holding an umbrella was a deliberate one.

This does not augur well for his leadership chances post-election.

Alien Radiology

2007-11-12T20:22:00.000+11:00

For Simon Kershaw

I will keep this short.

Last week, I visited a radiology clinic for x-rays of my teeth. I was led to a machine designed for that very purpose. A radiology nurse directed me appropriately. The machine operates by circumnavigating the patient's cranium to capture 360 degree images. It is designed to do this, I guess, by very, very clever Kodak engineers whose work is tested, re-tested and tested again by similar brainboxes to make sure it works.

I placed my head in said contraption. The nurse set it in motion and it whirred into action. Shortly into its journey, however, the machine was obstructed -- by my gigantic fucking head.

This marvel of modern medical technology, worth more than I have ever earned or ever will, was impeded less than 90 degrees into its journey.

The nurse was extravagantly embarrassed and called in the technician, who was more bemused than anything else. The machine was, after all, designed for the human head, with all reasonable contingencies taken into account. Luckily, however, there were alternate settings -- devised for the possible arrival of a large-skulled alien species on an inter-galactic search for reasonably-priced radiology services -- and the x-ray was completed without any further dilly-dallying.

Depression Laws

2007-11-11T12:50:00.000+11:00

According to News Ltd papers, He of the Golden Tonsils, John Laws, suffers from depression.

This is an odd coincidence, since I suffer depression every time I think of John Laws.

On Clapping

2007-11-10T12:51:00.000+11:00

At a Crowded House concert I attended at the Melbourne Tennis Centre last night, there came a time when it would have seemed mean-spirited not to clap. I don't mean applaud - although this was well-deserved and generously forthcoming - but clap in time with the music. I knew this moment would come and I was dreading it. In fact, I was on my own so I could have got away with not clapping but, for some reason, I tend to act in public as if I am famous (imagining the gossip for days after: "did you see that Phil Quin refused to clap in time with Crowded House's classic melodies! What a complete arsehole.")

Be that as it may, the moment of rhythmic clapping came. I was tentative to begin with, directing my hands to make clap-like movements without them actually meeting; then to gently and silently collide; then finally to pound into each other in order to make the desired onomatopoeic clapping sound. By this time, the clapping had been going on for around five beats - so far, so good. I appeared to be in sync. This was doomed, of course, or at least became so the very second I became conscious of it. The moment you are aware of the timing of the clapping, the clapping falters and the uncoordinated mis-clapping and attending embarrassment flow from there. This has stark parallels I am sure with erectile dysfunction: once Mr Floppy makes even the most passing appearance in one's consciousness, I suspect the game is up.

The problem stems perhaps from the mentality that underlies my clapping. If I was clapping purely in response to the music - as a natural and free-wheeling engagement with the tempo - perhaps then I would do so in time and without humiliation. But maybe my clapping is not about the music at all; rather, it is an ill-conceived attempt to belong, to appear normal and to fit in. After all, my clapping fails me once I start imitating the movements of other, more seasoned clappers around me. Thus, my mis-timed clapping is emblematic of my broader life: striving yet failing in a quest for "normalcy", I exist on the margins yearning to catch society's rhythms, but doomed to another beat.

Or it could be that I am complete spastic.

Occam's razor may come in handy here, too.

The Grandiosity Gap: How Wankaphobia Mutes the Australian Rhetorical Palatte

2007-11-08T16:02:00.000+11:00

In Team America, one of the greatest puppet movies of all time, a song which is probably called "America! Fuck yeah!" punctuates much of the action. The song came back to me as I was scanning Amazon for Xmas presents. Based on my past browsing history, the following titles popped up on my screen:

AMERICA ALONE: THE END OF THE WORLD AS WE KNOW IT (Steyn, Mark, 2007)
THE END OF AMERICA (Wolf, Naomi, 2007)
KIDS ARE AMERICAN, TOO (O'Reilly, Bill, 2007)
THE REAL STARS: IN TODAY'S AMERICA, WHO ARE THE TRUE HEROES? (Stein, Ben, 2007)
WHAT'S SO GREAT ABOUT AMERICA (d'Souza, Dinesh, 2006)

These books range the ideological spectrum: Wolf is on the left and believes that Dick Cheney is responsible for your last head cold; D'Douza is so far to the right he advocates conservatives from all religions - Muslim, Christian, Jewish and Hindu - gang up and act on their shared repulsion of gays, Democrats and vegetarians.

But what they share in common is their SHAMELESS GRANDIOSITY.

Imagine an Australian author trying to sell "Kids are Australian, Too" or "Australia Alone: The End of the World as We Know It". They would be mocked and quite possibly belted senseless.

Australians (and Kiwis and probably Poms and white South Africans, too, for that matter) live in perpetual fear of being seen a wanker; I call this wankaphobia.

If FDR's speechwriter had been Australian, his most famous line would not have been "we have nothing to fear but fear itself" but "we've got nothing to be afraid of" If it were an Aussie that drafted the the US constitution, he would have felt that using the term "bear arms" made him seem like a bit of a wanker, and Americans would today have the right to "own weapons like guns and so on."

Americans are immune to this wankaphobia; Consider Anthony Robbins. I rest my arse.

Book Review: The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism, by Naomi Klein

2007-11-05T19:56:00.000+11:00

The Shock Doctrine
Naomi Klein
Penguin, 2007

Naomi Klein is one of two Naomi’s with mono-syllabic surnames wandering the globe taking issue with how the world is run; the other is named Wolf.

Klein’s earlier work, No Logo, has become something of a bible to the anti-globalisation movement, in as far as anything as coherent as a movement actually exists. [In Western democracies, it is unfair to argue that the forces against globalization are their own worst enemy. Clearly, the omnipotent cabal of right-wing governments and multinational corporations are their worst enemy. They themselves are their second-worst enemy.]

No Logo and the emergence of its author are rare public relations high-points in the short history of the anti-globablisation movement. The book sold like gang-busters, effectively raising consciousness about corporate greed, hypocrisy and moral turpitude on a global scale. Klein herself presents as an economic realist, positioned on the centre-left, thereby cleverly alienating the far left who so effortlessly court public disdain. She also looks good and interviews well.

Naomi Klein’s latest book, The Shock Doctrine, is, if anything, even grander in its ambitions than No Logo. In it, she presents a wide-ranging 35-year history of the world’s political economy built around a singular and powerful thesis:

Right-wing economic zealots, mostly from, or inspired by, the Economics Department at the University of Chicago, have repeatedly imposed their extremist neo-conservative economic agenda on nation-states by taking full and deliberate advantage of assorted “shocks” – natural disasters, wars, coups, currency meltdowns, etc. In the wake of these shocks, against the democratic will of the people, an economic doctrine comprising privatization, open-slather trade and foreign ownership liberalization, and slashed government spending is imposed. Global institutions such as the World Bank and the IMF, along with the CIA and other organs of US government, aid and abet these radical and anti-democratic reforms wherever it emerges. The casualties of this radical agenda are invariably the “people” who slide deeper into poverty, unemployment and despair as the proverbial rich get proverbially richer. And big, fat US corporations – often aligned to Bush, Cheney and Rumsfeld - skim handsomely off the top. There endeth the lesson.

Naomi Klein makes the above argument with such force and clarity that I suspect a non-English speaker would get it. But she doesn’t stop there. To give her argument even more rhetorical weight, she embarks on the most elaborate, hard-working metaphor I have witnessed in a long time.

Klein begins with a fascinating story of American psychiatrists engaging in horrific experiments in the 1940s and 50s. The purpose of these experiments were to use hallucinogenic and other drugs, electric shock, along with sensory and other forms of deprivation, to shatter a patient’s mind so as to wipe it clean and rebuild from scratch. Not surprisingly, the CIA found these studies appealing – especially since they were convinced they were losing agents to mysterious Soviet brainwashing techniques at the height of the Cold War. [It turned out that brainwashing is actually something of an urban legend, and the techniques in question actually involved fairly credible threats regarding the removal and force-feeding of testicles].

These trials were spectacularly unsuccessful and served only to prove that is quite easy to psychologically destroy someone by pumping them full of LSD, denying them sunlight and flame-grilling their internal organs, but impossible to retro-fit them as hoped.

One department of the CIA – that dealing with brainwashing – may have been disappointed by the findings, but the guys down the corridor in the torture unit were chuffed to get the memo. Klein compellingly describes how the CIA sent torture experts across the globe instructing evil bastards everywhere in best-practice torture methodology gleaned from these botched experiments.

This is a great yarn, well worth the cover-price. But the problem is that it is in the wrong book.

Klein falters too by asking too much of the uncommitted reader (the choir, on the other hand, will embrace the preaching). The bridge between particular psychiatry experiments of fifty years ago, CIA torture methodology and economic policy from Beijing to Basra to Beirut is too tenuously constructed for the non-fanatic to cross. It's not that the metaphor doesn't make sense; it's that it is completely unnecessary.

Klein built her narrative on these flimsy foundations for no good reason – the rise of the far-right economic agenda by dubious means in country after country is compelling enough not to need such artifice.

Sadly, Klein’s over-wrought metaphor undermines the impact of her entire book, and the genuinely shocking doctrine it exposes.

Vote in the Poll, Please

2007-11-02T22:19:00.000+11:00

I am trying out the online poll feature of blogger.com. Please support it and me by voting, so for those of you who subscribe via email - please visit the site.

Ta, PQ.

Cousins' Father Denies Son is on Bender in LaLa Land

2007-11-01T20:16:00.000+11:00

There is now another hypothesis at work in the Ben Cousins saga; this time from his father.

This time, the facts of the case are challenged. Dad contends that Ben didn't fail to turn up to the Summit Rehab Centre at all, but is doing some sort of pre-rehab activity at an "appropriate facility" and he will get to Summit in the next few days. Further, Dad says he has been in regular contact with Ben, most recently late last night (Wednesday).

I have often said that parental love is the most awesome and unassailable of all the facts of nature, and a by-product of this is momentous gullibility.

Ben: "Dad, I am not on a gigantic bender in the company of two hot blonde chicks! Don't believe what you read! I am in a rarely heard-of form of pre-rehab rehab and I will get to Summit in a day or two"
Ben's Dad: "Ok, son. We are so proud of you."

Who knows what's true?

Applying Occam's Razor to the Ben Cousins saga

2007-11-01T10:37:00.000+11:00

A 14th century Franciscan monk named William of Occam is credited with pioneering the idea that when attempting to explain any given phenomena, the simplest hypothesis is most likely the correct one. If that is confusing, American philosopher Jerrold Katz made it crystal clear:

"If a hypothesis, H, explains the same evidence as a hypothesis G, but does so by postulating more entities than G, then, other things being equal, the evidence has to bear greater weight in the case of H than in the case of G, and hence the amount of support it gives H is proportionately less than it gives G" (Katz 1998).

Now that we have that sorted, let's apply this method of reasoning to the problem of Ben Cousins' disappearance in LA.

There are broadly two competing hypotheses at work, a'la the Katz example above.

First, let us agree on the terms of the problem:

Ben Cousins abuses meth-amphetamines, cocaine and perhaps alcohol. As a contracted footballer, this caused embarrassment to his employer (West Coast Eagles) and the AFL. As a result, he took a break from football and entered a high-priced rehabilitation facility in Malibu, California. He returned to Australia. He played some football. A close friend of his died from complications resulting from a drug overdose. He got caught with drug users and valium in his car after what appeared for all money to be a stupendous bender. He lost his job. All charges against him were dropped since it is not a crime (yet) to be in possession of prescription drugs for which you have a prescription. He has subsequently returned to LA, ostensibly to re-enter the rehab facility. He was collected at the airport by two blonde women in a Mercedes sports-car. He failed to check in at the rehab facility. He is somewhere in LA.

Most sensible people would broadly agree on the facts as outlined. However, there are two competing hypotheses; the first, let's call the Media -- or Hysterical -- Hypothesis:

Ben Cousins is missing. He is missing on the streets of Los Angeles, led astray in sportscar by two hot blonde women. He is possibly dead. In a gutter. LA is a terrible place for a recreational drug addicts like Ben Cousins.

The second Hypothesis, called the Non-hysterical Hypothesis is this:

The media doesn't t know his whereabouts, but that does not make him a missing person. He is having a blast on some of the best drugs anywhere in the world. The whole rehab thing was a PR stunt for the Eagles and the AFL anyway. He is rich, handsome and horny and LA couldn't be a better place. He will stop using when he's had enough, and that is SO NOT NOW. The only way he is dead is if he has choked on dislodged silicon implants.

I will leave the application of Occam's razor to you.

Are politicians asking too many questions of themselves? Yes (and thanks for asking)

2007-10-30T16:48:00.000+11:00

I have been avoiding the Federal Election as a blog topic because I am so wretchedly one-eyed that my opinion is completely worthless. I wouldn’t vote for John Howard if he promised to transfer the Budget surplus to my savings account. Equally, I would cast my vote for Kevin Rudd even if he were repeatedly punching me in the back of the head at the time. I am a swing voter in the sense Osama Bin Laden is Church of England.

Myopia in this regard extends to my entirely skewed interpretation of political events, especially after the election is called. In a non-campaign period, I can summon a modicum of objectivity, but the moment the writs are issued, any capacity for reason comprehensively abandons me.

John Howard could announce the abolition of the income tax at the very same time Kevin Rudd assaults a pensioner and I would declare the day a triumph for Labor.

But I feel compelled to comment on a disturbing trend that crosses party lines: the propensity of political leaders to pose questions of themselves. I had planned to regale you with numerous and pertinent examples, but I hit a Google wall: how do you find quotes of Rudd or Howard asking self-questions short of entering “Rudd+?”?

But, evidence notwithstanding, Australian readers will have to agree the trend is real.

Rudd: Is Australia doing enough on climate change? No, it is not!

Howard: Does experience matter? Of course it does.

Rudd: Does experience matter as much as he says? No way!

Howard: Are terrorist attacks and recession inevitable under Mr Rudd? Far be it for me to say…

Now, the self-query technique is known as a rhetorical device. (Other rhetorical devices include saying things in threes -- came, saw, conquered -- to maximize dramatic impact, and beginning best man speeches with “unaccustomed as I am to public speaking” to justifiably lower audience expectations.)

The self-query invites the listener to think they are part of a “conversation” with the speaker. The question is posed as if it is coming from the audience. Pivotally, it is based on the confident assumption that the fact the question is self-serving, manipulative and devious will be lost on the audience. If the guy watching at home was apt to thinking, “hang on, that question has never occurred to me so why should I listen to the answer to a question that I would never have asked”, then the technique would not work.

Does the technique work? You tell me.

What I Would Expect if I Paid $3,300 per diem for Rehab

2007-10-29T09:47:00.000+11:00

Ben Cousins is shelling out $3,300 a day for his latest rehab stint in Malibu. Apart from being about as grand an exercise in futility as I can fathom, it is remarkably expensive.

However, it would make sense if the facility offered the following on their rehab program:

Yoga instruction by the guy who actually invented yoga
One-on-one counselling with Dr Phil
After-dinner entertainment by U2
Anti-ageing yoghurt
Monopoly with Google shares

Why Rehab Recovery Rates Stink

2007-10-29T08:46:00.001+11:00

For celebrities today, drug and alcohol rehab is the PR accessory of choice -- the trend has been mocked widely, and for good reason. It is not entirely new. In the eighties, it was standing room only at AA meetings in and around Hollywood where aspiring actors feigned alcohol addiction to rub shoulders with the roll-call of booze-hounds who produced, wrote and directed movies.

[I like to imagine the looks on the faces of the old-timers when a nineteen year old cheerleader from Omaha, Nebraska, declared herself an alcoholic after a total lifetime consumption of four beers and a half-strength vodka and tonic.]

Back to the today and the Cult of Celebrity Rehab.

Nothing explains the cynicism directed at this fad better than events of the past day or two.

Very little is known for sure about addiction, but most experts and recovering addicts agree on this: an addict will stop only when the emotional, physical, financial, and spiritual cost of using exceed the benefits of using. The point at which this occurs is often called "rock bottom". The corollary of this, of course, is that if you have not yet reached, or at least sighted, rock bottom, attempts at sobriety are bound to fail.

Ben Cousins flew to LA in first class. He was welcomed by two attractive blonde women. He told reporters he was "just happy to be here". He was whisked away in a Mercedes sports car.

This is many things. Rock bottom it is not.

Fan letter to Stephen Fry

2007-10-23T11:45:00.000+10:00

Here is a fan letter I have just mailed to Stephen Fry:

Dear Mr Fry

I am a fan mail virgin about to go balls deep, so here goes.

Of all the celebrities in my orbit, I am by far the most like you. I often tell people I am like a shorter, (immeasurably) less talented Stephen Fry. (Or I would tell people if I didn’t think it would make me seem a complete tool.)

I have bipolar disorder, as do you. I am gay but tend not to make that fact central to my identity, which describes you pretty well. I am a recovering alcoholic, and you have your addictions.

There are differences too, of course. You are more gifted, funnier and vastly more intelligent. I am probably slightly – ever so slightly – better looking.

I have a connection with you that goes back further than my bipolarity, boozing or bum-chummery….Blackadder. Without Blackadder, I venture to say I would be completely bereft of any gags. It built my sense of humour from the ground up (except the first series which I found, and still find, creepy and unfunny).

For all these reasons and more, I have decided to write to you and thank you for being such an excellent role model for gay bipolar alcoholics/addicts. And for being such a thoroughly interesting chap. And, above all, for being simultaneously so resilient and vulnerable – a wicked combo.

Phil Quin GBA
phil.quin@gmail.com
www.mrmcentral.blogspot.com

Minister on Drugs

2007-10-18T09:59:00.000+10:00

Federal Sports Minister, Senator George Brandis, has been making hay attacking the Australian Football League (AFL) for its drugs policy, which he berates as too soft. The AFL, to its credit, is staunch in defending its controversial three-strikes policy. It takes comfort in the knowledge that it is an autonomous governing body and not a marginal electorate.

The very unsurprising revelation that footballer Ben Cousins is still involved with drugs, especially in this frenetic campaign climate, has renewed pressure on the AFL and given cause for Senator Brandis to don his hyperbole suit, and engage in a fresh round of finger-waving, blame-sheeting and craven pandering over the AFL's policy.

The AFL has released the following statement.

A STATEMENT FROM THE AFL IN REPONSE TO SENATOR BRANDIS

The AFL takes issue with Federal Sports Minister, Senator George Brandis, on drugs.

The Minister makes no sense at all on drugs.

His arugments on drugs are barely coherent.

He is no position to make policies on drugs.

On drugs, his statements are erratic.

Senator Brandis on drugs is an embarrassment to his government.

He should get off drugs and move on to something else.

ends

Self-Deprecation is a Tune Played Most Loudly by the Hopelessly Vain

2007-10-16T16:33:00.000+10:00

This is the opening paragraph of a column by the marvellously-named Monica Dux in this morning's Age:

I'VE now got three invitations to parties being held on November 24. I'm expecting more to arrive. I have no delusions about my popularity. It's not me that's got everyone so excited. It's the election.

This is a neat trick by Dux, opening her piece in a lively style. The sentence "I have have no delusions about my popularity" introduces a self-deprecating tone she uses throughout.

I think it is fair guess that in the history of the English language, the great preponderance of people who have used the phrase "I have no delusions about my popularity" are, in fact, profoundly delusional when it comes to their popularity.

So it is with Monica Dux.

She goes on to say:

My friends and I are classic Howard-haters — the latte-dependent, over-educated, bleeding hearts that you've read so much about.

Correct me if I'm wrong: a person who calls themselves a classic anything is nothing if not a classic wanker. Further note to Monica: latte-dependent, over-educated, bleeding hearts is about as damning a put-down as "awfully good in bed".

The entire column is a self-indulgent fantasy that places her at the epicentre of an imagined elite comprising people of rare sophistication and breathtaking intellectual powers. The column pretends to poke fun at this "latte-sipping" set, but it does nothing of the sort. It bolsters them.

The central claim in the column - that hating the incumbent government alone should not motivate people - represents such a profound misunderstanding of electoral politics that it begs the question: is Ms Dux perhaps a tad thick?

Governments lose elections, oppositions never win them. Ever. (Ms Dux suggestion that the "It's Time" slogan in 1972 was a positive reform message just amplifies her ignorance in this regard. "It's Time" was deeply negative and entirely anti-incumbent).

Catherine Deveny need not l0se sleep. Monica Dux may have an infinitely better moniker, but as a self-aware left-green-latte-Femmo-ABC-watching-Atheist columnist, she is no threat at all.

I am Surrounded by Cant, (inspired) by Alan Duff

2007-10-16T15:32:00.000+10:00

This morning. Business breakfast. Sponsor: Power company. Panelist from said company, sagely: "Recycle paper and ink cartridges. Save the world". Audience, chastened, nods. Me, to scrambled eggs, "What complete cant!"

Canberra Times

2007-10-13T13:39:00.000+10:00

The Canberra Times published my anniversary piece on drinking and quitting this morning, which was nice of them. I was hoping they would reference the blog, but alas no. Anyway, it was in a prominent spot on the right-hand side of the op-ed page, so there you go.

Accomplishment

2007-10-12T11:30:00.000+10:00

Al Gore is likely to win the Nobel Peace Prize today, to add to his Academy Award, eight years as Vice President and dazzling Congressional career.

Let me be the first to congratulate him.

It has got me thinking about the question of ACCOMPLISHMENT and AMBITION.

I made a list of my accomplishments, and top of the list came, "Biggest Disappointment (as Measured Against Potential), Class of '84, Aotea College, Porirua, NZ". This is quite an achievement since there are people I went to school with who are still looking for their first job, or at least that's what they keep telling Work Income New Zealand.

So I need to compensate for my Accomplishment-Deficit with out-sized ambitions, a la Al Gore. To wit, one day I aspire to:

Perjure myself before a Royal Commission
Win a Golden Globe, only to be snubbed at the Oscars in a shock upset
Become a Hindu Seperatist
Find employment as a climate change alarmist

Any ideas for additions?

Fax to John O'Neil (sent to me by mistake)

2007-10-07T09:46:00.000+10:00

Dear Mr O'Neil

As a day to day proposition, my life is by no means a joyous one.

As a rule, I am both lonely and either in the throes of deblitating depression or on the cusp thereof. When my day-job isn't numbing my mind it is destroying my soul. My love life is a laughable debacle. Recently I took the advice of my shrink who told me to "find practical ways" to expand the romantic possibilities in my life; I became bisexual. In any event, my sexual orientation is more an aspirational statement than anything else.

I have no friends to speak of, and the closest I get to a night out is watching the television with the lights off.

The only thing that propels me from one dreary, miserable day to the next is the All Blacks.

They mean everything to me.

I am writing to thank Australian rugby from the bottom of my heart. If you hadn't lost to England, I doubt I could have found the will to go on.

Regards

D Prest

One Year on Wagon

2007-10-01T13:52:00.000+10:00

Today is the first anniversary of my sobriety. I wrote this and submitted it to the Age, even though it has no news angle of which to speak. (It also doesn't help that I am not a person of any particular note - they would run it were I Lindsay Lohan).

CHOOSING AGAINST THE VOID: One year of Sobriety (Oct 02 2007)

I see this world but I can't relate
Hey that everything must accelerate
Betty Ford oh won't you be my valentine
Can't tell the bottle from the mountain top
No, we're not right

David Gray, “We’re Not Right”

A year ago today, as I entered a detox centre to put an end to ten years of reckless and relentless drinking, my hands shook so badly with delirium tremens that I could barely lift the pen to sign the admission forms. Ten days later, I emerged to discover a life unattended to and strewn with wreckage. From long-neglected health problems to bad debt, the practical challenges of recovery were - and are - daunting. But, given time, debts can be paid, and the body will heal. It was the imperceptible damage – the guilt, the shame and the unshakable sense of loss – that seemed impervious to repair.

I drank up to 30 pots of beer a day, and only stopped when the need to sleep finally overtook the need to drink It never occurred to me to stop "after a few" or go home because I had "had enough". Drinking for me was sprinting a marathon – as fast as I could, for as long as I could. The finish line is the same for all alcoholics: misery, desperation, decay and premature death. I knew this for a long time, but I kept drinking. Part of this is the physical addiction to alcohol – I actually thought I needed to drink - but this is easily overcome with 5-7 alcohol-free days and Valium to manage withdrawal symptoms. I kept drinking because I was scared about what would happen if I stopped.

Alcoholics Anonymous asks that we constantly dwell on the misery of our drinking years as a way to prevent relapse: Guilt trip as therapy. When I stopped drinking, I didn't need anyone's help to wallow in self-loathing and regret. All of a sudden, I was 36 years old and had nothing and no-one. Alcohol had prevented me from seeing my life for what it was and -- now sober -- all I could see was the failure it had become. I understand why so many return to the bottle -- or the needle, or the powder, or the pills -- in order to re-connect with the void.

The world of an alcoholic is a tiny one. It has three parts: drunkenness, pre-drunkenness and drunken sleep. The aim is to keep sober hours to a minimum while earning enough to pay for the drunken ones. There comes with this a simple and seductive rhythm that is hard to break. It comforts us with lies and numbness and stupor. To sustain and justify the fiction of our lives, we find perverse comfort in the belief that no-one cares if we live or die, least of all ourselves.

The success rate in the treatment of substance addiction is notoriously low, stubbornly in the single figures. This is because rehab is about trading one form of unreality – intoxication – for another – rest, recreation, yoga and yogurt. Four or twelve weeks at a rehab facility is one thing; the terrible imperfections of a grinding sober reality quite another.

When I see a meandering and hopeless drunk, my feelings of pity are complicated by a twinge of envy. He has chosen the void, and I can’t blame him.

When an alcoholic considers that this may be his last drink, sobriety without the promise of imminent intoxication is a frightening prospect. This is why, as the theory goes, we need to reach an emotional and/or physical 'rock-bottom' before we will even contemplate it. I suspect my rock bottom was a few rungs further down, but I didn't have the stomach for the fall. I thought I wanted to die, but it turned out I was wrong. I stopped drinking a year ago today because I wanted to live and I suppose that is as good a reason as any.
Phil Quin
Hawthorn
October 2007

The Andrew Johns Experience

2007-09-05T08:53:00.000+10:00

Andrew Johns - rugby league superstar - was caught in London in possession of an ecstasy tablet. His initial response was that that tablet was dropped in his pocket unbeknownst to him. This didn't fly. His second stab at a public statement was that he has abused drugs and alcohol for most of his playing career. He amended this further by having his psychiatrist declare that Johns has bipolar disorder and that the incident in London was due to a manic episode brought on by going without his medication for six days.

This will go down as one of the great over-reactions in the history of crisis communications: it was the equivalent of launching a cruise missile at a jay-walker.

He is an cashed-up Australian in his thirties in London with an ecstasy tablet - a far more common sight than a cashed-up Australian in his thirties in London without an ecstacy tablet.

The hysteria on the media's part is a story on its own. They either do not understand the nature of substance abuse and addiction or, worse, they pretend they don't. There is also the generational dissonance at play: baby boomers equate any drug use at all with scandal, decay and desperation - it is the same as the attitude towards alcohol on Beverly Hills 90210 where a one beer signalled full-blown alocholism.

Back to the response by Team Johns. One explanation is that his PR team panicked and resorted to a Code Red strategy when Code Off-White would have done [in crisis communications, the theory is to "get the story out" in full and on your own terms to prevent more, and more sustained, reputational damage]. A better explanation is that Johns himself wanted to get it all out: the booze, the drugs, the bipolar, the whole messy miserable, lot of it.

I could quibble with aspects of the Johns story: if your drug and alcohol consumption occurs mainly off-season, then it cannot be addicition is any meaningful sense (it qualifies then as abuse, not dependence). The shrink's claim that Johns went manic in London after 6 days off lithium is a tad hard to believe (it would probably take longer to suffer such symptoms). But these are minor things.

The major thing is the Andrew "Joey" Johns is the pin-up boy for bipolar disorder, which has suffered for too long in the shadow of Depression, its more celebrity-friendly and media-savvy cousin.

Things I Suspect #1

2007-08-26T20:02:00.000+10:00

I suspect that the vast majority of people who claim to love jazz actually don't.

I suspect this is the reason the words "jazz" and "concert" are so often preceded by the word "free".

Gym Shame Update

2007-08-14T16:01:00.000+10:00

Just came back from gym after a workout that wouldn't count as a mild stretching exercise even for a elderly gym devotee.

Remember Chris, he of the FANTA PANTS who shoved me off to Rob, the FEMALE SPECIALIST? Then you will also recall that he could no longer train me because he works out of another gym. Well, he lied.

His freckly pasty form was unmistakable even from a distance.

I think he blushed, but I couldn't be sure.

Gym Shame

2007-08-13T10:13:00.000+10:00

This anecdote needs no embellishment.

I have started going to the gym because I am unfit and overweight. This was a profoundly difficult decision for me because (a) I have spent two decades mocking people who go to the gym and (b) I am incredibly uncoordinated and prone to intense embarrassment where physical activity is concerned. However, I am getting older (37) and need to increase my fitness because my energy levels are flagging in a range of areas. Walking won't do it and jogging is far too exposed. Cycling is just wrong. Anyway, here I am defending my decision again, which just shows that I have yet to make peace with the unalterable fact that I have joined a gym (does this necessarily make me the kind of person that goes to the gym?)

Anyway, I am due a total of three personal trainer sessions. My first was with a ginger-haired fellow (a discount?) called Chris. It didn't go well. Perhaps he doesn't like working with spastics. Perhaps I struggle with gingers. Whatever the reason - actually the truth is he works at another gym and need to refer me on - he referred me on.

He referred me to an older trainer called Rob. I gave Rob the same spiel and, drawing on his immense experience, he guided me through our first session with the minimum of abject humiliation.

When it came time to make the next appointment, he open his diary and laid bare a month's worth of appointments. I got a clear view and his handwriting is admirable for its legibility. It looked like this:

9.30AM	Cindy
10.00AM
10.30AM	Tiara
11.00AM
11.30AM	Minnie
12.00PM	Bonnie
12.30PM
1.00PM	Sammy
1.30PM
2.00PM	Connie
2.30PM
3.00PM	Sara
3.30PM	Petal
4.00PM	Fay
4.30PM	Carla

I was clearly referred to the FEMALE SPECIALIST.

His diary now looks like this:

9.30AM	Cindy
10.00AM
10.30AM	Tiara
11.00AM
11.30AM	Minnie
12.00PM	Bonnie
12.30PM	PHIL
1.00PM	Sammy
1.30PM
2.00PM	Connie
2.30PM
3.00PM	Sara
3.30PM	Petal
4.00PM	Fay
4.30PM	Carla

Oh, the humiliation!

The Anti-Smoking Lobby is a Lazy Bastard

2007-08-12T19:02:00.002+10:00

In the world of public advocacy, no one has an easier job than the anti-smoking lobby. Everyone agrees with everything they say, and those who don't know better than to admit as much in public lest vilification ensues.

This is possibly why the anti-smoking lobby has become so appallingly lazy.

Tonight's Channel 10 News reports Quit Victoria claiming that parents smoking in front of children is a bad thing. Hard to disagree. As evidence, they make the following claim:

18 percent of people smoke but 42 percent of children admitted to hospital have smokers for parents, therefore passive smoking must cause lots of said hospital admissions.

Now, this may be true but there is profound deception going on here. Some time ago, I blogged about Quit's Californian equivalent using statistics in a similar way, namely:

25 percent of people smoke, but 60 percent of movies feature smoking, therefore smoking in overrepresented in film.

This is utter horseshit, of course, because a film IS NOT a person and therefore no meaningful correlation exists between the 20 percent and the 60 percent. The Quit Victoria numbers are bogus for much the same reason. The anti-smoking people know this and yet present this as science and no-one argues with them because it would seem like sticking up for smoking and we all know that smoking is the source of all evil.

Public health messages should be based on science and presented with honesty. Leave bad science to the tobacco industry.

How Conservative Sex Scandals Send the Wrong Message

2007-07-23T09:26:00.000+10:00

To me, the funniest running gag in Little Britain is that which features a British politician, flanked by wife and children, making absurd claims of innocence in the face of some sex scandal or other. He met a constituent in a park and accidentally fell on top of him at the very same time their clothes mysteriously fell off – that sort of thing.

Life is imitating art with the arrest of Bob Allen, a Florida State Senator, for soliciting an undercover police officer. Also the co-chair of the McCain Presidential Campaign, Mr Allen is accused of offering $20 for an “unspecified sex act” at a local amusement park. His defense: it was all a big misunderstanding. According to Allen, he was hanging around the amusement park because it had been a pet project of his in the state senate.

This sure is one hell of a misunderstanding:

Version 1

An undercover cop and Republican politician are standing in the middle of a known gay-sex haunt.

Politician: Here’s $20 if you let me commit an unspecified sex act.

Cop: You’re under arrest. You have the right to remain silent, etc.

Version 2

Politician: This amusement park is one of my signature political achievements.

Cop: You’re under arrest. You have the right to remain silent, etc.

Call me an old cynic, but version 1 seems just a tad more credible.

There is no denying that conservative politicians and seedy gay sex scandals make for great comedy. Hypocrisy deserves exposing. But it worries me because, in the end, it reinforces conservative sexual morality.

Religious conservatives of all major faiths hold that homosexuality is a disorder characterised by compulsive, impulsive and dangerous behaviour. The alternative view is that homosexuality is a genetic fact of life, and gay people are no more compulsive, impulsive or dangerous than anyone else.

Politicians and religious leaders who, drunk on a cocktail of self-interest and self-loathing, repress their innate same-sex attraction will one day succumb to the most visceral aspect of their closeted sexuality in ways that are – you guessed it – compulsive, impulsive and dangerous. This, to a right-wing zealot, does not challenge their preconceptions – “oh, if our preacher/senator is gay, then maybe it’s not so bad” – it reinforces them – “the homo disease can attack anyone if we do not remain vigilant and bigoted!”

To that end, it is my fervent hope that closeted nut-jobs keep their hypocrisy to themselves.

Perspective, People...Leprosy Mission New Zealand

2007-07-10T10:51:00.000+10:00

According to the NZ Herald today, Helen Clark has is under attack from Leprosy Mission New Zealand after she said Fijian coup leader Frank Bainimarama would be "treated something like a leper" if he attended the Pacific Islands Forum meetings.

Let’s take a look at the objections to her comments:

Leprosy Mission New Zealand executive director David Hill said yesterday that her use of the word leper was insensitive.

No, it wasn't – it is the perfectly acceptable term for someone who has leprosy.

"[She] is promoting stigma and discrimination by using the word 'leper' when she means that Bainimarama will be ostracised by the South Pacific leaders," Mr Hill said.

No, she’s not. She’s saying Bainimarama will be ostracised by South Pacific leaders, which he will, by invoking the shunning of lepers throughout history, which is true. It is a perfectly accurate historical allegory.

"Indicating that Bainimarama will be treated like a leper is degrading and insulting to the millions of people, who through no fault of their own, have had or have leprosy.”

No, it isn’t. It is an accurate and colourful metaphor that neatly describes the politics of Bainimarama’s attendance at the Forum by drawing parallels with the historical treatment of lepers. It does not suggest such treatment was a good thing, but that it happened. Which it did.

"Stigma such as this not only makes it more difficult for people to come forward for treatment, it often leads to human rights abuses.”

Oh, come on.

"People affected by leprosy should be treated the same as everyone else - they are no different."

No, people affected by leprosy are not the same as everyone else – they are, unlike “everyone else”, affected by leprosy.

What carping nonsense

Why Foreign Doctors Become Terrorists

2007-07-09T08:25:00.000+10:00

There has been a lot of conjecture about the question raised in the above headline. There has also been an element of high-brow wailing and teeth-gnashing about the seeming incongruity of brain-boxes such as medical doctors turning into whitey-hating Koran-bashers.

Similar consternation ensued after 9/11 when it was revealed that the terrorist hijackers were rich and educated, as opposed to poor and thick. It seems we are more comfortable in a world where extremist mass-murderers, genocidal maniacs and deranged militants are stupid and broke.

We miss a vital element in this whole discussion because we neglect the obvious fact that terrorism is not a socio-economic activity, but a deeply psychological one. It is not an act of intellectual or political (or even religious) defiance, but an act of insanity.

Taken in that light, the whole doctor-as-suicide-bomber story is far less mysterious.

The well-educated are not immune to insanity; in fact, they are prone to it (think serial killer IQ's).

So why foreign doctors?

Short answer: Sex. (Thanks, Freud).

If you want to get a handle on the degree of permissiveness and "amorality" of Western culture, a hospital is a pretty good place to start. These repressed, sexually confused Muslim doctors would be confronted every minute of every working day with evidence of appalling (to them) behaviour: drugs, booze, prostitution, and the occasional head-cold.

They also work very, very long hours with little sleep.

The jarring experience (for them) of wading in the mire of decadent whitey-world, along with sleep deprivation, is enough to make suicide-bombing seem like an attractive alternative.

So there.

Back from Secondment

2007-07-09T08:23:00.000+10:00

I have been away on secondment for three weeks, at a place where blogging was not an option. This is no longer the case.

Hitchens on Paris Hilton

2007-06-12T12:36:00.000+10:00

As unlikely as it seems, Christopher Hitchens has devoted a column to Paris Hilton.

In his withering style, he writes that the coverage of her imprisonment, release and re-imprisonment symbolises the "systematic, massified certinization of the major media".

He also cops to watching the Paris sex video (who hasn't?), although surprises me by writing that "I could almost have believed that she was drugged" during its filming. If this is not ironic understatement - and it appears not to be - then Hitchens has betrayed a rare naivety. Hilton was diabolically and demonstrably stoned.