*Ø* Blogmanac | I .... I .... I ... I ....
Dammit, this sticks in my craw, but here goes
Australia's a funny place, and we Aussies are a funny breed. We're better known, internationally, for our sports men and women, and showbiz types, than for our Nobel prizewinners or our 'public intellectuals', although there are plenty to name (stop laughing, I'm trying to think).
The level of public discourse is not what you would call highbrow. To be honest, it's almost nobrow. If you were to go into a Sydney cinema and yell "Fire!", it's a moot point whether the audience would catch your drift. Apparently quite a few people died watching Lethal Weapon in 1987 because of this, so it's a shame. Not a big one, but a bit of a shame.
Having said this, although the average Bruce or Sheila is not renowned for knowing their arse from a hole in the ground, we have a tradition of intellectual culture that has deep roots – witness the standards of our public libraries and universities. And my countrypersons have (as my countryperson, Germaine Greer, rightly pointed out), "built-in bullshit detectors". In this, I doubt we differ from our brotherpersons and sisterpersons in all countries. As the great Australian feminist author, Abraham Lincoln said ... something about how often you can fool folks. Not all the time. But Aussie bullshit detectors are pretty sophisticated – for a country that's sold off all its manufacturing to Richer Countries, so we can be the mineworkers, bedmakers and coffee pourers of the Southern Hemisphere.
Back to the chase. Now, Terra Australis has also produced two Big Rich Persons, by the names of Rupert Murdoch and Kerry Packer. Both are True Blue Aussies, despite the sissy names, and both became fabulously wealthy from selling ordure to many millions of people. Let me express that anew. Both became fabulously wealthy because they inherited immense fortunes from their dads who sold ordure, but they added to the inherited wealth with more ordure. Piles and piles of it. Piles of ordure, and dirty big piles of money.
Rupert (come on, what sort of name is that for a bloke?) turfed his Australian citizenship so that he could become a Yank in order to buy something or other (I forget exactly what he wanted ... the New York Times, or Disneyland, Camp David or some such), but we still call him an Aussie, because we still suffer our cultural cringe and have to blow the trumpet of any expatriate who's "dun good", regardless of how seldom they visit these shores. Don't get Sheila or Bruce started on "our" Errol Flynn, our Mel Gibson or our Bee Gees.
Rupert dun good. He owns half the world, half the world's media and half the world's transmission of 'facts'. He owns half our minds. Nuff said.
Kerry dun good, too. Not as good as Rupe, but good. He owns a few billion, the other half of the media (only in Australia), half the facts and the other half of our minds. Onya, Kezza!!
Now, one of Kezza's shiniest toys is called the Daily Telegraph (or, Daily Telecrap as the naughty ones call it). It is what we laughingly call a "newspaper" and it sells by the shiteload. Literally. You needn't worry about getting the important news in the Telecrap: why, if every man, woman and child in Africa were dropping dead because of lunar dust dropping on their continent, or if some scientist discovered George W Bush's brain was in the same zipcode as his beady eyes, you could be sure it wouldn't knock the latest Rugby League sex scandal off Page One. Not a prob. Don't sweat it. Kerry's got things under control at the Tele, just as he has on all those TV channels he owns. (The ones that Rupert doesn't.)
Let me round this up, and say what I was going to say. Phew. I have a compliment to pay The Goanna (what the naughty ones call Kerry). And that's this: although his Daily Telecrap today has the usual neanderthal pro-war editorial by some pubescent cadet journo who is just learning to hold a crayon, there is something else; something encouraging, something mind-shredding. And that's a reprint of David Rose's excellent article from that prestigious British journal, The Guardian, called 'How We Survived Jail Hell'. It's paginated between the Rugby League sex scandal and something about Courtney (retch) Love, but it's there, and it's a few pages long. It'll stretch the attention spanette of Tele readers, I guess. There'll be a lot of tired lips in Australian McDonald's family restaurants by the afternoon. But we need the exercise so we can Win the Gold at Athens, right?
Yes, Kerry Packer's Daily Telegraph today tells the story of how George W Bush's military goons are ill-treating uncharged men in Guantanamo Bay. The reprint leaves out nothing: the massacre of prisoners by the US-backed Northern Alliance, the cruelty, the inhumanity, the mental and physical torture. It also has today an opinion piece by Michael Duffy that isn't pro-war and is actually quite intelligent.
Kerry Packer is well aware that nobody ever went broke by underestimating the intelligence of the Australian reader, but he let this stuff get through today's edition (I hope he's not on the phone as I speak, sacking the editor). So, for once (and don't hold your breath for twice), oh boy, this is hard to write ... Mr Packer ... I ... I ... I salute Sydney's Daily Telegraph.
At ease.
Dammit, this sticks in my craw, but here goes
Australia's a funny place, and we Aussies are a funny breed. We're better known, internationally, for our sports men and women, and showbiz types, than for our Nobel prizewinners or our 'public intellectuals', although there are plenty to name (stop laughing, I'm trying to think).
The level of public discourse is not what you would call highbrow. To be honest, it's almost nobrow. If you were to go into a Sydney cinema and yell "Fire!", it's a moot point whether the audience would catch your drift. Apparently quite a few people died watching Lethal Weapon in 1987 because of this, so it's a shame. Not a big one, but a bit of a shame.
Having said this, although the average Bruce or Sheila is not renowned for knowing their arse from a hole in the ground, we have a tradition of intellectual culture that has deep roots – witness the standards of our public libraries and universities. And my countrypersons have (as my countryperson, Germaine Greer, rightly pointed out), "built-in bullshit detectors". In this, I doubt we differ from our brotherpersons and sisterpersons in all countries. As the great Australian feminist author, Abraham Lincoln said ... something about how often you can fool folks. Not all the time. But Aussie bullshit detectors are pretty sophisticated – for a country that's sold off all its manufacturing to Richer Countries, so we can be the mineworkers, bedmakers and coffee pourers of the Southern Hemisphere.
Back to the chase. Now, Terra Australis has also produced two Big Rich Persons, by the names of Rupert Murdoch and Kerry Packer. Both are True Blue Aussies, despite the sissy names, and both became fabulously wealthy from selling ordure to many millions of people. Let me express that anew. Both became fabulously wealthy because they inherited immense fortunes from their dads who sold ordure, but they added to the inherited wealth with more ordure. Piles and piles of it. Piles of ordure, and dirty big piles of money.
Rupert (come on, what sort of name is that for a bloke?) turfed his Australian citizenship so that he could become a Yank in order to buy something or other (I forget exactly what he wanted ... the New York Times, or Disneyland, Camp David or some such), but we still call him an Aussie, because we still suffer our cultural cringe and have to blow the trumpet of any expatriate who's "dun good", regardless of how seldom they visit these shores. Don't get Sheila or Bruce started on "our" Errol Flynn, our Mel Gibson or our Bee Gees.
Rupert dun good. He owns half the world, half the world's media and half the world's transmission of 'facts'. He owns half our minds. Nuff said.
Kerry dun good, too. Not as good as Rupe, but good. He owns a few billion, the other half of the media (only in Australia), half the facts and the other half of our minds. Onya, Kezza!!
Now, one of Kezza's shiniest toys is called the Daily Telegraph (or, Daily Telecrap as the naughty ones call it). It is what we laughingly call a "newspaper" and it sells by the shiteload. Literally. You needn't worry about getting the important news in the Telecrap: why, if every man, woman and child in Africa were dropping dead because of lunar dust dropping on their continent, or if some scientist discovered George W Bush's brain was in the same zipcode as his beady eyes, you could be sure it wouldn't knock the latest Rugby League sex scandal off Page One. Not a prob. Don't sweat it. Kerry's got things under control at the Tele, just as he has on all those TV channels he owns. (The ones that Rupert doesn't.)
Let me round this up, and say what I was going to say. Phew. I have a compliment to pay The Goanna (what the naughty ones call Kerry). And that's this: although his Daily Telecrap today has the usual neanderthal pro-war editorial by some pubescent cadet journo who is just learning to hold a crayon, there is something else; something encouraging, something mind-shredding. And that's a reprint of David Rose's excellent article from that prestigious British journal, The Guardian, called 'How We Survived Jail Hell'. It's paginated between the Rugby League sex scandal and something about Courtney (retch) Love, but it's there, and it's a few pages long. It'll stretch the attention spanette of Tele readers, I guess. There'll be a lot of tired lips in Australian McDonald's family restaurants by the afternoon. But we need the exercise so we can Win the Gold at Athens, right?
Yes, Kerry Packer's Daily Telegraph today tells the story of how George W Bush's military goons are ill-treating uncharged men in Guantanamo Bay. The reprint leaves out nothing: the massacre of prisoners by the US-backed Northern Alliance, the cruelty, the inhumanity, the mental and physical torture. It also has today an opinion piece by Michael Duffy that isn't pro-war and is actually quite intelligent.
Kerry Packer is well aware that nobody ever went broke by underestimating the intelligence of the Australian reader, but he let this stuff get through today's edition (I hope he's not on the phone as I speak, sacking the editor). So, for once (and don't hold your breath for twice), oh boy, this is hard to write ... Mr Packer ... I ... I ... I salute Sydney's Daily Telegraph.
At ease.
Pip Wilson posted item above at 2:03 PM | Permalink
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