Tony’s Spit
Retired judge Tony Fitzgerald, QC, has launched a broadside at the main political parties, saying they have “largely abandoned the ethics of government”, and practice “pervasive deception”.
Mr Fitzgerald - recently appointed to investigate the leaking of a Victorian police report - said a “spiteful, divisive contest” now dominated the national conversation, and democracy “struggles incessantly with populism”.
[…]
“Although effective democracy depends on the participation of informed citizens, modern political discourse is corrupted by pervasive deception,” he said.
Reflecting the deep cynicism of the party political system, “many of the political class deride those who support the evolution of Australia as a fair, tolerant, compassionate society, and a good world citizen as an un-Australian, bleeding-heart, elite.”
I agree with his criticisms, but I don’t actually think there’s any point in upbraiding politicians for their behaviour when the system by which we elect them actively rewards them for behaving that way. We’re well past the point where a call to honour and decency is going to get our democracy working again. The unwritten rules of the Westminster system have been savaged - the supposed safeguards have been found wanting. In the era of professional politics, we can’t rely on our elected members to be fine upstanding chaps who will do the right thing and fall on their swords at the first whiff of impropriety. What we have to do is implement a system such that we don’t have to rely on their goodwill for things to function properly. After all, if the laboratory rat gets a treat every time he does the wrong thing, there’s not much point in waggling your finger at him and telling him you expect better.
UPDATE: More of Tony’s speech here.
Separation Anxiety
A row has erupted between Opposition Leader Robert Doyle and Police Minister Andre Haermeyer over Mr Haermeyer’s insistence that one of his advisers be present at future briefings to the Liberal leader by Chief Police Commissioner Christine Nixon.
Mr Doyle said yesterday that Mr Haermeyer’s insistence that an adviser attend the briefings showed that the Government had no understanding of the separation of powers.
Can someone explain to me how this relates to the separation of powers? Is Robert claiming that the police are part of the judiciary? Or that the opposition is a separate power in its own right from the executive? It seems to me that the Opposition Leader would be briefed by the Police Commissioner in his capacity as potential premier - that is, a member of the would-be executive. He’s not there to represent the legislature (which, of course, the Police Minister is also a member of). I think before one accuses another of not understanding the separation of powers, one should make sure that one has a full understanding of the separation of powers oneself. I get the feeling that claiming a breach of the separation of powers has become universal catchcry for any kind of political unfairness, even when it has nothing to do with the actual s of the actual p’s.
Jolson, Armstrong, Electrolux
There’s an ad for Electrolux that’s doing pretty high rotation on TV at the moment. It uses some flashy cgi to go from a view of the earth from space and zoom in on someone’s loungeroom where the drudgery of someone’s life is relieved by some appliance, then out to space again, and the process gets repeated, zooming into someone else’s house in a different part of the globe where to find the owner luxuriating in the absence of work made redundant by another appliance. You know the deal.
The thing that makes this otherwise unremarkable ad campaign worth a blog entry from me is the song. It’s a tune called Sittin’ On Top of the World, and to listen to it, you’d swear that it’s being sung by Louis Armstrong. I don’t think it is, because I don’t think Louis Armstrong ever recorded that song. It doesn’t seem to appear on his discography, and Google doesn’t come up with any examples that I can see.
This wouldn’t be that remarkable - there must be all sorts of Louis Armstrong imitators singing songs that Louis didn’t actually sing, and good luck to them. What caught my attention about this recording, though, was that the tune the Louis clone was singing was one which was made famous by Al Jolson. Jolson, if you weren’t aware, made his name as a blackface minstrel. That is, he specialised in racist parody.
Now, I should say that I don’t particularly buy into the cult of Louis Armstrong. I know that he was one of the great innovators in jazz, and I don’t doubt his genuis. But I think the worship stuff is wide of the mark. One of Louis’s most endearing characteristics was the fact that he didn’t take himself too seriously, and in that I think he provides a model for later jazz musicians, whose reverence for Satchmo is often only matched by their reverence for themselves. A famous case in point is the Pat Metheny rant that did the rounds of the jazz community four or five years ago, in which he tore Kenny G to pieces for presuming to overdub himself over Armstrong’s recording of What a Wonderful World. If you’re in the mood for an uninhibited spew (and let’s assume that you are, since you’re browsing blogs), I can recommend that you go and read the whole thing. The following extract gives you the idea:
By disrespecting Louis, his legacy and by default, everyone who has ever tried to do something positive with improvised music and what it can be, Kenny G has created a new low point in modern culture - something that we all should be totally embarrassed about - and afraid of. We ignore this, “let it slide”, at our own peril.
I’m of the view that the only thing sliding was Pat’s well-lubricated hand. I don’t think that tasteless musical judgement gives rise to anything that can be described as “peril”. I don’t think that music is anything sacred that can be sinned against.
So what’s my objection to the Jolson thing? Well, I don’t think that the politics of Jolson should stop anyone from enjoying his music, and there’s no doubt that he sang some good tunes. What I do think, though, is that the racial thing should be borne in mind when decisions are made about where and how and in service of what his music is played. I think the same applies to other famous bigots like Wagner and Grainger. I don’t think that anyone who likes a particular bit of music should be put off by the fact that the composer was a nazi, but I do think that one should think twice about, for example, using The Ride of the Valkyries as the theme for a documentary about Martin Luther King.
Likewise, I think that overdubbing a Jolson song with Armstrong’s voice is to ignore the very wide ideological gulf that separated the two. I’m inclined to think that Louis, if he was still alive, would find this much more offensive than the Kenny G recording. Musical profanity is one thing. Racial profanity is another.
Up Late Dated
The usual chatter on Big Brother is pretty inane, but harmless enough. Tonight, though, they’re discussing the War on Iraq. I had to turn it off because it was just too annoying - there’s something irritating about watching someone loudly and obnoxiously agree with my conclusions, but do so by making bizarre leaps of logic from entirely false premises. As grating as it was, though, it brought to mind an interesting thought: I wonder if any of the participants in this little politics rave stopped to think that the “current” affairs that they were discussing in front of a television audience were actually over a month out of date, and that anything could have happened in the meantime? Howard could have gotten the boot, Bush could have been assassinated, Osama could have been captured, WMD’s could have been found (well, maybe not that). Imagine if a series of Big Brother had started on September 10, 2001. How surreal would it have been to sit for the next three months and watch the activities of the last dozen-or-so innocents on the planet?
PR v The World
In a comment on Tim’s Peter Garrett post over at Surfdom, Steve Edwards unwittingly puts a terrific argument for proportional representation:
Putting Garrett in Parliament will be putting a time bomb in a suit and tie. It’s a disastrous decision based on faulty reasoning: that the ALP needs to win back Left-leaning greenie type voters who apparently deserted the ALP in 2001.
Guess what? Those voters did nothing of the sort. They gave their votes to the ALP via preferences anyway. The only way they could really “desert” the ALP is by preferencing Howard ahead of Labor, which just isn’t going to happen.
Latham needs to win back his more right-leaning swingers who actually did desert the ALP in 2001, not the left-liberal greens who wouldn’t preference Johnnie if he paid them.
All of which illustrates how a voter to the left of the ALP (or, for that matter, to the right of the Coalition) is left politically impotent and might just as well not bother. Meaning: elections will be decided either by those whose politics happen to place them in the (diminishing) gap between the two parties, or by those who couldn’t really give a fuck about politics and just vote for the guy who happens to be bashing gays and Aborigines and refugees most viciously that year. Does this piss off anyone else but me?
Play School 3
This is a very serious example of putting the indulgences and the particular wheelbarrows of adults before children.
[…]
We know that from an incredibly early age children of both sexes look to mum for nurture and warmth, dad for stimulation and play.”
I see. So now we can count warm, nurturing dads and playful, stimulating mothers as among those deviates the very sight of whom will corrupt young minds.
Tim calls it “ill-informed pettiness”. I’m not sure that I could characterise this sort of hateful, narrow-minded intolerance so lightly.
To anyone who was thinking of voting for the coalition: if you’re a homophobe, go right ahead. If not, please consider the sort of stuff that you’ll be endorsing.
Higher, Stronger, Faster, Tackier
I’m not sure whether this applies to the leg of the Olympic torch relay that’s now happening in Australia, but apparently Greek torchbearers have been provided with a handy flashcard lest the grandeur of the occasion leave them lost for words:
That Samsung Olympic spirit brings a Nike tear to my Coca-Cola eye every time …
(via Gizmodo)
More Play School
Greg Barns has a piece up about the Play School lesbians which is a lot better than my effort. I particularly like this bit, in which he provides an answer to the question I posed along the lines of “What if the majority of Australians really are homophobes? Was the ABC still right to broadcast the segment?”
There is nothing avant-garde about respect for, and recognition of the rights of, minorities. That neglected great 19th century thinker, John Stuart Mill, once fashionable among the liberal wing of the Liberal Party of Australia, warned against the “tyranny of the majority” and the need for a democracy to create laws and traditions that respect minorities.
In short, there is something noble about the ABC’s Play School pandering to minorities. The national broadcaster has a responsibility to ensure its programming reflects the principles of diversity and tolerance, and showing children that familial circumstances differ is entirely appropriate.
In other words, since a healthy democracy relies minorities being treated fairly, sometimes it’s necessary for the state to go out of its way to encourage tolerance, even if that involves doing something which is in itself slightly undemocratic. Sounds reasonable to me.
Play School Cock
The ABC has been criticised for allowing Play School to broadcast a children’s story allegedly involving a same sex couple.
Federal Minister for Children, Larry Anthony, says while Play School is a quality program, it overstepped the mark in reading a book about a child with two mothers.
Mr Anthony says it is the role of parents to educate their children on such issues.
“I am concerned that the ABC are putting on these types of programs,” he said.
“Quite frankly when it comes to my children, if I want explain about same sex couples that should be up to parents.
“It should be up to me, not the Australian broadcaster.”
Had Larry been in Alabama in April 1947, watching on TV as Jackie Robinson wandered out to bat for the Brooklyn Dodgers, I wonder whether he would have been reserving the right to explain to his children about race relations? Let’s say, just for illustrative purposes (I have no idea whether it’s true or not), that the majority of people in Alabama were opposed to the idea of broadcasting the image of a black baseball player hugging a white baseball player. And let’s say that the decision as to whether or not to broadcast lay in the hands of the state broadcaster (that much, I know, definitely wasn’t true). The question is, would it have been wrong for the images to have been broadcast?
Gay couples are as much a part of modern Australian society as straight couples. When Larry’s kids go to kindergarten, they’ll probably be hanging around with other kids who have gay parents. When Play School shows his kids a gay couple (without, notably, any moral commentary whatsoever), how is that different from showing them a straight couple (or, for that matter, a fire engine or a nest of ducklings)? Larry seems to assert that the mere acknowledgement that there is such a thing as a gay couple is somehow corrupting his kids. Note that the programme showed a girl going to a funfair with her “two mums”. It was utterly innocent, and I can’t see how anyone but a homophobe could have any problem with it. The way Larry’s talking, you’d think that they’d shown Monica and Noni getting into some double-headed dildo action with Jemima and Big Ted watching.
Now, it could be that I’m in a minority on this point. Maybe most Australians really do think there’s something wrong with Play School showing a gay couple (in which case, by my reasoning, the majority of Australians are homophobic). The question is, is there a role for the state broadcaster in showing leadership against intolerance, or should they pander to prejudice provided that the prejudice is a majority view? If you prefer the latter, are you prepared to acknowledge that a similar stance taken during the civil rights years may have delayed the end of segregation (bearing in mind that the Jackie Robinson broadcast i) was widely opposed in the South, and ii) played a significant part in ending segregation).
Vote No
Ken Parish is as unimpressed as I am with John Howard and Mark Latham. Unlike me, he considers the coalition to be the lesser of two evils. My approach, if I was forced to choose one or the other, would be to prefer the devil I don’t know on the basis that he could hardly be worse.
He considers an informal vote, but:
Of course, the trouble with voting informal is that it’s really abrogating one’s civic reponsibilities. Someone’s going to get elected even if I opt out, and there’s a pretty persuasive argument that we should at least attempt to choose the lesser of two weevils.
He doesn’t outline what that persuasive argument is. I’m beginning to think that when “democracy” comes to mean choosing between two completely unattractive options on the basis of which is least bad, then voting informal might be the most responsible thing to do. If the election provides me with no opportunity to make my voice heard, then I can at least use an informal vote as a statement on the inadequacies of the electoral system. If enough people did it, perhaps the need for electoral reform would become obvious enough that even the politicians with the least to gain from such reform may be forced to take notice. Under the circumstances, the last thing I want to be seen to do is to legitimise the way that politics is being conducted by allowing my preference to be expressed one way or the other.