And if you were still in any doubt about the decline of newspapers as we know them ...

... then you obviously haven't seen the subject line of today's online update of The Age that just arrived in my mailbox:

Nixon, teen had sex: report

Showing my age, I responded initially to this as though it were some sort of long-repressed "news" about the behaviour of Richard Nixon. (Remember Richard Nixon?) Then I thought Gee this looks like the headlines I used to give my first-year Rhetoric students to re-punctuate in order to teach them how vital punctuation is to meaning.

(Nixon: teen had sex report
Nixon teen had sex: report
Nixon? Teen had sex! Report
Etc)

For those of you not up with these vital matters, the headline refers to one of the AFL's more high-profile serial sleazes and that girl who publicised those photos of Nick Riewoldt's willy, and who cannot, apparently, help herself to stay out of the news.

Osama bin Laden is dead. President Obama's chances of winning the next election are up through the roof. The Tories have just had a similar boost in Britain. (Now that really would be news: 'Millions of Brits look happy!') Victoria has just had its state Budget announced and the federal ditto is just around the corner. Global warming is on the rise, as is resistance to it, and countries in the Middle East are falling over one by one like dominoes. Africa continues to horrify. Greece and Portugal have gone broke. (Just typed 'borke': that too.) Which reminds me: the sacking of subeditors by Fairfax is major news in the sense that it marks a major stage in the decline of, erm, yes, oh right. And so what's The Age leading with? 'Nixon, teen had sex.' Given that subeditors are responsible for, among other things, writing headlines, perhaps in some cases their decline might be ever so slightly less of a bad thing, but not much.

You know what really drives me crispy about this one? (Apart from the decline of, etc etc.) That word 'teen'. Anyone who has ever seen any p*rn with actual words in it knows that 'teen' is right up there with 'panties' (EEWWWW) as far as the lubricious p*rn vocabulary goes, which Goddess knows is not very far but that only makes it worse.

I Do. Not. Care who had sex with whom, in any context, and I never ever want to hear about it ever again ever. Shag your socks off, people, with whomever or whatever you choose: just make sure it involves a nice hot cup of STFU at some point, and I mean for everybody.

And I don't want to hear it about anybody at all, much less Ricky Nixon. Being faced with the image this headline conjures up is not what I require from my broadsheet newspaper. But the whole notion of a 'broadsheet newspaper' is now a thing of the past anyway.

It just gets worse and worse

This is the third disgracefully dishonest headline I've seen today.

Bob Brown has written today to Julia Gillard saying how appalled he was by the placards being waved by Tony Abbott's posse of bussed-in flat-earth clowns, and saying that he knows she has 'broad shoulders' but he also knows that this kind of stuff can be hurtful.

How has The Australian reported this online? Under the headline Anti-tax banners 'hurtful' to Gillard.

The clear implication is that Gillard found them hurtful, and said so, and is therefore a wimp, all of which is complete crapola.

Furthemore, they are not in any way 'anti-tax banners'; they are banners saying, and I quote, 'Ditch the witch' and 'Juliar .... Bob Browns [sic] bitch'. This one is written over a crude background sketch of what I presume are supposed to be the flames of hell, in which they presumably want to burn her. I mean, it wouldn't be a picture of the planet going up in flames, would it.

I've got a headline for them: how about Genetic link suspected between the inability to place an apostrophe correctly and the belief that the sun revolves around the earth.

Shoot me now

From today's Crikey:

'Iran's cover up. Baroness Ashton, the EU Foreign Minister, has been given a more modest neckline in Iranian newspaper coverage of the talks in Turkey over Iran's nuclear program. Who said that what women politicians wear does not matter?'

Shame all round, boys

Now I know that with the Great Big Non-Story of Nick Riewoldt's Willy (and of course that's what this is really all about: is it that he thinks it isn't big enough, or is he embarrassed about being caught in a pose that might shout 'wanker'?) we are back in the land of what my Facebook Friend Lord Sedgwick calls the Single Digit IQ Nuff Nuff, original ref to Brendan Fevola and Lara Bingle.

But does that time-honoured 'quality' newspaper The Age, which I'm old enough to remember as a once mighty power in the land, really need to get in on the act as well? Note to Paul Millar and Jared Lynch: It's 'stream of consciousness', boys. Not 'stream-of-conscience'.

(NB: also, Elizabeth Jolley has already made this joke. But she was doing it on purpose.)

Actually, I don't see any sign of any conscience anywhere in this whole story. Not even a trickle. Just infantile narcissism and total abnegation of responsibility for one's own behaviour as far as the eye can see. That and the tip of the iceberg that is the pig-dog ugly subculture of the AFL-and-women.

But I hope that young woman is enjoying her ten minutes of fame, because the AFL is going to swing all of its power and money into action and crush her like a bug. And more vain and misguided young women will swan in to fill the tiny gap she leaves in the AFL's neverending supply of stupid girls, and nothing will change. A plague on both your houses.

Because everyone knows you've got a right

A British backpacker has "defended" himself against the breach-of-privacy charges laid against him for covertly filming a young woman in a 'uni-sex bathroom' at a Queensland resort by saying 'I just wanted to see her naked.'

Spot the weasel word here. Yes, that's right: 'just'.

'Just' as distinct from what? The unavoidable implication here seems to be 'I only wanted to see her naked, which is my perfect right as a man and anyway what's the harm, I didn't rape her or anything so what are you all going on about?'

His lawyer calls his actions 'a lapse in judgement.'

Me, I'm off to the bottle shop to see what Scotland has to offer. Somehow a glass of wine just isn't going to cut it, after that.

In the words of the First Dog on the Moon ...

Australia, what have you done?

Sorry, Annabel, not good enough

The ABC's Annabel Crabb published a long, informative, entertaining piece at The Drum the other day, characteristically witty and meaty, in defence of journalists and their current behaviour and reportage on the campaign trail.

Much of what she is says is fair enough. But nothing she says can possibly excuse what I've just heard on the radio.

I got into the car and turned on the radio and there was Julia Gillard in Queensland, mid-speech, announcing the Government's seniors policy, after what I imagine was a somewhat stressful morning meeting Kevin Rudd for the first time since she became Prime Minister. The seniors stuff sounded pretty good, mainly the improvements to the pension situation but also several other things. Jenny Macklin followed up. And then it was time for questions.

I listened for a total of just over half an hour, apart from the four and a half minutes it took me to duck into Dan Murphy on the way home, and I heard one, and only one, question, right at the end, about the policy announcement. Every single other question, asked mostly in an aggressive, smartarse, gotcha tone of voice by what sounded like a bunch of extremely young journalists (with the exception of -- wait for it -- Mark Latham, who was "working as a guest reporter for a commercial network"; is there no scrap of venomous fuckwittery of which the man is not capable?) was about her meeting with Kevin Rudd, except for the ones about the presence of Mark Latham.

Wah wah wah shrouded in secrecy (actually, said Gillard, there was a TV camera and sound gear in the room) wah gotcha wah wah why didn't you make eye contact (actually, said Gillard, just because you didn't see something doesn't mean it didn't happen) wah wah gotcha blah are there really two leaders wah wah wah knifed blah blah assassinated wah wah doesn't Mark Latham upset you blah not helping wah wah aren't YOU having a hard time wah wah gotcha blah Kevin Rudd Kevin Rudd Kevin Rudd.

Gillard answered every single one of these aggressive, repetitive inanities with humour, patience and grace.

As someone with an 83-year old father and an older sister recently turned 60, I would have quite liked to hear some questions about the seniors policy. I didn't think it was too much to ask. Perhaps the baby journalists thought Julia had spoken about it so clearly and in such detail that there were no questions left unanswered. But it seems more likely that they didn't hear a word she said and were filling in time tweeting and texting till her mouth stopped moving and they could start yelling But we need to talk about Kevin!

Can anyone tell me what this appalling crap is all about? Has journalism become a matter of goading someone until they lose their temper or burst into tears? Exactly when did loss of control or bodily containment become the stuff that "news" is made of? Did any of them even realise that there were policy announcements being made? Is this the kind of scrum that produces the kind of rubbish we're getting in the papers and on  the news? Do journalists really think that public life is a soap opera in which the only thing that matters is emotion, personalities and gossip? How much of this is being driven by the Rupert Murdochs of the world? Can you really blame the obviously extreme youth and inexperience of some of these journalists when Kerry O'Brien is doing more or less the same thing every night on The 7.30 Report? Now that journalism is something you need a university degree for, what on earth are they spending those four years teaching them? And is the Australian public really only getting the media it deserves?

Whatever the answers to these questions may be, I am bloody glad I'm not a journalist. I would be hanging my head in shame, mortification and sorrow at the untrained flea circus this once noble profession has become.

Sometimes what you're advertising isn't what you meant to say

I've just come home from brunch with friends down the posh end of town, and as I crossed the road to return to the car I became mesmerised by a large banner slung overhead across King William Road. It was an ad for Pulteney Grammar School, one of Adelaide's pricey private schools, showing a picture of a little girl with plaits, bent studiously over an exercise book.

Above the photo, in giant letters wholly innocent of punctuation, appeared the following exhortation:

SEE YOUR CHILD DISCOVER WHO THEY REALLY ARE

(Thinks: 'Hello darling, how was your day?'
'Excellent! I saw Ermintrude discover who they really are!'
'Who who really are?'
'Ermintrude.'
'Um, what?'
Etc.)

Now, I don't have any kids, and if I did they'd probably be beyond school by now, but if I had and they weren't and I was looking to educate them, any school that advertised itself using the so-called 'singular they' would get crossed off my list sharpish.

Nothing like a good visualisation

Genetically cursed as my sisters and I have been with not just one but two bad-tempered extroverts for grandmothers, I at least (my sisters usually don't bother) spend an awful lot of time trying to be patient while my patience is tried. (And, usually, found wanting.) It's not just irritability, it's a full-on propensity to breathe heavily like Marvin the Martian and say in a posh high-pitched robotic voice 'You have made me very angry. [pant pant pant] Very. Angry. Indeed.'



Bugs Bunny And Marvin The Martian via Noolmusic.com


Unlike the sisters, however, I regard it as a major failing and character flaw, and -- as with other curses of the human condition, like migraines -- try very hard to stay out of situations that might bring it on. Unfortunately I have now failed to do this two days running, and find myself wanting to scream obscenities at two completely different lots of people -- one online, one off -- which is some kind of a record even for me.

And so there is nothing for it but housework therapy. By the time I've wielded the vacuum cleaner the length and breadth of the house, including the special attachments for curtains and sofas, I'll have vacuumed them all up in my imagination, consigned them to the disposable vacuum cleaner bag where they can be smothered by the kilos of cat hair, and chucked the bag in the bin.

I know Florida is odd, but still

The 'Say what?' feature at the Doonesbury site offers a daily sample of demented quotations from US public life. Here's today's:

"If you voted for Obama... seek urologic care elsewhere. Changes to your health care begin right now, not in four years."

-- sign on the office door of Florida urologist Jack Cassell

I suppose long immersion in matters urological might do strange things to your temper and world view eventually, but this is just extraordinary, possibly even illegal. And Robin Williams reckons we're unevolved.

Mind you, I imagine anyone who voted for Obama would, on seeing Cassell's sign, fall over themselves to get as far away from it and him as possible, so the Pollyanna view is that it's a win-win.

Crazy brave

Dear Malcolm,

With all your faults you are still far too good for them, and I am really enjoying the spectacle of you toughing it out to the bitter end. Like the musicians who played 'Nearer, My God, to Thee' on the Titanic as it sank, you are a heartening spectacle and an example to us all.

I use the Titanic analogy advisedly, in the knowledge that your water-wings are of the finest, and that icebergs -- for reasons that everyone except Nick Minchin knows -- are not what they used to be.

Lots of love,
Pav xxx

Arithmetic, or is it algebra, in chronological order

1 horrible old neck injury (high-speed highway rollover, 1986: C4 and C5) x too much housework and gardening (yesterday) x general stress (ongoing) = shoulder, neck and scalp muscles in spasm = extreme nausea + plenty of hyoscine hydrobromide + too much codeine + 1 moving, upsetting funeral of a 60-year-old woman you've known since you were born + several hours with your father & sisters + far too many brandies (today) + 2 x really crucial deadlines that matter a lot to a lot of other people (imminent) = X, where X is how you'll feel at 8 am when the alarm goes off.

On the other hand, it's 20 years today (3.30 am, November 26th 1989) since I had my last cigarette: cold turkey from 40-50 a day. CP, if you're reading this, thanks from the heart.

Brothers, sisters and anthologies : oh the irony

So when I got home this afternoon from fifteen rounds with a sibling -- the ferocious upfront one, all teeth and claws all the time, and no backing down until one of you dies -- so stratospherically stressed out that my eyeballs and teeth were aching and there was a strange metallic taste in my mouth that no amount of medicinal chocolate would shift, I found two things in the mail.

One was a copy, kindly sent by Allen & Unwin, of Charlotte Wood's new themed anthology of specially-commissioned stories by Australian writers about siblings, entitled Brothers and Sisters. The other was my copy of the current Australian Book Review, in which critic Peter Craven continues his attack on the team of scholars of Australian literature (of which he is not one) who edited the Macquarie PEN Anthology of Australian Literature, including moi, that he began in his magisterially and savagely opinionated review of the anthology in the previous issue.

I've been a fan of Charlotte Wood's since I read her novel The Children, in which she shows great interest in the sibling dynamic and great skill in representing it, an impression further borne out by the brilliant, funny, moving introduction to this new book. And after reading the ABR correspondence pages I'm considering the possibility that one way to understand the shifting, endlessly complex dynamics of the literary scene and all its tortured interrelationships is to think of it in terms of sibling relations, where the keynote is intensity for better or worse, and where endless fights for territory, dominance, independence, sentimental vases and Mummy and Daddy's approval all take place in the hothouse arena of shared interests and common experience.

At the very least, I find that thinking about these things anthropologically and psychoanalytically helps me to get some distance on them, to back away from the rage. It's that or the bottle shop, and I have too much work to do tonight for the bottle shop to be an option. Besides, I want to be fully alert when Germaine takes on Planet Janet on Q&A.


Cross-posted at Australian Literature Diary

Good news for aspiring writers!

Because these days, apparently, you can get any old crap published. Any old offensive, outrageous, barking, evil crap at all.

A taste, if you can stomach it. My emphasis. Note the interesting elision from 'polygamy' in the headline to 'polygyny' in the article, and ponder on whether it was a nodding sub or a deliberate way to make this bilge look more palatable, or what. NOW READ ON ...

Yes, polygyny may lead to jealousy. We are all human. But ... the ultimate in giving is for a woman to give a fraction of her husband's time and affection to another woman who is willing to share with her. It is a spiritually rewarding experience that allows women to grow while the husband toils to provide for more than one partner.

... Many men in Western society complain about their mother-in-law or a “nagging” wife. If his wife and in-laws were difficult, would he seek more of the same? The willingness of a man to take on another wife is in fact a form of praise to his first wife.

While Islam sanctions polygyny, it does not condone threesomes. Islam also does not permit polyandry, a form of relationship in which a wife takes more than one husband. There are many reasons for this. Some are medical, some relate to paternity. Others pertain to the sexual proclivities of the different genders.

Yeah, see, you need to know who the father is. Because that's the most important question in the world. And everyone knows women don't like sex. And 'medical' -- hey, enough said. (It must be enough; he doesn't elaborate.)

Now re-read this article swapping the roles. Try to think of any man you have ever met or heard of who would accept that being one of several men in any woman's life would be a spiritual experience that would allow him to grow, or that he should look on it as a song of praise for him.

I know the blogosphere is particularly scone-hot on free speech so I take my life in my hands here. But this kind of stuff ought not to be allowed to poison our reading air. Speech is action, and some actions are not to be condoned.

Words and phrases I would like to ban: an occasional series

Number of times during a 32-minute drive this afternoon that I heard, across 3 different radio stations, the expression 'rolled out' used to mean 'introduced', 'set up', 'set in motion', 'put in place', 'established' or 'carried out': eight. Eight times. That's once every four minutes.

And here's another thing I heard today that I would like to ban: 'The problem must be under the pavers.'

I always did like John Alexander

"We don't need dreary old feminism any more, it's all irrelevant [sic], we're equal now, we're empowered."

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA


UPDATE: Mindy's comment has alerted me to the fact that this is a very ambiguous post. The above quotation is attributed not to John Alexander but rather to assorted young women I've heard expressing that opinion in recent years. The hollow laughter is my response, and the link explains why. John Alexander actually comes out of it looking really good.

Gah

Papa Cat got carted off to hospital yesterday after some sort of heart attackish thingy. Not very big, but there is some damage. Have spent the last 36 hours walking past and under signs saying Emergency and Resuscitation and Critical Care, writing book reviews in hospital corridor chairs using the Notes application on my iPhone, and sending texts to my sisters saying things like 'Have you got his Gold Card?' and 'I'm in the cafeteria, where are you??!'

Tonight he is, as they say, resting comfortably: under observation in a quiet ward, no surgery or anything. But a doctor saying "I've looked at his ECG's and I didn't like what I saw" is a doctor whose face not even a mother could love.

Because everybody knows that women exist only as a reproductive function

Currently featured in the 'Say What?' spot at the Doonesbury site (see links in sidebar) on Slate:

"Let's hope that the key conferences aren't when she's menstruating or something, or just before she's going to menstruate. That would really be bad. Lord knows what we would get then."

-- radio host G. Gordon Liddy on Judge Sonia Sotomayor

I know that many bloggers are too young to have any first-hand memories of the name G. Gordon Liddy, so allow me to show you his credentials.

UPDATE: According to Wikipedia, Sonia Sotomayor was born in 1954, which makes her 55 this year, so apparently Liddy is pig-ignorant as well: not only is she very, very unlikely to menstruate ever again, but she is probably well over the worst of menopause as well. So, G. Gordon, what else have you got?

Mind your Qs

After almost 20 years of fearing it, late last year it finally ha ened: I ti ed a glass of wine straight into the com uter keyboard. Had to lug the old iMac keyboard into the less old eMac. And now the key between the O and the square and curly brackets is sticking on this keyboard as well.

I've been meaning to buy a new com uter for ages now, u grade my internets, that kind of thing, but I think the gods are now sending me little messages to hurry u with it.

Sticking with A le, of course, but might move on from the deskto and get one of the la to s. It would be leasant and convenient to have something ortable.

Pants on fire

The 'notifications' on Facebook, once a simple mechanism to let you know when some Friend or other had done something or other, now mostly consists of meta-Facebook self-promotion exhorting you to use some application or other, presumably so that more advertising will get more exposure.

Perhaps the most deceptive of these applications are the ones that lure you, including by the use of carefully designed weirdly-behaving links and the exploitation of people's unfamiliarity with the way Facebook works (not least because they keep changing the way it works), into trying to find out what your so-called Friends have been saying about you using those sinister applications designed for the very purpose of bringing out the worst and most malicious in the unwary who see no reason not to commit all manner of reckless remarks to cyberspace.

What these applications really do -- both the ones where you say what you 'really' think about your 'friends' and the ones where you find out what your 'friends' 'really' think about you -- is first to feed, and then to feed on, the naiveté, out-of-controlness, emotional insecurity, uncertainty and paranoia of the young, who are, of course, Facebook's main target. For Facebook is mainly a massive market research tool, hunting the baby dollar. Observe, for example, the 'notification' that has just popped up this morning:

Good friendships are based on honest opinions! Are you curious to know what your friends really think about you?

Good friendships based on honest opinions? Are they serious? In my by now rather extensive experience, good friendships rely on the occasional and loving suppression of honest opinions.

(Note also the heinous valorising of opinion as such -- which is perhaps the single most overrated commodity of our time -- that has taken over most of what used to be intellectual life and wrecked newspapers forever. The MSM ought not to be blaming The Internet for its own demise, but rather its own foolishness in having drunk the Opinion kool-aid. Facts, dudes. Analysis. All the good, disciplined, clear-eyed, neutrally-expressed, non-visceral things you used to do so well.)

But I digress. Am I curious to know what my friends really think about me? No I am not. I love and trust my friends, would never expect them to give me a perfect report card, and flatter myself that if anything about me is seriously annoying them then I will probably be able to tell. (Possibly not to do anything about it, mind. But certainly to tell.)

Look at the evilly paranoia-inducing vulnerability-creating-and-exploiting wording of that question, with that word 'really' implying that your friends 'really' think something quite different from what they're saying, that you are being lied to and betrayed, that your friends are not really your friends at all but rather acting on some cruel and horrid secret motivation in pretending to like you. We, Facebook, are your only true friends. Want to find out The Truth and stop being the pathetically deluded patsy that we know you really are? Why, just click on this handy link, and we'll take you straight to a site where you have to enter your mobile number to proceed and then you will never, ever be free of us or any of the people who are paying us all will be revealed.

One aspect of contemporary education that gives me real hope for future generations is the rise of media studies: kids are a million times more aware and critical of the media's manipulations, especially in advertising, than was the case a generation ago. I don't know whether the same kind of techniques for critical analysis are now being taught with respect to new media, but I hope they are. I'd like to think that the kids being targeted by Facebook have actually got its number.