The Cuckoo's Nest

Friday, April 28, 2006

It was him

While the lefty media go crazy over the death of Private Kovco in Iraq - tonight's ABC item was an especially disgraceful piece of ghoulery - SBS still carries off the nightly prize. According to Cassandra Hill on tonight's bulletin:

"Prime Minister John Howard has accepted full responsibility for the death of Private Kovco..."

This statement was made against vision of Howard in a radio studio with headphones on. Funnily enough, there was no direct audio, no quote of him making this extraordinary claim of responsibility.

ABC's Matt Brown got every bit of vision he could to make the point that morgues are dismal, unappealing places. Gee, you mean they're not like a tapas bar or Disneyland? Apparently the morgue in which Private Kovco's body briefly resided is 'dimly lit'. No kidding? No disco balls or fairy lights, you mean? Not even a lava lamp? The hand-written label on his body-drawer showed signs of having been 'crumpled'. Oh, the humanity!

Update: In the matter of the PM's supposed claim of 'full responsibility' for the death of Private Kovco, it gets interesting once you do a little googling. Shortly after posting a comment on Tim Blair, I found two different articles on the Australian's webpage, using what was obviously the same original quote to mean two very different things. In one article, Howard was claiming 'full responsibility' for the death of Private Kovco, in another, it was for the bungled repatriation of his body. Within minutes, the second article was replaced by the first, and the second link (which is still up as of this writing, and which is titled Body mix-up: PM accepts full responsibility) then led back to the first article

You'll have to take my word for that, because I didn't get a screenshot. In fact, I would encourage you not to believe me, but at least I've got a screenshot of that second link, my only evidence that that second article ever existed.

Thursday, April 27, 2006

Not a good feeling

Last night I had the unpleasant experience of seeing John Howard as I imagine the Howard-haters see him. He was taking questions on the new health-welfare ID card, which, he stresses, is not an ID card, or a 'trojan horse' for one. Right. It's not compulsory, just as the current Medibank card is not compulsory, unless you fancy paying your compulsory Medibank levy, and then your uncompensated medical bills on top of that. The term 'weaselly' came to mind.

The card will come in, and I will no doubt end up carrying one, photo and all. As noted in a much earlier post, one of the few compensations will be watching the parties of the Left tie themselves in knots trying to bag Howard for carrying out a policy they all cherish, deep in their narrowing and straightening little hearts.

Monday, April 24, 2006

Civilians

Occasionally, even a hardened Radio National listener like myself looks up into the shaving mirror and asks his reflection 'Did she say what I thought she just said?' This morning, the normally fairly sensible Fran Kelly was talking to Foreign Minister Alexander Downer about the latest 'Osama Bin Laden' tape, and led with this observation:

"...again, the main target of the war on terror remains on the loose and now he's essentially threatening not just governments, but civilians..."

Obviously, it's a gaffe, and if she'd thought a little harder, she wouldn't have said it, but in the end, your mindset determines the kinds of gaffes you make.

Sunday, April 23, 2006

The glittering prizes

Congratulations are in order to the first Australian to win a Pulitzer prize, Geraldine Brooks. Even those who, like me, have read neither her March nor the classic novel from which it is derived, Louisa May Alcott's Little Women (1868), are aware that Brooks' novel belongs to that modern literary genre known as 'sharecropping'. The idea is simple: take a classic novel, and write a spinoff involving one of the characters, preferably one who only plays a minor role, or better still, who never actually appears in the source-novel. In Little Women, the father of the March family is away at the Civil War, and exists mostly as an offscreen character. Brooks has won her Pulitzer by writing a novel in which we follow what Mr. March was doing all that time.

Others with a canny eye to this kind of ploy have included Peter Carey, who wrote Jack Maggs to follow what happened to the convict Magwitch, from Dickens' Great Expectations, after he vanished to Australia. Then there's Sena Nashlund's Ahab's Wife, which tells the story of, you guessed it, Captain Ahab's wife. We can only look forward to a version of Moby Dick, told from the whale's point of view. How could you beat an opening sentence like: "Call me Moby" ? Probably the grandaddy of the sharecropping novel is Jean Rhys' Wide Sargasso Sea, which is a prequel to Jane Eyre, filling in just what happened to the first Mrs. Rochester.

I have respect for the mercenary motive in literature, and agree with Dr. Johnson that 'nobody but a blockhead ever wrote for anything but money'* so I have no qualms about any writer who wants to maximise their chances by pitching directly for the biggest market, and by piggy-backing on an established best-selling classic. However, that liberality should not be mistaken for a willingness to judge the end result by any standards other than the literary.
(* which makes me a blockhead, or should that be 'bloghead'? Perhaps Boswell misheard the Doctor, who really said 'nobody but a blogger...')

Having taste-tested March, I can say that it is not as badly written as one would expect. Not well written, but at least not offensively inept, and it is surprisingly free of the ear-gouging linguistic anachronisms and factual bloopers which normally pepper the modern literary historical novel. Its outstanding fault, on a quick survey, is the 'voice' of the central character - a dreary, lifeless pastiche of an imaginary nineteenth-century novelistic voice. I have always suspected that the men and women of the nineteenth century did not talk like the people in Dickens and George Eliot any more than modern Americans actually talk like the people in Hemingway or Richard Ford.

I am probably hopelessly idealistic about artists and writers, but I found Geraldine Brooks's attitude to her former critics not encouraging. Referring to a 'wrist-slittingly' bad (i.e., mildly critical) review given to March by Thomas Mallon in the New York Times, she has said gleefully "He'll get up tomorrow and read the news and puke." Maybe. But if he's any kind of critic, he'll be puking because a mediocre literary airport novel has - yet again - won a major prize, not because he's been 'proved wrong' by the infallible Pulitzer Committee.

Brooks' Australian publisher, Shona Martyn, offers perceptive, but somewhat backhand praise: "Geraldine … goes to the heart of what I would call the book club market". I've often wondered what happened to that market, once ruled by giants like Morris West, A. J. Cronin, Irving Stone...

Wednesday, April 19, 2006

To kill a (protected species) bird

A Victorian policeman is under investigation on several charges arising from the fact that earlier this year he shot dead a swooping magpie, while off duty, in his own home. Apparently he nailed the avian aggressor right through the abdomen while it was on the wing: forget about prosecuting him, anyone who can do that deserves a marksmanship medal. Perhaps he should have used capsicum spray and called for a negotiator instead.

Update
: In a searing expose that brings back memories of the legendary 'Who Killed Cock Robin?' series that scooped several Walkleys, the Age today runs an x-ray of the dead magpie (print version only), and quotes a vet's autopsy report: "
She found bullet fragments in the heart, the base of a rib and the left thigh muscle." We are yet to learn whether the magpie was affected by drugs, or was receiving treatment for a mental illness. Did they do a chalk outline of the body-drop spot?

Even wackier, the Age report quotes someone who was at the policeman's home at the time, but "who cannot be named for legal reasons".

Further update: greetings to visitors from Tim Blair's site. Presumably that unnameable witness was an undercover agent from The Birdwatchers' Society, or a stool pigeon. The police officer, upon conviction, has been fined $2000, and barred from carrying a firearm while off-duty. The magistrate condemned him thus:
"
It's all the worse where the person discharging the firearm is a member of the police force, who ought to have understood that this is an inappropriate activity."

I must differ with the magistrate: I'm not crazy about people discharging firearms in suburban backyards, but if anyone's going to do it, I want it to be someone trained in their use.

Tuesday, April 18, 2006

Who reads the third paragraph?

I think it used to be a rule in newspapers that your headline had to be substantiated somewhere in the body of the article. I say 'used to be'. Take a look at this article in today's Age, with the screamer:

Some think I lied on AWB, admits Howard


The article itself doesn't contain a single direct quote from Howard that even remotely approaches this. Not even a massaged-paraphrase. Surely if he had made such a staggering admission, it would be worth quoting verbatim? The closest is that a talkback caller accuses Howard of cowardice over the AWB affair, and Howard replies - quite reasonably:

"It's a view that some Australians will have but it's not a view that all Australians will have."

The real thing, of course, is to get the words 'lied', 'admit' and 'Howard' into the same sentence.

Monday, April 17, 2006

Belated thoughts on Good Friday

I never hear St. John's account of the Passion - as we do every Good Friday - without some new and surprising note hitting my ear. This year it was the detail about how the Jews were unwilling to enter Pilate's precinct - the Praetorium - as this would have defiled them, and they would be unable to eat the Passover. Even though the Jews here are a subject population, there are some things they won't compromise on: Pilate doesn't order them to come before him, defilement or no, but instead goes out to them. Readers of Josephus will know of the remarkable lengths to which the Roman rulers of Judea went in order to accomodate the religious scruples of the conquered populace. They even enforced a death-penalty on trespass in certain areas of the Temple, against their own - Roman - citizens.

Pilate wasn't all touchy-feely, though. The only other mention of him in the Gospels is in Luke 13:1, where he is described as having had a number of Galileans killed, 'mingling their blood with their sacrifices'. Presumably this means he had a number of people set upon and killed in the midst of a religious observance. Obviously, respect for the religion of the conquered had its limits.

His dialogue with Jesus and the Jews has always seemed to me one of the most psychologically vivid forensic dialogues we have from the ancient world. Anyone who considers it a work of fiction has a lot of explaining to, purely on the grounds of literary criticism, let alone theology. Above all, its insights into the relations of power are piercing. Pilate, despite his power, ends up bouncing like a pinball, back and forth between Jesus and His accusers. The High Priests effortlessly blackmail him by 'spinning' how bad the acquittal of a pretender to kingship would look in a supposedly subject province: "If you release him, you are no friend of Caesar". Jesus is even harsher: to Pilate's bluster "Do you not know that I have the power to release you, and the power to condemn you to death?", He coolly replies "You would have no power over me if it had not been given to you from above".

Saturday, April 15, 2006

Sad clown

News from France that an MP has secured an undertaking from a Japanese paint manufacturer not to close its factory in his departement, by staging a hunger strike. In a country in which riots by a few thousand students and unionists are considered adequate grounds for the reversal of government policy, government-by-hunger-strike suddenly looks almost rational. With the poetic eloquence so characteristic of his nation (or else delirium brought on by malnutrition), MP Jean Lassalle rhapsodized:

"I like the Springtime. It's lovely. I love life, everything about it. I love my family so much. I have no desire to die whatsoever but after nearly 40 days without food I can't stop. Like a sad clown. I'm not asking to win. I'm asking for good sense to triumph."

Friday, April 07, 2006


Smashing time

We all know those stories that we read, reported as sober fact, but which never quite sit right. For me, one of these was the account in January of the man who smashed three large and very valuable Qing vases in the Fitzwilliam Museum in Cambridge, after he supposedly stumbled down a staircase. Now it seems it was no accident. Mr. Clumsy turns out to have a conviction for assault, and attempted to re-enter the Museum during a media presentation on the proposed restoration of the vases. Having viewed CCTV images of the 'accident', police have laid charges of criminal damage.




By the beard of the prophet

I had seen this picture on LGF, and was pondering the strange habit of these sheikh types to dye their grizzled hair and beards a screamingly fake Pavarotti...


...Death in Venice...


...black. I got to wondering whether this practice is haram: surely, if Allah sends grey hairs, man is not worthy to defy or deny them? I dialled up the helpful Ask an Imam site: the very first question sitting there on the notice board was on this precise subject. Spooky. The answer is somewhat confusing. Apparently men are allowed to dye their hair, but in any colour except black. I always knew Henry Ford wasn't a muslim.

Thursday, April 06, 2006

The last time I saw parrots

There are just so many layers of irony to this story, that I don't know where to stop peeling. The Federal Government has nixed a planned windfarm in the Labor state of Victoria, on the grounds that it would pose a threat to the habitat of the highly endangered orange-bellied parrot. The Federal Minister responsible, Ian Campbell, is depressingly susceptible to Kyoto flim flam, but he deserves a Logie for his straight face in announcing the cancellation of a $220 million project for the sake of a population of parrots estimated at no more than 200.

The Age, for whom every kind of environmental study has hitherto been holy writ, has suddenly discovered a newfound scepticism towards them, wonder of wonders. They now realize that 'environment' can be cynically used as a smokescreen for political manouvering. And they don't think windfarms themselves are a political ploy?

Spare a thought for the poor greenies, whose heads must be exploding, like the archetypal evil robot, whose CPU housing starts to smoke and spark when he is defeated by having two contradictory instructions programmed into him: Parrots good! Windfarms good! Windfarms bad for parrots! Coalition bad! Coalition defends parrots! Parrots..er..good..er..arrgghhHHH!!

Sounds of silence

Apologies again for the hiatus in posting, but in a sense this reflects the strange hush that has fallen over the Australian political scene. The AWB enquiry, set to run longer than The Mousetrap, has dwindled to a background hum, and the sale of Australian uranium to China, which would once have set the streets ablaze, passes with barely a murmur. The Age was reduced to running a 'where are they now?' story on the old faces of uranium protesting, and the fresh, new young faces in this exciting lifetime career.

Similarly, the prompt granting of visas to the Papuan refugees has been a great disappointment to the media, because it deprives them of one of their favourite memes. Still, on the age old principle that there's no good side to a John Howard story, they are concentrating on the problems this has created with our 'relationship' with Indonesia. If Howard, on one of his morning walks around Lake Burley Griffin, spotted a drowning man and dived in to save him, the Press Gallery would no doubt find that he'd broken some by-law.

Monday, April 03, 2006

Of dingoes, dogs, ducks and men

When I saw Bill Leak's cartoon in response to the Indonesian 'two dingoes', my first thought was, 'Will he get away with that bone through the nose'? By and large, it looks as though he has. As for those tender souls who worry about Indonesian Muslim sensibilities over being depicted as a dog, has anyone asked the Papuans how they feel about it?

I saw Leak being interviewed briefly on ABC news on this issue, and was struck by a couple of things. Firstly, he is well known as someone who has an absolutely pathological hatred of Alexander Downer, and of Downer's supposed patrician accent. (I've never been able to hear it myself, but maybe you have to have grown up in Adelaide, as Leak did.) Knowing this, I was surprised to hear a distinctly plummy tone in Leak's own voice. Bit of transference going on, perhaps? In fact, the conspiracy theorist in me wonders if Leak didn't stage this piece of provocation just to rattle Downer's cage.

Secondly, I was interested to see that Leak draws his cartoons directly on one of those digital tablets. I'd like to know whether that's his own choice, or whether his editors foisted it on him in the interests of efficiency. Leak, despite his pretensions as a painter, is a fairly middling cartoonist to begin with, and I strongly suspect that a recent decline in the quality of his drawing could be traced to the use of this technology. The Age's John Spooner - a genuine artist-cartoonist - has no truck with these things, and creates all his work as an ink-on-paper original. Leunig makes some use of this technology, but I suspect he also starts with a pen and ink original.

I'm reminded of a rather sad story about one of my favourite comic artists, the great Carl Barks, creator of the authentic Donald Duck comic books. Barks was one of those artists who, in a funny, clever story for kids, could craft parables of the human condition which were all the more penetrating for the apparent slightness of their means. The kind of thing many a Booker Prize winner can only dream of doing. Anyway, Barks, who laboured for years in anonymity - fan letters came addressed to 'the good duck artist', to distinguish him from the lesser talents working in that field - happily received a full measure of recognition and material reward late in his life. In one interview, he spoke of the decline in the quality of his drawing late in his career. Partly it was due to old age - you can see the hand shaking in some of his lines - but he explained that it was also because, after a certain point, in order to save a few dollars, Disney started supplying him with cheaper, inferior artists' board, which simply didn't take the pen as well.