Daily Show Slap-down: Bigger and Better than anything you will ever see on WWE

Amidst all the financial turmoil and the daily news of rising unemployment rates, slowing trade and the ever present spectre of a global depression I have to say Michael Franti and Spearhead had it right in his song Bomb the World when he sang, with great prescience, in 2003:

No one listened for years
But like, "who put us here?"
And who's responsible?
Well, there's no debatin'
Cause if they ask me I say
It's big corporations
World trade organisation
Tri-lateral action
International sanctions, Satan

The rest of us seem to have belatedly cottoned on to the manner in which criminals like Bernie Madoff have operated We yelled and cried at the excesses of the big corporations and the way in which companies could close their operations and default on the pension entitlements of their workers, while still keeping the lucrative annual bonuses for the executives. Even after AIG was bailed out to the tune of $170 billion it seems clear that the message has not filtered through to the company that they have to change the way that they do business. Last week it came to light that the company was planning to honour the payment of bonuses for their executives, which would come in at around $165 million!!! To add insult to injury it emerged that the bonuses are for the staff within the same derivatives trading unit that was responsible in large part for the company needing to go cap in hand to the American people for money. In response to the howls of outrage the company replied dead-pan that it had to honour contractual obligations and that it was required for the company to retain the best and the brightest talent in the industry!!! Those are their words exactly – “the best and brightest talent”, which strikes me as somewhere far beyond unbelievable. As postings on the Huffington Post make it clear the AIG arguments are fallacious on several counts. Robert Creamer comments that

And just imagine how protestations from AIG's CEO about its "contractual obligations" sounded to UAW workers who are being asked once again to modify their contractual agreements to keep the auto industry in business. But the titans of the financial sector seem to have very different standards for themselves and the rest of the American economy.

Creamer continues

Now the CEO of AIG has the audacity to argue that it has to pay bonuses because, if AIG loses it best employees, it would be harder for the company to recover and help the government recoup its investment. These are the best and the brightest? Could the gang in the financial products division of AIG done any worse? They helped precipitate the worst economic collapse in more than half a century.

(see the Creamer article at: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/robert-creamer/aig-bonus-scandal-spotlig_b_175124.html)

The reportage of the AIG excesses got even worse with one show reporting that soon after the second government bail out the executives had been treated to an all expenses paid $88 000 English hunt weekend. Little wonder that Obama weighed into the fray yesterday, stating that “This is a corporation that finds itself in financial distress due to recklessness and greed," The Prez then went on to promise that his administration would use every legal avenue available to them to recover the unwarranted bonus payments. The problem that has been raised is that these bonuses were already promised in April last before the Federal Reserve (apparently independent of Congress) authorized the first bail-out payments. The gist of that is the belief that there is a legally binding contract between AIG and the imbeciles who got it into this mess. One new option being circulated in response to this is that the US Government (which now owns 80% of the company) should exercise its muscle as the owner of the company. It will be interesting to see what happens. Americans are appalled by the naked greed of the AIG staff, but are also (according to some commentators like Robert Reich) wary of any sort of government ownership. You have to wonder does the paranoia of the McCarthy era still linger, like the bad smell in an elevator?

But the real news of the last week or so happened with the show down on the Daily Show between two popular tv pundits. So, ladies and gentlemen, in the blue corner is Jon Stewart from the Daily Show (blue because he is a staunch supporter of the Obama camp but confusing because he’s also the lefty that the Republicans hate, and we all know that red is the colour of …communism!!) You may have heard me mention the Daily Show and its host, Jon Stewart, in previous blogs. Along with the Stephen Colbert show, Stewart consistently presents hilarious piss-takes on US society and particularly the Republicans. While Colbert poses as a raging right-wing conservative as a vehicle to satirise the…right wing conservatives….Stewart wears his liberal tendencies on his sleeve while delivering his lines like a naughty schoolboy who has just told a smutty joke. In the red corner (which should be the green corner, to represent money and unbridled greed) was the tv money adviser Cramer. In response to the thought forming in your head, no it is not Cosmo Kramer from Seinfeld, but you would be excused for thinking that there is a more than passing familial resemblance there. Cramer’s Mad Money Show is characterized by his bouncing around the set, giving answers to callers on what to buy and sell, all the time to the sound of him beeping horns or setting off other strange sound effects.

Last week a slanging match developed between Stewart and Cramer after Jon Stewart took the financial advisers at CNBC, and Cramer in particular, to task for fuelling the fires of the economic melt-down. In response to the comments Cramer was dismissive of Stewart as an “entertainer”, but Stewart was persistent, airing footage of Cramer repeatedly espousing the virtues of the Bear Stearns stock even as it tanked and went south. One line that I particularly liked from Stewart was that he would be a millionaire if he had have followed Jim Cramer’s Mad Money advice – if he had started with a hundred million dollars! After a week of shadow boxing in the media (with Cramer even appearing on Martha Stewart’s show to put his case) it was finally agreed that the two would square off on Stewart’s show. It was touted with all the hoopla of a World Wrestling slap down. The fight went the distance, but it was a fizzer with the press the next day universally declaring Stewart to be the winner. For his part Stewart eschewed his charming, smarmy, schoolboy pranks to go after Cramer, insisting that he (and the CNBC financial shows) had misled the American population and that many people had lost money as a direct result of following his advice. One key to understanding Stewart’s righteous indignation was the report that his parents had lost a substantial part of the value of their 401K scheme (the US superannuation) scheme. A remarkably contrite Cramer, perhaps further chastened by footage of him that Stewart had dug up from a couple of years earlier recounting gleefully how the market could be manipulated to advantage, agreed that they could have done a better job. He did stop short of a mea culpa and the whole exchange was riveting but very uncomfortable to watch.

It led me to wonder why this show – which wasn’t vintage Stewart – had still managed to attract one of the highest ever audiences for the Comedy Central channel? It was perhaps a tad unfair to make Cramer the face of the unscrupulous and greedy Wall Street types. Admittedly there was an admission from Cramer that he had given advice based upon assurances from the CEOs of companies that were later to go to the wall. Clearly there was not distance between the financial “experts” and the financial sector to ensure impartiality and independence. Yet on another level Stewart’s slap down of Cramer was like watching a deer in the headlights of a semi-trailer. I almost felt some pity for him. Clearly Stewart has touched a responsive chord with the American people who were (and continue to be) right royally screwed over by the financial giants like AIG. Someone has to be made accountable and perhaps Cramer was the Wicker Man who had to be sacrificed. For those of you not familiar with the Wicker Man it is a film that centers a around the alleged murder of a young girl on an isolated Scottish island. The Wicker Man is a huge wood sculpture that is set ablaze at the end of a pagan celebration. The plot revelation is that the detective has been lured to the island and that the girl hasn’t died at all (look away now if you don’t want me to spoil the ending). In the end the detective is sacrificed in the Wicker Man funeral pyre to appease the gods and ensure that the apple harvest will not fail a second time. A long winded analogy but perhaps the American public needed a sacrifice, some sort of punching bag, when they know that the Bernie Madoffs of the world, and the faceless AIG executives will continue to be largely unscathed and, even worse, show no contrition for their excesses. Litigation spanning years and the anonymity of the criminals is all frustrating to the middle America at risk of losing their jobs, health insurance and homes. So I think Jon Stewart’s role as the unmasked avenger can perhaps be seen in light of the lines of the Paul Kelly song that soothe us with the assurance that:

They say the darkest hour is right before the dawn
And in the hour of greatest slaughter the great avenger is being born.

If Obama is going to turn the US economy (and nation) around then he possibly needs people like Jon Stewart riding shot-gun. Stewart’s Robin, to Obama’s Batman makes perfect sense to me. We need new super-heroes, the Watchmen for the new millennium…hmm who else can we recruit?


(P.S. The Daily show episode featuring the face off is here:
http://www.thedailyshow.com/video/index.jhtml?videoId=221516&title=jim-cramer-unedited-interview


(P.P.S. If you are intrigued by the Wicker Man plot for heaven’s sake don’t go with the awful Nicholas Cage re-make. There is only one version, starring Edward Woodward from 1973, that is worth watching. Beware of imitations!)

Chirpy Chirpy Cheep Cheep

This week was notable for the fact that the internet turned twenty. It is amazing to think how it has transformed how we access information, communicate – even carry out the day to day activities of online banking (or Facebook or online gaming, to be perfectly honest). It is a measure of how profoundly that the new technologies have changed the world in that the Pope called on the faithful to give up text messaging, computer games and social networking sites (like…gasp…Facebook) for Lent. As one wag commented the reach of these new technologies can be gauged from the fact that the directive from Pope Benny probably came through the papal website.

While I have never felt at ease with cell…I mean mobile (sorry Neil) phones, the lure of the ipod is like a siren song for me. It doesn’t matter that you feel slightly drone-ish traveling in a bus with everyone wired to ipods. Then again, if Obama is so smitten with his Blackberry maybe it is time for me to reconsider on that front…hmmm

Similarly, after initial resistance, Facebook has drawn me into its thrall…and I am finding it a wonderful way to communicate with everyone around the world. For all its narcissistic overtones, blogging also strikes me as a better form of release than bending the ear of another drunk at a bar (with less prospect of being punched in the nose too). But my connection with these new technologies is leaving me feeling increasingly conflicted and the battle-lines have been drawn (or at least the boundary has been defined) with the issue of “twittering”.

I am not really sure about it so I will shamelessly cite from wikipedia (which I am always telling my students not to do) to tell you that:

Twitter is a social networking and micro-blogging service that enables its users to send and read other users' updates known as tweets. Tweets are text-based posts of up to 140 characters in length. Updates are displayed on the user's profile page and delivered to other users who have signed up to receive them. Senders can restrict delivery to those in their circle of friends (delivery to everyone being the default).

So twittering can take place via SMS or the twitter web-site or other applications, allowing you to shoot out one or two sentence messages to all and sundry from the cell phone or on the web (oops…sorry I meant mobile). Sort of like a group email that lets your friends, or anyone on your subscription list, know what you are doing at any particular moment. It is aptly titled “micro-blogging” and works around the simple question of “What are you doing now?”. I suppose it is not dissimilar to having constant up-dates from your profile page on facebook.

. Given that I have embraced both Facebook and blogging, my aversion to ‘twittering” is perhaps somewhat hypocritical. It has certainly been embraced by all manner of unexpected bodies and individuals. I went to the home page of the University of California San Diego the other day and was gob-smacked to see that you can sign up for news of UCSD activities on their twitter site. Even the dinosaurs of the Republican Party appear to have taken to the new mode of communication. This was all the more surprising that McCain had to admit during the last presidential campaign that his wife took care of his email and internet communications. But there you are, in this new era the member of Congress with the most followers for their twittering is…the Senator from Arizona. So, come on down…John McCain. He does concede, to be fair, that he gets some assistance with his pearls of wisdom. An article from Chris Lefkow of AFP observes:

The 72-year-old McCain is an infrequent Twitterer and acknowledges getting a little assistance. "YEs!! I am twittering on my blackberry but not without a little help!" read one recent message.

McCain's missives range from dismay over a rash of injuries to members of his hometown NBA team, the Phoenix Suns -- "steve nash hurt? amare too! what now for the suns!" -- to concern over spending in the economic stimulus bill. "$650,000 for beaver management in North Carolina and Mississippi - how does one manage a beaver?" he asked.

In the aftermath of the Obama address to Congress one of the intriguing tidbits that came to light was the fact that the chamber had been alive to the sound of twittering (sort of like the Julie Andrews tune from “The Sound of Music”). And many of the members were caught out with their excessive (and, one might offer, inane) “twittering”. One Democrat was reportedly chastised by her mother for twittering during the President’s speech while Texas Republican Joe Barton grumpily observed that there was a basketball game about to start on the espn2 channel “for those of you that aren’t going to bother watching Pelosi smirk for the next hour” in reference to the Democrat Speaker of the House, Nancy Pelosi. The sudden realization that this was posted for all the world to see (as we would have said in high school “Der Fred”) led to a rapid retraction with the disclaimer: "Disregard that last tweet from a staffer."
So what do I have against twittering? Well it seems to be so limited and limiting. An article that I saw about it made the point that people are so being twittering about what they are doing that they are not actually in the moment. It is a form of (further) disengagement from actual personal relations to a form that is mediated through electronic media. Railing against twitter is, of course, ultimately futile. Sort of like King Canute ordering back the tide. It does leave me wondering, however, whether it will sound the death knell for written letters as a form of communication. It is not just the limited range of communication that twitter implies – as if the world has dumbed down to an MTV generation vision of the attention span of one pop song – because there is still the possibility to have more expansive and detailed communication through email. But I fear that it will mean that future generations won’t have that pile of letters from parents, family and lovers that are tied up in ribbon or kept in a shoe-box and when they are opened they are like breathing in the essence of another time and place. Printing out the emails and keeping them isn’t the same either for there is something personal about the handwritten letter. I will admit to being one of the worst when it comes to my scrawled hieroglyphics. I look at the beautifully formed letters of my mother’s hand writing or the cursive (perhaps copperplate) of my father and I am envious that I didn’t persevere long enough to master a beautiful script. When I make notes for my teaching class I more often than not finding myself squinting (and not just because I refuse to wear my glasses) trying to make out the illegible scratching on the paper. While it appears to be a dying craft I was interested to see a recent episode of the NPR show “A way with words” was talking about a book titled Script and Scribble: the Rise and Fall of Handwriting (see the show which deals with the origins of local or family sayings at http://www.waywordradio.org/)
But it is not a generational thing. In that show they actually commented that Superman…I mean President…Obama actually has very beautiful handwriting. And of course this blog is shameless in its support of Obama. Apparently he left a handwritten note at the Wailing Wall in Jerusalem during a visit in July of last year. The note was promptly retrieved and copied by the press and there was universal acceptance that he had a very nice writing script.
So it is not just about what we can say in the new technology, the content, but the fact that we will lose that art of penmanship. It struck me as apt when I first heard of twitter that I remembered a song from my teenage years by a group called Middle of the Road called….Chirpy Chirpy Cheep Cheep. The song’s perceptive lyrics go something like this:

Last night, I heard my mama singing a song
Ooh-We, Chirpy, Chirpy, Cheep, Cheep
Woke up this morning and my mama was gone
Ooh-We, Chirpy, Chirpy, Cheep, Cheep
Chirpy, Chirpy

The lyrics (I use the term loosely) sum up for me the shallowness, the absence of any aesthetic pleasure, which twitter represents. But, just like the song Chirpy Chirpy Cheep Cheep that gets stuck in your head (I challenge you to listen to it and not be humming it for the rest of the day) so it is that twitter will get stuck in the head. Apparently those songs that get stuck in the head create a cognitive or brain itch (the Germans call it ohrwurm, or earworm). Of course the only way to scratch the itch is by constant humming or, in the case of twitter, by…twittering!!! But I refuse to accept that resistance is futile, so I am going to go now and dust off my fountain pen, find some ink and start writing you all letters. Which is not to say you will be able to make out a single word I write, but it’s my form of silent resistance.

Why am I soft in the middle (when) the rest of my life is so hard…or…The Return of the Motorcycle Boy

It is Oscar time and I confess to being more than a little distracted by the pending festivities. There are no Oscar parties on the horizon and I am not really that inclined to sit and wince through the acceptance speeches that are always the same. The red carpet waltz as the stars arrive doesn’t really interest me, except perhaps to see whether Angelie Jolie decides to wear her haute couture outfit back to front as she did (reportedly) at another recent awards ceremony. And I also admit that I am bemused at the choice of Hugh Jackman as compere. This decision prompted the previous host, Jon Stewart from the Daily Show, to declare that the awards must have been cancelled because he hadn’t got the call asking him to do the gig. So I am not sure how our Hugh will fare. Undoubtedly I would have preferred Jon Stewart’s smart arse Yonkers banter. As to the films nominated? I confess that I have only seen three of the films that are in the running. Loved Sean Penn in “Milk”, but then it is hard to find a dud in his cv (perhaps with the exception of his marriage to Madonna). Also enjoyed “Slumdog Millionaire” though I am not sure that it is the BIG picture that everyone is declaring. There seems to be something of a controversy circulating also that the film’s producer/directors exploited the young kids who appear in the film. But then that may well be down to the Machiavellian mud-slinging of the studios as they jostle to get their horses across the line. Which brings me to the heart of the matter, so to speak. It is all about the return of Mickey Rourke.

Bouncing back into contention, like Sly Stallone in Rockys 1,2,3,4 etc. He is back in the game. I am so glad to see Mickey Rourke back up on the big screen and nominated for a little nude gold guy for the “Wrestler”. From the moment that I saw him in “Rumblefish” I was convinced he was the next big thing. I still watch Keifer Sutherland running around on the tv show “24” and see the less-talented and not as good looking version of Mickey. Then there was the work that Mickey did in “Diner” and “Pope of Greenwich Village” which confirmed, for me, that he was going to be the next big thing. Of course subsequent films didn’t really bear out such rosy-cheeked exuberance. I went to see “Year of the Dragon” and squirmed throughout it, conscious of the glares from the other people who had come along on my say so. After that “Angel Heart” left you thinking that it had channeled a David Lynch episode of “Twin Peaks”. I am sure de Niro would happily lift that one from his resume. It could also be argued that this film outing was the career choice that put Lisa Bonet’s acting career into something of a terminal tail-spin, but I stand to be corrected on that one. But you get my drift. I am not even going to touch the execrable duo of 9 ½ weeks and Wild Orchard – oh well, yes I am, because 9 ½ weeks is also to blame for Joe Cocker’s wailing like a banshee “You Can Leave Your Hat On”. So Mickey disappeared into the back blocks of LA to take up boxing, and turning his back (reportedly) on a number of big ticket item roles in films like The Untouchables, The Rain Man, Platoon and 48 Hours. It was during this phase that, by all accounts, Mickey took too many punches, lost all his money and looks and took to shacking up in a run down place in LA with his pet Chihuahua. After a number of small roles in films over the years, though, we finally have his triumphant return. Cue to the sound of “Hail to the Chief” that they play usually for the arrival of the President.

For ages I thought I was the only one who had this faith in Mickey Rourke –a bit like being an English Football supporter whose team are in the Fourth Division and are absolute rubbish – but who never stops believing. One good thing about the blogging is that you find out there in the depths of cyber space other people with the same delusions or obsessions as yourself. I mean you could never enter a conversation about film with people at a party and offer up “well I think Mickey Rourke’s work in 9 ½ weeks is critically underrated” without people either calling you a cab or moving nervously away. It would not fly and I have to hastily add that my going in to bat for Mickey has never managed to stretch so far as to try and justify his worst work. At the wonderful blog “The House Next Door” (go to: www.thehousenextdooronline.com/ ) there is a really nice take on the return of Mickey and the numerous comments make me realize that I am not alone in my love affair with Mickey. An article in Salon by Cintra Wilson reflects on the appeal of Mickey as being down to the fact that she had “never seen a male movie star the compellingly enigmatic sexual equivalent of Mickey Rourke as "the Motorcycle Boy." I am not sure what it is about Mickey that makes me think of him as the great couldabeen champion. Admittedly he would never have had the depth and range that Sean Penn has showed, but he had real, big screen charisma of a type that pretty-boy Tom Cruise could only dream about and Richard Gere could never approach. And he was the bad boy when you get so many sanitized boring actors.

Of course there is the down side to Mickey’s return, what we might term the clouds around the sunshine. The damage done by the boxing and the botched plastic surgery, and reportedly too much bad liquor, leaves the star of “The Wrestler” barely recognizable as the smouldering screen presence that first roared across the big screen as the Motorcycle Boy. When I saw the first publicity pictures I presumed it was make up. How else could Mickey Rourke suddenly resemble both the character Hell Boy and the actor who plays Hell Boy, Ron Perlman? No disrespect intended to Mr Perlman or, for that matter, Hell Boy. It is just that Mickey with his sardonic, wrinkled smile personified a latter day James Dean. During the Wrestler there are glimpses of the trademark wistful melancholy smile, but for the main it is puffed up lips and scarred face.Now he gets to strut his stuff again…which brings me to the Paul Simon lyric at the top from the song “You Can Call Me Al”.

A man walks down the street
He says why am I soft in the middle now
Why am I soft in the middle
The rest of my life is so hard
I need a photo-opportunity
I want a shot at redemption
Don't want to end up a cartoon
In a cartoon graveyard

So Mickey gets the shot at redemption, but in avoiding being a burned out has-been, mumbling (like his Bukowski character in Bar Fly) something along Brando’s famous line that “I coulda been a contender”, there is bitter-sweet irony to it all. Mickey is back, he’s a contender but it is some sort of Faustian deal because he ends up looking like a cartoon character, even if he has delayed the trip to the cartoon graveyard. So I hope Mickey wins, though I suspect Sean Penn’s role will triumph. I want to go back to my DVD’s of Rumblefish and remember a Mickey Rourke who didn’t support George Bush, carry around a yappy little dog and act as though he was still in character as a wrestler. But you still gotta love him.

All of which has brought me to reflect on what it means when you realize you are getting old. You no longer snigger when you hear the Who lyric that demands: “hope I die before I get old” or scoff at the Rolling Stones performing and refer to them as the “Strolling Bones”. At the risk of sounding like a scratched record (an allusion which of itself dates me) I am returning to the ruminations on getting older…perhaps it’s the impending celebration (!!) of another birthday. Sorry to my friend Chris from Bowral who has endured this rant before, but it has come home with increased poignancy in recent times with a number of things, beginning with the realization that after a few weeks in the Oval Office Obama (same year of birth as moi) is going grey. Then there was the eternal rock adolescent; that Peter Pan figure of Bruce Springsteen at the Superbowl doing the obligatory rock star slide on his knees. The only problem was that it ended badly when he slipped off the stage like a beer in a hackneyed comedy film that slides along the bar and onto the floor. As one pundit put it, it left the cameraman at the end of the abortive slide with zipper marks from the Boss’ crotch. Then there was the moment in the film “Milk” where the character Harvey Milk reflects that he is turning 40 and he hadn’t done anything with his life. All totally depressed me for a moment, till I remembered that my friends Rupa and Chris had both gone to see Leonard Cohen rocking out in Australia (at the sprightly age of 74) and wowing them in New York last week. He is still singing and painting. To borrow from Paul Kelly and Mark Seymour’s song “Hey boys, we’ve got a lot of work to be done”. Time to start doing things. But first I am going to take time to think about which cartoon character I would want to be if I was to end up in a cartoon graveyard. You have to keep things in perspective after all.

Same as it ever was

It must be getting on to a month since Obama took office (or, as Keith Olbermann would say for February 22 2009, “it is 2115 days since the previous President declared mission accomplished in Iraq”) and the Obama honeymoon is still in full swing. This despite the fact that the economy is still tanking and all you read in the papers are dire forecasts of job lay-offs and company liquidation. Still the love affair shows no sign of diminishing. Watching the Daily Show and you have Jon Stewart discussing the daily doings under the rule of Emperor Obama and then there is a silly, silly moment where, after he mentions the President, a voice from on-high can be heard moaning “Obaammmaaa” in a more than suggestive manner.

But I have to say that not everything is hunky-dory in Obama-Land. There are a few signs emerging that it is business-as-usual in the US of A. The most recent portent was the publication of the racist cartoon in the New York Post that linked the story of the chimp that savaged a woman and the battle of the President to get the stimulus package passed. The caption to the cartoon reads: "They'll have to find someone else to write the next stimulus bill”. For all the misguided trumpeting that the election of Obama meant that race as an issue was dead in the US, here was tangible concrete proof of the racist undercurrents that percolate through society. Granted that the New York Post is not a broadsheet with any sort of pretensions to the type of seriousness that we might attribute to the New York Times. But to represent the President as a monkey is just so clearly a representation steeped in the racist past of the lynch mobs, Jim Crow laws and the claims that African-Americans were an inferior race. Although the NY Post apologized it was a clear indication that the election of Obama was a momentous event, but that there are ingrained, historical attitudes that will be hard to shift (adding the fact that the NY Post is presided over by the former Australian, Rupert Murdoch).

The second portent that things haven’t changed all that much was the manner in which the Republicans rebuffed Obama’s overtures for a consensual approach on the stimulus package. For all the hope and hype of bi-partisanship, it is clear that the dinosaurs from the Republican Party are reverting to the usual petty nit-picking politics – as if it were business as usual. So they lined up to block the stimulus package and declare that the government should be delivering tax cuts and that they could not, in clear conscience, saddle future generations with such debt. Leaving aside the fact that it all happened under the watch of their very own Dubya you have to wonder if they will ever learn? There was even the ludicrous comment from Republican (of course) Congresswoman Michelle Bachman who declared that she didn’t think that the stimulus package would work because “we are running out of rich people in this country”.

As if to emphasise the radical, iconoclastic nature of Obama as politician there is a constant procession of petty, provincial politicians with the snouts in the trough. Or, alternatively, you have the Republican governors declaring (presumably on ideological grounds) that they would not accept funds from the Federal stimulus package. No thought given to the fact that unemployment rates are rising by the month and the home foreclosures continue apace and the people that would be affected by such grand-standing would be their own constituents. If it sounds like I am offering up Obama for beatification or some other such recognition of a status of divinity it is only that his radiance is increased in comparison with the tawdry, sad pack of incompetents who (supposedly) represent the people in the Congress. It brings me to the inescapable conclusion that we do it better in Australia! Granted the Queen is an anomaly and the Governor-General did stuff up things in 1975. But it did deliver us the martyrdom of Gough and something for the Labor Parties true believers to cling on to. What I am talking about is the limited power given to the elected President and the power that resides in the Congress. My understanding of the history of the framing of the US Constitution is limited (with a lot of it drawn, I concede, from watching the HBO television series on the life of John Adams, the second President) but I have to say that I find it passing strange that the President who has been elected in a landslide has to battle against the Congress, and basically horse trade, to make sure that he gets his measures through. Even his own party (take a bow Harry Reid) for a fleeting moment, gave some indication that they would scrutinize Obama’s measures. So the President is elected to govern and then has to go around trying to placate the regional pork-barreling aspirations of every tin-pot senator and representative! What is even stranger is that the President can lose control of the two Houses (Senate and Reps) and continue to govern, as a lame duck President, for the remainder of his or her term. It is also strange that the opposition party leader, having lost the election, fades back into the crowd and they don’t have a key spokesperson to go toe to toe with the President. Constantly the petty machinations of politicians bring into stark relief the yawning gulf that separates them from the vision of Obama. I dread to think what will happen to the US if the forces of mediocrity frustrate any real change because the Republicans are trotting out more of the same. And that obviously hasn’t worked.

So there is little cause to celebrate the higher motives of most US politicians, but I have to confess that it is not all boring and bland. Once you move beyond the ridiculous notion that politics should be about serving the people (with the exception of you-know-who), you can glean at least some passing enjoyment from watching politics as a form of blood sport or extreme reality show. There has been, for example, the riveting spectacle in recent months of the impeachment proceedings against Rob Blagojevich, the Governor of Illinois, who was wire-tapped by the FBI touting the vacated seat of Obama to the highest bidder. Infamously Blago (as the media here have dubbed him) is heard declaring to his advisers, when it became clear that the President elect was not going to play ball, that he didn’t want to give this “motherf—-er [the President-elect] his senator. F—- him. For nothing? F—- him.”
(For more of Blago’s deluded, colourful rantings check out the politico site at: http://dyn.politico.com/printstory.cfm?uuid=1D549536-18FE-70B2-A8DEA34624EA721A

What was even more entertaining was the string of media appearances made by Blago, where he declared that the Illinois Congress was denying him the right to give his side of the story. Leaving aside the falsity of that statement it was hugely entertaining to watch the besieged Governor quoting Rudyard Kipling ("If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you."). This in turn lent itself immediately to parodies along the lines of:

If you can keep your job while all about you
Are fielding bribes and blaming it on you,
If you can duck the Feds while all men doubt you,
And bleep-ing show the charges are untrue,
If you can fight and not be tired by fighting,
Or, being wiretapped, profess surprise,
Or argue that there will be no indicting
Because it’s all a bleep-ing pack of lies....

Then, to trump it, Blagojevich went to old western movies to explain how he was being denied a right to be heard. He declared:

I like old movies and I like old cowboy movies. I want to explain how these rules work in a more understandable way. There was an old saying in the old west. There was a cowboy who was charged with stealing a horse in town. And some of the other cowboys, especially the guy whose horse was stolen, were very unhappy with that guy. One of the cowboys said, let‘s hang him. The other cowboys, hold on, before we hang him, let‘s first give him a fair trial. Then we‘ll hang him.
Under these rules, I‘m not even getting a fair trial. They are just hanging me. Under that fact pattern I just gave you, if the cowboy who charge was stealing a horse was charged with doing that in town, but, in fact, on the date and time that he apparently stole the horse in town, he was on the ranch with six other cowboys, herding cattle and roping steers, and then he expects that when his day comes to go to court, he can bring those six cowboys to say it wasn‘t him, because he was on the ranch herding cattle; even if he could bring those cowboys in to say that, under these rules, under 8-B, it wouldn‘t matter. The complaint that charged him with stealing the horse would convict him.

This is the man that was in charge of governing a State. He is undoubtedly barking looney mad, or perhaps an indication of what it takes to be a successful politician in Chicago. A further possibility does spring to mind from the conspiracy theorist in me (and we all love a good conspiracy, admit it). I couldn’t help but make a connection between Blagojevich’s rantings and the disturbing postscript to the film “Milk”. The killer of Harvey Milk was defended on the basis that he had an overload of sugar in his diet from fast food and so he was not technically sane. It was dubbed the “twinkies defence” and it worked! He got convicted for two counts of manslaughter (having also gunned down the mayor of San Francisco) but only served five years. Given that Blago will be indicated on Federal criminal charges I would suggest that these media performances aren’t going to hurt his defence. In any event Blago made for entertaining viewing. He even had the larger than life hairstyle to go with the larger-than-life political ego (matching even Donald Trump – the hair I mean, but possibly the ego too). The fact that Blagojevich comes from the same Chicago that delivered us Obama doe makes me a tad nervous, however, that the new Emperor might have feet of clay, that there might be some political scuttlebutt or past misdeeds lurking in the background. Then again if the right-wing extremists of the world like Russ Limbaugh haven’t managed to find anything then I can sleep comfortable in the belief that they can’t lay a glove on him…yet.

Falling at the first hurdle (blogging as a self-indulgent exercise)

Okay I have my lil sister Meaghan to thank/blame for this moment of uncertainty, this crisis of indecision. She was the person that first alerted me to the website of “Stuff white people like”. I skimmed it, smiled and went away. In recent times I have come back and looked again. The response is something akin to the Shower Scene from Psycho. I am wondering how long I will be in therapy working out (a) who I am? (b) who I should be ?(c) how white I am?
As to the website – well it is :

www.stuffwhitepeoplelike.com

But the part that has really messed me up (thanks Meag) is #56 Lawyers. Which might seem inane because I am sort of a lawyer but it is the full text that really gets to the issue. Let me quote at length:

A common characteristic amongst white people is the need to over analyze things, so they partake in activities such as therapy, writing a blog, or becoming an arts major. So its rather obvious why white people love lawyers so much as it is the one profession that has mastered the art of “over analyzing things”.

So there you have it. Where Lionel Ritchie could croon that she was “Once, twice, three times a lady” here I am once, twice, three strikes as a sad case. So I can always lie about therapy but I am pinned, like an insect on a piece of card. Yes I am a lawyer (sort of…sorry Neil, guilt by association), and I have an arts major and yes I blog. So I am inescapably damned for that one. I love to over-analyze things…and make lists…and drink too much red wine. But it isn’t that bad is it? Well it is not…unless you start checking through the list of stuff white people like. There is a book too and it is slightly different from the website, but check it out. So, for the record I will concede that I do have a partiality the following:

For #23 microbreweries

White people don’t like stuff that’s easy to acquire. Beer is no exception.
They generally try to avoid beers like Budweiser, Labatt’s, Molson, Coors, and Heineken because if it’s mass produced it is bad. No exceptions.
So when they need a beer, they turn to microbrews who seem to be located almost exclusively in New England, Ontario, Quebec and Colorado. Being able to walk into a bar and order a beer that no one has heard of makes white people feel good about their alcohol drinking palate.
A friend of mine once met a white guy who brought a notebook with him to every bar. He would then keep a record of all the beers he drank and his experience with them. He called it his ‘beer journal.’
Also of note: most white people want to open a microbrewery at some point. One that uses organic hops.

On wine (#23)

Within white culture, you are expected to know what a good wine is, what wine is not acceptable to like, and the names of prominent wine growing regions.
But because there are thousands of wineries, thousands of wines, and a limited time to try them or learn about it, often times, white people need to fake knowledge. If they are exposed as not being knowledgeable, they will look like fools and their peers will consistently make jokes about them liking Boone’s Farm, Thunderbird, Steeler, or Lakeport. This humiliation can crush a white person for years.
When a white person offers you wine, you take a small sip and then say “ooh, that’s nice. What country is it from?” then they will say the name of the country and you say “I love wines from that country, I would love to get a villa in the wine region there.” White people will nod in agreement as they all want to have a second home in a wine region like Napa, Tuscany or Santa Barbara.
It is also a good idea to say that your favorite wine is from a small winery called [make up name like 'Spotswood,' 'Red Duck,' Random Spanish name] in [Australia, Argentina, France, California, or Chile] that is hard to get in whatever country you are in. White people will be impressed that they have not heard of this wine and consider you to be a very smart person. They will also make a note to try to find that wine, and when they can’t find it, your status will rise even higher.

In addition I have to confess to a love of breakfast places (#36), the Daily Show/Stephen Colbert (#35), indie music (#41) and sushi (#42) and dinner parties (#90) and the “idea” of marathons (#27)

In life, there are certain milestones of physical activity that can define you. A sub 5 second 40 yard dash, a 40 inch vertical leap and so forth. To a white person, the absolute pinnacle of fitness is to run a marathon. Not to win, just to run.
White people will train for months, telling everyone who will listen about how they get up early in the morning, they run when it rains, how it makes them feels so great and gives them energy.
When they finish the marathon, they will generally take a photo of themselves in a pair of New Balance sneakers, running shorts, and their marathon number with both hands over their head in triumph (seriously, look it up, this is universal).
They will then set goals like running in the Boston Marathon or the New York Marathon.
If you find yourself in a situation where a white person is talking about a marathon, you must be impressed or you will lose favor with them immediately. Running for a certain length of time on a specific day is a very important thing to a white person and should not be demeaned.

And so, for the record, I also like Barack Obama but not because if I don’t say that people will think I am racist (#8)

Of course there are those ones that are too culturally specific to America, such as #75 (Threatening to move to Canada). Mind you, if Howard had stayed in power it was looking like a good option. The there is #100 (Boston Red Sox, substitute Collingwood?) #30 (Wrigley Field, read MCG and it is the same). As to the rest, there are the ones that I don’t think apply (joining a religion your parents don’t like, bad high school memories, organic food, not having a tv, veganism, Toyota Prius, rugby, multilingual children, Japan, graduate school, snowboarding, musical comedy (you have GOT to be joking!!). Then there are the others that might need to go to the third umpire and I will no doubt dispute them.

All I can say is thank god I no longer have to eat organic food, promise to learn a foreign language (read: Portugese – bloody hard) and pretend to like classical music. Instead I am going to pack up t-shirts, shorts and my outdoor gear (#87 think Katmandu or Paddie Palin) and drop them at St Vinnies, donning a flanny shirt and getting some meat pies and Budweiser beer and/or Jim Beam. Then I am going to crank up the Lnyrd Skynrd (must learn to spell their name) and watch NasCar on cable. Which makes me…??? Hmm …confused I guess.

So far away, so close…

From the moment I first saw the news of the bushfires I have felt a strange tightness in my chest, not unlike an asthma attack. That was how the impressions of the bushfire hit me. It is strange because here I am, half the world away and I feel a sense of dread and fear and sadness. The media here gives the fires a cursory fifteen seconds of coverage so I find myself glued to the internet, constantly hitting the refresh button to see if there are any update. The internet is a blessing because I can get a real sense of where the fires are burning and friends and family can sent me updates, but then I find myself waking in the middle of the night and going to the computer at 2am, at 3.30 am at 6 am to see if things are any better or worse. Hewie has sent me a letter that had been forwarded by email from another teacher who he had worked with and was in a town that had been decimated. It was heartbreaking to read a letter, from a complete stranger, talking of the kids in a town that they knew were dead. Nandini has kept a stream of bulletins on the state of fires and posted links to the ABC website and Mum kept me up to date on the family that were close to the hotspots. I know that my nephew Cleon was heading towards Alexandra and that my auntie’s house in Warragul had been in the path of the fire and the embers had been falling onto the roof. While the media here in the US has hardly made mention of the fires, De’s mother rang from Rio de Janeiro. Everything was okay there, she told De, but that she was worried about my family in Australia. Then De’s friend Ni, who hardly ever uses the internet, sent a message asking whether the fires were near my family and De’s nephew, Daniel, sent an email asking the same thing.

It was only in 2007 that I was in Australia and the fires were burning through California and threatening San Diego, so much that the University was shut down and people who I work with had to leave their homes and be evacuated to the local sports stadium. There wasn’t the same sense of dread, however, once I knew that De was safe and not in the path of the fires. The images were scary but the names of the places that burned didn’t resonate. This was different – it was the names of towns where I had friends and family. There was a notice on the La Trobe mail server that acknowledged that many staff and their families were in the areas that were burning. Whittlesea is on the doorstep of La Trobe, Flowerdale is where my friends Kate and Charlie have a place, Churchill is where I lived for a time, Warragul is where I have family. And there was Marysville…where I didn’t know anyone but it is etched in my memory for the weekend that De and I visited, taking photo after photo of the snow around Lake Mountain and of the parrots that congregated on the porch of the b & b we were staying in. Now Marysville is gone. It is just beyond comprehension. The scenes of the aftermath of the fire are so apocalyptic, like a war zone. So I watch the footage of people sifting through their burned homes, and so often it seems as though their past and their future, their dreams, are all in ashes. It is impossible to comprehend. I shudder at the images of burned out cars where people haven’t managed to make it out. For all my talk in the past of what it is to be away from Australia it is now I have a sense of the country, the people. Here in the US there is so much investment in the American sense of nationhood, with the flag and jingoistic patriotism. But it is here and now when I see the Australian character– without the need for elaborate pageant or overstated pomp – that I am struck with by an overwhelming sense of belonging and pride in the people who are there in the midst of the bushfires. There are the exhausted firefighters, covered in soot or hobbling from burns and the resilience of the people who have lost everything yet refuse to give in. All this is playing out against the images of a countryside that I love but is scarcely recognizable. I don’t pretend that I would be doing anything different if I were in Australia. I would be on the internet or watching the news in the same way, but for some reason I just feel at this moment that I am so far, far away from home and yet so close.

I’M IN A NEW YORK STATE OF MIND (STILL)

We caught a red-eye from LA to New York on the Wednesday night to go to New Brunswick in New Jersey. De had to give a paper at Rutgers University and so I thought I would tag along and we would spend the weekend in New York. We arrived at JFK at 6am and had to catch a train and then a cab out to New Brunswick. We took the shuttle down to Manhattan before getting another bus out to New Jersey. As Frank sings it, it’s the city that never sleeps. Here we were at 7 am and the streets were packed like Collins Street at midday. From there we travelled out to New Brunswick, which is a pretty little campus town – with all the things that students and academics like: Starbucks, brewery pubs and various types of chain restaurants. The trip to and from New Jersey removed any romantic notions about Jersey though. From the Bruce Springsteen and Tom Waits references (“Jersey Girl”) I had the romanticized vision of working class USA. From the train the landscape was covered in snow gave it a rural bucolic feel, but always away in the distance there were refineries and transport depots and factories. All along the route and the colour of the dirty snow was matched by vapour belching out from the factory smoke-stacks. The car-plates from New Jersey claim title it “The Garden State” but I have to say the parts we saw aren’t from any garden I know (and I am a bad gardener). From the train we could see three bedroom houses on postage stamp sized blocks of land. The strangest part was that quite a few had swimming pools, both in-ground and above ground, that were nearly as wide as the backyard - and they were all frozen solid.
We spent Friday in Manhattan – doing the long walk from our hotel on 42nd and Fifth Avenue to Central Park. The snow had covered the park and there were skaters on a rink – and crazy tourists who were disregarding the signs that warned of the thin ice and walking over the frozen ponds. There were only flurries of snow but the Park was beautiful and, in parts, it felt almost as though you were in the country. Walking back down to Times Square in the freezing cold (the temperature was about 3 Celsius and the following day it didn’t get above –2 Celsius) I couldn’t help but be impressed by the fortitude of the New Yorkers who stood out in the freezing night air for hours for the New Year festivities. I mean that was seriously cold.
All the time we were in New York I found myself noticing the differences between the East Coast (or perhaps NY) and the West Coast. I think that it is something that Americans do (and in Australia we have/had the Melbourne vs Sydney rivalry…does that still exist?), the constant evaluation and checking of the two coasts. I know that much of the population of the USA envies the Californian lifestyle with the beaches and the weather, but New York is like being in a real city. Even the food is different. In New York as you walk along the streets there are the vendors selling the artery-hardening, high is saturated fat delicacies such as pretzels and hot dogs. And the smell wafts around you, strong and not at all fragrant, but part of the streetscape. So you can walk up the steps to the Metropolitan Museum of Art scoffing a hot dog with ketchup and mustard without a twinge of guilt. In California there would probably be a by-law preventing eating such unhealthy food in public and the punters would be chugging down organic tofu wraps. I know California has its share of bad food (and the chains are universal in their badness) but in New York you know that it will not all be over-priced and bland (sushi and Mexican are good in California, but it ends there). We ate Brazilian one night and Portugese the next down in Greenwich Village and then went out and listened to too some blues and drank too many dirty vodka martinis. By the end I was oblivious to the wind chill gusting along the streets (but that is not what I meant by a “New York State of Mind” I might add).
Another thing you have to love about New York is that you feel like it is the city that you inhabit, albeit vicariously, through all of those movies and television shows. The streetscape has a familiarity to it born of the famous films (try googling and the list is awesome) and the television series (for me I confess to “Law and Order” and “Sex and the City” as obvious candidates). If I liked Woody Allen (although I don’t think “liked” is the word you would use for him, would you?) I would have got more out of the Brooklyn Bridge according to De, but ah well.
From Brooklyn we headed up through Wall Street. It was the weekend so it was closed (and cold as charity in those streets where the skyscrapers are so high there is perennial shade) but we noticed that they had erected barriers around the Stock Exchange. There was a private company van erecting the bollards in one of the side streets and it struck me as appropriate that the security companies in the US have morphed into “counter terrorism specialists”. Given that there was news that the Citibank executives had paid out bonuses to their executives in the realm of $17 billion the big end companies probably are in need of protection. This was the company who received a substantial handout from the government coffers in the period before Christmas, prompting Obama to call the Wall Street bonuses “shameful.” I see Kevin Rudd is trying to stimulate the Australian economy with a $42 billion Aus (roughly US$28 billion) package. Remember that the Citibank bonuses were for just one company…I think Barack was understating it by calling it shameful. But then that is why Wall Street is such a part of the American Dream and it belongs in New York. The city has it all, from the trashy, greedy, gaudy to the sublimely beautiful and supremely stylish. At the risk of embarrassing myself by referencing to Billy Joel (a sure sign of the on-set of dementia, or at least hearing impediment) even though we are back in San Diego and the winter temperature today was 26 Celsius, I’m still feeling in a New York state of mind.