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MARTIN IS UPSET
Did you vote for John Howard or George W. Bush? You did? Well, you’ve made The Age’s Martin Flanagan sad:
The results in the recent elections in Australia and the US are matters of fact, but I believe it is also a fact that those elections resulted in a general sense of depression among a significant section of the population. I would describe it as a phenomenon of the time.
I would describe it as a typical day at The Age. More so if you happen to share a desk with Flanagan.
Imagine, for example, if you believed in a cause like reconciliation. More to the point, you saw it work, not just for you, but the people around you. You had Aboriginal friends, you saw the possibilities. But Australia isn’t interested.
Poor sensitive Martin. If only other Australians shared his capacity for caring, and his my-way-or-the-highway view on Aboriginal issues.
Imagine you believed in peace.
Imagine you believed that your fellow Australians were selfish, war-lusting, hateful morons. Hey – you’re Martin Flanagan!
You weren’t exactly a pacifist but you thought war a grave matter that should only be conducted when the causes are established beyond all reasonable doubt. You never thought that was established in relation to Iraq - you now know it was never established in relation to Iraq - but, again, Australia isn’t interested.
Beats me why so many Australians followed Iraq’s elections, given how uninterested and all we were.
What if you saw a federal election won by one side saying interest rates would rise if the other won power when anyone with an intelligent appreciation of national affairs knows this argument is as shallow as a schoolyard riddle?
We’re idiots, plain and simple. Please forgive us, Martin.
What if you thought politics was the way a society informed itself of ideas and arrived at serious decisions - not all the time perhaps, but some of the time, particularly when the world is in more serious need of scrutiny than it has been decades.
Flanagan is veering towards Margolese. Look for him to be posting here by the end of the month.
If a person such as the one I’m describing exists, he’s a worried man. He approaches 50 and asks himself the big questions. Where’s hope? Where’s the energy to keep going?
I don’t know. Did the cat eat it? Cats do stuff like that. Believe it or not, this bigoted, senseless rubbish was inspired by the suicide of former Crowded House drummer Paul Hester; Flanagan is shameless. Oh, and incorrect election results aren’t the only cause of depression among Flanagan’s “significant section of the population”. Individualism is also to blame:
The myth of the individual, one of the most pervasive myths of our time, is a recipe for alienation … We live in a culture where our basic identity is being redefined from citizen to consumer.
So write for free, Martin. Allow citizens to read your words for nothing, thus sparing them the shame of becoming consumers. Demand that The Age donate all your wages to UNICEF. But please, above all, continue interviewing the dead:
For three years, I wrote a column for this newspaper called Monday Story. The media deals copiously in stories of death, calamity and war. I told stories about people who had experienced death, calamity and war and were not broken by it.
Sometimes I envy people who’ve experienced death. It can’t be any worse than reading a Flanagan column.
I know my cat ate my hope and energy to keep going. I can barely drag myself to the store to buy cat litter. I hope she doesn’t see me typing thi
Posted by Andrea Harris, Administrator on 2005 04 03 at 12:49 PM • permalinkYou only die the once. Martin Flanagan will be back next week. Do the math.
Posted by richard mcenroe on 2005 04 03 at 01:17 PM • permalinkCan anyone explain to me what reconciliation is? Apart from a bullshit moral posture used by fat, balding middle-aged white men like Flanagan to get a compassion stiffy?
How would it actually work? Would Flanagan, for example, have to give up his house to an aboriginal family and go live under a turnip? Or is ‘reconcilliation’ just walking over a bridge with twenty thousand other white onanists befor patting yourself on the back and going home to a nicely non abo-infested North Shore suburb?
Can anyone explain the nuts and bolts policy ramifications of ‘reconcilliation’ ie, what the fuck these idiots are talking about actually doing?
If a person such as the one I’m describing exists, he’s a worried man. He approaches 50 and asks himself the big questions. Where’s hope? Where’s the energy to keep going?
Sounds like a male midlife crisis to me. Maybe he should get himself a Jag and a trophy wife. I bet it’s what he secretly wants to do anyway.
Well I voted for President Bush. I guess I’ll just have to wait for all that depression to seep in and drown out all that optimism I feel. What if you believe in peace through strength? Guess that doesn’t count. Maybe one of NWAB’s NGO’s will come in and “social justice” will trump us all. Never mind.
Every time you vote Republican, God kills a kitten…
Posted by Steven Den Beste on 2005 04 03 at 03:24 PM • permalinkThis attitude doesn’t seem uncommon from the left: anyone who disagrees with them is doing it for sport, or just to be ornery. The right wouldn’t have been genuinely upset if the left had won, had dismantled our national defenses, and had increasingly interfered with individual decision-making. The right would only be upset that they lost.
It’s not just the right—John Kerry seemed to genuinely believe that the French would have joined the war in Iraq if we had been nicer to them. He didn’t think they actually meant it. Bush actually showed more respect for the French than Kerry did.
It may be my imagination, but I don’t see a lot of this lack of respect for sincere disagreements coming from the right.
Imagine if all those depressed wankers could just manage the energy to pull their cranial cavities from their anal apertures for just a few minutes and breathe clean air and see for miles and think clear thoughts, and . . . .
Oh, Hell!! Even my imagination’s not that good.
Posted by JorgXMcKie on 2005 04 03 at 04:00 PM • permalinksteven den beste — Yeah, but as any Buffy fan will tell you, kittens is good eatin’...
Posted by richard mcenroe on 2005 04 03 at 04:25 PM • permalinkLook here, you guys - unless you learn to vote the right way there’s no point having a democracy!
And another thing - you are upsetting some people by not invading more countries. From now on, if anyone does anything bad, we will invade. Pre-emptively. Without warning. Without UN approval. And, yes, we will have fries with that.
There. No further discussion necessary.“This attitude doesn’t seem uncommon from the left: anyone who disagrees with them is doing it for sport, or just to be ornery. The right wouldn’t have been genuinely upset if the left had won, had dismantled our national defenses, and had increasingly interfered with individual decision-making. The right would only be upset that they lost.
It’s not just the right—John Kerry seemed to genuinely believe that the French would have joined the war in Iraq if we had been nicer to them. He didn’t think they actually meant it. Bush actually showed more respect for the French than Kerry did.
It may be my imagination, but I don’t see a lot of this lack of respect for sincere disagreements coming from the right.”
Horse hockey.Liberals without guilt are like cars without wheels.
Posted by marknicodemo on 2005 04 03 at 07:22 PM • permalinkHe approaches 50 and asks himself the big questions. Where’s hope? Where’s the energy to keep going?
I voted for Bush, but those aren’t my big questions. I’ve got 3.
1. a Bed and Breakfast recommendation in the Hunter Valley next February
2. a good scuba dive operator in Cairns
3. a good dinner cruise operator at Sydney Harbor.
Just thinking of this trip to help thank my Aussie friends keeps me going. A direct email response would be appreciated by all.He approaches 50 and asks himself the big questions. Where’s hope? Where’s the energy to keep going?
Imre Salusinsky has just turned 50 and has all the answers in today’s The Australian. The difference is that Imre writes with grace and good humour.
Someone asked what ‘reconciliation’ with aborigines is. That’s when the Prime Minister gets up and shouts, “I’m Soooooooory!” We can all feel better. Those awful do-gooders, churches, saints, Xtians and philanthropists who killed and kidnapped the entire aboriginal population between 200 and 50 years ago have got their come-uppance. Keith Windschuttle is stripped of his citizenship and expelled to Outer Mongolia.
Posted by walterplinge on 2005 04 03 at 07:42 PM • permalinkIt’s a good thing Hester isnt around to read that article. He’d probably kill himself again.
Posted by Lucky Nutsacks on 2005 04 03 at 07:57 PM • permalinkI don’t know, maybe it’s wrong. But it makes me, well, happy to know he’s not happy.
Is that wrong of me?
Posted by wronwright on 2005 04 03 at 09:23 PM • permalinkWhat a presumptuous prick!
For all Flannigan knows, Paul Hester may have been depressed about high rates of taxation and declining standards of commentary at Fairfax. Oh yes, I know he does qualify it by saying “I’m not claiming to speak for Paul Hester”. But It’s a pity he has to use the suicide of another as pretext to speak about himself - a Fairfax speciality.
I’m sure any election provokes a “general sense of depression” amongst a “significant section of the population”. If Latham had won in October, I’d still be drinking myself to sleep today, I can assure you!
Posted by James Waterton on 2005 04 04 at 12:32 AM • permalinkNoticed that there is now a Brigid Flannigan who does the occasional op/ed piece for the Age on issues from a young person’s perspective. Given her age and the fact that she’s swallowed all the same intellectual cliches as Martin (plus the fact that the print media has always been a hot bed of nepotism), I’m assuming they are related - perhaps father/daughter, although the Age has never acknowledged any connection and left us to believe that Ms F is employed on her merits.
Can anyone confirm the connection? Prima facie, not the sort of behaviour I’d have expected from high minded Mr Flannigan.
Posted by Consuela Potez on 2005 04 04 at 12:52 AM • permalinkNice try, Flanagan, to try and lay a guilt trip on us iggerant Red Staters who voted for President Bush. But you’re going to have to shell out some cash for your impotence problem. I hope they sell Viagra in Australia.
Posted by The_Real_JeffS on 2005 04 04 at 01:19 AM • permalinkI’m going to be 50 in five years, and I’m asking the big questions of how to choose between a ‘72 Plymouth Roadrunner or a ‘69 Mercury Cougar convertible- the rag top would be nice in winter, but the hemi 440 would shit greenies more, consume more resources and even Lance Armstrong couldn’t hope to outrun the bugger on a downhill grade- finding the energy to power it is a real quandry. LP gas drops 10% of power output, and with 335Kw that would shave a half-second off the 1/4 mile. I’m worried.
Den Beste wrote:
Every time you vote Republican, God kills a kitten…
That would imply that the one with a problem is God, wouldn’t it? :)
Posted by Patrick Chester on 2005 04 04 at 04:12 AM • permalinkHabib, think MoPar for your mid-life crisis car. God created Chevs and Fords to keep dickheads out of Chryslers.
Posted by Lucky Nutsacks on 2005 04 04 at 04:27 AM • permalinkBTW-I passed a CL Chrysler Regal in Fortitude Valley this afternoon painted up in General Lee colours, even down to the flag and numbers on the doors. That ol’ boy needs help.
Martin Flanagan is a disgrace - a Tasmanian who spent three years hanging around Footscray Football Club to make himself an expert on all things western suburban.
To top things off, this shit came in the same edition on the Sunday Age which went to press when the pope wasn’t even dead, but he was already being buried (as in they came not to praise him, but to bury him) by Paul Collins, a fallen priest, and Dr/Sr Veronica Brady, a bitter nun who puts her academic qualifications ahead of her vocation.
BTW-I passed a CL Chrysler Regal in Fortitude Valley this afternoon painted up in General Lee colours, even down to the flag and numbers on the doors. That ol’ boy needs help.LOL. Another fine example of America’s cultural exports to the world. Well, we did get Mad Max in return, but I’ve never seen his car on American streets, sadly.
Posted by Jabba the Tutt on 2005 04 04 at 09:04 AM • permalinkJabba the Tutt — Hey. we did teach Aussie women to wear Daisy Dukes, that’s gotta count for something…
Posted by richard mcenroe on 2005 04 04 at 09:44 AM • permalinkEvery time you vote Republican, God kills a kitten
and every time they actually win an election, a pope dies. Then again, I’m not sure that would bother too many lefties, they only seem to mourn the death of spiritual leaders who plan terrorist atrocities.
Can anyone explain the nuts and bolts policy ramifications of ‘reconcilliation’ ie, what the fuck these idiots are talking about actually doing?
Basically they are talking about taking even more of your money, and giving it to even more white parasites on the pretext of helping aborigines. And feeling self-righteous, crocodile guilt as mark of their moral superiority. They suffer for your sins, don’t you know.
Posted by Jim Geones on 2005 04 04 at 09:47 AM • permalinkI’m 49, and I sing Speed King by Deep Purple in the shower, if that helps. But I’m still a Michael Corleone Democrat. My other favorite Australian is Sophie Lee, whose disagreement with Toni Colette in Muriel’s Wedding was capably reenacted by two Newcastle United soccer players this weekend. who says Americans don’t pay attention to what’s going on in the world?
Posted by chinesearithmetic on 2005 04 04 at 02:45 PM • permalinkConsuela,
You could be right. A quick google search tells us:
Martin Flanagan is brother of Richard Flanagan, well-known Tasmanian author. His most famous book is “The Sound of One Hand Clapping”, and he has been involved in the Tasmanian Greens.
Their grandfather was a member of the communists!A google search for Bridget Flanagan (or other variations on that name) turns up some useful snippets of information, but nothing substantial. Seems she has an interest in Green party politics and is from Tasmania.
The Age, along with the SMH, seems to work on the Nepotism principle - give jobs to family members or already well-established writers - on the principle that their names will pull in more readers. It’s a disgrace, since they must automatically assume that their readers are more attracted to big names than to well-researched, or (God help us) ORIGINAL writings.
richard mcenroe: So prove how out of it I am, what are ‘Daisy Dukes’? My guess, cut off jeans so high, that the butt cheeks are showing out the bottom. I saw on tv during the Sydney Olympics a feature on what my dream job is: the guy sprays suntan oil on topless women and gets paid for it. He looked liked Paul Hogan.
Posted by Jabba the Tutt on 2005 04 05 at 03:30 PM • permalinkJabba: yes, that’s what they are. They’re named after a character on the Dukes of Hazzard tv show. How do I know this even thought I refused throughout my life to watch a single episode of that show? Well, being raised in the 70s, my brain is stuffed with all sorts of trivia like that instead of more important knowledge.
Posted by Andrea Harris, Administrator on 2005 04 05 at 10:22 PM • permalinkWell, being raised in the 70s, my brain is stuffed with all sorts of trivia like that instead of more important knowledge.
Ain’t that the truth (speaking for myself). For instance, I know the difference between subspace and hyperspace. I know what a convoy is like. I know a DA (the hair style, not the profession). A GTO.
I know so much. All useless information. Except for the hyperspace thing. It might come in handy some day. If that Zephrem Cochrane guy would get OFF HIS LAZY BUTT AND GET WORKING on the warp engine. I mean it’s already the 21st century and the Eugenics Wars have been over for years now.
Posted by wronwright on 2005 04 05 at 10:40 PM • permalinkApologies to Muriel’s Wedding fans; that wasn’t Toni rolling on the floor, was it?
Posted by chinesearithmetic on 2005 04 07 at 09:33 AM • permalink
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A Sunday on which a lefty is upset is not a Sunday wasted…