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SENSIBLE AND RESPONSIBLE SCHOLARSHIP
Received this email, from an anonymous attendee, shortly after John Doyle delivered Friday night’s Andrew Olle Media Lecture:
Watch the Andrew Olle lecture. You’ll puke. It’s unbelievable. Undergrad lefty conspiracy theories sewn together with one liners and masturbatory adolescent fantasies about how the world should work ...
Terrorism apologist (literally) Peter FitzSimons was at the same lecture and reported in the Sydney Sun-Herald that it was just super (no link available; sensitive Peter evidently prefers that his column no longer be published online). Who is right? Let’s take a look at Doyle’s terrible/wonderful (and here abbreviated) speech:
It’s a cold, cold-hearted world out there. Look at the way Mark Latham treated his Labor family. Look at the way the Liberal family treated John Brogden.
Labor family? Liberal family? That puke warning came just in time.
So forget diversity of opinion – it’s out there on the margins. If you really want diversity go to the ABC or ABS.
You can’t get more diverse than that; one is a $773 million public broadcaster, and the other is an anti-lock braking system.
I’ve always enjoyed reasoned commentators. I loved the sturdy assuredness of Paul Murphy and now Mark Colvin. I lean forward when I hear Catherine McGrath or Fran Kelly in attack mode. I love Kerry O’Brien getting angry. I pull up a chair for any Chris Masters or Sally Neighbour Four Corners special. I flick the page to the Paul McGeogh article. It’s the mixture of gravitas and style.
Doyle has cultivated an odd, very pretentious, vocal affectation; it seemed to take him nearly 30 seconds to roll out “gravitas and style”. He enjoys listening to himself. Which is curious, given Doyle’s admiration for 50s radio presenter Arch McKirdy:
He was a master of the medium having the easy confidence of one who has made the time, the moment, his own and he knew his subject and somehow gave the impression of having left the ego behind.
Doyle doesn’t give that impression. The dried-lake shallowness of his ideas have the ego at centre stage:
Suddenly the world is awash with Opinion ... Newspapers too, are full of it. Any half-baked dickhead who can string a few sentences together is given a go, particularly if the opinion is inflammatory or somehow ratchets up the climate of fear or loathing – simply and obviously because it sells more newspapers.
He’s talking about conservatives. And then, imagining his point made, Doyle moves on:
I remember reading some years ago about the series Dallas being beamed in to the New Guinea highlands. It was being viewed by mountain tribal people who were just a generation removed from First Contact, people who’d had little or no connection with European society at all apart from the odd Christian missionary ... What were they to make of Dallas? A highly camp styled vacuous rich oil family living the life of Reilly in a bed-hopping fun-filled soap operatic adventure, laced with stylized irony. Probably the highlanders saw it differently. They saw a lifestyle that was heaven on Earth. Irresistible. Vast houses, huge cars, heated pools, money, booze, guns and loose women. And no morality to speak of. Ancient and modern cultural universes brushing against each other. Again a cataclysmic event.
Doyle’s audience, mostly media oldtimers, loved this. It possibly struck them as Revelatory. The last episode of Dallas aired fourteen years ago.
The truth is that in the belly of any society there’s a violent brutal core that exposes itself when the thin veneer of culture is stripped away.
Interesting biology lesson. Strip away the thin veneer and you’ll instantly expose the brutal core within the belly. Nurse! More clamps!
The marauding Rascols blowing into Port Moresby from the New Guinea highlands are no different to the clans of Mogadishu; and those filmed roaming the streets of New Orleans armed to the teeth, all with hunger and many with hatred in the belly are similarly the result of neglect and cynical indifference by politicians and media alike. The recent Hurricane Katrina in the Gulf of Mexico has partially revealed the feral world that snuggles so closely within the first world.
Doyle was complaining a few minutes ago about inflammatory columnists who “ratchet up the climate of fear or loathing”, yet now he does exactly that, days after it was known that tales of feral armed gangs were a media exaggeration. Speaking of climate:
The fact is New Orleans has been known to be a disaster waiting to happen for decades. Being in denial about global warming is to court disaster.
This should have provoked an informed audience to rip Doyle from the stage and throw him on to the street. Instead, he was encouraged to continue:
The Internet allows anyone anywhere to access information that might be true, might be false, but you can find whatever information you need to prosecute any argument you want. Conspiracy theories abound. History can be written any way you wish. In the past, information bound culture. There was a shared sense of a gradually expanding library of sensible and responsible scholarship whereas now information is serving more to fracture culture.
Doyle earlier called for diversity of opinion. Now he pines for an “information bound culture” with a “shared sense” of “responsible scholarship”.
The future of information is with bloggers. And who knows what the blogging implications might be of a generation aching for the steely coldness of Grand Theft Auto San Andreus and other games involving cyber murder, cyber torture and on line sex and anonymous chat rooms and bomb-making instructions and clubs dedicated to nihilism and terrorism and all manner of misguided madnesses designed to accelerate Rapture.
Yep. Sounds like us bloggers. By the way, the transcript of this speech is so poor I suspect it’s taken from Doyle’s actual copy. Let’s skip past a bunch of fear-mongering over the Economy and Investment to Doyle’s next Dallas-related point:
To imagine that everyone on the planet can aspire to the lifestyle of JR Ewing at the cost of the global environment and the resources of other nations is to live in a fool’s paradise. Arm poverty and ignorance with moral rectitude and hang onto your hats. We live in interesting times.
If commercial radio is so slight because it is under resourced, so too is Television. And if more channels are allowed then the resources will be even further stretched.
Doyle wishes for diversity, yet opposes any increase in the number of networks. Stupid, but not all that unpredictable coming from someone who says that 9/11 was ...
... a blunt cleaver that questioned Western certainty. One of the pilots of the first American Airlines plane to smash into the World Trade Centre was Mohammed Atta. He spent his last hours on this earth in Las Vegas roaming amongst the gambling dens and strip clubs theoretically to further steel his resolve such was his loathing of the excesses of the West.
His last hours? According to timely accounts and Doyle’s trusted ABC, Atta left Las Vegas on August 14. Fascinating “theory”, too, about why Atta may have visited Vegas; this from someone who desires “sensible and responsible scholarship”. Of course, Doyle is also a why-ner:
The quest for our media is to ask why it happened and to understand the motivations of those who are willing to end their lives at a young age on the altar of sectarian anger.
Apparently it’s all to do with television. And the internet. And the New Guinea highlands. Doyle claims to reject conspiracy theories, but get a load of this:
To join the dots between that state of mind and the mindset of those in the New Guinea highlands cutting down their pristine forests to feed the generators that provide the power for the television to screen Buffy, or The OC or Backdoor Bonanza three or if they’re on line to power the modem to any cyber freak show the mouse takes them. If the examination isn’t exacting or truthful and without fear or favour, then this universe’s accidental experiment with self-awareness and consciousness may well have been a total waste of time.
At which point Doyle received a standing ovation from Australia’s collective media elite. Seriously.
I think he finally ran out of verbs. I read the first sentence of the last paragraph quoted above, and it looks like the rant just plain ran out of gas; isn’t that an incomplete sentence?
Regardless of whether the sentence is incomplete, the thinking definitely is. These are half-formed notions that seem to have died in the larval stage, little crumbling cocoons of sheer nonsense. And the context is laughable: “Dallas”? Please! You want to talk about powerful oil barons these days, look no further than Hugo Chavez. And for the last time: people who are obsessed with the “why” of terrorism stand an increasingly good chance of dying with that question on their lips at the hands of same.
The same shit who wrote of me and my mates bashing detainees at Port Hedland? I was one of the officers who testified on the only ( to my knowldge) occasion it happened.
It was brought to attention becuse officers complained.
And I still see lies printed about it (we made it happen) ( only one of many)ect.
I hope there is a Royal Comission one day Because lots more shit will stick to “advocates” than anyone elsePosted by thefrollickingmole on 2005 10 10 at 12:56 PM • permalinkWould this be the same John Doyle who is part of the Roy & H.G. duo? Surely there couldn’t be more than one John Doyle who is that much of a wanker?
Posted by Steve at the pub on 2005 10 10 at 01:02 PM • permalinkAre you certain your source was actually at the speech, Tim? Maybe he just dreamt it all. Did he report any mysterious shootings?
BTW, are many electrical generating plants in Oz powered by burning (New Guinea) wood? I would think that burning Smurfs, Belgium’s biggest export, would be much more efficient.
And please, don’t tell we foreigners the premise behind the “Backdoor Bonanza” TV show; I think we’d be better off not knowing.
Posted by andycanuck on 2005 10 10 at 01:18 PM • permalinkI wrote Doyle off as a buffoon when he penned that appalling ABC series “Changi”.
A song and dance show set in a WW2 POW camp?The steaming pile won a Logie.
I then wrote the Logies off as well.
Posted by Pedro the Ignorant on 2005 10 10 at 01:22 PM • permalinkSounds like a graduate of the Warren G. Harding school of public speaking.
Democrat William McAdoo memorably said that Harding’s speeches “leave the impression of an army of pompous phrases moving over the landscape in search of an idea; sometimes these meandering words would actually capture a straggling thought and bear it triumphantly, a prisoner in their midst, until it died of servitude and overwork.”
To imagine that everyone on the planet can aspire to the lifestyle of JR Ewing at the cost of the global environment and the resources of other nations is to live in a fool’s paradise. Arm poverty and ignorance with moral rectitude and hang onto your hats. We live in interesting times.
‘Fools paradise’, ‘hang on to your hats’, and ‘We live in interesting times’. This part of the guy’s speech must have been created by a random number generator.
Insofar as the guy has a point, he seems to be lumping Islamic radicalism in with every other ill of the world today--and blaming them all on the globalization of the idiot box, Internet porn, video games, hookers, and demon alcohol--complete with a new allegory of the Garden of Eden in which innocent native types are seduced by the Western serpent. And yet he can’t seem to decide whether he’s for that old-time religion and morality or against it: he also seems to think that Grand Theft Auto and Buffy the Vampire Slayer are part of some millenialist plot ‘designed’ by nutso religious types to ‘accelerate Rapture’. Yeah, those evangelicals--you know they love lesbian witches and AK-47’s.
Admittedly, the speech is too disorganized to credit him with having really thought through a lot of what he seems to say here--like most speeches which are comprised of a list of questions and then end with a call for the audience to ‘think’, it’s a sure sign the author and speaker himself hasn’t, doesn’t intend to, and wouldn’t know where to start if he did.
But why oh why does a man this semiparalytically terrified of progress and of individual freedom (though I don’t doubt that he’s redefined both to his own advantage), still get to call himself ‘liberal’ or ‘progressive’? Presumably because he hates the young people with their loud music and internet sex and (shudder) BLOGS no more than he hates their evil repressed June and Ward Cleaver parents with their pleated skirts and 9 to 5 jobs. They’re all part of the same SYSTEM, ya know? (A system from which John Doyle, of course, finds himself fortuitously exempt)
And the only alternative? Why, a happy medium, presumably: mandated and regulated to the last ‘sensible’ square inch by John Doyle and whoever else he deems ‘sensible and responsible’ enough to be in charge.
Oh, sorry, I misunderstood--I take it that New Guinea has wood-fired electrical generation and not Oz. (Although it still sounds so inefficient that I wonder about its veracity.) I guess I was too distracted by the violent video game I was playing on the XBox at the time. And I’m still hungover from the hoser Thanksgiving holiday.
Posted by andycanuck on 2005 10 10 at 03:30 PM • permalinkThe truth is that in the belly of any society there’s a violent brutal core that exposes itself when the thin veneer of culture is stripped away.
He, um, works in cliches oddly joined, which doesn’t give bad prose. It’s an intertext effect, and poets use it.
This one is based on ``fire in the belly’’ and ``thin veneer of civilization.’’
One could probably find pairs of cliches for most of it. It’s far from dead prose. Some analysis puzzle could be based on it :
4 across, fire in the belly
10 down, thin veneer of civilization
Superficiality has gotten an unwarranted bad name these days
Other than the size of the audience, what is the difference between John Doyle and any other common public bar blowhard? You know the type - “If I was in charge....”
Posted by Just Another Bloody Lawyer on 2005 10 10 at 04:47 PM • permalinkAnd how, pray tell, did the PNG highlanders watch “Dallas” lo these many years ago? On TV’s made of coconuts? Just because EMTV’s brodcasting don’t mean that people are watching.
And is this schmuck trying to say that the PNG highlands was a peaceful paradise before the arrivial of the Evil White Man and Dallas? (Dude, ever hear of tribal warfare, payback killings, and the like).
I really wish Roy Slaven was real and John Doyle was a parody.
Posted by Young and Free on 2005 10 10 at 05:07 PM • permalinkGod this is mostly just wordy puffery. I admire Tim for trying to critique it. Trying to find proper arguments in it is like grabbing air.
Doyle, aside from overt wordiness, seems to have only one rhetorical device in his armoury - argument by exaggeration. Who ever said that we were aiming to give everyone in the world a JR lifestyle? The vast majority of the world would be more than satisfied with material wealth equivalent to the poorest suburbs in western society. Actually the only person I heard espouse that idea was lefty muso Sting. When asked how a socialist can justify living in a huge mansion he said, “Socialism means everyone living in a house like this.”
Doyle should stick to his double act. Does everyone on the ABC get to deliver the Olle lecture eventually? Is it a perk like a car parking spot? When does Ross Noble get a go? At least he’d be funny.
OT: Another classic case of how Webdiary people waste their time in pointless activities:
Neil Maydom writes: Ed Kerri, OK you’ve had your fun. Would you mind removing the extra ‘l’ you added to ‘skilful’ in my post of 28/08/2005 2:49:32PM to ‘improve’ my spelling, please? I’m quite capable of making my own mistakes and would prefer that you concentrated on those.
Ed Kerri responds: I’m not sure if you are joking or not, Neil. One of the reasons I love editing Webdiary is that until you posted your comment above I didn’t realise that there were two correct spellings of the word: skillful and skilful. Fret not. Your post as edited is correct. The incorrect spelling with which we are both familiar includes an additional ultimate ‘l’.
I guess nobody told her that the version she changed it to ("skillful") is the hated Yank spelling, either.
What about this from Doyle?
“And now there’s Terrorism. Will it become common, a sort of angry graffiti?”
What the fuck is he talking about?
Posted by Pig Head Sucker on 2005 10 10 at 07:00 PM • permalink"The marauding Rascols blowing into Port Moresby from the New Guinea highlands are no different to the clans of Mogadishu”
Actually there’s a vast difference. The Raskols are the result of the breakdown of clans/tribes and the flotsam and jetsam joining together. Kind of like the bad guys in Mad Max 2 without the bikes and leathers.
The clans of Mogadishu were simply doing what they’ve been doing for the last 600 years of recorded history.Remember this is the Andrew Olle Lecture. I always associated his trademark smirk with the ABC’s political take on the capitalism that sustained him and all the others. It had a particularly big curl whenever he signed off from the many highly slanted anti-West Four Corners shows: as if to say ‘Cop that you anti-communists!’
John Doyle should never have been let out of his comedians’ cage. He is the media equivalent of the Behrens’ ‘art’. That he was given the gig says everything about the ABC’s ‘serious’ values. They are sadly reduced to believing he is their Mark Twain.
sigh - another addition to my list of Binladenists to dodge while channel smurfing
Posted by knuckleheadwatch on 2005 10 10 at 07:52 PM • permalinkDon’t look too hard for meaning, guys.
This speech was nothing but a ‘love me’ plea from an ageing low-brow air-head to the ‘smart kids’ he oh-so-wants-to-impress.
And for those of you irritated by reading the transcript, you’re missing the full emetic effect! I watched a few minutes of it. If you think it’s vapid in print, you wouldn’t want to hear the vocal mannerisms that accompanied it. The smug nasal whine (verbal eyebrow-arch) to highlight when he was being an especially clever smarty-pants, to the exaggerated husky-throated rasp accompanying the punch-line delivery.
But the nausea highlight for me was the the camera panning around the tittering ninnies in the audience. These guys aren’t just champagne socialists, they’re tiara-and-pearls socialists…
---
And a final point. It’s rich for Doyle to pontificate about the lack of Aussie drama on telly, when his daft chat-show is one way Channel 7 fills its Australian-content quota without the expense of a drama show…
Principles - they’re for les autres, I suppose…
The best short comment ever on Doyle, his work and his understanding of contemporary Australia was made by the Wog Blogger in her review of Doyle’s peurile “Marking Time” TV drama back in November 2003
“Oh, and the car the teen boy lead buys? His first car?
A Mazda 121.”
Posted by Consuela Potez on 2005 10 10 at 08:16 PM • permalinkEven a genuinely non-partisan observer (which I am not) would have to wonder about the tiny and stagnant talent pool the ABC draws from. Talent-and-personality-free nonentities like Peter Berner and James O’Loghlin, who just get show after show. The former Doug Anthony All Stars, who seem to have lifetime contracts with Aunty, bob up again and again. And John Doyle, who long after exhausting any comic energy he might have had years ago on the ABC, is allowed to write drama series (Changi and ‘Marking Time’), and give the Olle lecture. Presumably he gets the Reith lectures next year. An honorary doctorate from ANU can only be months away.
re post 29
and have you ever noticed how monocultural they are?
the white australia policy is certainly alive and well at your ABC
Posted by knuckleheadwatch on 2005 10 10 at 08:32 PM • permalink#29 Of course I meant the Boyer lectures, Australia’s version of the Reith. No doubt Doyle would consider himself capable of either. And I have to agree with Larrikin. They used to do a variety show on Saturday nights which is the sort of thing I expect to be shown if I end up in Hell. Maybe I’m just projecting, but I suspect that Doyle secretly loathes the comic turns which put butter on his bread; can’t you see, he’s an artist?!
Roy’s always been a bit of a pinko, but he’s been completely ga-ga of late. Let’s face it, the old HG & Roy schtick is pretty tired these days, and like every other washed-up comedy act in this country the only way to keep the career going is to swing to the left and score a gig on the ABC- as long as there’s plenty of John Howard is a short nazi with funny eyebrows, global warming will kill us all unless we sign Kyoto, George W. Bush is a stupid redneck nazi, who used to drink and snort coke off cheerleaders’ firm young breasts and torrorism is a myth, we’re the real terrorists, we deserve all we get for wanting a plasma TV gags and you’ll always have work on the public broadcasters, and the bonged-out audiences at a taping or an outside stand-up will cheer like billy-o.
BTW, Doylie, I think you’ll find it’s raskols.#30 Sorry to go on, but you’re so right, Battlestar. One of my favourite occupations is simply to read aloud the names on the end credits of ABC shows, it’s such a roll-call of skippys: Amanda, Brett, Charlotte, Davina, Edward, Fergus, Geoffrey, etc. And they want to call Australia a racist country.
No definitely go on cuckoo
I think there could be a very successful blog called ABC watch or some such. without doubt 80 plus % of the people I see and hear on ABC media are middle aged male WASP’s
Posted by knuckleheadwatch on 2005 10 10 at 08:43 PM • permalinkre 34
sorry that should be “mostly” male
re 27
do you remember how monocultural the audience was at the lecture?
Posted by knuckleheadwatch on 2005 10 10 at 08:46 PM • permalinkI bet heaps of them drive 4X4’s too. I must do a recon mission at the gore hill carpark 1 day and post the picks!
Posted by knuckleheadwatch on 2005 10 10 at 09:01 PM • permalinkIt also struck me that it was a total pisstake. Certainly Russell Balding’s comments after the speech could be construed as acknowledgement thereof. The problem is Doyle is really a middle brow obscurantist. That is his stock in trade. So probably the speech was fundamentally incoherent, not even Doyle knows what he meant. I suspect ultimately it wasn’t a piss take. He has too much invested in the relationships he putatively satirised.
#34 - I think there could be a very successful blog called ABC watch or some such. without doubt 80 plus % of the people I see and hear on ABC media are middle aged male WASP’s
There was a great blog called ABC Watch but it’s been defunct for 10 months - just stopped. I suspect ‘Uncle’, whose blog it was, died. A great pity
Posted by walterplinge on 2005 10 10 at 09:20 PM • permalinkI don’t think it’s too affectionate- I think it’s classic ABC smug-inner urban patronising of a cliche’ that barely exists in the outer ‘burbs; while the luvvies at the Anarcho-Bolshevik Collective purport to stand up for the working class, they secretly despise the ‘proles, especially if they start getting uppity and moving into the stamping grounds of the perpetually outraged, like Balmain (which used to be VERY working class). For one of the best takedowns of the phenomena of the caring and sharing pushing the people they supposedly care about (but sure won’t share with) from their old suburbs, check out the lyrics to “Joey Black” (scroll down) by Dave Warner.
Cuckoo and Habib, very true.The same people writing letters to the SMH bemoaning how ‘we should understand’ terrorists, have no real sympathy for the victims of terrorism, a sort of ‘only westies go to Bali’ mentality.
You wait for the howls of anguish when the residents of Leichhardt, Kelvin Grove and Fitzroy become involved themselves.
"The fact is New Orleans has been known to be a disaster waiting to happen for decades. Being in denial about global warming is to court disaster.”
At that point I switched it off. I felt nauseous.
Posted by ronvanwegen on 2005 10 10 at 10:37 PM • permalinkI don’t want to write a thesis on Kath and Kim here, but of course Habib is right about the general inability of the ABC to conceive of life in anything other than middle-class terms. For me, the prime example of this was their other success, Sea Change. Now, SC was always just a xerox of a particular format that had already been a hit elsewhere: Picket Fences, Northern Exposure, Hamish MacBeth, Ballykissangel, etc. In all those shows, the central character was a non-middle-class, or de-classed, outsider: either a cop or a priest. When ABC comes to make their version, they have to make it a middle-class profession - a magistrate. Just try to imagine the ABC making a series in which the main character is a male, white, hetero cop.
We all know that the ABC thinks Sydney ends at Leichhardt. Beyond that, it’s all Kath and Kimland or worse still, Habibiland.
Just as the SMH doesn’t sell in western and southwestern Sydney, so no-one listens to the ABC beyond the inner suburubs, which suits the middle class luvvies who run both organisations just fine, because, they’re not interested anyway in the vast majority of Aussies who live there: Howard-voting, aspirational and uninterested in the republic, Iraq, George Bush and multiculturalism.
Maoist re-education camps should be compulsory to force ABC staff to go and work among the people they are supposed to serve and who pay their salaries. I suggest a year of piece work in a Cabramatta sweatshop for John Doyle, where to paraphrase Madame Mao, he may learn that the people’s farts smell sweeter than those of the ABC intellectuals. Who knows from this experience he may even find some material for a new TV series.
First of all THANK YOU Tim for posting this!
Secondly, I sure would like to know who your “anonymous attendee” was???
The only one I could see in that predictable audience, who wasn’t in raptures, was the Nine Networks’ Richard Carleton. I saw Gary Linnell there too.I rememeber in 1998 I think it was, John Doyle for some bizarre reason was asked by the ABC to host the Lateline program, where he was to interview two American Cosmologists about the Big Bang Theory and String Theory amongst other things. I remember I was really looking forward to hearing what these guys had to say. Unfortunately however, Doyle stole the show. Apparently determined to upstage these two experts by airing his own knowledge on the subject, which he had no doubt only acquired in hast, earlier that day, he turned the entire interview into a farce!
Doyle, determined to prove that he was more than a buffoon who entertained people less than half his age with smutty, ‘Are You Being Served-style’ penis humour, only ended up reinforcing that view, with a truly pathetic attempt to appear intelligent.
I couldn’t believe my ears on Sunday night when he recycled his ill-fated String Theory routine, sadly desperate to impress yet again. WHAT AN ARSEHOLE!Trust me people, reading a transcript of his ‘lecture’ doesn’t do it justice. You really had to see this guy in action to get the full, nauseating impact!
As a bit of light-satire Roy and HG have had their moments. I used to love listening to their League commentary on JJJ. And they were sublime during the Sydney 2000 Olympics. However, since then they have proven that their 15 minutes have well and truly expired.
The excerable “Marking Time” mined new depths of manipulation and exploitation of a complex issue that the incurably politically correct ABC can not and WILL not allow itself to view through the eyes of the majority of Australians. And let’s noty even mention the unspeakable “Memphis Trousers”, which is half and hour too long!
One observation that caught my attention was his damning of “Big Brother and his suggested way to improve it:
“Big Brother is a waste of an opportunity. The housemates live in a state of perpetual boredom, unless they’re pissed. Why not engage them. A house of really smart gifted young people from various fields: scientists, engineers, mathematicians, builders, a Latin scholar, a poet etc and they have a problem to solve. With a shared incentive of a few million dollars they have to find a solution to Australia’s water problems in ten weeks – there’s a show.” Doyle suggested.
Compare that with the cynical bandwagon-jumping of ubiquitous “Media Tart” Associate Professor Catharine Lumby, who has decreed that far from being a banal sexploitaion of vulnerable young girls by capitalist dirty old men, a banality excoriated by our Favourite Raving Old Bat, Germaine Greer,
“[Germaine Greer] is also absolutely wrong, as demonstrated by extensive research I conducted with Professor Elspeth Probyn into young women’s attitudes to the media.
In our three-year research project, Big Brother emerged as one of the most popular shows with girls aged 12 to 18. And why did they love it? Because they face a lot of the same dilemmas as the housemates. They are constantly under surveillance from parents, teachers and experts. They spend a lot of time trying to work out how to be an individual while fitting into a group. And they wonder a lot about how far you should go in telling other people what you think of them.”
The Ethical Goddess thundered from her Fairfax pulpit
I shall be publishing my banned Webdiary article tomrrow, where such issues will be touched on. On what constitutes “research” in “Cultural Studies” we can only wonder.
Given the orgy of deification for the rather John Doyle by the ABC Usual Suspects, perhaps I should expect a Pulitzer Prize for my own modest musings.
Without sounding like a complete Kath & Kim anorak, YES they certainly have included some classic Johnny bashing… the episode where they end up having a holiday at the airport due to cash flow problems resulting from the introduction of the GST!
The pathetic line, oft repeated by hunk-o-spunk Kel: “bloody Howard!!!”.
Made them all look like complete dickheads. The only thing that saves the show is the occasional Mick Molloy appearance.
[ADMIN OT] Aman2, could you please fix your email box, or use another? I am tired of getting all the bounced replies to your comments. Or you could go into your profile and deselect the comment-notification box in your emails settings. If this isn’t fixed by 6am EST out goes your complete registration, and I’ll delete your comment too so as to prevent further bounced emails. Nothing personal, I am just tired of people using crappy email services or fake emails.
Posted by Andrea Harris, Administrator on 2005 10 11 at 12:18 AM • permalinkJohn Doyle was very funny 15-20 years ago with his (and H.G.’s) radio show “This Sporting Life”. A brilliant weekly four hour parody of washed-up ex sportsmen pontificating on everything under the sun, it included station IDs, bogus ads and even “news” items. (This is The South Coast News and I’m Paul Murphy)
Unfortunately since they moved to television the talent seems to have long ago dried up.
I would love to believe that the Andrew Olle lecture was a sendup, but sadly I think Doyle probably actually believed what he was saying.
Once the novelty of a black gang banger suffering from culture shock when meeting America’s finest loonies wears off, GTA: San Andreas gets boring pretty quickly as it’s pretty much just like the previous two games.
And man we’re showing those poor bastards the OC? Jesus, get that shit off the air, and make sure you don’t show the later Buffys. Show them Firefly, you’ll win humanitarian awards for doing that.
Also Buffy ended in 2003, though it really should have ended in 2001, 2 seasons too many. Mind you, it did allow Spike to hope over to Angel, a far superior show.
Posted by Aging Gamer on 2005 10 11 at 02:35 AM • permalinkHe enjoys listening to himself.
John Doyle spent some time on the afternoon show ABC radio 702, he used to be amusing but after a while you noticed that he browbeat his guests to the point where any presenter, be it the news or weather, was in a state of high anxiety.
It became the John Doyle pulls-the-wings-off-flies show, a nasty little boy.
As far as I am concerned he is just another over paid under performing over blown bag of wind.
(and as for Kerry O Brien, he is the ultimate in spleen-venting bombast. He wouldnt last 5 minutes away from the comfort zone of the ABC)
Sheik Khalid Yasin makes sense. Christians put the AIDS virus in vaccines. Paranoia and delusion pay court to cause and effect.
And Boyle’s Lore?
To imagine that everyone on the planet can aspire to the lifestyle of JR Ewing at the cost of the global environment and the resources of other nations is to live in a fool’s paradise. Arm poverty and ignorance with moral rectitude and hang onto your hats. We live in interesting times.
One gets the same sense of disconnection reading Mein Kampf. Half-baked cliches and half-educated ‘big’ ideas bubble in a stew of warmed over political resentment.
Boil and Shake.
JR Ewing? Sounds like a Headmaster trying to be hip with the kids by saying ‘groovy’.
At which point Doyle received a standing ovation from Australia’s collective media elite. Seriously.
Sadly. Predictably.
Public Funding for the ABC and SBS seems to give them the security to indulge their political leanings. Instead of providing balanced coverage of the topics of most importance, they are tilting at the imagined giants of right-wing bias. They imagine that these monsters, broadcasting daily from the free enterprise media windmills, need to be countered by the ABC/SBS twin fountains of enlightened discourse.
Some time back, Tim ran a jokey TV guide in the Bulletin. It showed SBS as running an outrageously biased doco every night. It was rather black humour, and too close to the bone. Frank Devine in the Australian (sorry, lost the link to this - about a month ago) also did some analysis of SBS programming over the last year and listed the incredible series of biassed docos, run week after week.
Perhaps next year the Andrew Olle lecturer could be somebody who has a few home truths for the large and small cognoscenti in the machinery of media. Someone who leaves them a bit introspective, rather than smugly bolstered. Leave them feeling less like Quixote, secure in their delusions, and more like Sancho Panza - discomforted by the reality.Slightly tangential, but still on topic- some observations on the media and civil liberties lobbyists from Janet Albrechtsen:
“Now, there’s nothing wrong with those on the Left gathering together under one banner. But let’s not pretend, as the media does, that these are dispassionate people speaking on behalf of the rest of us when it comes to civil liberties.”
The Australian."He enjoys listening to himself.”
A blunt cleaver questioning Western certainty?! I wouldn’t enjoy listening to myself say that, unless I was desperate for proof I was demilingual…
Posted by richard mcenroe on 2005 10 11 at 07:49 PM • permalinkHave a look at this post on a digital TV forum regarding Doyle’s speech. I think that a few people who’ve posted comments here should go over there and respond to the very modest “Santa”.
What a pity that it couldn’t be actually a cogent one, eh?
FWIW, the responses (Mr Tim’s and the others’) demonstrate that the responders actually took note of the many stupid things that Doyle actually said. His own words, you know, preserved and analyzed in this written medium, in which one doesn’t get to speed up or mumble over the embarrassing passages ... it’s a wonderful thing. Lots and lots of things that can be gotten away with, in a speech or even in an ordinary conversation, cannot be gotten away with in the written form. Of course you dislike and resent that, Ryan, and for the obvious reasons.Posted by Stoop Davy Dave on 2005 10 13 at 04:34 PM • permalinkI’m glad that there’s finally a dissenting comment at the foot of this thread. Thanks, Ryan.
Not any more.
BTW, it wasn’t a dissenting opinion. It was just pissy nonsense-
“you didn’t actually listen to it… you just read it somewhere on the net…”
Ah, so reading a book is a waste of time. Best to listen to it on tape.
Well, misrepresenting a spoken lecture isn’t fudging over errors, it’s just a misrepresentation… If you had listened to the lecture, you would understand the context of the speech. Also, you would know that the spelling errors aren’t his, they are the transcribers and blogers. If you listen to the speech, he actually says “So forget diversity of opinion – it’s out there in the margins. If you really want diversity go to the ABC or SBS.”
When Tim Blair says “You can’t get more diverse than that; one is a $773 million public broadcaster, and the other is an anti-lock braking system.” It is a complete misrepresentation, and shows that if you had actually listened to the speech, you might have a better understanding of it. He is either trying to make the man look like an idiot maliciously, or, perhaps, only making himself look like an idiot.
I’m not claiming any rightness or wrongness in the things Doyle said, but this site certainly goes a long way to prove his point that blogs are completely unreliable mediums of opinion.
And Dave, books are written in text, it is only natural to read them rather than listen to them… personally, I think if you are going to critic a spoken lecture, you really should watch it first. Just my opinion. I believe we are still allowed them in this country? No?
Well, misrepresenting a spoken lecture isn’t fudging over errors, it’s just a misrepresentation… If you had listened to the lecture, you would understand the context of the speech.
Yeah yeah yeah, so next comes to the part where you actually POINT TO some piece of left-out context that will change the meaning of the parts of the speech that are mocked here ... except that part never gets here.
I’m not claiming any rightness or wrongness in the things Doyle said,
Yeah, I thought not.
Posted by Stoop Davy Dave on 2005 10 14 at 02:30 PM • permalinkI did point out a very distinct part of the script that was misquoted. Now you are leaving out part of my message to suit your own arguement.
I thought it was a funny lecture, I don’t know if what he said was right or wrong, I agreed with some of it but not all of it. All I am saying is that if you are quoting someone, you should at least quote them correctly.
If you listen to the speech, he actually says “So forget diversity of opinion – it’s out there in the margins. If you really want diversity go to the ABC or SBS.”
In this blog he is quoted as saying ABS and is then mocked for it… It’s a misquote that if you watched the lecture you would pick up on… thats all.
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I hear Atta read Playboy for the articles, too.