hell’s paving stones

HPS once attended a very grand cook-off at Joe’s at which David Letterman, and his Show which is Late, sustained a certain amount of derision and irritable dismissal - which can flow easily when the room is full of jaded twentysomethings and the paella is beyond reproach.

We begged to differ - or at least we would have if we weren’t essentially cowards. The Late Show is very often a shambles, and Letterman himself may indeed be “rude and bald and megalomaniacal” as someone put it that night. In fact, generally speaking, about five nights a week the writers and Dave himself completely phone it in. But from time to time there comes a night where the show crackles with energy and glee, and these are the times when Letterman actually glories in the poor writing, the ill-conceived interviews and segments and especially, especially his unhidden contempt for anyone that he takes a dim view of, and wears these things like a goddamn cloak. In moments like these, he might be acknowledging that he’s essentially a servant monkey for the promotional, lowest common denominator machine of late nite variety, but damned if he’s going to be there in spirit. And then he’ll do something like look down at the desk for, like, a tenth of a second and just despair - that’s the point where someone might see that what powers this man’s blackened heart is, surprisingly, a profound sense of secular decency.

So we’re initiating an occasional roundup of the Late Show, because, we dunno, something about the dude seems to fit in with our sensibility. That a good enough reason?

The first roundup is of an episode that aired in Melbourne on Thursday, 5 January at 1.00am. Begins after the jump.

Read the rest of this entry »

This is how the first candid national discussion of racism in Australia was aborted before time:

JOURNALIST: So you’re saying there was no element of race or racism in the riots on the weekend?

PRIME MINISTER: No, I said what I said. I do not believe Australians are racist. I thought the behaviour yesterday was quite unacceptable and I said that attacking anybody on the basis of their race or their colour or appearance is quite unacceptable.

That was the first question asked at a press conference given the day after the worst Cronulla riots. There was no follow-up question which might have gone along the lines of “Nobody is arguing that all Australians are racist. The question was simply if racism played a role in the Cronulla riots, and I asked it to interrogate the reasons why race has been such a divisive element in that particular part of Australia.” As a result, Howard was able to avoid addressing the root causes of the riots and implicitly deny the possibility that racism in society might be complicated.

As a result of the missing follow-up, and consequently the airing of Howard’s unchallenged interpretation of the debate, the frame of discussion became awkwardly skewed. The question asked in polls and commentary was whether there is, in Howard’s words, underlying racism in Australia. The bogus ‘big development’ in the discussion was when an AgePoll discovered that 75% of respondents thought there was ‘underlying racism’ in the country. It could be argued that a respondent might have interpreted ‘underlying’ racism to mean that there is an element of racism in Australia rather than a domination of racism in society. In any case, the back-and-forth became centred on the question of whether a majority of Australians are racist. The debate fizzled and didn’t even make it to Christmas. Instead of constructing an analysis of racial tensions in Sydney, and using it as a starting point for considering race relations in the rest of Australia, we had an ersatz debate and collapsed on the easy truism that we’re a country of migrants and at least we don’t have the White Australia policy anymore.

The name of the journalist who asked the founding question isn’t noted in the transcript, but our suggestion is that the record should attribute questions to reporters so that we might be able to put a name to significant failures in Australian journalism. This was one of them.

Aussie coppers are going back into Papua New Guinea after the Enhanced Cooperation Program was resuscitated today. Apparently there will be no uniformed or plainclothes police on the beat, as there were before the Plan fell over. Federales will be put into key posts, and some more civvys are going over too. But no firefights with raskols, that’s all up to the natives now.

A thought: why get all twisted up in knots about immunity from prosecution for Aussie cops (the original sticking point), when we quite happily (and on Howard’s watch, too) signed and ratified the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court? That particular commitment means that Aussie soldiers deployed anywhere around the world can be prosecuted for war crimes and/or crimes against humanity.

Updated from:

Somare’s Soles

“Downer we will remove more than your shoes”

Hey you! Tired of hackneyed political opinions from a lazy blogger? Cruising ’round St Kilda for some sizzling pop-cultural commentary from another, notionally different, lazy blogger? Did you perhaps think that the humourous parts of that Star Wars conversation we posted a while back were weighted mostly on the blue side of the scales? Have we got the site for you!

Scott is , in his own words, “pale and scary. Boo.” Of late, it seems that he’s been haunted by ghosts of his own. Ghosts, or just hallucinatory manifestations of his guilty conscience who should probably bug him more often. He is also a nascent satirical genius and a scholar of animated pornography. An apparently very learned scholar.

He’s just started writing again after a few years of detox, so the backlogue of articles tends to contain some cultural flashbacks: a vicious dissection of the hampsterdance, and a 10-point argument in favour of Early Edition, to name just a few. Read, and get taken back to yesteryear!

Disclosure: Mr. Bellairs underwrites this blog financially and is in no way associated with the Konsojaya Trading Company. In absolutely no way, shape or form and certainly not as its managing director.

Okay, admittedly the highly over-paid and under-worked staff here at hell’s paving stones have been diverted of late by a series of highly lucrative book offers that may or may not in fact exist. The already variable flow of posts has accordingly slowed. For those of you who’ve never worked out how to set up a news aggregator, or why you keep coming back here to check for updates, this might be a little vexing.

Our startling academic transcripts and improbable journalistic careers notwithstanding, we here at HPS like to think that we have always managed to steer away from developing a certain… arrogance in outlook. Not that you’d be able to appreciate the kind of moral fibre it takes to do that.

So it’s in that spirit that we’re going to try a little experiment in… democracy. Normally this would call for an assortment of military hardware as capital, but instead we’re going down a different path by letting you, the reader, be editor! Editor, that is, instead of ol’ “Red Teeth” Joe who, God - and possibly a very tenacious federal policeman - knows, has made us pay in human flesh for deadline tardiness before.

Hence the Parliament of the Damned is open! For the first session of 2005, let us lay this proposal out for your deliberation: the past month or months or however long it’s been, we have, all evidence to the contrary aside, gone through a number of ideas for new posts. For various reasons - poor timing, other commitments, uh…over researching an idea, old-fashioned mulatto laziness - they were abandoned. But you can bring one of them back! Here they are:

Yet more meditations on the Media’s love/hate affair with Douglas Wood (including recent revelations of his business dealings and his partial blindness as a result of his kidnapping), and HPS’s actual affair with same.

An account of the Chinese Cola Wars and the unholy triumvirate between Coke, Chinese pop trio S.H.E., and the World of Warcraft massively multiplayer online computer game.

Just who do these getup.org.au kids think they are?

The next chapter in the Oil-for-Food scandal, starring a whole bunch of corrupted officials who certainly aren’t in the Bush Administration, yes sir that much is for certain!

The shoot to kill policy re: terrorists/innocent bystanders

The first, fragile strip in a webcomic that I would call my baby if that didn’t entail a certain level of soul-wrenching grief should it die/be taken away from me.

Choose wisely and submit your decision in the comments. Remember, punch the right hole clean through, vote Greens in the Senate and remember that hell’s paving stones is all about the Politics of Hope! Ahem.

After a period lost in the wilderness (the grasshoppers and wild honey were delicious, thanks for asking), HPS notes that the Doug Wood story is still playing in the papers (Hey! Scottish Guy! If news is slow, stories can be faked! Once again, U.S. = one step ahead of Australia).

Any ways, we think an extended post on this issue in the not-too-distant future might be interesting, but for now, we’ll leave readers with a quote from the above-mentioned latest report, which tells of how avuncular, knockabout Douglas want s his captors hanged or in the clink for life:

As he continued to recover from his ordeal, Mr Wood was in the stands yesterday to see his beloved Geelong beat Hawthorn in their AFL match at Telstra Dome. After the match, he joined the team in the dressing rooms for the club song.

Hey! Posting is easy with blockquotes. Next post: a verbatim and unabridged version of The Age’s Editorial. HPS: challenging laziness in writing sinc

(image is of a Darth Vader Battle Buddy, currently an ebay auction item.)

PARENTS! Uncertain of whether or not to take your young ones along to a screening of Star Wars Episode III: Revenge of the Sith? Worried about the effect that uncompromising portrayals of violence and vengeance may have on your golden-haired children? Studies have been inconclusive about the risk of lasting psychological effects when exposing young minds to graphically unsettling material. Worst case scenarios are legion: 20 years hence, do you wish to be gagged and trussed up, suspended from the beams in your attic by your brooding only son? If you’d like some kind of insight into the sort of personality that George Lucas imposes on the malleable brains of today’s youth, then take your guide from the following conversation between two adult Star Wars fans.

But first a bit of context. This is an exchange between HPS and our good friend Scott. Scott’s pop cultural knowledge is next to none. Watch this space: he’s got a project going. This specific conversation took place the night before we went to see Revenge of the Sith. Here’s an excerpt where we discuss the ill-fated “Star Wars Holiday Special” that aired on television in 1977:

Scott says:

i can’t believe Bea Arthur was in it.

Vincent says:

She was robbed of her born role as Aunt Beru in Ep IV, that’s why.

Scott says:

every time i hear the name “Aunt Beru”, it always reminds me of this article i read about comic conventions where someone asked Phil Brown (Uncle Owen) if Aunt Beru lactated blue milk.

Read the rest of this entry »

Third post in a row that’s treading old ground: we’ve officially hit our creative apex and from now on hell’s paving stones is going into decline. Enough! Back to the regurgitory task at hand!

Here’s a picture of the little demon - we know how much you like pictures:

HPS was toying with the idea of liveblogging the Logies, but that’s just been a dream to bathe in the reflected glory of Gothamist’s liveblogging of the Oscars. That, and the fact that we completely forgot it was on. And the added fact that we struggled - genuinely struggled - to care once we found out we’d missed it.

So anyway, anyone who reads the front page of the Australian newspapers to learn about news of global, political and social significance would have found out that Rove McManus won his third Gold Logie Sunday night (fact: it is Commonwealth Law that 3-time Gold Logie winners get their names written in boldface). And got some uncensored swearing into the mix. According to the Herald Sun:

Australian Family Association vice-president Bill Muehlenberg said the incident showed McManus was too big for his britches.

The size of Rove McManus’ britches relative to Rove McManus was an HPS scoop, Muehlenberg! Last year’s Yesterday’s news!

However, our favourite piece of news from the night came from Age journalist Nassim Khadem’s wrap-up of the night:

Bec Cartwright did not go home empty-handed. The fiancee of Australian tennis star Lleyton Hewitt, won the Silver Logie for most popular actress for her role as Hayley in Home And Away. After thanking her dogs for helping her win the award she thanked Hewitt.

Our emphasis. Read between the lines, people. Read between the lines.

Did you know? A genuine Sally Struthers quote circa 1975, on learning that the name of the Australian awards show she was to guest present at was called the “Logies”:

(uncontrollable giggling)…really? It sounds like a disease!

Sally Struthers, for those of you who don’t know, played Gloria Bunkem-Stivic on the long-running US sitcom “All in the Family”. Her charity TV spots for the Christian Childrens’ Fund were famously lampooned in South Park.

In the past few weeks there’s been some interesting developments on the ’shoe incident’ - the diplomatic quibble that’s acting as a proxy war for tensions between Australia and Papua New Guinea over the forms of aid to PNG.

On Tuesday, Sir Michael Somare, the PNGuinean PM, made a speech to his Parliament saying that he would not continue seeking an apology from the Australian government:

If the Australian government had said sorry to indigenous people in Australia, they would say sorry in this case, he said.

Says it all, really. For his part, here’s what Alexander Downer had to say on the 10th as he tried to giggle the issue away on Meet the Press:

Look, you know, look, you have to understand that there are cultural differences here. One of, I suppose, the characteristics of Australian culture is we’re fiercely egalitarian. One of the characteristics of Papua New Guinean and Melanesian culture more generally is that they have the notion of what they call the big man. The leaders and chiefs and so on fall into that category. So they expect special treatment for people who fall into that category.

Talk to any anthropology student and they’ll tell you this is a gross distortion of the ‘big man’ role in Melanesian societies. Downer’s counter-posing “fiercely egalitarian” Australia to the “special treatment” that prevails in PNG society. He may as well say start calling Somare ‘His Royal Backwardness’.

Somare’s probably seen the way the terms of the debate have changed over the past month. To the Australian press, the issue is now less another example of Australia’s diplomatic oafishness towards certain neighbouring leaders (a similar thing happened Helen Clark at Sydney Airport, Malaysia’s top dogs have never been popular here, and East Timor’s brass is being “ungrateful” for trying to renegotiate the Timor Gap Treaty). Instead, it’s portrayed as a bemusing but ultimately tiresome display of histrionics by a spoilt tinpot chief. What other choice does Somare have? Climb down and hope to recapture the moral high ground. He’s probably going to re-engage us directly on the issue of aid, and the most effective way of doing that is to point out how our 200-copper stipulation isn’t necessarily making law ‘n order in the country any better.

However, there may be a more desperate reason for Somare to back off - in the middle of all this, the foreign investment ratings agency Standard and Poor’s indicated that it would probably downgrade PNG’s rating if the country cancelled the Enhanced Cooperation Program (ECP). So Somare would have no aid coming into the country, and no foreign investment either.

Update update: However, he’s already set a ball rolling: towards the end of last year, a challenge to the ECP was mounted in the PNG Supreme Court by a provincial governor, Luther Wenge. The substance of this challenge is that under the provisions of the ECP, Australian police officers are granted immunity from prosecution, and argues that it isn’t constitutional. If the challenge goes through, then presumably the Aussie coppers are gonna have to go, Downer and Foreign Minister Rabbie Namaliu are gonna to have to do some talking, and that investment rating is gonna look shaky.

So now, bizarrely, the talk from the PNG government is that they think the ECP will withstand the challenge, and that:

“I’d imagine, we’ve got the political will, we’ve got the support for the ECP,”

as the Internal Security minister, Bire Kimisopa, says. Just a few weeks ago, Namaliu was threatening to suspend the ECP! More strangely still, on the same day that Kimisopa made those remarks, another senior member of the government, Chief Secretary Joshua Kallinoe, said that the ECP has been completely irrelevant to the country’s recent economic stability. Aaaarrgghh!!!

HPS thinks this is all fascinating stuff: we don’t like our own country’s arrogance and “here, let me do it” attitude to aid (which Papua New Guinea is dependent upon). However, we also think that the PNG government is acting strangely. A few weeks ago, it seemed they were reclaiming their own sovereignty and arguing for more independence in solving their country’s problems. Now, they’ve been stuck into an embarrassing rhetoric of contradiction. We’ll keep an eye on developments, but since some of our less fascinated readers have been grumbling of late, we’re also about to post a shiny, colourful update about Rove.

If you want an excellent summary of the shoe issue and the wider aid debate, read this.

Alma, who commented in the original post, provided HPS with a link to an fascinating and comprehensive article on aid in Papua New Guinea. Read it here.

HPS had a particular interest in the outcome of this papal conclave. As you may have worked out, we’re of the Catholic persuasion.

Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger’s elevation to the Bishopric of Rome and the Papacy is, for us, the worst possible outcome, and coming as it did on only the third vote (by our count), it worries us that the balance of theology in the college of cardinal is skewed further towards the orthodox than we had thought.

None of the changes that I had fervently hoped to be initiated from the top will come from this man. At best his papacy will be much the same as John Paul II’s. At worst, he will be combative and divisive.

In today’s edition of Slate, Jack Miles makes the point (via theologian Charles Davis) that the only unique aspect of the Roman Catholic Church - the only feature which is not shared by at least one other Christian Church, or indeed any other religion - is the centralised papal heirarchy. For that heirarchy to fail in attending to the diversity of the faithful is to continue the tradition whereby Catholics get told what to do, and are expected to do it, or leave the club.

This isn’t how it has to be.