Ute-ilitarianism

For this political dispute
Australia is going mad:
I think we just like saying “ute”.

In other lands they’ll up and shoot
You if you say the leader’s bad,
For this political dispute

Is seen as neither wise nor cute
In Tehran or Islamabad.
I think we just like saying “ute”.

There’s Berlusconi’s prostitute
(He’s old enough to be her dad!)
For this political dispute,

Or England’s, where they’ve got a beaut,
Would not fly here: too dull and sad.
I think we just like saying “ute”.

They say that Turnbull’s quite astute,
But I don’t give a hanging chad
For this political dispute;
I think we just like saying “ute”.

What’s happening?

Frost / Nixon

Frank Langella’s performance is excellent and the whole cast is very good. Mention should be made of the always entertaining Oliver Platt, and Kevin Bacon revisits his character from Animal House with a pleasing sort of dignity.

Reading around the web I find some critics were grumpy with the film because they think that it lets Nixon off the hook, but it seems a bit unreasonable to expect Ron Howard and Peter Morgan to do more in this regard than the legal and political system of the United States of America. To expect that would be to fall into the same trap as one of the film’s characters does when he describes the interviews as “the trial Nixon never had.” One of the best things about the film is that it illustrates exactly what the difference is between a trial and a chat-show appearance. Criminals don’t get paid six-figures up front and a percentage of the profits for standing in the dock. And chat-shows always exonerate their guests by turning them into television magic.

Note that the film omits to mention that Nixon got points, when it really should have. The grumpy critics are right on that score.

It should also be noted that the process depicted in this movie – being slightly interrogated by a Man Without Qualities in a nice suit and then zoom-to-closeup *TRAGEDY* – is the very harshest punishment our society inflicts on serious criminals at its highest levels. So, Bush, Cheney, Greenspan: watch out. I think Andrew Denton should be trying to line up contracts.

Expectations

All the high expectations are making just one thought go round in my head.

Not so long ago, the conservative population of the world convinced themselves, and did their best to try to convince the rest of us, that George W Bush was, not just a competent, but, actually, a completely awesome President. He was the best parts of Winston Churchill and General Patton, all rolled in breadcrumbs and fried to perfection.

Yes, kids, they really did. I am old enough to remember it.

So this is the context in which my brother, whose birthday is the 20th of January, got this cake.

Even for a lefty family, with small, cake-loving nieces helping my Mum decorate, that’s pretty enthusiastic.

Yeats and shoe-throwing

From ‘Stories of Michael Robartes and his Friends: An Extract from a Record Made by his Pupils’, one of the odd little semi-biographical fictions which enliven W B Yeats’ A Vision:

“My name is Daniel O’Leary, my great interest is the speaking of verse, and the establishment some day or other of a small theatre for plays in verse. You will remember that a few years before the Great War the realists drove the last remnants of rhythmical speech out of the theatre. I thought common sense might have returned while I was at war or in the starvation afterwards, and went to Romeo and Juliet to find out. I caught those two well-known persons Mr. . . . and Miss . . . at their kitchen gabble. Suddenly this thought came into my head: What would happen if I were to take off my boots and fling one at Mr. . . . and one at Miss . . . ? Could I give my future life such settled purpose that the act would take its place not among whims but among forms of intensity? I ran through my life from childhood and decided that I could. ‘You have not the courage,’ said I, speaking aloud but in a low voice. ‘I have,’ said I, and began unlacing my boots. ‘You have not,’ said I, and after several such interchanges I stood up and flung the boots.

“Unfortunately, although I can do whatever I command myself to do, I lack the true courage, which is self-possession in an unforeseen situation. My aim was bad. Had I been throwing a cricket-ball at a wicket, which is a smaller object than an actor or actress, I would not have failed; but as it was, one boot fell in the stalls and the other struck a musician or the brassy thing in his hand. Then I ran out of a side door and down the stairs. [...]

“You can understand even better than Robartes why that protest must always seem the great event of my life.”

This in 1925, mark you, from a man who knew a thing or two about being on the receiving end.

Merry Crashmas!

It’s everyone’s favourite time of the year, as jolly old Santa Keynes, with his heart-warming cries of “Ho, ho, ho!” and “I’m not sure that’s quite what I meant” distributes largesse and mare’s milk to pensioners and low-income families, which in Australia these days means, roughly, “anyone with a kid who is not on the board of a publicly listed company” so it’s time to spend up big!

Each Crashmas bonus will be enough to enable you to buy 15 iPod Shuffles, 6 whole pairs of sneakers or around 50 shares in Macquarie Bank (NOTE: DON’T DO THIS)

Q. Can the Government force me to spend my Crashmas bonus?

A. Technically, no, but commencing on Boxing Day, all recipients of the payment who have not yet spent their Crashmas bonus in full will receive an automated phone call of the Prime Minister sighing and tutting with disappointment once every twenty-four hours.

Q. Do I have to give my Crashmas bonus to my kids?

A. First, make sure you ask them what they are planning to spend it on. Good answers are ‘lollies’, ‘robots’, ‘dinosaurs’ or ‘a deposit on a house’. Bad answers are ‘my piggy bank’, ‘Macquarie Bank shares’ or ‘bullion’.

Q. Can I spend my Crashmas bonus on hookers and blow?

A. Although money laundering is an excellent pathway for fiscal stimulus, it is, unfortunately, still illegal to spend any part of your Crashmas bonus on blow. However, you may spend it on hookers, provided that said hookers are going to circulate the money back into the economy in turn. If your hooker has copies of The Economist on her night-stand or has ever used the phrase “Baltic Dry index” in post-coital small talk, you should probably get a new TV instead.

Q.If I spend my Crashmas bonus and Australia has a recession after all, will I get a refund?

A. Merry Crashmas!

Things we should all get used to, part 2

• Black T-shirts with skeleton bones printed on them
• Socialism! or at least, people yelping ’socialism!’ whenever governments do anything.
• Baseball caps
• Capitalism
• Skateboards
• Climate-change deniers. They’ll ignore it, or if they don’t they’ll just blame it on all the socialism.

Twatting pollies

Seems that “busy/important” is so last century, because these days even politicians have time to stuff around on Twitter. And to think I was vaguely embarrassed about doing something which I thought was the equivalent of gluing cut-out pictures of bands from Smash Hits onto your folder at high school, oh, wait, no, that’s what Facebook is.

Anyway it all reminds me of that time in the 70s when Malcolm Fraser ate a sausage which had been barbequed by solar power. Sure, people laughed, or at least my parents did, but look at how far we’ve come since those early days.

In other news, Michael Lewis has written the best possible article about the Wall Street crash.

Limited liability

So now even The Australian is wondering whether some guy who ran a really bad property investment trust deserves to keep the enormous amounts of money and houses he made now that the trust is completely failing.

What limited liability means is that people take risks not in their own right but using a fake person called a corporation, so that when the corporation goes belly-up, the guys in suits still get to keep their big houses. There are exceptions to this principle but they are rare and only cover cases of criminal fraudulence or negligence, not bad luck or even incompetence.

At law school I was given to understand that without this form of protection, hardly anyone would bother to start a business of any scale at all. Admittedly my law school was full of Marxists but the guy who taught us corporate law was definitely not one of them. This is why when I hear pious talk about ‘moral hazard’ from economists and finance journalists I hold my nose.

Sorry I had to go into all that. Anyway, on Friday night Grace and I discovered Barack Obama’s Flickr account, so now I’ve friended the President-Elect, which to be honest felt a bit weird.

And there’s now an animated version of Get Your War On.

President-Elect Obama

My girls were at home with their Gran on Wednesday afternoon Sydney time, watching the acceptance speech, really excited and happy but not really understanding why my Mum was crying or why she kept saying that they would remember that day all their lives. But they will.