Pseud's Corner: No. 4

Order of the Brown Nose

Julia Gillard wears power incredibly well. Sorry to use the verb "wears"; a colleague had warned against it. But as Australia's first female prime minister established the running order of questions at yesterday's press conference, her newfound authority fitted like a second skin. Her voice was steady, her gaze direct, her cheeks ever-so-slightly flushed. My eyes kept returning to her stylish necklace. Our Prime Minister chooses a necklace in the morning and not a tie, I kept thinking. Funny what a giddy, slightly nervous mind can latch on to.

As we stood around watching the press conference, one woman thrust her fist into the air and hissed, "Yes!" Another whispered "Finally", her eyes moist. No, I decided. Granted, the time for bursting into "I am woman, hear me roar" has long passed. And it is a challenge to mark this moment without lapsing into the sentimental or the patronising or the glib. It is a bittersweet, heartbreaking moment too; encompassing the shattered dreams of a man of great promise. But don't piss on this parade by claiming there's nothing to celebrate. . .

When Kevin Rudd became Labor leader in 2006, a reporter wrote about how sexy he suddenly seemed: a dusting of power being all it takes. So let's say it: Gillard was damn sexy too, even sexier than she was two days ago. If saying this undermines the [feminist] cause, the cause still has a way to go. (Julie Szego, "A feminist hero", The Age)

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This week's Order of the Brown Nose goes to Julie Szego for her reaction to the Gillard boil-over last week in The Age - not quite for sucking up, but for empty-headed cluckiness on the subject. "Funny what a giddy, slightly nervous mind can latch on to," Szego twitters as she catches herself in flagrante full of confused sentimentality; less funny is what such a mind is happy to splurge into its newspaper column: the worst of the lot is the cliche' that power is sexy - that Julia G is sexier than ever before now she's come by the highest office in the land. Szego knows the effect is pure media hokum - something that dissipates over months or can vanish almost overnight, as it did for Kevin Rudd; she says as much. But when it comes to Gillard, well. . . because she's feeling giddy, the cliche' doesn't just get trotted out as if it's true and interesting, it gets elevated to the status of a feminist nostrum; the logic seems to be - we all know that the power-is-sexy idea is bollocks, but - if women can be sexy in power just like men, it proves that equality of the sexes is another major step closer to full realisation.

The Age was at its worst in its coverage of Gillard's rise to power. In comparison to its 10-page spread, the Hun read like Tacitus. With more column inches to fill - and at such short notice, given the coup against Rudd took everyone by surprise - Age staffers were able to really indulge one of the mainstream media's worst habits: reporting on their own reactions to events (events that they in every sense tease into existence) as if their reactions were themselves the news. Maybe this kind of situation's made specially surreal in Australia by the fact that the national capital is a sort of anti-metropolis: the drama of Rudd's resignation, like so many a national-political story, took place in an almost wholly negative public space - in front, that is, of no one but an assembled mass of PR-bods, journos and camera-operators, with no street scene to function as backdrop, no vitally interested or plainly curious or merely indifferent group of burghers to raise the scene from out of its hyper-mediated sub-reality.

The best response to the civic vacuum, you'd think, would be to let events speak for themselves. Instead, Age sloggers like Szego and Tony Wright fill out their pictures of events with the reactions of fellow sloggers. The media stands around observing itself, ready to write up its experience of itself as news. There it is, front and centre of the story, crowding close to the "spectral" Kevin Rudd, hanging on the "dying words of the extinguished leader". Rudd's own media-team, together with other staffers, are captured accompanying him on his "final journey" - this is the journey into the prime ministerial courtyard outside his office for his last press conference: poignant spinners in serried ranks of three "march as a battalion across the cobbles, forming a sort of guard of honour." Wright really earns his place in the Corner of Shame with a little touch that comes in the middle of Rudd's speech: a nameless member of the media-pack bumps the sculpture in the courtyard and - you guessed it, it tolls like a bell - "the bell that has already tolled for Kevin Rudd, the vanquished prime minister." Tony, we feel, it tolls for you too, for all those dead phrases walking, the ritual changing of the words on the page. As you put it so aptly - it is all nothing more than a formality. Lead us, your lambs, to the slaughterhouse of prose. Vanquished yet expectant, we read on. . .
 

Such a long walk, the one to the gallows. Kevin Rudd, hands in pockets, Labour Party elder and keeper of the last rites John Faulkner. . . He had declared the night before he would fight; he would call a ballot and he would put himself in the hands of the party. But as the night wore on, it became apparent there was no point. A ballot would leave on the books a dreadful truth. He had no mates, or too few to matter. And so he was a dead man walking. The destination was a party meeting that was nothing more than a formality: a ritual changing of the guard. No ballot. The Australian people had elected him. The Australian Labor Party's fear of the Australian people had executed him. Within two hours, a spectral Kevin Rudd . . . stood for the last time in the prime minister's courtyard. A couple of hundred journalists crowded close, intent on capturing the words of the extinguished leader. Rudd's staff, all those exhausting days and nights behind them, their future uncertain, marched as a battalion in ranks of three across the cobbles, a guard of honour. "What I remember most about [the day of national apology was that] as they came in from over there - he gestured across the courtyard - they were frightened," he said. "Our job was to make them welcome." He could barely utter the words. The eyes welled, the silences grew, the crowd stood transfixed. Someone bumped a large metallic sculpture in the courtyard. It tolled like a bell. But the bell had already tolled for Kevin Rudd, the vanquished prime minister. . . Within two hours, Rudd would attend question time in the House of Representatives. He sat at the back of the bankbenches, determined to stay, hoping for redemption. . ." (Tony Wright, "Kevin Rudd's Long Walk" The Age)

Meanwhile. . .

There is an old Dale Carnegie saying: It goes - 'people don't care how much you know, 'til they know how much you care'. - Thought Leaders are knowledgeable people, often very objective and analytical around an issues that a business or person may be facing. I try to remember the importance of care factor. Without it, all your smarts, all your IP [Intellectual Property? Induced Polarisation? Intercessory Prayer?] is completely useless.
My friend and Thought Leader Darren Hill, would tell you it's simply increasing your Humanity. My dear friend Pete Sheahan, would tell me it's simply being Old School. My customer experience mate Iven Frangi, would tell you that it's Good Business. My technology and futurist friend Craig Rispin, would tell you it's being High Touch in a High Tech world. However you look at it, show you care. That's why so many profiteering [sic] businesses are getting all "do good" with corporate social responsibility and I think it's a great thing. Some may be faking it, but the power of kindness means that before long they'll be making it. (Matt Church, "Care factor 'zero'" Inspiring ThoughtLeadership)

Learning about Our City of Literature has been a personal journey. My great-grandfather, Frank Hobil Cole, arranged the lease for the Hill of Content back when A.H.Spencer needed funds to get his dream. started. Having historical connections to this iconic store was my catalyst for developing the "Melbourne by the Book" tour, which is sensory discussion about the heritage of reading, writing and storytelling in Melbourne. I believe that how and what Melburnians are reading is a historical indicator of the nature of our city, so the writers festival . . . is seeing history being made. (Fiona Sweetman on Melbourne as a UNESCO memorial City of Literature, an Age Writers Festival special)

This is a Godot which is accessible at every point and which refuses to acknowledge any lacuna or yawning gulf that doesn’t have its primary registration in a human sigh or shrug. . . At every point Sean Mathias refuses to formalise Beckett. The clowning always looks like the natural fumbling and frolicking of two professional chaps who know each other and the routines they share which constitute the forms of their intimacy, above everything else. In the great lyrical duet, the nearly liturgical refrain, about leaves and everything else that sounds in the silence, McKellen and Rees cut through the form of Beckett’s cadences to find unexpected human colour and surprise. And it’s that sense of tumbling, improvised comedy on the part of two old stagers that dominates throughout. Ian McKellen as Estragon has an encyclopaedic repertoire of ghoulish comic faces to pull and imbecile dances to dance and dogged cowardly lion growls to growl. It is a wonderfully warmhearted, baffled face he presents to the world as Gogo, almost a fluffy toy with the stuffing knocked out, and the fact that you can hear the great tragedian behind the bawling, long-vowelled northern tragic of a music hall man brings him to the heart of Beckett’s vision. Roger Rees as Vladimir is McKellen’s perfect complement, partly because his eroded matinée idol smoothness comes from a different planet which is, nonetheless, professionally compatible. It’s such a dapper, rapid performance style, as if he had fallen asleep doing Private Lives and woken up 30 years later on a dung heap.Of course, this Ian McKellen/Roger Rees Waiting for Godot is as much Shakespearean as it is sawdust. The magic, though, which releases Beckett’s sense of mystery, is in the lavishness with which these two masters of the technique of the classical theatre pay homage to music hall in order to convey their sense of the foul rag-and-bone shop of the heart. (Peter Craven reviews Sean Mathias' "Waiting for Godot", The Spectator)