Stuck in a collapsing idea
There now appears to be a critical failure in the elite to understand the people of this nation
2021 Australian of the Year Grace Tame, one of the most respected and influential recipients in the history of the award, was at government house on the 25th January, handing over the award to a friend in Dylan Alcott. Some said she shouldn’t have gone. Some said, she shouldn’t have gone to stand tall on the final day of her honorable position, shouldn’t have stood next to a “well-meaning and blindsided” PM who voted against 49 of the 55 recommendations included in the Safety at Work Report, someone who illuminated us of enlightened restraint to not use bullets against female March 4 Justice protestors, “she shouldn’t have gone” some said.
Grace Tame has delivered mountains of awareness through her passionate advocacy for survivors of sexual assault. Like some previous recipients of this award, such as Tim Flannery and Adam Goodes, Tame has copped the scorn of the right-wing journalistic block throughout her tenure. Tame, like most Australians, has valid reasons to be grossly disappointed by the inaction of Scott Morrison and his Government lack of action on gender inequality, including historic failures deep within his own corridors of power.
The victims of horrendous crimes, their stories hidden away in the silent horrible history of this country, people who have been waiting their entire lives for people like Tame to shine a light on this massive issue, will no longer be silent.
Tame had every right to feel uncomfortable in the presence of a PM who has offered only lip service to those Australians impacted by sexual assault and yet up jumps right-wing commentators like Peter Van Onselen, Pru Goward and a host of Murdoch lackies set to accuse her of being ungracious, rude and childish, among other virulent insults. Morrison wanted a photo-op and Tame was understandably reticent, which is her right and a completely justifiable response. The grievance merchants of the ideological wasteland started talking trash on radio and television. Even before she made it home, these grubby trash jockeys were publishing articles and seeding commercial news programs with anti-Grace vitriol.
Peter Van Onselen must have quickly got to work, wasting little time pumping out an article in ‘The Australian’ just before 2pm that day. He called Tame’s presence “Ungracious, rude and childish. The footage of Grace Tame meeting Scott Morrison at his residence in the nation’s capital for a reception today was embarrassing, for her that is”. That’s the bit before the paywall. All before he went off to host ‘The Project’ and spar with author Amy Remeikis, who along with the programs co-hosts, couldn’t believe what she was witnessing.
Someone who has suggestively poked and trolled his way around the political discourse since he was a young adult, who still thinks we can’t all see his bull dust, because he is blinded by his imposition as a backwater elite with no tangible experience in the wider world. “How good is Scott Morrison?” — How bad is Grace Tame? Sometimes a question mark, a snide suggestion, a niggle — an ambitious political professor that professes to impartiality and complains about “loud voices” as he sits like a blot on all three information delivery systems in this country. Dunning-Kruger in suspended animation is this man, clever enough to articulate his disingenuous analysis, yet devoid of the baseline intelligence and lacking the empathy to ever truly understand what he is saying.
The day after PVO blocked out the sun, Pru Goward decided to put her slippers on and went to quilling an article about the ‘Australian of the Year’, on the hutch out in an empty room somewhere up a solitary wing of her big house. With Howard-era memorabilia adorning the office and a leg propped up on the Ottoman, Australia’s favourite Readers Digest inspired feminist historian and veteran columnist for the Financial Review, still livid about missing a panel spot on Stan Zemanek’s: Beauty and the Beast, got to work on defining the “angry young woman” for us all.
Between the two flagrant articles sounded a cacophony of natters from the offended, the News Corp talking heads dribbling nonsense down to the far right bottom feeders, who now sit closer to the appendage of this countries corporate press than they ever have in our living memory. They descended on a symbol of strength and activism, someone of profound significance to this country, how she must have felt standing there next to someone who needed to ask his wife how he should feel about the issue — maybe it was he who shouldn’t have gone.
Interesting that two upper-class columnists with political conflict-of-interest oozing out of their pores, who proudly display every inch of their one degree of separation, chose to join the News Corp mongooses thrashing around in the dusty arena of dry ideas. We can throw our hands up in the air when we see this kind of behavior from journalists, but we shouldn’t expect anything less from people like these two.
Goward’s article about troublesome proles last year was obscene because it lacked empathy and understanding, because the poor are suffering the hardest in this pandemic. Peter Van Onselen’s book about the Prime Minister is devoid because he is tangled with the political class, and has no understanding of the depth, context and nuance of this country nor most of the people that live here. Both of their analyses on Tame’s demeanor were complete examples of the partisan blindness that has infiltrated our media class, further compounded by the contriteness of their cloistered wealth and compelled by the guilt of propping up a system that is cracking under the strain of great social change.
This is a cry for help from people like Goward and Van Onselen, trapped in a torrent as their blue-ribbon dreams are shattered by hard-right elements that look to change the DNA of this country. A Murdoch infused cocktail of American poison is pumped into our nation, openly challenging our democracy and mocking people like Tame who choose to demand change at a granular level across society. These people are stuck in the middle of a collapsing idea, yelling into a narrowing void — understanding no other status quo, they may choose to go down with the ship.
These articles give us the opportunity to witness the inter-generational lethargy that has inflicted the upper classes, their offerings shine light on the moribund ideas that pervade the minds of these people and reveal the waning influence of their ideas over our society. Tame, for all she has endured and for all she has become, what she has achieved in twelve months is truly remarkable. She has been joined in unison by a voice of women across the country, a voice of clarity that is heard by most in our society and understood by more everyday - yet it still somehow can’t quite be heard, over the hedgerows and high fences in the cloistered, tone-deaf pockets of the ascendant and wealthy. A dirty patina sits on the atrophied brains of this section of society, growing ever callous from fear of losing their evaporating power and influence.
“The loudest voices are the least tolerant”, Van Onselen is right about that. Every day people like him use hugely influential platforms to divide us, their voices drowning out the millions of Australians who scream holding onto a dangling thread, who want to do right by others, who admire Grace Tame. So, some questions for the landed elite, if your disdain for the Australian of the Year is so great, why write an article? Why take a whack at someone who stands for something real and significant? Because you are not these things, you are afraid of never knowing these virtues, and your time is almost up.
They patiently await the Murdoch-Musk collab, where they will fly aloft, on wings of gossamer to seed a new world.
A brave, new world.
Brilliant, Joel. Witnessing the white heterosexist elite mobilise to protect its vested interests has takes on an almost cartoonish quality. A Marxian analysis of this stupendously and dangerously dumb era is now the only thing that makes any sense to me. (Also FYI, by “countries” I think you mean “country’s”)