[csaa-forum] The Narrative of Andrew Bolt (a.k.a. The Burning Academy)

Christian McCrea saccharinmetric at gmail.com
Fri Dec 10 02:00:51 CST 2004


Since I can't be at the CSAA, I'll write up my Bolt rant, which is
probably what I'd be spouting after a couple of (government-sponsored)
gins over there anyway.


The Narrative of Andrew Bolt (a.k.a. The Burning Academy)
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

It is absolutely imperative then when we publicly fight people like
Bolt, we fight on ground on which he is weakest, rather than futile
defensiveness about the relevance of our work.

Bolt's narrative is the familiar one of moral decay, and again
humanities academics, as the favourite low-hanging fruit of this
particular fairy tale long before Murdoch et al descended from the
moral empyrean to grace us with consistent, balanced journalism.
Bolt's narrative is actually well-researched for the most part - where
he is weakest are the massive leaps of common sense, the very energy
he wishes to harvest.  In his manicured declarations of war against
the grant-funded left, he finds himself stating some fairly circular
things. It isn't just a matter of his proclamations having a grain of
truth, but genuine lapses in editorial quality. The gaps in the
narrative he is telling are incredible - that, or as Bolt says of
himself, that he "might be a friend of the new, exicting, sensible
Left, that stands as united for justice as they used to."

Ob-soive.

--------------------
"And we're reassured that a $140,000 study of "moral panics and the
law in 18th century England" has "contemporary relevance" for
Australians who now see "governments legitimise their authority by
helping to constitute popular anxiety about threats to moral and
personal security".

Nice, but wouldn't a study of these alleged moral panics in Australia
today be more useful than one of moral panics in Britain three
centuries ago?
-------------------

To me, this reads as if Bolt is telling the particular academic
(whoever this brave soul is) to reject their historical work, and
becoming active in analysing contemporary Australian moral panic,
which would probably first mention Bolt somewhere soon after the word
"preface".

There's another moment, weeks ago, in which he provides an answer to
Arts funding:

--------------------
"Hand these grants to the public. Let's do that by using the money to
subsidise the seats of the theatre and not the playwright; to
underwrite the book and not the author; to finance the opera house and
not the composer; to make tickets cheaper for local movies, and not
make the movies themselves."
--------------------

... which is pretty similiar to how the Greater London Council (at the
time, an admixture of activists, mad communists, bureaucratistas and
lackeys) and Hackney council managed to develop an incredible arts
scene despite late-Thatcher era crushing of the Arts. Sure, Andrew, if
that's what you want... but be careful of what you wish for.  Fairly
disasterous for several reasons in our circumstance, but making local
movies cheaper isn't the dumbest way I've heard to revitalise an
industry that only recently let the henious act of Japanese Story go
not only unpunished, but rewarded. (Don't fight me on this, I care
more than you do.)

Finally, and absurdly, Bolt develops a fairly accurate representation
of the ARC grant system and provides a solution:

----------------------
"Think of the money wasted by this system. An academic wanting a grant
can spend a couple of weeks, with staff help, to prepare an
application. Then another two academics spend perhaps a day to see if
it's good enough for the ARC to consider, before several "readers"
examine it. The grant-seeker then gets to respond to their reports and
only then does a panel of 12 experts, all paid, make a final decision.
IN the end, the panels reject three in four applications for Discovery
grants, all of which means taxpayers may well spend up to $1 to
administer every $3 we actually hand out. And now the ARC wants to
check the results, too. How much cheaper it would be to simply give
the grants money to the universities to hand out themselves, and to
make them account for the results?"
-------------------

The last time I heard someone suggest that it was... oohh, someone
working for the NETU.

We say Bolt is racist, sexist, idoitic all the time in private
conversation because we are bound to, he is arrayed specificially
against us. To merely decry him just makes him more famous. If you
anything to say about Bolt, in private, public, or in your work, be
sure to apply pressure to his leaps of logic. Apply pressure to his
circular politics. Apply pressure to the specific instances of his
bigotry; but be consistent. His greatest weapon to use against
academics is the fact we allow ourselves to appear abhorrently
inconsistent, useless, wasteful, morally disinvested. It is partially
because, at the worst of times, we are all of these things - but when
an academic generates good work, it is precisely these things which
they can work against.

I don't think we should be afraid to have our work questioned for its
usefulness because we are government funded. I am mightily irrational
about the defense of free study, but I realise the conditions that
that presupposes - widespread superstition of the academic as some
sort of evil money-burning warlock who can twist their words and cast,
at will, the mighty spell of Political Correctness Gone Mad. So I'm
willing to defend and explain what I do to anyone who asks - because I
believe its when we don't that people like Andrew Bolt get to keep
their jobs one more day.

More generally speaking, there is a big difference between a cullture
of in-fighting and a culture of productive self-analysis, and we have
to bridge it. Continuously. Bolt is able to rally the terms "radical
chic", "chardonnay-sipping intellectual" and others so effectively at
the moment, to genuine political effect, because we let ourselves be
the butt of the national joke without a real fight. It may be that the
best way to avoid defeat next time is to truly deserve its victory.

About a month ago, I took a (government-funded) taxi across town, and
in the petit conversation that was generated, I explained of my
day-to-day that I was a writer - never did the word 'academic' pass my
lips. That is not to say either that writers are merely that, or that
I am technically an academic (I am, in fact *merely* a postgraduate
student). It struck me afterward as a missed opportunity. The fear of
class hatred, of all things, was at the centre of my momentary
retreat. I had become utterly worthy of the type of inane criticism
that is emitted from the morally narcoleptic Boltian linguo-trough. If
I can't defend who I am, or want to be, in situations of
micro-political importance, how I can expect writers and academics of
genuine worth, like Arundhati Roy to be treated fairly in the press?

-Christian McCrea

(PS -  I do wish someone more verbose and intelligent than I had been
driven to make this particular gesture. Either I am alone or you all
have to deal with my attempts at wit. In the writing of this rant,
I've already been told it will ensure I am never given an academic
position - let it be said I'd prefer to go down in flames than to be
soaked in petrol, waiting for a newspaper columnist to ignite me.)



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