[csaa-forum] bolt and emotion

[langley timmy]

continuing the 'question everything' (of bolt)
perspective:

Is bolt harmless? Let me begin with a quote from bolt:

‘Harmless? How harmless is it for children to be
taught a morality
that is so impractical or shallow that it soon becomes
a game of
pretend?’ 

this quote is about the harmful effects of the
animated movie ‘finding nemo’ on children. so very
right.

On a personal level, i find bolt fascinating and
funny. however, as an australian straight white middle
class male, my life isn’t affected by the rise of the
right: i won’t fight, at this stage, in the righteous
war(s) against terror, although i’m constantly under
threat from islamic fundamentalist trying to destroy
my freedom, my way of life (all the deaths of innocent
civilians in these, and the next, wars are
exaggerated, and if their not, their deaths are worth
the price); i will never have an abortion; i can get
married (in western Australia the conservative state
opposition wants to repeal some gay laws because: boys
aged 16-17 are easily influenced into the gay
lifestyles; gay relationships don’t offer children the
security of heterosexual relationships: ‘think of the
children’); i live happily on the wealth created from
third world labour and resources; i’m not, at his
stage, a refugee; i’m not an aboriginal person so land
rights, or the important and problematic
‘decolonization of the mind’, do not affect me, and my
culture and history is not being denigrated in
revisionist history (and if i steal a packet of
biscuits in the NT, i'll won't be place in juvenile
detention); i'll get a better tan with the increase
sunlight; i don’t need to assimilate, unless the
multicultural elite get their way; i don't work at the
UN; i haven’t criticized the howard government in
public so have not being attacked by the popular right
wing opinion commentators like bolt. 

A few ways of response:
Articles in the press reaffirming the importance of
the humanities, like Elspeth’s and Millicent Poole’s
(the VC at ECU)in the australian. 

Comedy: comedy shows. (preferably not on the ABC or
SBS as that would reaffirm their left wing bias and
their inability to allocate ‘our’ tax dollars to
important shows; although media watch and Kerry
O’Brien remain constant targets. The comedy show
glasshouse, admittedly a rip off of the brilliant
English show ‘have i got news for you’, but a better
rip off attempt than, in my opinion, ABC then ten’s
attempt ‘good news week’, was criticized in this way).
Channel ten’s the panel does examine the absurdities
in the media and politics in comedic ways. Cnnnn and
the chaser newspaper and shows are great satires,
which criticize the left and right.

What not to do:
Overreact. Any form of overreaction reaffirms his
position and makes him more popular, like the media
spectacle Pauline Hanson as Catherine Lumby and Margo
Kingston (and others) have demonstrated. 
Be emotional. that’s exactly what he is trying to do,
make everybody emotional: his critics (angry), his
audience (angry), his editor, proprietor and
shareholders (happy). emotional responses creates the
conflict, the audience, the profit.
Bolt’s response to Elspeth’s article picked up on the
bit about emotion, which is different to being
emotional: ‘Probyn, professor of gender studies at
Sydney University and author of Sexy Body, tackled
none of my arguments in her piece, simply wailing:
"Would (Bolt) care that it hurts to be told that your
50-or 60-hour work week is pointless?"’
bolt’s greatest weapon against his critics is also
irony/satire: he couldn'tt criticize the language and
ideas in Elspeth’s article so he goes for her work,
written in the very language he can satirize. And he
does it well: ‘Several questions zap into my thinking
machine as I eat my dinner of connotations, leaving
traces of their rhizomatic passage on my shirt.’  And
in the title’s pun: ‘a mouthful of tripe’.
There is no response to this (literally one could
say); bolt writes his opinion three times a week (on
the online version) so has constant access to redress.

These are just some things that come to mind.
cheers tim



		
___________________________________________________________ 
Win a castle for NYE with your mates and Yahoo! Messenger 
http://uk.messenger.yahoo.com