Short Hairy Dwarf vs Pipe-Down-Kids

Short Hairy Dwarf said...

"Journalism covers a broad field. It does not simply refer to the profession of reporting."

Okay. "define: journalism" at google:

Definitions of journalism on the Web:

a style of writing for presenting bare facts to describe news events
www.iclasses.org/assets/literature/literary_glossary.cfm

newspapers and magazines collectively

the profession of reporting or photographing or editing news stories for one of the media
wordnet.princeton.edu/perl/webwn

Journalism is a discipline of collecting, verifying, reporting and analyzing information gathered regarding current events, including trends, issues and people. Those who practice journalism are known as journalists.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Journalism

Merriam-Webster:
a: the collection and editing of news for presentation through the media b: the public press c: an academic study concerned with the collection and editing of news or the management of a news medium
2 a: writing designed for publication in a newspaper or magazine b: writing characterized by a direct presentation of facts or description of events without an attempt at interpretation c: writing designed to appeal to current popular taste or public interest

"This course is designed to aid people in developing general writing and analytical skills, which can be applied to a wide range of media related fields."

Quite. Thats not in dispute. But my comments are about Journalism. Not 'media related fields'.

"Furthermore, as an individual keen to pursue a position in the Public relations field, I take offence to your "well informed" analyses that this is a "bullshit" job."

Good luck. By all means. Absolute Power on ABC makes it look like great fun. As for your taking offence, your feelings could have been spared by application of a more careful reading of my comments. It is a "bullshit job" in the sense that I seek employment in Journalism (see above), and only Journalism. Not anything that resembles it vaguely at a distance, or even resembles it up close.

"I don't think that this is particularly constructive in anyway, and instead simply highlights your inability to take this blogging exercise seriously."

On the topic of seriousness, may I refer you to the collected works and quotes of Oscar Wilde, but drawing your particular attention to The Importance of Being Earnest? But as we're speaking personally, for my part I wish it known I am capable of enormous seriousness indeed, sir, and in my turn, I am quite offended that you disparage my great sobriety. Actually, not really.

I thank you for your feedback. May I offer some also? Sometimes it's important to cast about in a spirit of fun for 'one's voice'. Not everything that one commits to expression must be the final word, so to speak. Blogging in the past has taught me the need to have fun with it. May I refer you to sudama.blogspot.com for further illustration.

"Perhaps next time you should not write your weekly blog in a spare 5 minutes before class."

Actually, getting just the write 'brief and casual' tone for that entry took considerably longer than five minutes. More like half an hour. As a greater wit than I said, "I have made this letter longer than usual because I lack the time to make it shorter." (Blaise Pascal)

Don't be fooled by length, or indeed, the lack of it. Brevity is a virtue. It is one that I'm still developing myself, so I sympathise with your own struggles in this area.

Edit: A pleasure sir, but next time play the ball and not the man. (Thanks to baba ganouj for his close reading)
PS I cannot reach your blog Mr. Ganouj, where have you gone?

What have I learnt this week?

That APEC backfired for Howard, and he might have been dumped? Easy in hindsight to say perhaps, but really, it's hardly a revelation. That SocialismTM can be almost as myopic as JWH. Dir. That SecurityTM certainly makes us more fearful, and probably less secure. Obvious. That Insight on SBS continues to deliver the goods?

Again, most of us kinda know all that already don't we?

More interesting news: so-called 'socialised medicine' doesn't just work: It's The Best System. Really the only one worth having if you're a self-respecting 'western' country. Actually we probably already knew that too. I've long felt this in my gut and up-top. But I have never seen it argued so persuasively as Mike Moore has with his recent film SiCKO.

So what I really learned this week that Michael Moore is still a formidable talent despite an ongoing backlash from quarters of the left as well as right. I can't help but feel that lefty backlash is mostly career and attention-envy, but can't be dismissed as easily as rightist attacks, driven as they are by panic and embarrassment.

Whatever. SiCKO is a great film. Choosing to focus on health care as one issue was a great move. By narrowing the focus, Moore avoided the all-over-the-shop feeling that irked slightly about some of his earlier films, and paradoxically made the film feel more 'universal' and comprehensive. Maybe even less partisan. Less of an election-time attack on incumbency (Fahrenheit 911), however worthy that was, and more of the great social essay and an appeal to humanity in all sections of politics, business, academia and 'the people' more broadly.

Health. It really doesn't get more crucial than that does it. A better measure for a government and a society can't really be found. It's pretty much the indicator for everything worthwhile innit? So in betting on only one horse here, Moore has bet on them all. And he's pretty much scooped the pool.

Hard to imagine what sort of defense his targets can mount. Misinformation, their oldest friend, is about all they have left. Oh, entrenched power and political influence, and vast cash deposits and stock value probably aren't bad defenses either.

Moore's film is one brilliant film. But that's all it is. It's one piece of celluloid (or many I guess), it's a show, it's movement and sound. Ultimately, its physically insubstantial when compared to the enormous density and centre of gravity in corrupt 'HMO's'. But if it can move enough bodies and voices and actions, it will slowly erode the rock away.

Then again, the little boy who said "...but...the emperor's indecently exposing himself" just had the one voice.

Bhopal Disaster - BBC - The Yes Men

Excellent

INSIGHTs from SBS

Thank tax for public broadcasting. After pondering protest yesterday, SBS had an Insight installment dealing with my current questions. The discussion of Geoff Cousins action on the Tassie pulp mill was great.

Another highlight was the 'Yes Men' - funny, and right on. They use mainstream media and corporate communications against its wielders, for example fronting on BBC in 2002 as a Dow Chemical representative promising to liquidate Union Carbide to fund justice for the victims at Bhopal. Dow's bungled response (even now it reads like satire) would bring a proud tear to the eye of James C Scott. And it shows that politics and protest don't have to be dour and uninviting processes. Not all the time.

Equally hilarious was the ass-hattery stylings of Mark Vaile, who managed to not even not answer a question, if you know what I mean. Despite my great exertion, his words defied assimilation. His double speak slid of my brain like silken tofu off Teflon. And his distracting impression of a man struggling with a very prickly turd is second only to you-know-who.

Tim Blair gave a good account of himself also, not failing to disappoint those of us who have come to love his defense of the indefensible, and simultaneous assertion of the ridiculous. His true genius is only apparent in the live performance context.

	Is protesting outdated?
	Yes- it has little impact.	32%
	No- forms of protest are just evolving.	64%
	Maybe.	4%

As a bonus, the above poll confirms that many feel how I feel: that activism and protest aren't dead - just evolving. A heartening show, bravo! It seems we can almost just about let the forces of ass-clownery and bad politics squirm their way to defeat. My journalism school colleague Marty probably feels the same.

Damn Socialists

It all started around 3wks ago. I got into 'conversation' with Socialist Alternative. Like mormons at the door, they hectored me with slogans and cant while pretending to listen to my side. I agree in broad brush strokes with much of the general socialist paradigm. And hey, on the left, we all need allies. However strange and awkward they may be.

So in a spirit of political friendship and siblinghood, I continued the weekly conversations. I regret saying I was interested in attending APEC. As an amateur journalist of course. But going on THE RED BUS to Sydney was not what I really had in mind. Could do untold damage to by neutral credibility. They started hassling me for money for bus tickets, and suggested a personal meeting at other locations.

Besides, 14 or so hours of propaganda that I've heard a million times before, in an enclosed space with 'fun-lovin' socialist activists would probably be enough to drive me into the arms of the Liberal Party. At least briefly.

Being a hospitality slave, I can't really afford the time or money to go to APEC anyhow, so Ill just blog events from here, in between dishing up pizzas, lattes and asahi to assorted Fitzroy wankers. Yes, I work at VEGIE BAR, and you may admire my work ever Sunday afternoon, and assorted evenings.

So now, I'm on their watch list probably. No not really. Just that they are annoyed at me, for teasing them with the prospect of becoming a convert, only to awkwardly back out. Thats how they see it. The way I see it, I was open minded enough to want to converse with them. Then things got annoying and one sided (what did I expect?), so I decided to disassociate. They see it as a betrayal I think. They should have met me on my own terms, instead of seeing everything through their own prism.

Their loss. I will continue doing my own best for a better world, and I wish them luck in their own endeavours.

INactivism update

I've been researching the latest on the National Day of Action against bad juju in the tertiary sector. I have not found a thing. Not one measly mention of the protest. Not even the National Union of Students have anything in their media section. Not even socialist sites i checked had a mention. Its all APEC.

Which is fine. sydney.indymedia.org had nothing either, but an interesting story on climate action protesters warming up for APEC by shutting down a 600 watt generator in Latrobe valley. For five hours. Not Bad Guys, Quite an Effort.

Interestingly, I'm fairly sure sydney.indymedia.org had the story before anyone else. But nothing on the so called national day of action (it no longer warrants upper case).

So clearly, I should either feel bad about not supporting an under attended rally on a worthy issue, or I should feel relieved I didn't waste time on a non starter. I feel a bit of both.

Having just set up facebook profileness, I'm seeing more clearly how more may be done through the Medium of the Internet. Specifically through social, or many-to-many sites.

My pa, (nom de web Slim Pickens) is working on just such a thing. Called blogotariat.com. Please check it out. And make him a facebook friend also, cause he's a dude who knows how to have a good internet time. This kind of stuff (many to many, web 2.0 or whatever) is more promising, perhaps more relevant, and (let's face it) much more convenient much of the time, than attending street protests.

Poor old national day of action. Thou will be missed, though I never knew thee to have existed in the first place.

INactivism

Feel bad. Right this minute a bus is leaving the La Trobe Agora bound for the city and the 'National Day of Action' against fees, 'voluntary student unionism' and cuts in tertiary education. Its National Union of Students stuff. Big stuff.
There might even be a few hundred people there. Maybe even a couple thousand.
I won't be one of them. Seven hours of class today. An overdue assignment.
I could skip half of the above for the sake of the protest. But then I feel it won't make much difference anyway. (Can't even rely on Labour completely. They did introduce HECS after all. Maybe HECS wasn't such a bad thing. If I had to choose between more HECS/fees and the total obliteration of lesser populated disciplines, I'd go with HECS)

But maybe thats the reason to fight. The socialists argue that there was a battle under Hawke and Keating, an even bigger battle under Howard and whoever wins the next election, guess what...? More battles.

Decent tertiary education, like any other part of education generally, will always need defending. Now more than ever. So why aren't I there? I mean apart from class and work I need to do? I feel the need to be counted, to be able to say years from now 'well it didn't work, but i was there.' But as things are, I won't be able to say that. I was part of many anti-VSU protests. But that legislation got through in the end...

I guess i'm not sure of the value of demonstrations anymore. Our mass protest against Iraq's invasion didn't stop our government. Folks in the US must feel the same. Doesn't mean it has no use, or is a waste of energy. Or is it?

What other forms of protest are there? What other methods of producing change, or defending the good things in our society? Tempted as I am to think that the blogging community can do it single handedly, I'm not that optimistic.

In his book, The Weapons of the Weak, James C. Scott details one Malaysian peasant village and its politics in the nineteen sixties and seventies. Open peasant rebellion in Malaysia usually resulted in a crushing by authorities. So thats out. And organising a bigger rebellion would just mean more casualties. And anything big enough to succeed at that time was simply impossible to organise. These people didn't have iPhones for pity sake. Still don't.

But the downtrodden rice farmer and field worker has other methods of resistance don't they?
And they don't involve organisation. Here are some items from Scott's list: lying, theft, disimulation, foot-dragging, non-compliance, back-biting, slander and gossip
'White-anting' some call it. They are all behaviours that people usually object to in social situations. Its interesting then that Scott thinks they are the main instruments by which oppressed people can help themselves. Not flag waving. That just gets you shot.
(Great review of Scott's book here)
But I won't be shot for protesting against the Howard government. At worst, I might be photographed and databased somewhere. Maybe, if 'they' have sufficient resources and technology to bother. But no great threat really. Its more that I see Scott's point in making a distinction between different kids of resistance. One the one hand we have 'open, selfless, organised, communal activism that rejects the basis of dominance rather than supports it' to use a common socialist expression. On the other, we have peasants doing all the petty things above when no-ones watching, while on the surface just going along with the system as it is.

True, I'm not a peasant. But for the purposes of relative power and relative wealth in my society, I might as well be. Perhaps I'm one of the better-off peasants. But the point remains. I am not a big player. As a student, minimum wage worker, renter and so on I am an exceedingly small player. Which is why I choose more petty and less symbolic acts of resistance than those advocated by my Marxist colleagues. Such as blogging which covers gossip and slander. Only paying the civil infringement fines that I can afford (none) covers non-compliance and theft. I'm sure there are other ways I'm rocking the system to its core, but I can't recall right now. Maybe I'll get on the 'red bus' to APEC after all.