The phrase ‘only in America’ is one which is deep in possible meanings. In particular it lays itself open to the deconstruction demonstrated in the old Jewish joke about Stalin and Trotsky.
In the joke Stalin is standing on the Lenin mausoleum and announces that he has just received a telegram from Trotsky. He reads it out: “Stalin. You were right and I was wrong. You are the true heir of Lenin. I should apologise. Trotsky”
When Jack Welch, the former GE CEO dubbed Neutron Jack, died at 84 it may have been the passing of one of the ugliest faces in capitalism but not the end of the ugly form of capitalism he represented.
During his career he was lauded as a business genius and leader but behind the hype was a different story. Debt-fuelled growth; massaged GE’s earnings to hide systemic company weaknesses; a ‘rank and yank’ personnel philosophy which led to the systematic firing of 10% of those deemed to be the company’s weakest performers each year; a key division, GE Capital, a basket case which had to be rescued during the GFC and then be quietly put down after credit card and other scandals; and, the final reward for all this – a severance of payment of $US417 million.
Ted Egan has pointed out that the blog got the name of the song We are Australian wrong by adding an s. Now corrected. The blog’s slightly derogatory comment about the Bruce Woodley song also attracted some criticism.
The song’s ubiquity contrasts with the reality that there are still lots of knuckle-dragging Australian flag cape-wearing Aussies who probably deeply distrust many of the sentiments in the lyrics.
It is frequently asserted that if you change the government you change the country. But perhaps the assertion that if you change the government you also change the way the media – particularly the Murdoch media – reports on a government’s policies might be more apposite in Australia.
Just how apposite can be shown by a comparison of the NewsCorp coverage of the Rudd and Morrison stimuli. Some research commissioned from the invaluable media monitoring and analysis service, Mediaverse, vividly demonstrates the phenomenon.
As consumers have been fighting over toilet rolls; marauding busloads of city dwellers pillage local country stores of products; and, the PM says we will get through it all because we are Australians, it is probably a good time to ask the question – what are Australians really like?
Our national myths encompass a large amount of rot – brave, iconoclastic, independent, inheritors of the Anzac tradition and proud singers of that awful song We Are Australian. Sadly the Word program can’t quite capture the little tremor that comes with the singing of the word Australians.
The blog – the author – not the site – has been experiencing some maintenance but will resume operations next week.
In the meantime there is an update on the review of David J. Silverman’s This Land is Their Land about the Wampanoag Indians, the Plymouth Colony and the distorted history Americans celebrate every Thanksgiving.
“Get on with it” erupted loudly from the sitting room this morning as if an after dinner speaker was just taking far, far, far too long to make any point at all.
But it wasn’t caused by an after dinner or breakfast speaker, just someone watching our Prime Minister exuding that faux sincerity and concern that Elmer Gantry personified. The problem apparently was that instead of getting to the point of what new measures were being put in place to deal with the pandemic he was spending time assuring us that Australia would get through it because we are Australians and uttering assorted other similar platitudes.
As the coronavirus infection spreads it is hard not to think that it might be a good idea for one of the recently infected, Peter Dutton, to be isolated on either Christmas or Manus Islands rather than one of the various properties he owns.
The Government is obviously worried that he may have infected colleagues, or the Government offices in Sydney in which he met with them, would not have been visited by a Hazmat clad team from somewhere to sterilise the place.
There may well be a benign side to the Australian Grand Prix’s consistent overstatement of how many people attend the event – the potential number of coronavirus infections will be correspondingly reduced by the multiple by which the Grand Prix exaggerates its attendance.
Italy has been locked down but the Italian Government has given Ferrari’s Formula One team a special exemption to travel from coronavirus-impacted Lombardy to Melbourne and the Grand Prix CEO, Andrew Westacottt, says there won’t be a problem and that there is no need to do what Bahrain has done for its race – hold it without spectators.
The recent death of the 102 year old Michael ‘Mad Mike’ Hoare reminds us of when the last of the mercenaries who fought in the world’s wars were replaced by mega-mercenary companies to which the United States and others have outsourced many military operations.
Over centuries rulers have outsourced wars and one of Hoare’s most famous English predecessors was the 14th century English condottiere John Hawkwood who plied his trade among the interminable wars of the time in Italy. But for those who have never heard of Hawkwood or Mad Mike you need to go to the history books (for instance Frances Stonor Saunders’ Hawkwood) to learn about the former and to the film The Wild Geese for the latter.