I’m feeling my way with this one, so I’d especially appreciate your feedback on it, folks. I haven’t managed to pay as much attention to politics as I would have liked this week, so there’s only two fairly small items here:
Alan Joyce and Qantas
If you’ve been in Australia this week, you can hardly have missed this story. I don’t have much to add that hasn’t been said better by others – in particular, I’d like to point you at Heathen Scripture’s take on this which captures all the salient points for my liking.
I also have a modest addition of my own to the growing number of kicking Alan Joyce in the Ego rants that are appearing all over the net – you can read that here.
Gruen Planet
This week’s Gruen Planet was interesting mostly for what it didn’t say.
In the Qantas story, nothing much of substance was said (other than by Russell Howcroft), but my oh my, was it said at length. And isn’t it interesting how absolutely none of the panellists even for a second questioned Alan Joyce’s story – instead, it was all about how well he’d spun things. Which, frankly, seems a dubious enough idea to me to make me doubt all these so-called experts’ credentials. For people who present themselves as incisive and insightful critics of media, it doesn’t seem that they apply much of that critical thought to news stories, even when commenting on them on national television.
Moving on to the Katy Perry – excuse me, I mean the Occupy Wall Street story – once again, little of any substance was said. Instead, the panel concentrated on why Katy Perry would be there. Apparently none of them, even “respected social critic” Rebecca Huntley or “comedian” Wil Anderson, are aware that Perry’s husband, Russell Brand, is an activist and social critic in addition to his own career as a comedian – and that Perry’s presence there might not mean anything beyond spending time with her man. Alternately, perhaps she believes in the same causes as Brand, and with equal fervour. For the record, I don’t know why Perry was there either, but I have at least avoided making any sexist jokes about it, which puts me ahead of at least one holder of PhD in Gender Studies.
The Gruen Planet’s website proudly proclaims “The World Spins – We Don’t”. This week, that slogan seems about as accurate as Fox News’ “Fair and Balanced”.