16

Apr

#prayforboston – balancing despair and hope

There’s something to be said for those stark moments in life when tragedy strikes somewhere far away, or, awfully, disturbingly close to you. It’s the price of the modern age, both the blessing and the curse of the news cycle, that we are informed immediately of the world’s most awful actions, and too often slide past the world’s most beautiful. Re-connecting the moment where I heard about Boston today to the moment I heard about the Connecticut school shootings or the 9/11 attacks serves two purposes. Firstly, it means that my memories surrounding these tragedies are strengthened and remembered. Secondly, perhaps the most oddly, they carve shards of light into pieces of my life that I would’ve otherwise forgotten were it not for the illumination of tragedy.

  • September 12th, 2001. I’m in year nine. 14 years old. I’m watching Third Rock From The Sun on cable television. It’s morning. I always wake up around six and watch at least two sitcoms before I go to school. Third Rock From The Sun is my regular choice at the moment. A banner scrolls across the bottom of the page. Two buildings I’ve never heard of have been attacked in New York. A word I don’t fully understand, terrorism, is mentioned. I turn to channel nine and see the two buildings in flames. There’s been a second explosion, I’m told. I run to my father, who is shaving in the bathroom, and tell him. He doesn’t believe me. Soon my parents and I are round the television. It takes us an hour or so to figure out that it’s not missiles or a bomb inside the building. It’s planes. I go to school and it’s all anyone talks about. The television doesn’t play anything but American news for days afterwards. I’m quite taken with it all, and confused at my own internal reaction. Fascination. Horror. An attempt to become a political expert. I remember a piece of footage from someone on the ground floor, and the tremendous thud it recorded of a human body hitting the ground. People jumped because they couldn’t escape the flames.
  • December 14th, 2012. It’s the morning, again, and I turn on ABC News 24 to hear about the school shooting. My wife isn’t awake when I start to hear the numbers. Twenty children dead. Six staff members. I don’t listen to the details because I don’t really want to know. The image of Obama wiping away a tear is enough. We sit with it for the morning before we shake it off and resume the Summer cleaning of our entire house.
  • April 16th, 2013. Morning. Home alone. Turn on the radio as I’m getting ready for work. I hear a few sparse details in headline news, but the situations barely developed. When I get to work I find myself looking at pictures online. It took me that minute, that time when you’re trying to work out what has happened, to realise that people had actually died. Charitable citizens. Then I went back to work. We all muttered sympathetic noises at the office. What else can we do? (It’s also worth mentioning that 31 people have died in Iraq in the last few days due to a series of car explosions. I won’t remember that three months from now.)

I could make all kinds of political inferences here about terrorism and violence. There’s something about the fact that all three of these incidents are American. I’ve also left out others – the 2006 tsunami, not nearly as clear in my mind. Or the 2011 floods, which take up a separate part of my brain because I was inevitably a part of it all.

Instead, I think it pays to remember that there are other moments that happened today, ones that you don’t hear about:

  • People gave to charity today. A lot of people. Billions of dollars are given every year by all kinds of people all over the world to help each other out.
  • Somewhere, not too far away, are acts of mundane noble courage that are the essence of  life. A son or daughter cares for their elderly parent. A sibling or friend stops their mate driving home drunk. Someone who used to be afraid of themselves stands on a set of scales and beams with pride. These things happen all of the time.
  • I don’t understand why there’s no statistics for it, but a certain number of people urinated because they laughed so hard today. And they do everyday.
  • Friends were reconciled today.
  • Someone found out they beat cancer today.
  • A kid opened up a book for the first time today.
  • You had fun today. Somewhere, somehow – admit it.

I hope we hold on to those moments as much as we hold onto the tragic.

32 days ago Short URL 1 Comment

personal/political

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28

Mar

The Pink Pope and the story you didn’t hear

Just a quick nudge on this chocolate filled Christian holiday.

As you’re chewing down on your Cadbury massed-produced corporate egg, simultaneously somehow indulging in the Pagan festival of fertility and drowning in immense sorrow and regret remembering how Jesus sacrificed himself for all of your wrong-doing, I just wanted to publicly welcome our new Pope  to his throne. (He has a throne, right? Or is it just a hat and a big stick?)

Given that the last Pope resigned due to a sex scandal/stunning lack of relevancy, Pope Francis has a big hat to fill. But in a ceremony worthy of prime time reality television, he ascended to highest honour with ease. One day, a seemingly ordinary cardinal, the next, the leader of one of the oldest Christian churches on Earth.

It’s Harry Potter meets The Bachelor. A group of elderly men go and ‘vote’ behind closed doors. I can only imagine the interior of the conclave is something like the Gryffindor Common Room or the room in Willy Wonka’s factory with the chocolate waterfall, Oompa Loompas included. At the end of each day, smoke billows out of the Vatican chimneys. It’s the only time in the entire process that the Vatican publicly communicates with the outside world. It’s an efficient system, and competes with Twitter’s 140 character limit for its simplicity.  White smoke, new pope. Black smoke, no new pope.

It’s also worth noting, that in the year 2013, the Catholic Church have done an extraordinary good job on keep pesky women out of the entire process. Given that they’re far too likely to mess up the entire thing with their wiles, unpredictable desires and hair, it’s a matter of divine intervention that they be kept out of the lowest orders of priesthood, let alone voting for a leader to the organisation that many choose to devote their entire life to. Besides, who else is going to make the sandwiches?

The absence of women in the Catholic Church should be celebrated as one of the greatest acts of male stubbornness and ignorance in the entire history of the human race. The sheer amount work that goes into keeping women out is extraordinary. So too is the selective deaf-ness the Church shows towards a myriad of issues. Why is homosexuality a sin, but divorce, which is spoken about in the Bible with far more clarity, so rarely touched on by the Church? Why, when Jesus modeled a life of economic poverty rewarded by spiritual richness, does the Church hold on to mountains of cash? We’ve heard all of these questions before. They go on unanswered.

So you can imagine Rome’s feelings when pink smoke was seen billowing in a relentless cloud over the Vatican. Or can you? Was it relief? Liberation? Or was it fear and anxiety, as the new century lept out at them in vivid hi-lights? Or is it too hopeful of me to think that the great majority of men in that room felt, somewhere in their hearts, shame? Did they ask the God they so adore for forgiveness?

The Women’s Ordination Conference, which has campaigned for women in the Church for well over thirty years, organised the protest and were more than vocal about it.

“The Catholic church should be a healthy and vibrant place with equality, with both men and women called to the priesthood. Jesus did not exclude women. Jesus encouraged women and actively sought to include them,” said Miriam Duignan, Communications coordinator of the association ‘Women can be priests’. “So why do the cardinals who are supposed to represent Jesus, make a point of actively excluding women, of telling them to be quiet? And of criminalising anybody that speaks out in favour of women priests?”

(from here)

Happy Easter.

51 days ago Short URL Comments

political

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12

Jun

The slippery slope of truth

A couple of weeks ago now, I settled in to watch Q & A being broadcast from my home town, Toowoomba. The Empire Theatre, which I work in regularly, was shown off in all its glory. I can’t say that I was surprised by what followed: a glimpse into the psyche of the regional Downs. Twitter and Facebook was awash with comments crying outrage and shame. I posted one of them. The many moments of xenophobia, and the sinking feeling that Barnaby Joyce won over the crowd, were two of the main reasons why so many of my lefty-pink-faggy-woman friendly arts friends were pissed off. At least I think it was them. There’s a good chance that immigrants had hacked into their accounts. They’re stealing our jobs, after all, why not our social media?

Perhaps most troubling was the moment where homophobia reared it’s ugly head about two thirds of the way through the show. When the middle-aged man got up and started talking about homosexuality, I mistook him for a gay man. My assumption was quickly reprimanded. He put forth the now famously ridiculed ‘slippery slope’ argument. Won’t allowing gay marriage in turn allow polygamy, bestiality and legalised pedophilia? He was laughed at by the entire crowd and the entire panel. Immediately following this question, a brave young man enquired about the ‘gay panic’ defence. Still legally sound in Queensland (the only state to not get rid of it), people under trial for  physical assault can put forward the ‘gay panic’ defence. ‘He came onto me. I panicked, so I bashed him.’

The national staging of these two questions presents a bizarre dichotomy at the heart of the current gay marriage debate.

In one sense, this episode of Q & A was an absolute triumph for gay rights. It presented those against civil unions as deranged, desperately afraid, and grossly mis-informed. While the homosexual community was presented as insightful, intelligent, and calm. The crowd, which before and after this moment showed itself as immensely conservative (and that’s putting it mildly), universally shunned the ‘slippery slope’ argument. This uplifting but surprising reaction is what drew me to raise an eyebrow. Why was that question allowed to be presented at all?

The media is hounded, now more so than ever, to present ‘two sides’ to every argument. Too often, in the age of democratisation of knowledge, this means a second side is invented. This appears to now be true for gay rights. The overwhelming majority of Australians have little to no issue with civil unions. Gay marriage beyond that is getting increasing support. The change to full acceptance of homosexuality is inevitable. So why are we still being presented with moments like Q & A? Q & A did its journalistic job by presenting two sides of the argument. The only problem was, one side is a myth. The audience and panel’s reaction proves this to be true.

I blame Wikipedia. (Just keep with me for a tick.) The internet’s ability to now have everyone voices heard and presented as equal flies in the face of common sense. Truth is now marginalised in favour of keeping everyone’s say ‘equal’, even when what they’re saying deliberately shuts down others rights to equality. The wikipedia entry for ‘Civil Unions’ is constantly edited to make room for bickering arguments. It’s governed by the desire to present ‘both sides’, even when one is in a gross minority. The same is true for so many points of information where Wikipedia is the first stop for countless students. ‘William Shakespeare’ and his biography, for example, presents the authorship question as a flat playing ground, despite outsiders claims to Shakespeare’s authorship being considered in the scholarly mainstream to be ridiculous. The ‘moon landing’ page includes a section detailing those that have claimed it to be a hoax. Free speech is a beautiful thing. But we have encountered a bizzarre 21st century problem because of it’s ramifications in an increasingly online world. Fringe discussions and opinions are being brought into the mainstream. A discussion of ideas based on meritocracy and genuine expertise is being dangerously eroded.

If there are two sides to this argument, than they need to be reflective of the current zeitgeist: right and wrong. Toowoomba’s Q and A, consciously or not, did just this. In a live moment, we caught the inherently dangerous notion that all truths are potentially untrue. When we look up into the sky, most of us see it as blue. As true as this is for most people, most people also accept that the past happened. We landed on the moon. Shakespeare wrote Shakespeare. Most people also accept that the future will happen. Gay rights are important, and should be equal, in every sense to those enjoyed by heterosexuals. Arguments to the contrary should be placed where they belong: the fringe. If we don’t do this, we undermine the notion of truth, and journalism will stand on thin air.

340 days ago Short URL 1 Comment

political

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16

May

A Morning in May at Musgrave Park

From what I can gather from media sources, this morning over thirty people were arrested at Brisbane’s Musgrave Park after refusing to leave the area. A few weeks ago, the organisers of the upcoming annual Greek Festival asked for the Aboriginal Tent Embassy that occupies Musgrave Park to be emptied for the duration of the event. Brisbane City Council then issued that request to the indigenous group occupying the embassy. This request caused much distress, and amounted in a large protest, climaxing today. 200 police officers turned up at Musgrave Park this morning, and have since been fighting a losing battle to keep things calm and to evict the protestors. The protestors have since apparently left the park. As I type, they are currently marching through the CBD. Up until this morning, the protesters had been peaceful.

While police were present at the site before dawn, the Lord Mayor Graham Quirk didn’t make an appearance or release an official statement until approximately 11am. He was notably absent from the fiery comments that raged on Twitter, as was Premier Campbell Newman. Brisbane City Council released a statement on Facebook. Here’s an extract:

Council has been engaged in ongoing talks with the protest group, and has been understanding of the groups wishes to protest since they began on March 12 2012 and unfortunately the protestors have refused Council’s offer to relocate to another area.

Council has been supportive of the group throughout the demonstration period by allowing the protestors to express their views. However, with the group refusing to nominate an end date for the protest, it has been determined it is time for them to move on so the park can be used by all communities in Brisbane.

The notion of ‘nominating an end date’ for one’s protest represents the most profound lack of understanding of this complex issue, and displays the Council’s fantastic ignorance of the matter at hand. The Council’s language here is patronising (‘you’ve had your say now go somewhere else’), and just plain incorrect (the ‘and’ in the first sentence should be a ‘but’). A protest of this nature doesn’t end. It will go on until a solution is reached. Moving the protest to somewhere less public is not a solution. It’s censorship, and it’s wrong.

When Lord Mayor Graham Quirk did appear at the site, his statement had similar slips into the bizzarre. While making continuous offers to move the protest, and diplomatically stating that this incident is not indicative of Brisbane’s indigenous relationships overall, he went on to comment on the protestors specifically:

They are professional protesters, they are well known. And I just say this. I do not want the people of Brisbane to look at what has happened today and to view this as reflecting on the broader indigenous community in Brisbane,” he said.

“It does not. We are dealing with professional protesters and it is time that they moved on.”

He declined to elaborate on them.

“I think they are well known, they have made media commentary in the past, they have a record of involvement and I will leave it at that.”

Read more: http://www.brisbanetimes.com.au/queensland/police-evict-protesters-from-brisbane-tent-embassy-20120516-1ypnq.html#ixzz1v01zwz2B

Cr Quirk’s comments here are enigmatic, ill-timed, and are in danger of being mis con-strewed. Cr Quirk is flirting dangerously with racism. Is he saying that he’s fine and dandy with indigenous people, just not the ones that protest for their rights?

The matter’s now moved beyond a sensible discourse. With State Parliament opening today, protestors now look to Parliament House.

Blog comment boards and Facebook posts have inevitably lit up with their fair share of complete numb-skulled comments. Underlying a lot of those opposed to the protests seems to be a feeling that white Australians have somehow been ripped off. The law is the law, and no person should be allowed to squat on public land. Just because they’re indigenous, some people ask, does that mean they’re exempt from the law?

No. They’re not. But sometimes the law is wrong. And when we believe laws are wrong in this country, we have the human right to peacefully protest in a public area. And here, the law is wrong. When a place occupies as much spiritual and historical significane as Musgrave Park does, we should respect that sensitivity. We are walking in their church. We need to display sensitivity towards that. We are guests. Making enigmatic and unclear statements on the back of the deployment of two hundred police is not the ideal way to display that sensitivity. It’s an act of monstrous stupidity.

The year is 2012. This morning, police were deployed to cease a protest conducted by indigenous people on public land. We have so far to go. And based on this morning’s performance, in a matter that required urgent and delicate diplomacy, Cr. Graham Quirk behaved with the table manners of a petulant two year old. It is a crime against decency and appeals to the lowest and most violent common denominator. There should be an inquiry into what happend (and what is still happening) today, but it won’t occur. Within a week, this will be forgotten in the mainstream media cycle, and Cr. Quirk can go back to thinking he has a good relationship with indigenous elders.

Who are we, as Australians, that we let this happen? Every year we increase our patriotism around our fallen diggers. We pay homage to our history. Why then are we so keen to forget our other history, where thousands were killed, raped and abandoned? Our response is so couched in denial that we revert to the political discourse of children. We fight our battles with policemen and clinical bureaucracy. As a country, some of us have fought so hard to prove that we are above this. That we are committed to moving forward. Those of us like Cr. Graham Quirk seem destined to keep us rooted in our colonial pasts, while refusing to acknowledge that that colonialism still exists, and Australia wrestles with it daily. One day, we will overcome it, but it is already too late.

367 days ago Short URL 1 Comment

political

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