Quiet, You're Ruining Everything

So the Catholic church has its catechism in a twist because they don't like the subject matter of The Da Vinci Code. So a book (and now a film of the book) comes out, with a story that seems to go against their belief system. They call it blasphemous and hurtful. They claim that it’s part of a strategy to undermine church teachings.

I don’t know what’s more hilarious – the idea of a fairly pedestrian “public transport book” being some big threat to the vast empire of the Christian faith; or the fact that by spending so much time and energy denouncing it, they’re actually giving it more free publicity.

There are even those who claim that the book and the film seek to exploit the public’s distrust of the Roman Catholic Church in the aftermath of the many scandals world-wide involving sexual abuse by members of the clergy. Yeah, because that whole thing would have just blown over completely by now if Dan Brown hadn’t put pen to paper, right?

But what really gets me about this whole discussion is that it’s solely about ideas, and not about proof. The people within the Catholic church who are working night and day trying to debunk Brown’s work are doing so because they think The Da Vinci Code is a direct attack against the foundation of the Christian faith. In the real world, however, pretty much everyone else knows that Dan Brown’s book is proof of nothing, and I don’t think a single person who read it would think more deeply about it than they would The Grinch Who Stole Christmas. And trying to “debunk” this book/film anyway would be like decrying Star Wars for its lack of realism.

This is where it starts to get silly – when the Christians start thinking they need to defend Christianity against a flash-in-the-pan pulp novelist. Try explaining to them that no matter how many copies of The Da Vinci Code Dan Brown sells, the Bible will always sell more. I asked a Catholic friend of mine why they refused to read DVC. They told me that it deeply offended them as a Catholic. When I’d finished slapping them around, I told them to Google the following search terms: Darfur, Abu Graib, North Korean orphans, Sudan, and about a dozen other cases of human suffering and pain which should be offending their Catholic sensibilities long before this book should merit their attention.

But in response to The Da Vinci Code, I have an idea to put to all the Christians out there. You know what you should be doing? To really show us all how great your religion is once and for all, you should be doing absolutely NOTHING. That's right - you should be sitting there, smiling serenely while the juggernaut of pop-culture rolls on. You see, the rest of us expect Christian-folk to make a fuss any time something comes out that even remotely references a religious theme. I mean, let’s face it - you’d picket Neil Diamond for saying “Good Lord”.

But just imagine for a bliss-soaked moment that Da Vinci Code came out, and all the Christians were doing absolutely nothing. We’d all freak out, and wonder what you were all so quietly confident about. Or maybe we’d just start to respect you and your beliefs a little more, because you’d started to show some respect for ours. But no –you just have to jump up and down and try to tell us we’re going to hell for watching a movie or reading a book that you don’t happen to agree with.

And that’s why the Catholic Church’s popularity is really waning - because there's nothing people hate more than a cry-baby, and to be brutally honest here Christians: if your ideologies aren't strong enough to stand up against a Tom Hanks film, then you've got far worse problems than you think the rest of us have (Hey, “The ‘Burbs” challenged my ideals too, but I still believe in affordable non-psychotic housing).

Here's another suggestion for you, just while we’re talking – try having some faith. Is your faith so shallow that you don't think it can withstand the battering of a work of fiction? So you don't believe the events in The Da Vinci Code are true. You read the story, you sat through the whole movie, and you think it’s bollocks. WELL DONE - that may have been the first independent decision you ever made in your life. See how this book/film has just done you a big favour? It presented a situation that challenged you, and you made a decision, all of your own. You should be proud of yourself.

Now shut the fuck up and let me watch the God-damned movie

Advertising is Dumb

It’s often said that no-one ever went broke by underestimating the intelligence of the public, but lately our friends in the advertising industry have really been lowering the bar. Examples are legion, but I offer just two for your consideration.

Not too long ago Holden ran an ad for their Rodeo Utes. The ad features a late 30s/early 40s couple in bed. The woman puts down a magazine and asks “Hon, what’s your ultimate fantasy?” The man then describes his ultimate fantasy as, you guessed it, a new Rodeo, in which he blasts around some generic moonscape.

Here’s where it gets weird. In the original cut of this ad, the woman asks him “is that all?” and he defensively says “yes” while a cut back to his fantasy world shows there’s an additional element to his fantasy: Suzie Wilks. Which just goes to show that when planning your ad campaign, make sure you don’t blow all your money on expensive-looking moonscapes leaving no money for half-decent celebrity stunt-casting. C’mon, Suzie Wilks?

But recently Holden have updated and re-released the ad to promote a sale on this particular Ute. Now, the defensive denial has been replaced with this:

Woman: Is that all?

Man: No, I want it all for just $14,990 excluding dealer delivery and government charges.

See, this is where I have a problem. Surely in your ultimate fantasy, you don’t have to pay for the car of your dreams? Sure, we’re talking about someone whose wildest flights of imagination don’t get past a new car and the chick from Room for Improvement, but even then, he couldn’t go that tiny bit further and imagine not having to pay market value plus service fees and statutory and on-road costs?

To be absolutely clear: this man is fantasising about receiving a moderate discount on a product, and in the unfettered theatre of his mind he can’t even imagine not paying tax and rego. That’s like him saying “actually, my ultimate fantasy is seducing Audrey Tautou and then it turns out it’s not as good as I thought it would be and we both go away a bit disappointed.” See, marketeers, people might fantasise about owning a new Holden, but they do not fantasise about paying for it, any more than a “winning the lottery” fantasy is made even better by imagining spending good money on the lottery ticket. I’m sorry to break this to you, but the ‘ultimate’ price for something is free. (Actually, the ultimate price for something is probably “free with heaps of extra stuff thrown in” but let’s not split hairs).

There’s something a bit grubby about the whole thing though. High-performance utes are the playthings of the “Cub” (Cashed-Up Bogan) demographic, an important subset of the “aspirational” suburban populace so beloved of retailers and politicians. Brand marketers have been very conscious indeed of the Cubs as a lucrative market segment, because they have both money and the “aspirational” attitude that, properly harnessed, is a marketing dream. Could it be that Holden is subtly trying to make paying for things something to aspire to in itself?

No, probably not, now I think about it. Sorry.

Sometimes, though, the stupidity of advertising leaps off the screen and into your hand. Recently Lynx deodorant (whose advertising Christian has spoken about on this page before) released a rather clever ad featuring Ben Affleck and a joke involving one of those simple metal ‘clickers’ you use to count stuff.

So far, so good. Getting off the train at Richmond Station last Saturday night, a group of young women in Lynx t-shirts were handing out clickers to the alighting footy crowd. Real, honest-to-God, working clickers with metal casing and reset dial. Even weirder, they were handing everyone two of them per person. So my wife and I now own four clickers, which is roughly four more than I have or ever will have use for. As promotions go it’s sort of cute, but what the hell did it cost? Is the enormous outlay of giving passers-by two of the same thing that aren’t going to be useful anyway seriously going to translate into wildly increased Lynx sales?

Well, will owning a Lynx-emblazoned clicker and a back-up Lynx-emblazoned clicker make me any more likely to buy this product? No. However, if they make it smell the same, but add in an anti-perspirant, I would. Simple. Instead of shoving useless chunks of metal in my hand, maybe they should’ve just asked me. Ah, but that would mean assuming I’ve got some informed idea of what I want, rather than just being swayed by colour and movement. Call me difficult, but I’m not all that keen on letting Ben Affleck determine what I put under my armpits.

Now if you’ll excuse me, I’m going back to daydreaming about owning my very own Carribean island. Especially the bit where I have to pay back-dated land tax. Ahhh…

The Death Of Punk

I have a confession to make. I don’t hate Australian Idol, at least not as much as I think I should. Up until now, Idol has been fairly harmless, given that all it does is peddle shiny-looking pop to a vast, surprisingly bitchy constituency of thirteen-year-olds. And anything that helps young artists trying to make it in a tough and unforgiving industry should probably be supported, however dismal and bland the results.

But when Idol commits crimes against musical decency, it’s time to speak up. We all need to face the facts: as of 2005, Punk is finally dead, and while the likes of Good Charlotte and Avril Levigne remain the key culprits, Lee Harding is the biggest vulture feeding off its carcass.

Harding seemed unobjectionable enough when he appeared on Idol as a bouncy, punk-lite crowd pleaser doing the same goddamn thing each week (oh, wait, I forgot his rendition of Michael Jackson’s “Ben.” Oh look, I just forgot it again). His remorselessly cheery demeanour and oh-so-outrageously colourful hair came across as more Willy Wonka than Henry Rollins, but the audiences and the judges lapped it up. Except of course for the time he covered a song directly criticising George W. Bush and then immediately disavowed the song’s politics, giving me the horrible, horrible feeling of agreeing with Mark Holden as he paid out on him for singing a political song he didn’t himself agree (or disagree) with. Holden is clearly insane, but he’s absolutely right about this. You can’t sing something overtly political just because you like the music. Can you imagine, say, Joan Baez finishing a gig with “of course I don’t believe any of what I just said folks- now, bomb Vietnam! Bomb it I say! Goodnight Woodstock!”.

And now, predictably, Lee Harding has become the latest Idol stablemate to release an album (“What’s Wrong With This Picture”, an album title that invites a long and detailed answer). You’ll be pleased to know that the LP format really gives him a chance to flex his muscle and display his range, which spans the huge gap between “shameless Blink-182 knock-off” to “vaguely creepy Blink-182 knock-off.” His first single, the artlessly Seussian “Wasabi” supposedly charted strongly even though it demonstrates a complete failure to understand lyric writing, women or Japanese condiments:

She's just like wasabi
Looks like a barbie
Yeah she's too hot for me
She's like a tsunami
Can wipe out an army
With a blink of an eye, she can part the red sea

Yeah, Lee, every woman longs to be compared to a natural disaster. Gentlemen, write this down: liken a girl to a wall of water carving a swathe of destruction through the armed forces and she’ll be like putty in your hands. Oh and implying she’s at least as powerful as Moses is a winner to, apparently.

Harding goes on to describe his love interest as a jet-setting, champagne-sipping, bacon-eschewing vegan, who only ever wants “to do it with me.” Why he chose to make this character rich is unclear until you realise that Harding’s rhyming dictionary evidently started to run out around “Ferrari” and “Armani.” And by the time he starts alluding to her friendship with the Governor of California (“hangs out with Arnie”) and rhymes “Niagra” and “Viagra,” we are well and truly past the point of heeding Lee’s gasping, rattly pleas for mercy as we take turns standing on his throat.

Maybe it’s none of my clean-cut, not-even-remotely-punk business, but this is what passes for punk nowdays? We’re a long way from the Sex Pistols or Dead Kennedys when punk has become about trying to impress some girl using perky forced rhymes and frequent costume changes. Even when Harding tries to be explicit about his hardcore, gloriously self-destructive lifestyle it doesn’t work:

Let's not go to work
Let's just tell the boss he's a jerk
One day off won't hurt
Everybody needs to shirk
Let's just stay in bed
Eatin' Cheerios, getting stoned instead
Why get so upset?
Why don't we just stay in bed?

There’s various bong references through the song and even- heavens!- the f-word. Sure, it’s frightfully un-Idol to sing about drugs, but “lets sleep in and pull cones and eat Cheerios” is light years away from “Hey Nancy, let’s shoot up enough smack to kill a donkey and then cut ourselves up for a bit.” Lyrics about staying up until 4am to watch re-runs? The Carpenters rocked harder than that, dude. And “It’s twelve o’clock and I haven’t had my coffee yet” is hardly a searing evocation of angst-ridden alienation at the margins of society. Of course I’m not saying you have to live a life of aimless debauchery or terrible deprivation to be taken seriously; plenty of bands don’t. But did, say, Fugazi write songs about taking tea and scones in the rotunda? Not as far as I recall, no.

Sadly, “crossover toy” seems to be our biggest musical export these days. There seems to be some arcane formula being finessed by record company A&R folks: “Take a pop base but chuck in maybe 24% hard rock? Hmmm… needs to rock out by maybe another 2.5 points- no, wait, a bit less or we’ll scare the tweens. No, now it’s too dance, just pull it back 1.3% or we’ll lose the skaters. And… got it! Somebody book a slot on Sunrise!” The result is bands like Rogue Traders who seem earnest but sound like they were crapped out by a focus group. Getting excited by their songs is like trying to rock out to a Fanta commercial. My fiance summed up Rogue Traders best: “this is what someone thinks a rock band sounds like”.

You might think none of this stuff matters. If this is what The Kids want to listen to these days, what of it? If Lee Harding can sell records without having any recognisable street cred, more power to him, right? After all, cynically mass-produced musical garbage is nothing new: look at the seemingly endless parade of non-threatening, cardigan-wearing male vocal groups in the 50s. But when the apparatuses of the music industry co-opt the very notion of rebellion against mass-produced schlock, it’s gone too far. The whole point of punk was that it was supposed to be fearlessly anti-commercial and anti-conformist, and yet here we have non-conformity crafted by Sony BMG executives and served up in as demographic-conscious way imaginable. And when that happens, we- and by ‘we’ here I mean anyone who cares about music with a bit of grunt and integrity to it, not necessarily punk (I’m actually not really into punk myself)- have lost something important. When music that bucks the system itself gets taken up into the system, what’s left?

And this matters because the music industry sometimes reaches a point of stasis where it needs a short, sharp shock from outside that system to kick start it. I still remember the first time I heard “Smells Like Teen Spirit.” [Cue Wonder Years flashback]. The year was 1991, I was a gawky, uncoordinated thirteen-year-old with a terrible haircut, and FM radio was dominated by soulless hair-metal (Anyone remember Extreme? Scorpions? Def Leppard?) and such immortal dance acts as Kris Kross, Technotronic, KLF and Guru Josh (full marks for chutzpah, Mr. Josh, but boldly declaring “Nineteen Nineties: time for the Guru” turned out to be a bit premature). Oh and I think that band Sophie Lee was in was around then too. It should tell you everything you need to know about that awful musical epoch that the only piece of music to survive it in popular consciousness was Snap’s “I’ve Got The Power” and that’s only because advertisers won’t let it die.

Then suddenly I was watching TV and there was this… this thing. It was raw and uncompromising and I was utterly terrified. Here was a guy in a tatty jumper and completely non-permed hair screetching that “with the lights out it’s less dangerous,” while a high school gym full of people flung themselves around in front of tattooed cheerleaders. This was a sound that hadn’t been processed to sterile, lifeless perfection in a studio in LA; in fact it sounded as if it hadn’t been processed at all. This was the resentful growl of a fuzz-boxed Fender Mustang being punished in a suburban garage. There was no noodley show-off guitar solo deploying rapid trills for the sake of speed rather than music, just a tortured, whining melody line that you could play on one finger. Someone was doing this in their garage, and you could do it too. It was frightening and captivating and nothing could ever- EVER- be the same again. It’s easy to exaggerate from this distance but there is no question that Nirvana changed music irrevocably, rescuing it from the slick, pointless cul de sac in which it had found itself.

I guess my point here is that rock has always been a music of rebellion. At its heart has always been a deep antipathy to the corporate structures that inevitably come to control and overwhelm it. If its power and honesty is to survive its own success it needs people who are going to challenge us, to shock us, to scare us. And that ain’t you, Lee.

A Conspiracy of One

The Australian Open is upon us again, which for me means another two weeks of deeply unpatriotic cheering for whoever is playing Lleyton Hewitt. I don’t care if it makes me un-Australian, I don’t want to know what a lovely guy he is off-court, I want that nasty, childish punk to lose and lose heartily. Seriously, if Hewitt drew Josef Stalin playing with a racket made of soviet peasants I still couldn’t cheer for Lleyton. In fairness, extensive discussions with friends and co-workers have revealed that I appear to be the only person on the planet who thinks Kim Clijsters is cute, so my opinions on this topic may be a bit biased.

The other interesting thing about this summer’s tennis season is that Jelena Dokic is back in town. This means two things: grumpy, defensive post-match press conferences, and hilarious TV news clip packages showcasing the batshit-cazy antics of her father Damir. Now, it’s alarming how much of Occassional Outburst’s time has been spent reporting the rantings of world-class nutjobs, but when Damir Dokic threatens kidnap, murder and thermonuclear war, you better listen and listen good:

Damir Dokic says he is seeking to kidnap his estranged daughter Jelena, and has threatened to kill an Australian as revenge for her returning to the country.
[…]
Under her father's guidance, Jelena Dokic quit Australia for Serbia in 2001, and has only just returned to the Australian fold after becoming estranged from Damir.

"Australia with the help of Croatia and the Vatican have brainwashed my daughter," Damir told Serbian daily Kurir.

"I have thought about dropping a nuclear bomb on Sydney since Jelena lost in the first round this week, for which Australia is to blame.

"I have even thought about killing an Australian in revenge, but I wouldn't gain anything from it."

Damir has sought help from Serbian politicians, including an accused war criminal, in kidnapping Jelena.

"Only two were ready to help," Damir said.

"One of them however, Vojislav Seselj, is waiting to be tried at the International War Crimes Tribunal in the Hague."

So just so we’re clear about this: Australia, Croatia and the Vatican have conspired to brainwash Jelena Dokic into playing tennis for Australia. That’d be an interesting meeting:

POPE: So, Foreign Minister Downer, is all in readiness?

DOWNER: Yes, Your Holiness. We have a special RAAF jet waiting to spirit Jelena back to Australia as soon as the mind control ray being fired from Croatia is in operation. Is that ready, Mr. Croatian President or whatever you guys have?

CROATIAN PRESIDENT: Everything is set. You have my personal guarantee as President or whatever we have in Croatia.

DOWNER: Excellent. Now the glory of Australian women's tennis will be restored!

CROATIAN PRESIDENT: And the glory of Serbian women's tennis will be significantly reduced!

POPE: And the Vatican will... hang on, why *are* we in on this?

DOWNER: To distract people from all that stuff with the priests and the little kiddies?

POPE: Right, right. Carry on then.

“Oh, that Damir!” we all declare, like the closing line of some second-rate 80s sitcom, “He sure is crazy!” Which points to a curious feature of the Australian culture- we just don’t buy into conspiracy theories. I’ve always wondered why that is. Part of it is our deep skepticism of anything too earnest (which is why we’ll never have a Pledge of Allegiance, for instance), but in large measure I suspect it’s that we understand that Australians just couldn’t be arsed being involved in something as taxing as a conspiracy. If there was a plot to shoot an Australian PM Dallas-style it’d fail because the assassins couldn't be stuffed lugging the esky all the way up to the third floor of the Book Depository. Even where there is evidence of shady government doings-Children Overboard, the AWB’s dealings with Saddam Hussein, the case for war in Iraq- we can’t be bothered trying to keep up with it. "Politicians involved in a complex web of lies and intrigue? That sounds far too involved to care about. I’m sure someone will sort it out though, perhaps our politicians. Now if you'll excuse me, I'm missing Eddie McGuire's Reassuringly Inoffensive Hour."

Maybe, too, it’s a symptom of our infamous Tall Poppy Syndrome. People like to believe in conspiracy theories because it makes them feel special- "I know how things REALLY work, the rest of you can’t see it and therefore aren’t as smart or savvy as me." We don't care for that sort of arrogance in Australia unless you're a fast bowler or a Labor PM. Just having read books that don’t have a caricature of Max Walker on the cover makes you suspiciously high-falutin’, let alone claiming insight into the sinister machinations of the World Government.

Mostly, though, it’s that deep down, we know that nothing in Australia would be worth the effort of mounting a full-blown conspiracy over. Who, for instance, could have been bothered murdering Harold Holt? Again, it takes a special kind of egomania to believe that you’re important enough for the government, the freemasons, the Rothschilds, the Reptilians and the Greys to want to persecute you. There's a body of opinion on the internet that claims the Port Arthur massacre was orchestrated by the government in order to provide a pretext for taking away people's guns. Needless to say, the people perpetuating this deeply offensive codswallop are aligned with the more extreme right elements of the gun owning community. Can you seriously imagine any Australian government thinking "hmmm, several thousand rabbit shooters with .22s are a real threat to our plans for unchecked overlordship; we'd better find some painfully circuitous way to disarm them"? Ditto the theory that the Cronulla Riots were engineered in order to legimate giving the police greater power- what government ever lost an election by increasing police powers and talking tough on law and order, pretext or not?

Still, if you think Damir Dokic is crazy, let me blow your mind by telling you that in reality, we’re the crazy ones:

Damir said it was Australia, rather than him, that was mentally suspect.
"Australia is a spoiled nation," Damir said.

"They can expect my revenge.

"I'm not crazy when I say this, they are the crazy ones who give you hot sausages before the match when it's 40 degrees celsius outside."

Well, THAT'S definitive then. Our frequent sausage sizzles are clearly evidence of spoiled insanity. Who will put a stop to this nightmare of inappropriate pre-match snacks and tri-lateral brainwashing that is Australia? Who? WHO??

Tots of Hate

I was going to write a rant about the Howard Government’s sickening new workplace relations policy (“WorkChoices,” so named because the more accurate “Blow Me, Peasant” tested poorly with focus groups), or maybe the insane new counterterrorism laws which, by calling them “insane,” I’ve probably already violated. But I just can’t. I’m just so exhausted from being angry at Howard these past nine years that I can’t bear the thought of writing another whole spiel about how awful the whole thing is. Perhaps that’s their plan: make us so blind with rage that we get fed up with being fed up and go and do something else, leaving them to do whatever the hell they want.

Well, it’s worked. Instead of talking about what we might euphemistically call “the complete and utter destruction of Australian society,” I’m going to jump on the bandwagon of whaling on two little girls ten thousand miles away.

Not just any little girls, mind, we’re talking evil, bile-spewing, make those ghost girls in The Shining look positively delightful ones.

Prussian Blue are a teenybopper dance act out of Southern California, made up of thirteen year old twin sisters Lamb and Lynx Gaede. I’ve already given you several reasons to hate them already right there, but you should also be aware that they’re white supremacists whose poppy dance songs feature lyrics imploring the “Aryan Man” to “turn that rage to hate.” They already have one album out (with tracks like “Sacrifice” about Rudolf Hess and various songs about Viking mythology), have a music video doing the rounds and attract a crowd wherever they play. Oh, you’ll probably be noticing about now that all your hair just fell out a moment ago, so you might want to go grab a broom or something.

Now, revered US columnist Seanbaby has said pretty much everything there is to say that’s even remotely funny about this, much better than I ever could, so I’ll just add the minor comment that if turning your children into spiteful little bags of hatred is not a crime, calling them “Lamb” and Lynx” definitely should be.

“Mary-Hate and Ashley” quips aside, this is basically a very sad story of what I’d be perfectly comfortable describing as child abuse. Now, when your dad literally brands cows with swastikas all day you’re probably not playing with a great hand to begin with, but these parents seem to have gone out of their way to screw up their daughters’ lives. After a blast of negative publicity, the girls have had to go into hiding, one more thing they can thank mum and dad for when they eventually grow up and realize their parents are dipshits. Because they will one day, but they still won’t be able to put this stuff behind them. You can’t just laugh this sort of youthful embarrassment off. This won’t be like Mrs Spears pulling out old tapes of Britney on the Mouseketeers, or me pulling out the video of the time I was on Sale of the Century: “Hey Lynx, isn’t that you and your sister giving the Nazi salute while singing a song of praise about the Deputy Fuhrer? Awwww, look at your adorable braces! That’s so cute and- hang on… that’s awful!! This job interview is over!!!” Sure, Patty Hearst has managed to get her life back together, but face it, when you saw the words “Patty Hearst” just then, you thought “Newspaper heiress running around with a black beret and a machine gun,” not “Juror Number Eight in John Water’s Serial Mom.”

But what really caught my attention is a comment about some of the venues they play:

The 13-year-old blondes, LAMB and LYNX, call themselves a "white power" band and regularly perform for the neo-Nazi National Alliance at Holocaust denial camps.

Hang on, what? Perhaps I’m missing something critical here, possibly because I’m not a wilfully ignorant delusional bigot, but how do you hold a camp based around something having not occurred? Even if you can perform the grotesque mental contortions necessary to ignore every single piece of evidence (and as regular readers will know, people are awfully good at that), why would you then go to an event premised on the idea that that didn’t happen? Atheists don't go to Atheist Church and sing hymns about God not existing, do they? Do Nonhistory buffs stage elaborate non-recreations of battles that never happened?

This seems to be a hallmark of the American religious right. These people have been known to hold Abstinence Rallies. Freakin' Abstinence Rallies. How the hell do you come together to celebrate what’s not occurring? “Hello West Redwood! Are you ready to not have sex?” Have a rally, by all means, but taking time out from your busy not-having-sex schedule to not have sex with a whole bunch of people all at once makes no sense whatsoever.

Likewise, what do they do at Holocaust Denial Camp? Sit around the campfire singing songs about how nothing bad happened to Jews, gypsies and homosexuals in Europe in the Forties? Actually, scratch that. I don't want to make holocaust deniers look like harmless, fun-loving eccentrics. They're not. They are the ultimate, terrifying example of the way humans can subjugate their most basic epistemic capacities to hatred, and make themselves believe they're not even doing it.

Still, one thing I have to say for America: at the same time as Prussian Blue are being rolled out to draw small crowds of nutjobs to David Duke’s events, Rosa Parks got to lie in state in the Capitol. So maybe they’ll be strong enough to withstand “Back’n’da’Kitchen,” a pair of adorable young scamps who sing about disempowering women, and dreamy boy-band “NTSemITE!”

Nature's Fury vs. Famous People

In the weeks and months ahead, the US will be consumed with the task of finding and apportioning blame for the grotesque failures of the Hurricane Katrina rescue operations. Even as the dead are buried and the survivors begin to scrape together new and hopelessly uncertain lives, politicians, experts and media pundits will round on a wide range suspects. Bush, the Federal Emergency Management Agency, the Governors of Louisiana and Mississippi, New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin, all will be cited as chief architects of the colossal failure that cost tens of thousands of lives. With news that Bush has recalled FEMA head Michael Brown, this process is clearly already well underway.

The Fake McCoys, whatever our merits as comedians, are not as highly skilled in the fields of disaster relief, logistics and meteorology as is often assumed, so we won’t be offering any verdicts here. For all we know, using the pretext of national tragedy to fight a morally repugnant, open-ended war of conquest built on bald-faced lies and done purely to line the pockets of your petro-buddies might be a perfectly sensible way to apportion your national resources. And just because a massive hurricane wiping out New Orleans with massive loss of life has been a standard textbook scenario in disaster management studies for some decades, that doesn’t mean amateurs like ourselves can draw any conclusions about how ready the agencies supposed to stop that sort of thing could reasonably be expected to be.

So we aren’t qualified to demand, for instance, that Bush should be impeached for his breathtaking criminal incompetence, but we ARE qualified to pass judgement on Sean Penn:

"Movie star and political activist Penn, 45, was in the collapsing city to aid stranded victims of flooding sparked by Hurricane Katrina, but the small boat he was piloting to launch a rescue attempt sprang a leak.

"The outspoken actor had planned to rescue children waylaid by the deadly waters, but apparently forgot to plug a hole in the bottom of the vessel, which began taking water within seconds of its launch.

"When the boat's motor failed to start, those aboard were forced to use paddles to propel themselves down the flooded New Orleans street.

"Asked what he had hoped to achieve in the waterlogged city, the actor replied: 'Whatever I can do to help.'

"But with the boat loaded with members of the Oscar-winner's entourage, including his personal photographer, one bystander taunted: 'How are you going to get any people in that thing?'"

Nice, Sean, nice. So selfless was this gesture of help that you took along your personal photographer to immortalise it. Congratulations: your ex-wife once put out an expensive coffee-table book that was mostly photos of her masturbating, and yet you are now more of a self-aggrandising wanker than she was.

Apart from the fact you’ve used a national tragedy to whore yourself for publicity, it doesn’t take a Masters degree in Assholeometrics to work out that the space in the boat taken up by the photographer alone is one less person you can pluck from the swirling waters of death. Not that it would have been that great an experience for anyone you’d managed to rescue:

RESCUED PERSON
[Cough, splutter] Thank God you’re here, Sean Penn! I’ve been clinging to my rooftop for three days, I thought I was going to die!

SEAN PENN
Anything I can do to help, fellow American. Now, I need you to sign this release and we might need you in Toronto for some pick-up shots next week. See, unfortunately, New Orleans doesn’t look like New Orleans on film. By the way, do you know what Residuals are?

RESCUED PERSON
No.

SEAN PENN
Excellent. Hop in.

“Well, at least he tried,” I hear you say (oh yeah, I bugged your house. Sorry about that). “At least he went down there and rolled up his sleeves and tried to make a difference.” Sure, but the thing is, Sean Penn wasn’t watching the news from his trailer home and feeling helpless: “If only there was some way I could help those poor souls. But I am just one man, with no resources, what could I possibly- of course! The dingy!” No, this is a guy who’s prepared to cough up a reported $56,000 to take out a near-full-page ad in the Washington Post to tell us that- shock! - he doesn’t like President Bush. So his one-act farce on the water probably cost a fraction of what he’s prepared to spend on advertorial. That kind of money can do a lot of good if you give it to the right people. Just ask Al Gore, who put up $100,000 of his own money to fund two planes that rescued 270 people. And even though Gore must have known it’d make the news, so one way or another he was going to get a publicity dividend, he’s refused to be interviewed about it. Penn, by contrast, is evidently quite happy to write out big cheques for worthy causes, so long as he gets his name on it. But why ship in bottled water or blankets or generators or other boring stuff like that, when instead you can make a big, messianic show of how brave and strong you are? And I get to ride in a boat! Yippee! And then we get to go to McDonalds afterwards!

At least Sean Penn brought a boat. Some other celebrities were even less helpful, even the ones that claimed to be there in the service of a Higher Power (why that Higher Power couldn't just refrain from levelling the city in the first place remains unexplained as of press time). If I remember my Catholic education correctly, Jesus says somewhere "Be careful not to parade your uprightness in public to attract attention [...] when you give alms, do not have it trumpeted before you; this is what the hypocrites do." However this was clearly interpreted by His servant Revd. Jesse Jackson to mean “when you give alms, make sure you take a Me-dammned film crew with you at all times.” It’s not clear what Jackson hoped to accomplish by turning up, talking to some people who hadn’t eaten in days, and then saying some angry things to camera. But surely it can’t have been to make himself look good, can it?

And finally, a big shout out to Barbara “[these people were] "underprivileged anyway, so this is working very well for them" Bush. It’s nice to see that, in a time of national trauma and soul-searching, someone can still find time to be a total bitch to the poor.

Vanishing Points

An open letter to all the skinny bitches in Hollywood.

Dear Skinny Bitches,

Stop.
Just stop it, ok? No-one thinks you're beautiful, you just look like freaks. Enough with the starving, purging and painful weight-loss. You look like DEATH. Lindsay Lohan, Mischa Barton, Terri Hatcher, Nicole Ritchie and whichever Olsen twin has the eating disorder, I am looking squarely in your direction. For your own sakes, and for the sake of my lunch which I'd very much like to keep down, eat a freakin' sandwich. You people are making me sick.

If aliens were observing our race from their flying saucers hovering miles above the planet, doubtless there would be endless debate among them as to why we foolish humans were idolising those brightly painted walking skeletons. We must seem like such jerks to them. We applaud and emulate this image of dessication. And why? Because the magazines tell us so. Ah, but here's the catch - the pictures in the magazines LIE.

You Skinny Bitches can stop pretending that you actually look the way you're presented in those glossy toilet paper books. We know those pics are photoshopped and airbrushed and retouched to death. You all have blemishes and melanomas and wrinkles and sagging skin, but your publicists are there to stop us ever seeing that. So now a whole generation of young women are starving themselves, torturing their still-growing bodies because they want to be like YOU - and you look like you haven't had anything solid pass your lips since the early 90's. Wake up, Skeletor - food is good, people like having flesh, and your body needs those carbs (FYI - Atkins was a dick who died a fat bastard).

You see Bitches, I'm onto you. And if I have to come to LA and force-feed each of you until you look human again, so be it. You heard me - you don't look human anymore. You look like you can barely stand up under your own strength, let alone parade around in front of the cameras. I don't know if anyone told you, but women are supposed to have curves. Breasts are also a standard feature which you seem to have decided you can do without.

Here's another thing you Skinny Bitches do that pisses me off - anorexia is a serious problem that many people struggle for years to overcome (brought on largely by the Sorority of Skinny Bitches and your wretched ilk), and you jerks wear it as a fashion accessory. Have your head examined, and then take a day-trip to Smorgy's. It's not like you can't afford it.

You Skinny Bitches and the cosmetics companies and the Estate of Dr Pile-O-Bacon Atkins are making a fortune off the insecurities of others, and for that you should all be burned at the stake. Not that you'd burn for long. It would be like trying to make a bonfire out of toothpicks.

So just STOP. Keep your grotesque, rattling frames away from me. Some of us are trying to eat.

Lots of love,

Christian

Brainman

Recently, child-star turned former-child-star Brooke Shields released Down Came The Rain, a book detailing her battle with postpartum depression. Postpartum depression is a particularly insidious and often misunderstood illness, and whatever you think of Brooke Shields, this is a gutsy and commendable move. What’s more, if someone of Brooke Shield’s profile can be so publicly candid about her depression, we’ve come a very long way in learning not to stigmatize mental illness.

However, we haven’t quite come far enough to prevent me from saying that Tom Cruise has gone completely bat-shit crazy.

Don’t get me wrong: I have no problem with most of his behaviour in recent months and years. Personally, I thought bouncing up and down on a couch on national television to show everyone how much he loves Whatsherface was a touching display of affection. That’s certainly how it’s regarded in the Scientologist culture, and it’s nice to see Tom honouring the ancient traditions of the Old Country.

Divorcing Nicole Kidman was a bit strange, but for all I know he might have had perfectly valid reasons for not wanting to go to bed each night next to Nicole Kidman’s lithe, statuesque, perfect alabaster form, her full, soft lips parting seductively as her languorous trails of red hair cascade over her exquisite JESUS TOM WHAT THE HELL WERE YOU THINKING??? Sorry.

But the cheese slid pretty comprehensively off Tom Cruise’s cracker the day he criticised Brooke Shields for taking antidepressants, telling Access Hollywood this was both dangerous and harmful to her career. Pushing the standard Scientologist position that psychiatry is a harmful pseudo-science (whereas personality assessment via a mysterious ‘e-meter’ is perfectly acceptable), Cruise followed this up with a rambling, self-aggrandizing rant on the Today program (as transcribed by that Drudge fellow):

TOM CRUISE:
No, you see. Here's the problem. You don't know the history of psychiatry. I do.

MATT LAUER:
...aren't there examples, and might not Brooke Shields be an example, of someone who benefited from one of those drugs?

TOM CRUISE:
...all it does is mask the problem, Matt. And if you understand the history of it, it masks the problem. That's what it does. That's all it does. You're not getting to the reason why. There is no such thing as a chemical imbalance.

Oh ok, so there’s no such thing as- no, wait. See, the guys in the funny white coats don’t just make this stuff up, Tom. They have this thing called Scientific Method- maybe you’ve heard of it? Oh, you have?

TOM CRUISE:
if you start talking about chemical imbalance, you have to evaluate and read the research papers on how they came up with these theories, Matt, okay. That's what I've done.

Oh, I see. It’s just that I must have missed the part where you acquired the advanced degree in psychopharmaceuticals necessary to understand and evaluate those papers, Tom. But since it turns out you’re a fully qualified brain scientist, just how do you suggest we deal with cases of severe clinical depression?

TOM CRUISE:
But what happens, the antidepressant, all it does is mask the problem. There's ways of vitamins and through exercise and various things.

“My God, there’s a jumper on that bridge over there! Quick, I’ll get him to do some pushups while you go get a greengrocer!”

The rest of the interview was basically Tom Cruise saying Matt Laurer’s name over and over again in an effort to confuse him. Face it, ladies: Tom Cruise has finally lost his shit.

The resulting “War of the Words”, as the press inevitably dubbed it (thank God it’s not 1987 or else we’d have headlines like “Tom Slams Brooke’s Cocktail of Drugs”), saw Shields criticize Cruise’s “ridiculous rant” while various state Governors also came out in her support. Curiously, no-one in the media seems to have thought to ask a doctor of some sort for their opinion on the matter. But then, in America today it’s probably cheaper to get one-on-one access to Tom Cruise than to a doctor ZING!!!

So what makes Tom Cruise think he can overturn fifty years of experimental psychophysiology with one morning show appearance? The obvious answer is his Scientology faith. But just because someone believes that psychiatrists have been repressing humanity for literally billions of years (and invented pain and sex to help them do so), or that 75 million years ago the galactic tyrant Xenu stacked hundreds of billions of frozen humans around the Earth’s volcanoes before blowing them up with hydrogen bombs and then (yes, then) brainwashing them with a "three-D, super colossal motion picture" for 36 days- does that mean they deserve our ridicule? And sure, Scientology founder L. Ron Hubbard did describe past life experiences that include being "deceived into a love affair with a robot decked out as a beautiful red-haired girl", being run over by a Martian bishop driving a steamroller, and turning into a space walrus that then died when it fell out of a flying saucer, but surely we can’t convict him of having a somewhat slippery grip on physical reality just on that basis. And yeah, Hubbard made the whole religion up and it’s a massive intellectual fraud that preys on the weak and insecure to make money, but they also supposedly own the Pancake Parlor, and I like pancakes.

Even though Cruise was just towing the Scientology party line, the sheer fact that a debate like this (if Hollywood’s lukewarmest stars yelling at each other passes for a “debate” now, which I suspect it does) could occur at all speaks to something deeper and more disturbing.

In the US (and increasingly here in Australia) educators are debating whether schools should teach “Intelligent Design.” This theory holds that Darwinian evolution just can’t account for the complexity of the living structures of the Universe, suggesting these were created by a purposive intelligence. Now, I’ve had my first year philosophy of religion students work out what’s wrong with Intelligent Design in a matter of seconds: it’s a response to an inability to explain something, rather than an explanation in itself. Saying that evolution is wrong because it can’t yet explain everything (and therefore God must have created everything) is like saying that just because we can’t yet perfectly predict hurricanes we should scrap meteorology and give offerings to the Rain Gods. Evolution can already account for plenty of phenomena that, before Darwin, looked to be obvious instances of purposive intelligence.

Ah, but “ID” is hard science, not religion, according to its proponents. Fine, except there don’t seem to be many actual biologists signing off on it. The vast weight of two centuries of astonishing progress in our scientific understanding of the development of life on earth is being sidelined because some Christian fundamentalists have infiltrated school boards and gotten a few politicians to endorse them. George W. Bush has welcomed the idea of kids being taught this crap alongside evolution "so people can understand what the debate is about." This, you’ll recall, is the same George W. Bush whose Administration has tried desperately to pretend that global warming is based on questionable and unreliable science, despite the fact there are about five scientists left who don’t believe in it and they all just happen to work for oil companies.

We’ve come to the point where unqualified celebrities and politicians are taken as the arbiters of scientific truth, rather than, say, scientists. In the process we’ve thrown out centuries of progress and discovery, but the upside is we can now say anything we like and assert it to be true without having to back it up. So with that in mind, I hereby proclaim that buying me lunch cures cancer.

What’s that? Why, that’s very kind of you. Shall we say 12:30 at the Pancake Parlor?