What a week for heros shuffling off this mortal coil or jumping ship! Reagan, Flint and Garrett. All gone. In one week! What a cruel world we live in. The sickening forgetting which so often accompanies the passing of a "great" man was to be expected I suppose. The Reagan myth makers only had to change the present tense to the past in order to continue the puffery which allows such distortion and forgetfulness to ooze out of the memory hole.
Reagan, the President, was not someone to be admired. He was the man who was manipulated into entrenching poverty as the new American Dream. A man so full of Christian fundamentalism and whose advisors were so full of the same ideology (Rumsfeld, Rove, Chenney, Scowcroft, Wolfowitz, Perle – are these names familiar?) that they wrote speeches for him extolling the US as "the City on the Hill".
Reagan, it must be said, set the mould from which the present Shrub was cast. Helen Caldicott, in her autobiography, says that after meeting Reagan ("the most disconcerting quarter hour of my life"), "Reagan reminded me of the Peter Sellers role of Chauncey Gardner in the movie ‘Being There’, the character whose entire life experience came from watching TV and films". She continues "[Reagan] was a nice but totally uninformed old guy who might just decide to commit [the world] to radioactive dust".
With friends like Chenney, Rumsfeld, Scowcroft, Wolfowitz, Rove and Perle (the "crazies"as Bush the Elder called them) advising you, it’s easy to see how we ended up in the current world predicament as they continue their quest. Given that Wolfowitz and Perle are practicing Jews, its easy to see how religious faith can be overshadowed by the power of ideology as this cabal of truly evil men continue with their quest for total spectrum and world domination. Their version of ‘heaven’ on earth.
David Flint on the other hand didn’t shuffle off this mortal coil just yet. He did, however, jump ship at an interesting time. While the focus has been on his support for that other great human rights and equal opportunity campaigner, Alan Jones, other interesting developments in media control have been transpiring.
The sinking ship of the Australian Broadcasting Authority (ABA) has been slowing, for over a decade now, choked of the coal for its boilers since Keating rammed through changes to the media landscape in 1992. Since then the Labor party has been championing changes to the media ownership laws (Keeping Conrad Black out was just a diversion). As is becoming clear, the commercial media is becoming more out of control as it attempts to suck more wealth out of our pockets as we try and balance shrinking buying power with increased job insecurity. The media influence over policy is quite apparent and transperent. They don’t even try to hide it anymore (Read Terry Lane’s informative piece in last Sunday’s Age for instance).
Flint was just a well paid figurehead who, despite his substantial education, was just a silly old guy keeping the dream alive (apologies to Lawsy). Labor certainly don’t want him there and the Liberals saw him as a liability. Prediction – he’ll end up on the Board of 2UE or some such as he parachutes into a wealthy retirement.
On the issue of parachuting. What a bungle Labor has committed. I don’t take lightly to the tag ‘aging’ as Peter and I are of the same vintage, but to try and drop him in the middle of working class southern Sydney is a bit rich and I’m rather dumbfounded as to how he allowed himself to be done over like this.
From the Royal Antler in Narrabeen to the Coogee Bay Hotel. From Maroubra Seals to The Star Dust in Cabramatta. From The Star in Newcastle to the Prince of Wales, The Glass House to the Old Vic and the Dome, Midnight Oil strode with big steps in the 1980s and Garrett was the face and voice of a generation pissed off with politics and recovering from the 70’s. Their songs resonated with those who felt the force of the excesses of the 80’s and who saw them not as pampered pop stars but as a group willing to get involved in Indigenous rights, environmental activism and human rights.
Given this weeks machinations I think its fair to say that many of us, who now have kids of voting age or just about, are fairly confused as to why one of our peers who seemed to embody so much of what we strove for, has jumped ship to join ranks with the enemy. At least we know who Cheryl was screwing but I don’t think a bald ‘aging’ rocker would go for blokes with beards.
The world has gone all pear shaped again this week. A straw man has died, an ideologue has been shifted sideways and an idealist has seemingly sold out. In some ways its just the way of the world and nothing has really changed. And perhaps that’s the problem. While Reagan espoused a religious fundamentalist ideology, Flint tried to live it and Garrett (at least in the past) tried to knock it down, maybe there is balance and the rest of us are wasting our time.
Nonetheless, while there is some form of life in these ‘aging’ bones, I don’t wanna be the one to suffer from a short memory in this, the Lucky Country because, when it boils down to it, someone else is not to blame as we keep seeking out some common ground in order to bring on the change.