Webdiary’s prodigal son has returned to Webdiary as ‘Meeja Watch’ columnist. Jack Robertson begins his second tour of duty with the announcement of the winner of MW’s ‘Most memorable person of the year’ award.
Most memorable person of 2002
by Jack Robertson
“Yester-year upon the screen,
I saw a man who’s never been,
He’ll never be again next year,
I wish to God he wasn’t here.”
The Webdiary Meeja Watch ‘Most Memorable Person of the Year’ for 2002 is the ‘Ordinary Australian’. Particularly impressive was his natural ability to hold two deeply contradictory positions on any given issue, and strictly according to opportunistic political imperative. Highlights in 2002 which contributed to the Ordinary Australian’s overwhelming win (a victory naturally ratified via a national-wide opinion poll), included:
1. Victims of Taliban Oppression. His capacity to cheer loudly while our brave soldiers liberated the victims of extreme political and economic oppression in Afghanistan – and simultaneously cheer loudly while our brave politicians locked up the escapees of that same extreme political and economic oppression here at home.
2. A helping hand. His extraordinary ability to get stuck in and lend the less fortunate a voluntary helping hand in times of bushfire, drought, terrorist atrocity and national emergency – and his resolute unwillingness to allow desperate men, women and children huddling in small, leaky boats even to alight on our mainland shores.
3. A Love of Australian History. His capacity to bask proudly in the warm glow of historical triumphs in which he played no personal part – Gallipoli, Tobruk, Kokoda, Long Tan – and his refusal even to reflect properly upon historical failures in which he played no personal part – White Australia, the 1975 East Timor invasion, the Stolen Generations.
4. Honesty, responsibility, mutual obligation. His tough but fair insistence that a man should work for his dole, follow the rules, take personal responsibility for his situation, pull his weight and not expect a free ride – and his tough but fair acceptance that staggering share bonus options, multi-million-dollar executive payouts from collapsing companies, inflated salaries and outright corporate fraud are ‘natural’ elements of our competitive economic system and must be left for the ‘market’ to eradicate in its own good time, if ever.
5. Sound global citizenship. His shrewd ‘Everyman’ rejection of flawed, corrupt and elitist international organizations, covenants and laws on refugees, the environment, arms control and human rights – and his shrewd ‘Everyman’ championing of fine, idealistic yet commonsensical international organizations, covenants and laws on economics, trade, Robert Mugabe, Iraq and the extradition of terrorist suspects.
6. Religion, the State, and the Separation of Powers. His avowed opposition to Islamic fundamentalist encroachments into the mechanisms of overseas governments, and to political interference with their judiciary by foreign dictators – and his firm support for religious ‘conscience’ votes in Australian Parliaments, a cleric as our Head of State, and increasing political undermining of the Australian Courts.
7. Our fine soldiers. His respect and support for our soldiers’ courage, grit and professionalism – and his bored indifference to our turning of them into political pawns, and their subsequent exposure, undefended by their civilian masters, to darkening Senate committee and human rights organisation accusations.
8. Elitism. His grounded, egalitarian contempt for contemporary academic, literary, intellectual, artistic, media and political ‘progressive elites’ – and his pride in claiming Manning Clark, Patrick White, Doc Evatt, Sid Nolan, Keith Murdoch and Gough Whitlam as Great Australians of yesterday.
9. Mateship. His deep love of the principle of Australian mateship – and his growing hatred of anyone who lives within five miles of the CBD.
10. Poor fellow, my country. Above all things, his deep, instinctive, and unfailing sense of what exactly this slippery thing called ‘Ordinary Australian-ness’ actually is: ‘Me’ but not ‘you’. ‘Us’ but not ‘them’. Yesterday’s reffo – but not today’s. The Last Anzac – but not Tom Uren. Peter Allen – but not Bob Brown. John Howard the PM – but not John Howard the actor. Noel Pearson – but not Eddie Mabo. Working class kids like Bill Hayden and Mark Latham who support mandatory detention – but not working class kids like Bill Kelty and Neville Wran, who don’t. Middle class kids like Piers Akerman and Miranda Devine who think Reconciliation is just another soppy left soapbox – but not middle class kids like David Marr and Robert Manne, who don’t. Toffs like Alexander Downer who scoff at the UN as unrepresentative – but not toffs like Malcolm Fraser, who don’t.
And so the lying, anonymous, manipulative poll results just keep rolling in, and the Parliamentary division bell rings and rings, and goes on splitting the ‘elites’ and the ‘non-elites’ apart, whatever the hell ‘elite’ even means, anymore.
And the only voter in the country for whom that bell is really tolling is the only one who never even existed at all: this curiously-contrary ‘Ordinary Australian’, AKA a condescending and cynical political fiction, AKA The Man Who Wasn’t There Today, and doubtless won’t be again, tomorrow.
The Most Memorable, Forgettable, Miserable Un-Person of the Shithouse Year of 2002.