Thursday, November 19, 2009

John Coates, and The Australian strives to replace Neues Deutschland in the hearts and minds of Australians ...



(Above: something for the gentleman enthusiast and participant, dedicated to all those who admire the Olympic spirit and the firm ripe young flesh of the elite athlete. And there should be more of it, says my partner).

The Crawford report into sport and the Olympic snout in trough funding farm has landed with a remarkable whimper.

The odd commentator has noted that each gold medal averages out at fifteen mill the gleaming glittering trophy, for which you could get three average Australian feature films, finely feathered and destined to flop at the box office like golden turkeys.

When Greg Baum - an actual sports writer for The Age- had a go with Crawford wants sport to be for all, not just the privileged, the reaction was low key, and muted to the point of invisibility.

Not that Baum didn't poke his stick hard in a desperate attempt to get a response. While offering back handed support for the slushy subsidized feeding frenzy known as the Olympics, and only exceeded by offensive excess by the petrol headed F1 circus, he swallowed the Crawford package whole:

That history suggests the Federal Government is obliged to act on the urgings of the third Crawford report, released yesterday. That will again significantly reshape the Australian sporting landscape, and in it, the Olympic movement will recede from its privileged place.

That would be a tragedy only to those who still think Australia's sense of self-worth is intrinsically and vitally tied up in how many medals this country wins in a grandiose quadrennial carnival of sports that, though eminently worthy in themselves, scarcely comprise a cross-section even of sporting Australia, let alone the nation in all its 21st-century complexity.

So much for that glorified sports carnival dressed up in nationalist fervor and medal counting as a way of finding meaning, a bit like stamp collecting for nerds:

It is time for a rethink. This Crawford's report is damning. It says that there is so little accounting or accountability in Australian sport that it is impossible to say how much is spent, and to what effect. It says Australian sport administration is out of date, clumsily structured, afflicted by duplication and weighed down by competition between bodies that should be allies. It rebukes the Australian Olympic Committee for cutting off its nose to spite its face.

It says the standing model overlooks changes in society — wrought by immigration and technology, for instance — and neglects community sport both for its intrinsic worth and as source of players and followers of elite sports.


It's hardly a surprise that one of the few places on loon pond that's offered a supportive squawk for keeping things the way things are comes in The Australian's editorial.

Ostensibly a paper of the free market, and free enterprise, Chairman Rupert's rag understands the importance of offering bread and circuses to the mug punter as a way of distracting them while their pockets are picked. Or papers are sold, and tabloids spend their rear end contemplating the deeds and misdeeds of elite athletes.

It goes to show that whoever writes the editorials for Chairman Rupert is accustomed to the mindless nationalism worthy of a member of the North Korean, East German and Russian cadres, in the vainglorious days when standing on the Olympics podium made glorious benefit to prove the worth of communist thinking.

The use of sport as a mechanism which could bend and shape national sentiment was around long before Adolf Hitler, but the Nazis got the idea and went at it hard:

“German sport has only one task: to strengthen the character of the German people, imbuing it with the fighting spirit and steadfast camaraderie necessary in the struggle for its existence.” —Joseph Goebbels, Minister of Propaganda, April 23, 1933 (more here).

Apart from the absurd celebration of the Olympic spirit cobbled together by Leni Reifenstahl for her Olympia - awesome in its vulgar manipulation of both human bodies in action and cinematic techniques - about the only thing of value to emerge from the Berlin olympics was Jesse Owens symbolic triumph over Hitler.

But that wasn't about the garnering of medals, that was about the visible proof of the incontrovertible stupidity of a racist regime.

What does the garnering of medals at fifteen mill the medal say or prove about a nation's emotional or physical state? Well perhaps it says something about mindlessness, and as you'd expect from The Australian, mindlessness is fully on parade. The editorial is pungently short and stupid (Sports report is a real loser):

And there's Phar Lap . . . beaten by a nose. Just like those perpetual runners-up Dawn Fraser, Ian Thorpe, Kieren Perkins and Stephanie Rice in the pool, and Cathy Freeman on the track. Of course, our elite Olympians and the millions of Australians who cheer for them and the children they inspire aren't really interested in winning . . . just participating. Yeah, right.

Yeah right, start a fable about the Olympics with Phar Lap, a horse ineptly poisoned by its handlers. And then follow with the notion that children should really be interested in winning. Yeah right. All you losers go sit over in the corner and watch Dick and Jane show how it's done.

Sure someone winning Olympic gold is as rare as hen's teeth, but the losers can watch the goggle box and cheer on the winners. Bugger this democratic participation malarkey, bugger the thousands of losers, while we dance in the aisles and fete the winners.

And our next entry in the mindless bee hive, society is for the elites, mentality is ...

The will to win is part of the collective Australian psyche, which is why we wonder whether the Crawford report could possibly have been written here.

Well I guess it could have been written in Germany decades ago, and got the same kind of reaction as offered up by Adolf:

"The sportive, knightly battle awakens the best human characteristics. It doesn't separate, but unites the combatants in understanding and respect. It also helps to connect the countries in the spirit of peace. That's why the Olympic Flame should never die."
— Adolf Hitler, commenting on the 1936 Berlin Olympic Games


But enough of the Godwin's Law game, on with the editorial writer's firm desire to keep Olympics snouts in the trough, and getting, like Oliver, more and more of that gruel:

Aspiring to be in the top five on the Olympics medal tally is not a "sensible target" or "an appropriate measure of Australian performance". We profoundly disagree. Some of the issues the report raises -- sport in education, ensuring sport is open to all and greater access for the public to under-used facilities -- certainly need addressing, but Sports Minster Kate Ellis should think long and hard before accepting the recommendation that the extra $100 million a year the Australian Olympic Committee says it needs for elite sport should be spent elsewhere.

Yeay, it took awhile to turn up, but surely this is a class example of a commentariat columnist rag urging government funding for elites in the most shocking anti-free market way, in a quest for some kind of uber East German national identity.

Peddle harder hamsters, or we might lose our gold medals, and then where would we be, but in an existential crisis, all life without meaning, and perhaps even - don't say it, don't think it, don't contemplate the horror, the nightmare - we might have to actually participate in sport.

Other nations have increased investment in elite sport, poached our coaches and copied our techniques. We need to keep up or risk sliding down the ladder. Whatever Mr Crawford might say, medals count in a nation passionate about sport.

Sliding down the ladder, and next thing you know we'll be slipping up the evil snakes while the rest of the world clambers over us!

You see, it's the medals that count, in a nation passionate about sport, not a passion for sport, since the last thing we need is a nation full of passionate participants doing their bit to stay healthy and involved, and taking the strain of Medicare by forsaking obesity for activity. Do too much of it, and you'll either go blind or collapse from a heart attack, like that jogging guru who dropped dead in his tracks (Jim Fixx). Golly, participation is downright dangerous. Send in the substitute gladiators, or perhaps Mickey Rourke.

No wonder it's John Coates who found the editorial timely, in Less sports cash a national tragedy (A national tragedy? Up there with Hamlet and Macbeth? Darn tootin'):

The will to win is part of the collective Australian psyche, The Australian editorialised yesterday.

I couldn't agree more. It has been demonstrated time and again since the mid-19th century that Australians do not strive for mediocrity. They want to win.


Oh yes, just like we did in Gallipoli!

Would that we had a commentariat columnist to hand on loon pond to re-interpret these sentiments in an appropriate way:

The will to stick their noses in the government funding trough is part of the collective Australian psyche, The Australian editorialised yesterday.

I couldn't agree more. It has been demonstrated time and again since the mid-19th century that Australians do not strive for ordinary levels of government subsidy. They want to get the best snout in trough level of subsidy they can find, from the average dole bludger to the most elite Olympic gold seeking athlete.

Fortunately John Coates' self-serving, and coat trailing lobbying for an increase in Olympics orientated funding has turned out to be its own worst enemy, as the naked self interest has been a turn off.

You might scroll down Coates' arguments in favor of more pie for elites, but all you get is vague talk about forging closer ties, and talking up fabulous trade contracts and business deals, and wheeling out old banalities and pieties of the apple pie motherhood sporting kind from Chairman Rudd, and even wheeling in a few notorious socialists of the black helicopter kind:

US President Barack Obama demonstrated his understanding of the link between elite sport and international trade when he supported Chicago's bid for the 2016 Olympic Games, travelling to Copenhagen to present the his country's bid. And UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon has been reported as saying "sport builds bridges", presumably referring to personal, as well as international and commercial ones.

The greatest furphy of all of course is that the Olympic Games facilitates international business and trade, apart from the international business and trade associated with the greatest junket of all time, and the contracts and trade activity associated thereto, and the surest sign of unease is when some benighted consultant wheels out 'multipliers' to demonstrate the fiendish economic benefits of government subsidy, and throwing plenty of feed in the trough.

But if pie in the business sky doesn't get to you, then fear of failure should:

Ellis should think long and hard before rejecting the AOC bid for an additional $100 million in funding. Australia's funding in real terms has not increased since the Sydney Olympics and in fact this nation has fallen behind in comparison with Britain, Germany, France and Italy. The Rudd government will repeat the mistake of the Fraser government in the 1970s if it again allows the elite sports system to run down, as is being suggested by the Crawford report.

Oh no, beaten by the perfidious cheese eating French, not to mention the spaghetti and pizza munching Italians, and worst of all, the hideous British. Not the bronzed Anzacs done down by those pale, inept, indoors living, acne laden, fumbling furtive chariots of fire Poms! What nightmare can evoke the tragedy facing us?

For example, at the Montreal Olympics in 1976, the Australian public was appalled at the dramatic decline in this country's Olympic standing, when we dropped from 36 medals in 1956 to only five 20 years later, and none of them gold, as well as a fall in the medal tally to 32nd place.

Five medals. In Canada! Oh no, can it get any worse. No wonder the country collapsed, with a gnashing of teeth and a wailing, and sack cloth and ashes, well on its way to becoming a banana republic under the socialists, when what was needed to bail us out was government subsidy, government aid for the elites:

A Gallup poll at that time recorded that 70 per cent of Australians expressed the opinion more government aid was necessary if Australian sportsmen and sportswomen were to compete with the rest of the world on an equal footing. Prime minister Malcolm Fraser became so unpopular that he asked minister Robert Ellicott to redevelop the Australian sports system, which his government had only recently dismantled.

Oh yes. Keep that moola pumping into the trough.

What a stout hearted passionate plea for the importance of elite role models, because let's face it, how else would you motivate those at a grassroots level to strive for excellence. Let's face it, sport is intrinsically boring, and hard work, and involves tedious things like skills and exercise and fitness and getting fit, and no right minded child would indulge in it, when they could clutch a burger and a soda, and sit down to watch elites win medals, and dance in pleasure at the reflected glory beaming out of the plasma screen.

Well today we can dub The Australian paper of the year for its support for government subsidy of elites. Right up there with Neues Deutschland, fondly remembered by all as the official party newspaper for the SED, which did so much for sport in the glorious days of the GDR.

Think. Again.

Meantime, we will resume our campaign to have the Olympics staged in the nude, as per the original event. Not to mention fire eaters, palm readers, prostitutes, the "total pagan entertainment package", including the magical power to be derived from eating lizard flesh ...

Revamp the spectacle, and maybe we can work out a way to finesse that extra funding ...

(Below: ah that wacky zany Leni Riefenstahl and her Olympia).




1 comment:

  1. read the comments and take heart dot,allmost all see it for what it is

    ReplyDelete

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