It's a tad belated, but it's farewell to the Hamster Wheel lads - the pond insists you can be a lad at ninety - and their capacity to irritate the commentariat, especially Gerard Henderson. They even gave him a ten second twitter joke, in honour of his relentless moaning and groaning.
What an enviable skill the lads possess, and the last show wasn't half bad (though really you'd expect at least half a clue since the very late night screenings of CNNN on a Seven multi-channel reminds the world the lads have now been lads for a very long time).
In the usual way, some sketches worked and some didn't but the show had energy, and a truly inspired hatchet job on the racist attitudes embedded in A Current Affair's report on Chinese shops taking over a mall, part of a gigantic Chinese conspiracy.
Sadly even wondering about how Tracy Grimshaw sleeps at night defending this sort of tosh, isn't enough to make the pond watch this wretched commercial telly offal. Nor is there any point wondering why she looks so worn and haggard. It couldn't be guilt - she's completely shameless - but doesn't she at least have a Dorian Gray portrait in the green room?
The stupidities of the media in this country deserves this sort of send-up on a weekly basis, but instead we now enter the festive twilight zone where folly can flourish unpunished, which is why it's to be hoped that the lads return next year as compensation. This is a format which keeps on giving thanks to the eternally giving media.
Naturally Cardinal Pell got a flogging, though that was balanced by a timely flogging of ABC Breakfast and Julia Gillard.
But enough of trawling for Google image hits, because talk of Pell brings us Waleed Aly strutting his stuff at Fairfax with It's essential we think outside the confessional box, getting terribly anxious about religious freedom, and terribly agitated about rampant liberal secularism and terribly worried that any politician might tamper with the sanctity of the Catholic confessional box, and never mind that Irish legislators have already got into that pigeon box and set the pigeons flapping.
Now the sanctity of the confessional is an old routine - Hitchcock made a meal out of it in I Confess, in which a twitchy priest, Montgomery Clift, can't get himself out of a charge of murder because of what he heard from the real murderer in the confessional.
This sort of popular culture outing elevated the confessional routine into the mystical mumbo jumbo beloved by the Catholic hierarchy, but not once does Waleed Aly contemplate the real purpose of the confessional, which is to induce into the laity a profound sense of guilt and sinfulness and guilt and the moral authority of the church and guilt and the power of the church to give the guilty a ride into the pie in the sky bye and bye.
Talk to any Catholic and discover if they haven't at some time or another been made to turn up to confess during school days, and not feeling particularly guilty about anything, lied and made up a few minor things to shut up the agitated promptings of the priest, and then felt relieved that a few Hail Marys would take away the fictional sins, as well as the real sin - lying and making up sins.
Forgive me Father, I said a bad word.
That's how the church fucks with your mind, and the closest thing to an insight we get from Waleed Aly comes right at the end of his piece, when he says we don't understand.
True, it would have been better if he'd written I don't have a clue what I'm writing about or what it means, but as a goose I'll defend to the death the right of the Catholics to be geese. That would have got closer to the mark.
Sensible protestants got rid of this nonsense generations ago. It's fun to read the Catholic Encyclopaedia on that dangerous radical, dissident, ascetic, heretic, evil scumbag Martin Luther and come across this shocking account:
Shocking, shameful. Guilty!
Listening to ABC Drive occasionally it occasionally occurred to the pond that Aly has a medieval mindset, and it's pleasing to have it confirmed. Maintain that pre-1521 medievalism, Aly, and the pond will celebrate your exemplary understandings ...
Meanwhile, it seems everyone has joined the Royal Commission bandwagon, and naturally Dennis 'the tie' Shanahan gives credit where credit is due. It's Tony Abbott wot done it:
The speed of the change of direction could be explained by the speed of the political momentum. Tony Abbott, as Opposition Leader, had put out a statement offering support for Gillard should she suggest a royal commission. (here, behind the paywall for your protection).
Which set Gillard running. And indeed the process does suggest Abbott would fling any institution under the bus if the process served his quest for power and his ability to pose as a protector of children no matter where the abuse might be found. A conservative Catholic opposed to abortion? Where on earth did you get that idea? Unlike, as Shanahan goes on to note, the beastly socialists protecting the unions ...
Did anyone mention politicising paedophilia?
Meanwhile, a day is as good as a year in the befuddled world of Piers "Akker Dakker" Akerman.
As a reader kindly pointed out, Akker Dakker was in a rage and in complete and utter turmoil at the news of the Royal Commission, which was clearly an outrageous attempt to smear Tony Abbott as a practising Catholic (and never mind that Abbott had helped set the RC in motion by offering support), as you can read in Child abuse a tool of political abuse.
But as of yesterday, Akker Dakker had settled down in This issue is far too serious to get wrong, and now wanted to outline the real villains needing to form the basis of any inquiry - Milton Orkopoulos, Labor politician, jailed; Bob Collins, Labor senator, dead; former Tasmanian Labor MP Terry Martin, suspended sentence; and former ABC cardigan wearer Andy Muirhead, 10 month sentence, and naturally the new Heiner inquiry - involving Labor politicians - also gets a mention (Rudd, Goss could face inquiry).
Yep, unless the Royal Commission investigates Labor politicians and the cardigan wearers at the ABC, it will be nothing but a political stunt.
Or some such thing. Did anyone mention politicising paedophilia?
Meanwhile, The Australian offers up Bettina Arndt, deep in yearning for the nineteen fifties, and providing an abundance of thought bubbles happily summarised in the apocalyptic header Free sex and feminist marriage can make young men feckless. (behind the paywall in the lizard Oz, news of the apocalypse never comes free).
Words fail the pond - they always do when Arndt bobs up with yet another tirade about how women have, are or will emasculate men and ruin everything, and it seems that these days sex is so freely available to young men that it simply removes any need to have a career or make money, which explains why so many young men can be seen in homeless shelters.
They need to toughen up and prepare for marriage and responsibility and it goes without saying that marriage is a sexual straitjacket, a death sentence, a lifetime of sexual starvation. It's hard to imagine anything grimmer than a man shackled in marriage, with unrequited lust and endless suffering and unbalanced sexual appetites and so much joylessness, it sets the pond to howling at the moon ...
It turns out that Arndt is just recycling some opinions of Roy Baumeister and Kathleen Vohs, and in a cursory look at Baumeister, it turns out he was actually raised by wolves and this led to an unhappy childhood (here).
As a result, it seems everything is ruined, and you can read Baumeister outlining the ruin and damnation of men direct at the source, without the harping Arndt, in Is There Anything Good About Men? fresh from 2007.
Yep, it turns out he's been peddling these astonishing thought-provoking new ideas for years ...
At which point it seems only appropriate to turn full circle, back to the Hamster Wheel lads, and be reminded of the dangers lurking for young men, and why Australia lies in complete and utter ruin.
And if you believe any of that, why you might just be ripe for signing up for a splendid course on the decline of western civilisation, with your mentors and co-hosts Akker Dakker and Bettina Arndt. And perhaps we could throw in the spiritual guidance of Cardinal Pell as a bonus, and Waleed Aly as the resident religious philosopher ...
No complaints now, this is a genuine offer, and you get a bonus set of steak knives and forks, and the forks will come in handy for prodding and poking as you writhe in your mental hell ...
You are too hard on Waleed Ali. He makes some good points, chief among them that insisting that priests break the seal of the confessional is really a non-issue. The issue hasn't been priests confessing to each other and not reporting it. It has been that when it has been uncovered it hasn't been dealt with. We see Fr Brian Lucas (remember him - there was a time he was on every talk show on tellie) is now being investigated for covering up for priests. Then there has been the inadequate follow-up by police. Whenever CSA has been uncovered outside the confessional it has been inadequately dealt with. Waleed's point is that insisting priests report what is said in confessional might make the secular rest of us feel good, but it's not the main issue.
ReplyDeleteAs Waleed points out, no priest who believes in their religion is going to risk their immortal soul by breaking the seal of the confessional. Interestingly Father Bob has said that he would inform any priest beforehand that if a priest confesses to CSA he will not regard it as a confession - but note that he says this beforehand. Another priest has said he will no longer hear confessions from other priests.
Priests will not break the seal of the confessional. They may find ways around it, but it won't happen.
I thought Waleed's article was the most sensible thing I'd read on the topic. To see you attack it is quite disappointing.
The question is actually a simple one, and it has very little to do with the practical implications in law, whether it might yield up law breakers or result in them being dobbed in.
ReplyDeleteCan a religious institution apply its own criteria in relation to the law in a secular state?
Should sharia law be allowed?
Is tribal or customary law a sufficient basis for lawful action?
Is the genital mutilation of women acceptable, on the basis that a failure to do it might result in the jeopardy of immortal souls?
The sanctity of the confessional is a medieval invention of the Catholic church. It has no basis in the bible or in the words of Jesus.
It is always disappointing to see people defend medieval beliefs designed to reinforce the structures of an institution and in the end perhaps useless - since if pedophiles refuse to use it in the church that harbours them, what does it mean and what purpose does it serve - but if useful, and used, then offering an alternative way out to criminals.
I'd venture to suggest that it is precisely this kind of exceptionalism that sees all sorts of priests quietly defending their brethren and forgiving them their crimes along with their sins.
It is precisely the kind of exceptionalism that most religions claim in relation to all sorts of matters. That's why the pond applauds Irish politicians and disagrees with the dissembling and rambling forgiveness offered by Waleed Ali.
Reforming this medievalism might well have nil practical outcomes, but like the symbolism of the confessional - an exceptional and direct route to god in relation to the salvation of immortal souls - it would have a significant secular symbolism. The church and its agents cannot and should not be above or outside the law of the land. Any church ...
I hope the inquiry into the events at the John Oxley detention centre yields more than just Labor scalps.
ReplyDeleteFor those of us that worked there at that time and tried to get justice for the raped girl, we were hounded out of our jobs by vicious and deranged management that we watched bury the offence using the child protection legislation that allowed them to do it.
It disturbs me that these guilty public servants have been allowed to move on to manage other similar institutions when jail sentences should have applied to them.
The similarity to the protections given to them and to kiddie fiddling clergy has never escaped me.
There should be no statute of limitations on those that hide or cover up these heinous acts.