Razer’s Class Warfare: pissing in one’s mouth is a traditional value
We should quit expecting the unlikely convergence of great talent with great moral courage. Plus, what's so wrong with bubbling?
Jul 3, 2014
We should quit expecting the unlikely convergence of great talent with great moral courage. Plus, what's so wrong with bubbling?
"Any nation that pretends to look to sporting heroes for 'role models' is surely pissing in its own mouth."Second, less briefly, fuck off with the “role model” argument. Why should footballers be considered role models or models for any behaviour other than that executed on field? That they serve as an example to Australians outside the scrum is, in any case, in doubt. Any nation that pretends to look to sporting heroes for “role models” is surely pissing in its own mouth. Yesterday’s dreary editorial in The Sydney Morning Herald half gets this idea about our poor cultural nutrition. We must appoint better role models, says the storied newspaper. Apparently, we should aspire to be more like an astrophysicist or possibly Patrick White. Patrick White? Sure, he was one of the greatest exponents of tedious modernism in English language fiction, but he's no role model. White was a cranky, high-born tool who championed political conservatism for the first 60 years of his life. And, if Twitter had been around in his lifetime, we can be sure there would many more flaws in the glass than the great writer ever chose to make tastefully evident. Perhaps the point is not to select better role models than a footballer but to abandon the notion altogether, and possibly to accept that public identities were never as forcefully influential as they have lately become thanks to a media class that demands them. At the very least, we should certainly quit expecting the unlikely convergence of great talent with great moral courage. Einstein was a prick. Come on. The work or the feats we admire are not necessarily accomplished by admirable people, and to demand that an artist or scientist be as good as his output is hopeful at best. At worst, it is dangerous. While Daring to Dream is now an accepted pastime, it is also an Oprahfied false consciousness. Like everything else “aspirational”, the Dream propels us into a nightmare of paralysis. If we all Believe We Can Achieve, we tend not to challenge those broad social circumstances that will actively prevent our achievement. You know. Sometimes the only thing holding you back is not you. But that’s just my university Marxism talking. The real concern today is the disingenuous turd crapped out by the NRL on “values and standards” and “positive outcomes”, which reveals our national delusion not only that a fundamentally brutal game can, or should, be sprayed with a corporate Air Wick, but that we and our children are so horribly stupid that we look to footballers, or modernist authors, for “inspiration”. Sport has its inspiring moments, of course. Nicky Winmar gesturing to the skin beneath his St Kilda jumper. The 1968 Olympics Black Power salute. Cathy Freeman marking victory with the Aboriginal flag. Billy Jean King trouncing that old fuck Bobby Riggs at the Battle of the Sexes tennis match. But these incidents serve to illustrate a moment of cultural synthesis. These moments serve history, not the reputation of the athlete. Freeman made her reputation on the track. This self-effacing woman could have enjoyed being a “role model” in the bloated Bradman style, but instead went on to provide practical assistance to the children of Palm Island. Why settle for inspiration when you can actively improve literacy to disadvantaged students? But the media class has done a bang-up job of convincing itself and the rest of us that “inspiration” counts for a lot, that lives are transformed by good behaviour and ruined by a bad bubbling. In fact, the only life that has been demeaned by the Piss Carney portrait is Carney’s, and the only lives improved are those of idiots writing stupid editorials about how we should all read Voss. Perhaps the writer has forgotten the postcolonial novel that gives us a clueless white foreigner bumbling around a nation from which he is so pompously alienated, it kills him. If Voss had actually looked, he might have learned something about the persistent darkness of a wantonly ahistorical country that deludes itself it is illuminated. In this case, by the light of its “role models”. But Voss, who never stopped to drink his own piss, died in the desert. And personally, I can’t wait for a deluded national conversation that has “role models” at its centre instead of courageous exploration of the unmapped darkness to meet the same fate.
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Liked “pearl-clutching” so much I’m going to adopt you as a role model. Please refrain from any untoward acts in public urinals so as not to shatter my childlike awe. Not convinced Einstein was a prick though.
Take a bow, Helen. This is a tour de force.
Does this mean we should leave all of Rolf Harriss’ artistic(?) output where it is…?
Ive just been seduced by some of the best writing Ive seen in yonks!
Sigh….
Of course we should, Horowitz. He was a crap artist, praised for all the wrong reasons by people who were easily deluded by fame. Future generations deserve to know that their ancestors have no taste and are easily fooled.
I enjoyed that read…thank you Helen.
Fantastic article – I think this reflects what a number of people have been thinking about the whole incident.
Not your best work Helen.
I don’t expect footballers to be perfect, but these are people that come into our kid’s lives in a huge way. Several players a year come to my son’s football club. I take him to meet them at family days. I like to think that I will always be his role model, but I also expect that he will look up to other men in his life.
They don’t only get paid the big dollars because of their ability. They are marketable. That might not be ideal, but it is the reality.
It is fair to say that Carney was not just sacked for his ‘Bubbling”. He has a charge sheet longer than his arm and has been on his last warning for a while.
Generally, if somebody wants to piss in their own mouth, I have no issue with it. Piss away, but don’t think that Carney is some blameless victim.
He is a serial dickhead and it finally caught up with him.
And some people still want to be journalists when they grow up.
“Pearl-clutching” is the phrase of the year.