Critiquing the Crows Spin Machine

I posted back in April about  Crows 'star' Nathan Bock being arrested for striking his beloved.

One thing that intrigued me at the time was that shortly after I posted an Anonymous comment appeared suggesting I had overreacted. The comment said he was "only guilty of handbag violence". I misunderstood the comment at the time thinking it was making the suggestion that a footballer's partner was only just an accessory (like an handbag) and so it didn't matter if you bashed it.

I thought this interpretation pretty offensive and so deleted it! I did wonder where it had come from, and over the next few days was rather drawn to the conclusion that it was probably someone at Football Park who had been designated the task of trying to get erstwhile bloggers to moderate their righteous (or  possibly self-righteous ) anger. This seemed a little paranoid even for me. Though I had been under attack from two other correspondents around that time.

I didn't think much more about it until a couple of weeks later a similar sort of Anonymous comment appeared and it said

Stephen, he damaged her handbag. Spousal violence is indeed deplorable but aren't you over reacting a tad? Check your sources it was nothing more than purse bashing!

This actually gave much more credence to my original paranoid idea. And so the comment was left on there with a further comment by me that I didn't buy this argument....though now it was clear to me that Bock had indeed destroyed her purse!!

Now, for the record , today in court he pleaded guilty to assault

The report says

Prosecutors said Bock slapped his girlfriend, Carlie Matthews, twice on the left side of her face and threw beer in her face during an altercation at the General Havelock Hotel. 

He later damaged Ms Matthews' handbag, mobile phone and bracelet, the court heard, but was too drunk to be interviewed by police at the time. 

                           full report here

This was not merely the destruction of someone's handbag!!

Now while the incident was reprehensible, if my theory about the Adelaide Football Club trying to spin local blogs is even partially true...this would still indicate that they consider this as something needing damage control rather than fundamental change of culture.

Sondheim chanted Sweeney

At a Walford school production of Stephen Sondheim's Sweeney Todd last night I was left in awe at the imaginative production of director David Lampard who amongst other things is "That Science Guy".
His ability to be able to get out of a team of (admittedly very talented) girls a stirling production of a sinister musical is remarkable. Well supported by an amazing Ian Andrew, who was as much a Sweeney as Johnny Depp (and very much in that mould).
And of course the youngest S Clark was a great beadle

What a debacle!

I DO turn on Question time every day at 2 p.m., despite my revulsion and the obvious reality that it is a total waste of time.

Today they asked the same old questions, and gave the same old answers. Today they moved 5 abortive procedural motions wasting about half of Question Time any way.

We delude ourselves if we think that Parliament has any meaning beyond its four walls!!!!

The debacle of scalping

Once again this week we will be diverted by our Federal Parliament (on both sides) trying to get another scalp. This time the Federal Treasurer and/or the PM (good luck with that) is in the sights of the Opposition, and the PM (in a quiet measured way) gave notice that two can play at that game (quite good background here...poor old Mr Grech)

My question is not about the substance of this, 

[though I do find myself wondering  why it is so strange that politicians should be being criticised for being available to people who are worried about their businesses collapsing]

but in reality is this what we pay our politicians to do. This is, of course, posturing for the cameras. I am not suggesting that "misleading the Parliament" is not serious, and if Treasurer Swan has done so then he should probably go. Though I have noted before that the previous government seemed to have long ago stopped requiring Ministers to fall on their sword. 

Hardly surprising from a government led by a man whose misplaced hubris prevented him from apologising for almost anything...certainly for the grossest abuses to the weakest in our society.

But I ask again....is this  posturing.... on either side what we pay our politicians to be and do?

I think not!

That's entertainment!

There is no doubt that current reality show Masterchef has been a hit (here). Another SC and I are now so caught in the grips of it that, tired as we were on coming home from my birthday dinner last night, we had to watch the time-shifted episode I had recorded.
Had I known that
a) the program would overrun and I would cut the denouement off the end of the tape
b) any way I could have watched the highlights on the internet

Then I would probably not have bothered to record it.
However it begs all sorts of questions.
Whilst each episode is slow as, could be at least 50% shorter if they just cut out the recaps...at the heart of it is the building sense of competition.
I have always thought this strange. As a former teacher it seemed strange to me to try and inculcate competition as the key and indeed most desirable quality of a given program. And as you go on, inevitably you associate with those who have been able (like yourself) to use this to their advantage.
What it has to do with learning, education, contributing to the corpus of knowledge etc....is beyond me. But when you consider that even the top echelons are bedogged by this (eg. the Nobel prize) it is obvious there is an unquestioning acceptance of it.
It is of course bizarre, but good TV, to see fine cooking being treated as a competition. When people get voted off because they get 8/10 instead of 9/10 it just stupid. But there would be no program if it was not competitive.
One of the good things about Masterchef has been the refusal by most fo the guest chefs to get sucked into the competitive mode, but rather to try and help the contestants as much as possible. Clearly the world of the chef is highly competitive, but there seems about it a camraderie which is to be commended. Good luck to them.

New York, new York: So good they named it twice

K, presently in NY,NY; sent me a message the other day telling me to bring her spotted gum boots for her forthcoming trip.
I was a bit surprised that she wanted to pack something quite so heavy. Nevertheless I did what i was told! She actually wore them on the 'plane.
So, it was good to get an SMS on her first day in the Big Apple saying "It was a good idea to pack the gum boots then!"

She's having a great time, seen Avenue Q (absolutely hilarious) and the Metropolitan Museum of Art. She's loving it!  Gum boots and all. And why not?

Sense at last

After the curious speculations of "will he- won't he?" one can only think that Peter Costello has made the right decision to quite the Parliament.

There comes a point for all of us when enough is enough, picking it is the only art!

I was however faintly bemused yesterday when he said that he felt that the present Parliament lacked a sense of humour.

Did I hear him say

"I would have thought that one  reason we were there was to entertain"?

Well, actually, I thought we paid you to govern.

Perhaps explains why some found difficulty  taking him seriously. Goes for the previous Foreign Minister, too, who never seemed to quite understand why some people didn't get his jokes.

Clashing feasts

Today (June 11) is one of those years when two festivals of the Church clash. There are rules for deciding which festival takes precedence...but not always easy to follow in practice. 

Today is the feast of StBarnabas. Significant for those of us trained at a college under that saints patronage. It's suggested that Barnabas was actually his nickname (like many of the apostles Peter and Thomas, Bartholomew, Simon Zealotes etc...) and the Greek text suggests that it means Son (bar ...) of encouragement. The Aramaic doesn't quite work, but that's what the Greek says!

And it does give us food for thought about what Barnabites might be like. Indeed what all Christians might be encouraged to be...sons and daughters of encouragement! Not always something we are noted for.

Any way, it seems like a worthy aspiration.

Too often our "encouragement" is treating people roughly and justifying on the basis that we should be tough (the sink or swim method)...if you read the Barnabas story in Acts. That's not what he does. His way of encouragement seems to be to support the weakest link when they  have no friends or allies

It's also the feast of Corpus Christi when we particularly give thanks for the Sacrament of Holy Communion. I think it is pretty encouraging that we have faith that we can encounter God in the simple things of life, like and in particular...bread and wine. And that God can be vulnerable by being tangible and ordinary...but I am slipping into sermon mode

Disappointing- but not surprising

One of my colleagues was castigated in a  (semi-) public manner by our Archbishop for allegedly saying prayers with a gay couple for their relationship. This apparently had some report in the press, though I have not been able to track it down.

The subsequent castigation came in the form of a letter to the clergy by Archbishop Driver in which he told us what had happened. The priest was told to not do this again.

In his defence said priest had told the Archbishop a number of important things: 

• that this was a private occasion, 
  
• that the service was not and did not purport to be a wedding
  
• that he had (in his discussion with the couple concerned) made it plain that this would not be conducting a wedding.
  

I feel personally saddened by this. I am on record elsewhere as saying that we should be doing what we can to encourage and strengthen commitment, meaning and love in relationships. I would have thought that a principle way we do this is by saying prayers and encouraging others to join in those prayers.

Would it not be appropriate, for example, for my friend P and I to give thanks to God for our friendship over 35 years and to pray for God's continuing blessing on us? (We are not in a gay relationship...but we are both male)

Bully for you!

We had an interesting discussion about bullying at a seminar yesterday. It is a very slippery subject. Part of the problem being that "bullying" is a highly emotive word, and so even naming something that way is actually a fairly aggressive act.

One of the problems is that we often assume that bullying has some sort of logic about it. That is,  that the bully employs the tactic in order to achieve something. (Of course in one sense we don't do anything unless there is some sort of "payoff"...but the payoff may be that we just enjoy seeing people squirm).

It is too easy to rename the bully as a victim when they may just be a prat!

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