Young People Against Wild Parties

2008-01-19T00:13:00.000+11:00

A number of years ago, a number of times, over a number of beers, the Blog That Never Sleeps used to regale me with a tale about a group called “Young People Against Heavy Metal T-Shirts”.

This group, born in the early 90s, took their message to anyone who would listen.

The group's founder Matthew Thompson explained in a letter to Sydney's Daily Telegraph heavy metal t-shirts - laden with sexual and brutish imagery - were the reason for the obvious decline in the moral standards of young people.

The media went into hysterics. Radio stations and the Daily Telegraph ran with it; talk back went wild with people wanting to chime in.

Before long Thompson found himself being interviewed by as diverse sources as Good Morning Australia, Derryn Hinch and Triple J.

Everybody wanted to know about the clean-cut youngsters fighting against the tide of youth obsession with extreme violence and smut.

Thompson was even interviewed on the ABC’s high-brow Couchman program.

(I don’t remember the program, but I figure it must’ve been something like the SBS’s Insight program.)

Pointing to the audience – made up of rows of angry metal heads the show’s producers had tracked down – Thompson explained the problem was the wearers of heavy metal t-shirts felt they needed to wear a uniform to be credible.

“It’s the same as TV show hosts like yourself – why do you need to wear a suit to be credible?”

A clearly stumped Couchman deflected the barb a couple of times as “a good question” – but for anyone with a half-a-brain, the jig was up.

The whole thing had been a set-up. There was no such group as “Young People Against Heavy Metal T-Shirts”; just one very bright young person who took everyone, including the so-called experts in the media, for a ride.

Thompson was not just making a point about fashion, as he later explained:

“If an idea comes along that requires patience and thought, most people will skim straight over it, missing the main points, or they'll switch to something else that offers instant drama.

“Without the discernment and attention span to think matters through, the average punter's focus is stolen by triviality after triviality.

“You can go a hell of a long way by using an entertaining delivery of emotive words - regardless of the inherent content.

“If you can do this, you'll find it easy to manipulate and distract people - make them think it's more important that we debate tax reform in Australia than consider what it means to have our government and some of our large corporations happily splitting the profits from the near genocide of the East Timorese people with the Indonesian government.

“The war in Bougainville was a laugh, wasn't it?”

Now we're in the middle of all the furore about Corey Delaney’s party, it would be good if any moment now the "nation's biggest brat" takes off his shades and says: “gotchyaz”.

But even if he doesn’t, I think Young People Against Heavy Metal T-Shirts made the point well enough.

Thompson’s full account of the heavy metal t-shirt sting can be found here.

And the Title of Miss Guided USA Goes to...

2008-01-14T22:43:00.000+11:00

Aren’t these US primaries getting a few people excited?

Well, there’ll be no excitement at this blog; I take a Stalinist approach to fun (or perhaps a Papist, but that’s a story for another time).

The United States, born pre-Enlightenment, is quite an ideological nation.

The first British settlers were religious zealots deemed a little too out there for their contemporaries back home.

Even the founding fathers (in particular the revered Thomas Jefferson), who claimed to be men of the Enlightenment, believed its principles were something to swear by, rather than apply them practically.

This ideological aspect of America’s history has manifested itself ever since as a knack for bullshit.

And there is nowhere else where this bullshit is more omnipresent than a Presidential campaign.

For example, it is possible to give a three-hour speech in a Presidential campaign and say absolutely nothing.

A typical speech goes along the lines of:

“I believe America is the greatest nation on earth.

“And if you vote for me we can make this nation great again.”

No-one questions the dodgy logic of this; those two lines are repeated again and again by so many people that it must be logical.

So with everyone agreed that America is great and we must make it great again, how do we decide whom is the best man for the job?

With no real debate on policy, candidates are selected for what they represent in the minds of the electors.

Since George W Bush made such a balls-up of the presidency, change is in. And what better way to vote for change than to vote for someone who doesn’t look like him?

How about a woman? After all, it’s about time we had a woman in the White House.

And remember those good ole days with Good Ole Bill? We can look progressive, but not be too risky about it.

What about Obama? He's young, black, eloquent, and popular with the youth vote; he is the Samuel L Jackson of American politics.

And the fact he does not talk about race politics and isn’t actually descended from slaves means we don’t have to deal with that aspect of a black presidency…

The third candidate, John Edwards, seeking to differentiate himself from the other two, has swung violently against corporate America.

Good for him, and I’m glad the market he’s trying to appeal to exists in America.

But the fact that he speaks like Forrest Gump pretty much rules him out of winning anything besides a foot-race.

(And such was the incompetence of the Bush administration, it has made it pretty much impossible for a white man to be elected.)

Now, this cartoonish outlook is not to say that there aren’t real differences between the candidates.

Of the two frontrunners, one of the candidates voted against the Iraq war from the start – something that took plenty of courage to do in the post-9/11 hysteria.

The other has been described as "approachable" by one business lobbyist, because "she knows where a lot of her funding has come from".

There are also differences to some extent in health care policies, foreign policies, economic policies, etc, which I have no inclination to catalogue here (after all, I cannot vote).

The point is, unless the debate starts focusing on what those real differences are, America is doomed to choose the wrong candidate.

But with bullshit running so deeply in the veins, it is hard to see the debate moving away from the meaningless rhetoric any time soon.

Addendum: One for political and Simpsons junkies. My "research" led me to this delightful video:

Welcome to the Wankersphere

Young People Against Wild Parties

And the Title of Miss Guided USA Goes to...