Royal Wedding - Great but, so What?

Kate Middleton’s pretty cute, for a British chick. She’d be about an 8 I reckon. What’s-his-face has done pretty well for himself to get to nuptial point with her. Good on them. I could go for a pub lunch right now.

Beyond this thought, I fail to see why I or any other young Australians should actually care about this wedding. It would be good to see a case put forth for why our media is so enraptured by a union which for myself at least, quite frankly, probably ranks a couple of rungs below Geoffrey Edelsten’s wedding to that well proportioned 25 yr old. At least Edelsten is a taxpayer, a citizen, a philanthropist, self-made man who’s done some work and then had some work done (but that’s a different story). As for the royals, well just because your family has a Facebook page does not make them relevant.

Sure the Prince can’t be blamed for the privilege he was born into, and from most accounts he seems like a nice bloke. But surely, there is something so wrong with the way our media pines over a royal who:

a) Has not spent more than 3 months collectively in Australia, despite being a future head of state.

b) Is not influential to Australian politics or society in any way other than the surge of subscriptions to No Idea and the like.

c) Unlike his predecessors, has not had to conquer or colonise foreign lands. Or maybe he’s done that by marrying non-royal bloodlines – technicality?

So what exactly is the effort they have made to earn the gushing wide-eyed praise of us proletariat, their ever loyal subjects? At least in blighty they seem to have lifted the mood of a society ailing economically and in national confidence, and they would undoubtedly bring in some much-needed cash from tourists and exports of commemorative teacups and assorted china. However for Australia it is perplexing in the least that, as a democracy which largely operates independently of the Crown, we place any of our national value on a family living off the best welfare deal in history. Even Katie Price, another doyenne of the tabloid trade, had to pose topless, write a few children’s books and at least married an Aussie – as much as most of us were happy to see Peter Andre leave our shores. So how do we justify the immense attention this wedding is receiving in Australia?

Some might say ‘But we’re a Commonwealth, we’re such amicable brethren!’ Oh I forgot about that, what with U.K reporters taking pot shots at our cricket teams, the hopelessly irrelevant circus tent that is the Commonwealth Games, and England bidding against us for the FIFA World Cup. We voted against a republic? Oh you mean when we voted against the model for the republic, and then had a royalist PM speak for the majority in declaring we didn’t want the republic. Howard was enacting a political version of Paul Newman in ‘The Hustler’, and admittedly voters got played. Even still, karma had its way when bushy brows Johnny didn’t get the top job at the International Cricket Council (ICC), in what was essentially a colony vs. ex-colony standoff. If it’s any consolation I think he’ll probably get a wedding invite though.

This reminds me, I have a small request for our tabloid mag editors. I have a couple of close friends getting married in a couple of weeks, both of them vote, work honest jobs, have a small mortgage and I think they’re pretty photogenic. There’s relevance, geographic proximity, an event, a very romantic ‘how they met’ story and some glamour...all the pieces are there. Would you mind putting them on the cover and doing a 5-page feature?

Face it: Death, Taxes and the Diaspora

With its ostentatious decor based on the foliated metamorphic rock of it's namesake, one wouldn't expect the Marble Bar's patrons to be so decisively ignorant of the changing face of Australia. Then again this is Sydney, known for our vapid pretentiousness as much as the stunning harbour views, and then again this is the Hilton Hotel (where the Marble Bar relocated in 1973), where the Friday night punters are largely well-heeled corporates in their mid-30's, many of whom are likely to be part of a very different Australia in their not-so-long-ago youths. Nevertheless, last Friday night was a revelation of sorts for myself and a couple of friends of the Gen-Y bracket, kind of a subtle reminder that old misconceptions and prejudices still pervade the psyche of many in our young pseudo-colonial nation.

The lounges at marble lend themselves to larger social groups, so with numbers 2-3 and the close lounge arrangement we were inviting the company of newcomers (or strangers, depending on your outlook). One compliment about a hairstyle, dress or something else I don't remember (obviously it wasn't about me) and before long we were engaged in small talk with two chirpy female sales executives, one blonde in her late 40's (divorced, with a son as we were to find out) and a brunette in her early 30's, let's call them Jane and Jill. After Jane commented in astonishment "wow you're Indian! But you're skin is so light", we explained the broad variation in skin colour which appears across the country, mainly by region. Really from this point the conversation was heading toward a kind of cultural Mythbusters, a situation I believe is quite familiar with most of the population labelled 'ethnically diverse'.

While Jill questioned around whether Australians of Indian origins only dated others of Indian origin (answer is, we do not), Jane had a more personal matter which exposed a general lack of cultural knowledge and also the reasons why she was so keen to ask questions related to 'our' culture. She had been pursued by an Australian of Indian origin, who like us was born and brought up in Australia, and mentioned he was a 'nice guy, good looking, I wouldn't mind going out with him' but that she'd never dated an 'ethnic' before because, and this won the award for most unexpected comment of the night, "I just can't see him as an Aussie, like me...". Seemingly, this was the only reason she wouldn't consider dating Mr.Ethnic. While I didn't take the comment personally, in my mind I wasn't sure whether to direct my frustration toward Jane or to view the comment as an indictment of the system, or simply the blinds placed over an older generation. Perhaps this was an indictment of our city, famously declared as it were by Premier Kristina Keneally as a 'city of villages'. These villages may have created diversity when looked at as an entire system, but may have conversely closed off any communication and exposure amongst villages. The lack of general cultural knowledge in spite of being in one of the most multicultural cities in the world is ironic, considering Australians are famously (and infamously) amongst the most traveled in the world. While this is commentary off a single case rather than empirical study, I and surely many others have had similar experiences. To be fair, Jane and Jill were lovely and their questions came largely from innocence, seemingly genuine curiosity, general social chit-chat and a glaringly obvious lack of experience socialising with non-anglo saxon people.

In the name of friendly socialising we were happy to discuss the differences and more often accentuate the similarities between 'them' and 'us'. However, it may be this very same brand of genuine ignorance that quickly spills from curiosity into defensive/reactive or provocative hatred when 'contentious' racially charged issues are raised such as immigration, adapting to the 'culture'. Certainly the language of Jane and Jill, their sentences peppered with 'them' and 'us', 'you' and 'Aussies' suggested that even implicitly, they hadn't accepted that Australia is fast becoming a country of many races. It may be this lack of inter-cultural education that eventually results in the Cronulla riots, Government policy on detention centres, racially motivated attacks on Indian students and even indigenous affairs.

It is certainly true that many immigrants themselves are ignorant of how systems work here, and adapting to the positive qualities of Australian society - our generally strong civic sense, a respect of 'personal space' (though this notion itself differs amongst cultures) and in some cases developing fluent English being as it is the national language. Regardless, it is also true that immigrants are required to make many leaps and bounds of adaptation aside from the cultural and superficial in planting their entire lives in a strange and foreign country often in order to ensure a better future for themselves and their children. It is Australian's who have grown up in predominantly white-Australia that mainly appear stubborn to the notion that that this country will carry on as it has, their blissful ignorance of the fact that the very demographics of the nation have changed faster in the last decade than ever in our 200 year history. Our beautiful country can still be beautiful, albeit in a vastly different manner, if we find ways to truly embrace our diversity and decrease the inter-cultural educational gap. I'd like to think we did our part, that at least Jane and Jill could walk away without the many misconceptions they had. In the way of cultural education and knowledge, Sydney is akin to a rote learner or a charlatan - knowing all the fancy words and terminology, but knowing none of the true meaning or application - a multicultural illusion if you will.

In that spirit, I should probably find out what a foliated metamorphic rock actually means...I wonder if the Marble Bar staff would know...Gin and Tonic please, oh and by the way can you explain something to me, I'll give you the background story...

Tweep Tweep, Who got the keys to the jeep?

'Is Madonna an early adopter?' My tweets are lame (search harpt). However, even I don't tweet out stuff like this - "i iz tired" - thanks for that brit. I'm not sure of the reason you're following me, but I know why I'm not following you. In the last 2 months, I've found slowly but surely many friends and acquaintances are using Twitter as a primary source of information, from CNN feeds, NYTimes feeds to your more sublime and poetic fare such as "u remind me of my jeep...I want 2 ride it", or the prophetic "Ow this bleach hurts, rofl" - this could be interesting if it involved another person pouring the stuff on APGirlie3 - then it would also be interesting as to why she would be 'rofl' - too vindictive?. Google take note, if you want to buy Twitter, you're also buying into banal tweets (ban-weets), same goes for Facebook who, let's face it, may see their numbers dwindle by this time next year in the face of a(nother) significant tipping point in the history of social networking. Personally, I also like the word 'tweet' because it's like the commonly applied sounbyte used to censor swearing on brilliant broadcast TV like Jerry Springer and the like (I don't think HBO has this sound in their database - thankfully). In honouring this, for the remainder of this entry I feel it's only right...nay, necessary, to use the word 'tweet' place of profanity.

When you can break news of an American Airlines flight qualifying for Olympic Diving in the Hudson River, or a swine flu epidemic, or insider updates during the Mumbai Terrorist attacks (11/9 as its being cemented in the public consciousness) faster than the big boys of breaking news - you are onto something. When you figure out how to profit from feeding tweet inquiry into business enquiry - you are onto something. Likewise if a profitable model for news and reliable journalistic practice can be created from this technology (I am indebted to UNSW lecturer Kate Crawford for thinking in this direction). Invariably, in times of revolutions be they industrial, artistic, musical or technological (informational), the old system always breaks before a solution appears.

By the late 1800's, Horse Carriages, or more specifically the horses themselves, were producing such significant amounts of tweet that they placed an almost unbearable liability on the streets (infrastructure) and citizenry of New York City (amongst others), that a solution seemed nigh impossible till Henry Ford waltzed in with those wheels of his, and the internal combustion engine came of age (for those factussies - fact fussy people). Indeed, the tweeting horse tweet problem was such a threat that it dominated discussion at the first International Urban Planning Conference in 1898 - the issues were pollution, environmental by-products and infections where swelling human populations were in proximity with horses and their tweet, and the rise of carriage related accidents. Till Ford, citizens were left with more pedestrian solutions including development of NYC's professionalised street-sweeping service and developments of road rules to reduce carriage-related accidents and deaths (which happened more frequently than us of the 21st Century may expect). For a while there was a system in complete chaos, the dominant thinking being how to preserve the system rather than finding a completely new and innovative solution out of left field. We know the rest of the story, the horse-carriage arrived at it's not so glorious finish line, and a new race started with the Ford Model-A (1903). To begin a sentence with a classic line from 30 Rock's Dennis Duffy, 'In this analogy..', the horse tweet is the old way of doing things - newspapers, online newspapers, facebook (oops), and the internal combustion engine is what we're waiting for, Twitter is just the wheels - and someone's developing the idea for a new Ford Model-A.

Till then the metaphorical chaos in the virtual world gets reflected in the physical world. Illness, Flu. Swine? Is Medieval English on the comeback trail? Well the Urban Dictionary entry is particularly informative in this endeavour, and brings up such gems of definition as "Swine: probably one of the best words ever, swine can be used in any situation to degrade another person... ". The following are U.D's suggestions for potential uses around the watercooler and in everyday banter/duel with your arch nemesis from the middle-ages:

- Leave me alone you swine!
- Look at that tweeting swine.
- That man is a filthy swineish animal.
- You are the swine of all swine.

So it goes, and these may prove more effective in the event of the swine flu epidemic (or is it pandemic? - WHO's Margaret Chan is confusing us all). If it's pandemic, believe I’m taking a break from my beloved Vietnamese Pork rolls at Phuong’s Bakery. However, the possible severity of a pandemic should not be underestimated, particularly in light of the first swine-flu related death in Mexico. That there is any general sympathy about those most likely to be affected is questionable in light of...what else other than a tweet. Here's an incredibly touching, humanistic tweet from NYTimes columnist Charles M. Blow: "Pandemic, Smandemic, I want to invest in that surgical mask company". Lovely. We have the wheels, we need the engine, but what we really need is for these guys to stay in the passenger seats, preferably up the back with the naughty kids. Another browser window is chirping away with news, recommendations, and ban-weets about gardening and recessionary stock-tips. I would love to chuck my 140 characters of gold in with the rest of this horse tweet...but I iz tired.

Finally...a message from Jon Stewart.

The Daily Show With Jon Stewart	M - Th 11p / 10c
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Doom and Gloom, clouds in the boardroom

Unlike many other popular expressions in the English language, 'Doom and Gloom' which has likely featured somewhere in every form of media since September 2008, is not derived from the King James Bible or that colossus of adage and maxim, William Shakespeare. The phrase has its humble beginnings in the 19th Century Newspapers in the U.S. - take for example this ominous titbit from The Statesville Landmark (1875) "Slowly, and with a tone of doom and gloom, the ponderous clock began striking." Moreover, the phrase was predominantly used in economic and political pieces. However, with nationwide literacy rates still relatively low in the mid 1870's (approximately 50% illiteracy in the U.S.) it's unlikely that Jeb from the anvil factory was going to pick it up and pass the ball till word spread of 'doom and gloom' and the devils earpiece invented by Alexander Graham Bell.

The modern proliferation of the expression can be attributed to that steadfast bastion of the American golden years, the Broadway musical. Specifically, it was the 1947 musical Finian's Rainbow (also popularised for later audiences through revivals and a film adaptation) which spouted a classic line from the pessimistic leprechaun Og "Doom and gloom... D-o-o-m and gl-o-o-m... I told you that gold could only bring you doom and gloom, gloom and doom.” Nowadays you may find "doom and gloom" employed as phrase of the crisis in all media forms. Googling "doom and gloom" proves its popularity also runs across industries - with articles on doom and gloom in finance, I.T., fashion and even fruit juice companies (economic Boost anyone?, Stimulus Jamba Juice?). Although the locution has its origins in Broadway, it is precisely that staple of popular culture that has been thriving despite the global gloom and doom. Broadway ticket sales are surging, even improving during the early part of 2009 on previous earnings from February 2008. True that some of this effect can be attributed to the potential 'ticket tax' that may be passed by New York state, adding an extra $10 to theatregoers bills, however the irony brings a wry smile to the faces of those who are jobless and have time to dig for it (this blogger falls into said category). How can the financial services industry, which has so long eschewed the values of honesty, integrity and basic competence we learnt from musicals such as Chicago (crooks become celebrity) and Westside story (ethical gangster show) suddenly owe so much to the not so humble song and dance narrative..right? Surely a musical about the falling giants of Wall St - complete with Bull symbolism, choreography in the shape of plummeting stock prices, a hedge fund that actually deals in hedges (those of the garden variety) to save itself and numbers like ‘Lehmann Brothers to the gutters’ - is in tall order (and I would say, timely). Also if produced before the NY ticket tax, it may even be profitable – thus becoming the only thing related to financial services that is so.

Doom and Gloom, like a team of parasitic bit-players (think the evil twins in Cinderella, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern in Hamlet) have filtered their way through the media, via a hopelessly deregulated U.S. market, to all of us to the point where we aren’t even buying underwear. Is there more of a basic human right to be denied? A society in recession and without underwear is a worry indeed. So the recession is real, Pacific Brands has canned 1,850 jobs in Australia, Macquarie Bank had a period prior to Christmas where almost 50 heads were rolling each week, and countless others in financial and other industries are afraid that any second the boss is going to lean over their desk and ask them to come in 'for a chat' or to simply leave with only their personal belongings. As if the layoffs weren’t enough bad PR for these large conglomerates, Pacific Brands, one of the great underwear suppliers (I have some) and now much maligned employers, are paying the Cato Counsel PR firm up to $50,000 per month to revive their public image. Somehow I think that strategy in itself will work against them. Perhaps there should be a PR firm to revive the PR of the PR firm hired to revive the PR of a brand with failed PR. The firm could be called Doom and Gloom PR, their mascot Og from Finian’s Rainbow, assuring us that despite the volatility of financial markets, not even ‘stable’ investments such as gold can escape a global recession “I told you that gold could only bring you doom and gloom, gloom and doom." An optimist might say that the bit players always lose out in the end (see Cinderella, etc), a realist might say this is just the beginning of the play and they will still make us scrub the dirty floors for a while.

One man’s recession is another man’s boom, as they say (I don’t know if anybody has actually said that, but surely someone has). Federal departments have too long been bogged down by mediocre staff, unable to offer top guns the salaries they receive in the private sectors. Now, with big name firms falling faster than a man without a parachute, Governments wait eagerly with napkins on laps, holding out the trampoline below. They are preparing for a net grab, to get the best hired guns who worked for the very companies that strove to find loopholes in federal law to maximise profits. Yes, the silver lining has come in 2009 and it’s called The Year of the Regulator.