Paul Kellys piece in last months Australian Literary Review was in its way quite well done. Many of his general arguments were not only sensible, but were expressed with clarity and, at times, considerable force. Nevertheless, as did Raimond Gaita in his response this month, I found the comfortable certainty of Kelly’s judgements a bit troubling, the more so for being emblematic of the ersatz realpolitik that seems to pervade Australian politics. Far more troubling was his aggressively critical stance towards a small selection of intellectuals.
He quotes Owen Harries to bolster his case about “the dysfunction of the intellectuals”. “They are slaves of fashion”, Harries writes in Suffer the Intellectuals, “and, on the big questions, they tend to get things hopelessly wrong.” Provocative generalisations are of course always tempting, but we do need to remember that Harries is a subtle man, and as a serious intellectual himself clearly doesnt view the judgement as universal. Nor as applying uniquely to intellectuals of the left. Examples enough can be found to illustrate the frequent bone-headedness of intellectuals from all sides of politics and all ideologies so its doubtful whether this sweeping condemnation much advances Kellys rather selective case. As with anything, discrimination is required if criticism (or praise) is to be useful. To take a small (but hopefully pertinent) personal example, after listening to an interview with David Marr, I was left with little desire to read His Masters Voice, Marrs piece in Quarterly Essay about the corruption of public debate under Howard. It still sits unopened. He was too shrill in his condemnation to hold my interest or retain much credibility. Gaita, on the other hand, even though I may disagree at times, I will always approach with respect. He has earned that through the consistent quality, the seriousness, of his efforts to understand, to be balanced and to educate.
Kelly, unfortunately, seems unwilling to really delve beneath the irritated surface of his impressions. He pounds away at his chosen three betes noir (Gaita, Marr and Burnside) without sufficient differentiation. Odd choices, in a way. Had he wished to illustrate the frequent inanities of “leftish” critiques of economic, social or political matters, I’d have thought he could find far more appropriate targets. Perhaps he is in some way personally offended by the emphasis Gaita in particular places on moral considerations, and on integrity. Kelly does, after all, hit out with phrases like “moral vanity”, “self righteousness” and “pomposity”. There’s strong emotion at work here. Perhaps the mantle of hard, experienced realism in which Kelly cloaks himself can’t stop the old fashioned values sometimes slipping through to his heart like a stiletto.
Given Kellys use of him, Harries’ comment last year about Howards policy towards the US in the wake of 9/11 is rather amusing: “In either case, it was an example of misplaced realism. And in either case it is extremely dubious whether uncritical, loyal support for a bad, failed American policy will have enhanced our standing as an ally in the long run. A reputation for being dumb but loyal and eager is not one to be sought.” Indeed. Discomforting as it may be to some, quite a number of intellectuals (including ones from the right such as Harries) clearly foresaw the likely consequences of the Iraqi invasion and occupation long before they began to hit the headlines. Kelly’s newspaper, on the other hand (not that he can be held responsible for all its occasional lunacies) enthusiastically, at times almost embarrassingly, endorsed and promoted the war. Certainly not the strongest basis from which to flay those who opposed the war.
No doubt some intellectuals do hate Howard with an intensity that doesnt encourage sober judgement. Underneath his affected detachment, though, I fear Kelly is falling into a similar trap, for his dislike of dissenting intellectuals seems almost visceral. He gives the impression of one who doesnt really wish to hear, doesnt want doubts cast on his clubby perceptions of how the world works, doesnt want to have to distinguish between lightweights and gadflys and serious thinkers. The “foundations for rational conversation on the same page” that he claims to desire have been there throughout, just waiting to be built on. Gaita, for one, is the epitome of a careful, considered, rational man, as is Harries, yet both were pushed aside in the furious rush to judgement in the wake of Tampa and 9/11.
Were it up to Kelly, it seems, they still would be.
Robert Manne had a pretty good defense of the Kelly Three both on Lateline, and in the latest issue of The Monthly.
Marr, Burnside and Gaita are hardly unhinged Bolsheviks, motivated solely by a ‘hatred’ of Howard. This is typical culture warrior stuff, and I see no reason to take it the least bit seriously. This effort by Kelly reads little better than an Andrew Bolt blog-post, albeit without the small mercy of brevity.
I’m with your sentiments Ingolf – though with Ken I thought Gaita’s recent stuff in the Monthly has been pretty poor.
I made a note to post on Kelly’s article. I thought it was awful. It was wilful in its choice of examples, and basically lazy in the way in which the argument and the evidence for it was marshalled. I had more articulate thoughts on it than that back when I read it, but no longer. Unfortunate. Kelly says – or used to say – lots of things that were quite perceptive and interesting. But it’s been a while . . .
I’d not seen the debate referred to in the previous comment. It’s good. It’s here.
Erratum: for “Giata” read “Gaita” throughout
Looking through recent copies of the Monthly, Nicholas, I saw only one article by Gaita, which was his comment on the intervention back in the August issue. Curiousity piqued, I sat down and read it again. I thought it was pretty good, better on this second read than I’d remembered. If there’s something by him in the latest, my copy is AWOL, unfortunately, so perhaps that’s what you’re referring to. I did think his reply to Kelly was below his usual standard. It felt as if he’d written it while tired and a little discouraged.
I haven’t followed Kelly’s evolution at all. Perhaps the change in his thinking and writing you note is another example of the coarsening of much public debate in recent years. Still, I can’t say either his article or his part in the Lateline discussion that Happy (or do you prefer THR?) kindly referred us to struck me as particularly bad. Both seemed fairly mainstream (which is damning with faint praise you may well say). What I disliked in the article (as you obviously did) was his intellectual laziness and the vindictive dismissal of a whole school of thought. One which, to make matters worse, has often done a far better analytical job than his mainstream approach when it comes to social and foreign policy issues.
As Manne said, for Kelly to fall back on the many economic naysayers from the “left” as a justification for his views when those he attacked had little or nothing to say on economics was particularly unworthy behaviour.
Anthony, much appreciated.
I had written it as Gaita and then saw that the Australian had it down as Giata. And “Riamond” as well. Bloody hell. I should have checked again.
Will go through and correct.
As general comment, not having caught up on the articles quoted here, to read Kelly is to see a ccommenter sucked into the consumerist engine, two arms and a flailing foot clutching at the perimeter. Gulping breaths, ageless professionalism finds itself and the words feed out smoothly. The machine lives on, renewed.
It’s like eating a meal, wholesome nonetheless in the eating, of imported sausage three vegetables and mashed potatoes. No need for garnish or sauce; rather, the less hint of that the better: emphasise the homegrown elegant real thing. What you find punctuating the effect, sensationally placed, are pockets here and there of hit-it-up impact. In that potato is a chunk of garlic, all of a sudden. The sausage, ginger. Suddenly you stop, react, think again.
But it’s bangers and mash nowadays, to feed the masses, drawn from the menu of a none too classy chef. The incisive calls are designed to set the piece apart, but do not drive the piece, nor lift it: it’s not structured on that.
We like the inclusion of something powerful – seminal, incisive, insightful, pungent, even with a truth – but we do not walk away from it with ourselves renewed. We’ve merely gone through the motions. And when the pungency is untrue, it can rank for days.
To ‘renew’ the reader is the work and charge of the thinker. Reading Paul Kelly, too often, one gets the feeling he might enjoy just going away to read, and give thinking a miss for a bit.
Ingolf the Gaita article I’m referring to was on the intervention. Turns out it’s on line.
I was broadly sympathetic to the line Gaita was running – which was hostile to the intervention for its lack of consultation.
Some of the points that he made on that score were quite telling, but then revisiting all that stuff on reconciliation I thought was really completely off topic and gratuitously moralistic. In the same edition of The Monthly, Manne expressed his own misgivings at greater length and indeed more dramatically much more sparely, without overstepping the mark that I think Gaita did.
After discussing the intervention Gaita goes off on something more familiar to him.
He goes on a bit later
I think when you’re dealing with the problems you’re dealing with, this is head in the clouds stuff. It would be great if we were all very generous. It would be prudent to wonder whether it would take us anywhere all that great. But we’ve not been very generous. And it’s not our lack of generosity that has created the mayhem in aboriginal communities. It is largely aboriginal agency (albeit an agency that has worked in an unusual context). And rabbiting on about generosity of spirit, and reconciliation when the topic turns to sexual abuse in outback aboriginal communities seems well wide of the mark to me.
Ingolf, I’ve just read the Gaita response to Kelly. I think it’s very good. But like you said – at the same time he seems tired of it. It’s dreadfully, dreadfully and unnecessarily wordy.
This would be a good para – without the struck out sentence which adds little but takes a fair while to actually take in.
The final few paragraphs are marvellous though I think, though again I think they could have been expressed a little better.
Fair enough, Nicholas. We may have to agree to disagree on the Monthly article.
It was my impression that in the latter part of his comment Gaita sought to place the intervention and the current highly emotional political climate in its broader context, to step back and remind us of the fundamental issues that will retake centre stage once the current fracas has died down. I don’t think he has many illusions about the likelihood of near term progress, or even very firm ideas about what form any such progress might take.
His comments earlier in the piece about the profound disrespect revealed by the manner of the intervention resonate strongly with me. This was the aspect I found most disturbing, for like an x-ray it shows just how much ground will have to be covered before there’s any hope of rest.
As for the question of how things got to such a terrible pass, I just don’t feel qualified to comment. I have some thoughts, of course, some of which accord with Pearson’s belief that the causes lie in “alcohol, the poison of passive welfare and disconnection from the real economy”, and some of which lean more towards the psychological and spiritual consequences of dispossession and defeat. Like Gaita, and Manne, I suspect the symbolic element is critical but don’t begin to have the knowledge to clearly identify how or what might best be done.
You’re right, his reply to Kelly was wordy. Gaita will often take the time to explore many aspects of an issue, that’s part of his charm and his strength. He truly wants to better understand and then communicate that understanding. Here, though, his mind seemed to wander at times. Perhaps some of it stems from the feeling summed up in this sentence “Much of this is so obvious that I suspect the reasons one must keep saying it are not edifying.” As you say, he seems tired of the argument, or at least of the banality of the way it is often framed by his critics. Who can blame him?
I thought that was a particularly gutless attack by Kelly. You don’t often see a high-profile writer like that going after individuals and dismissing everything they stand for, with simplistic generalisations and hardly any specifics. It’s very difficult to defend yourself against that sort of thing.
I enjoyed the post, Ingolf, but was disappointed that you felt the need to distance yourself from ‘intellectuals [who] do hate Howard with an intensity that doesnt encourage sober judgement.’ This kind of caveat only encourages the rightwinger’s tactic of portraying people who consistently and passionately criticise their heroes as obsessive and irrational. When a political leader is as consistently deceitful, divisive and cruel, consistent and emotional criticism response is warranted without apology.
James, I’m glad you enjoyed it.
“Distance myself”? I guess to a degree that’s right, although the point I was trying to make was a different one. It seems to me that intellectuals, when expressing opinions in public, ought to hold their emotions on a tight rein. Not because it’s wrong to be emotional but because, in my view at least, they’re likely to be far more effective when they do. The emotion can still be allowed to come through (indeed, how can it really be stopped) but it should be used to give power to balanced judgements rather than being in charge.
Someone like Greg Craven (Professor of Government and Constitutional Law at Curtin), for example, is dry and quite low key in his criticisms of the Howard government. Nevertheless, for me, he carries real weight because his judgements are well thought through and balanced but still infused with quiet passion. For all I know, he may loathe Howard in the privacy of his own mind but what emerges at most is a very pointed sarcasm. This transcript of a discussion he had with the Law Report is a good example. He uses some wonderful phrases when describing what Howard’s drive to centralise power is producing, like “consitutional Afghanistan” for example. Similarly, Manne and Gaita maintain objectivity but no one can doubt their passion.
What’s going to be most effective at persuading waverers or slipping doubts into the minds of true believers from the other side (whatever that may be) will to some degree vary from individual to individual. Still, I’d back the approach I’ve been describing against emotional criticism in almost any situation. Emotional attacks or responses simply ensures that both sides of a debate retreat into their bunkers and lob grenades at each other. Satisfying, for sure, but effective?
Rafe Champion over at Catallaxy recently wrote a highly critical (or perhaps I should more accurately say dully abusive) comment on Gaita’s response to Kelly.
It’s surely not noteworthy in itself but the blistering reply by MichaelF, and their subsequent exchange, makes a visit worthwhile. James, I think you’d love it! I certainly did.
The best bit of Kelly’s screed was his complaint that intellectuals are pompous windbags.
Talk about the pot calling the kettle black.
To me this just the other side of the coin of Kelly’s self appointed role as arbitrator and guardian of the Serious position.
Every op-ed by Kelly I have read in the last couple of years, no matter the topic (US-Aus alliance, Iraq, human rights, economics, health etc) seems to follow the same winding path, of often tortured, reasoning to reach a qualified, but still resolute, agreement with (right-of-centre) conventional wisdom. The logical consequence of this, though, is anyone whose opinion falls outside Kellys tightly cordoned off area of what is serious and legitimate is obviously deeply unserious, and therefore just some sort of crank or whinger.
Re. emotions: That’s fine. As long as we’re agreed that an intense dislike of Howard, Abbott, Downer and Ruddock doesn’t have to be ‘hysterical’, ‘deranged’ or ‘visceral’.
Re. Rafe: I’ll check it out. Somehow I wouldn’t have expected a spitited defense of Gaita, Marr and Burnside from that particular quarter.
Indeed not, James. I’ve at times felt a dislike for some of them verging on the intense myself. As for Rafe, certainly no surprise. Am I imagining things or is Catallaxy getting more tabloidish?
Nicely put, AJ. I think you’re spot on. I was trying to get at this same thing when I said: “Perhaps the mantle of hard, experienced realism in which Kelly cloaks himself cant stop the old fashioned values sometimes slipping through to his heart like a stiletto.” The last part is obviously a guess on my part as to his inner motivations, but I did think it odd that he used such emotive terminology. Perhaps, as you suggest, it’s simply a reflection of viewing them as beyond the pale.
I just watched this video of St Paul of the Oz delivering a boilerplate message about inflation and spending. But about half way through he starts thinking about something else and he seems to get the urge to giggle. I couldn’t help thinking that Paul has private jokes with people – perhaps the camera man/woman – about how light on material he sometimes gets (for reasons I can sympathise with – journos have to pump out way too much stuff).
In Kelly’s case from the cosseted feather-bed of his position as “Editor-at-Large” of the National Rupertian.
The Monthly finally arrived and I’ve just read the comment by Robert Manne mentioned earlier by The Happy Revolutionary.
It was excellent, so much so that were it not for the comments thread already in place here, I’d delete my post and simply replace it with a reference to his article. Manne does justice to the very serious issues at stake whereas in this case, my effort was half baked at best.
Given his praise for Marr’s His Master’s Voice, I’m going to have a look at it to see if I was too hasty in my judgement. I’ve also deleted the reference to Julian Burnside. Without properly examining the context in which his quoted comments were made, I was wrong to even partly accept Kelly’s interpretation.
Regrettably easy to quote-mine, but Marr’s Quarterly Essay is indeed excellent.