The Inspector-General of Misconception (16 page)

Hello mother, hello father

Who's idea was it to go up to our successful competitors (and not so successful competitors) immediately after an Olympic event and ask the puffing and panting sportsperson whether they had ‘anything to say to the people back home'?

We do not wish to hear polite and commonplace private messages broadcast on the public airwaves. We have no interest in ‘Hello Mum and Dad, hello to my school friends at PLC, hello to all the people in the street, hello to my dog, Andy.'

Firing squad.

How would sports programmers handle a reply from
one of our woman athletes if it went something along the lines of, ‘I would like to say a big juicy hello to Likka, that lovely little dyke gymnast from Belarus I met last night at the village spa. Likka, same time; same place.'

It would at least be a little more grippingly life-like.

Or, ‘Yes, I would like to say only one thing – “get stuffed dad”.'

Take aim.

Then there is the ‘What was going through your mind during the last 25 metres?' Swimmers, especially, have to invent things to say. At least, silver medallist Scott Miller once replied that he couldn't remember anything – which is what we suspect of most sports.

Gold-medal shooter, Michael Diamond, in his reply to this question, ‘Always the same thing. I think, “Holy shit, there it goes and it looks like an aspirin. I'd better get it”.' This was not reported by television.

Which is why the question is really not worth asking.

Fire.

Happy, happy happy-talk for the sake of national pride

Being let down lightly in defeat.

One of the favourite euphemisms is, ‘Not the result we were looking for in this heat.' That is, we have come second last in the race.

‘Australians were prominent in the day' – that means no medals at all.

We don't have losers: we have ‘frustrations' (a euphemism adopted also by the ABC in their Olympic Games news).

One commentator told us, ‘She finished in seventh place but was not far behind!'

Happy lies

It is downright perplexing to be told that we are seeing something that we are not seeing – ‘the swimmers are thrashing ahead in a straight line'. They weren't. ‘Australia is putting in a fine performance.' They weren't. They were coming second last.

‘Sell-out audiences here today at the weightlifting' when the camera shows empty sections of the stadium.

Stereotyping

Although we have found remarkably little national stereotyping, we have heard of the ‘methodical Germans' (hockey), ‘good tumblers, these men from the Ukraine', and the information that ‘Chinese have very nice body lines'.

We-have-to-earn-our-money commentator babble

We have the commentators tell us what we ourselves can see is happening on the screen – ‘that one is straight in the basket' (basketball). Maybe this is comforting for some, like rain on an iron roof.

Silence is usually more dramatic.

Perhaps some TV viewers like to think they are with someone at the game, and the commentator is like a talkative friend.

All the stock-in-trade sports commentator words are dead meat but are used day-in, day-out:

and so on and so on.

And it doesn't help to be told that judo is ‘a combination of chess and advanced physics'.

Sports commentators should be required by law to refurbish their vocabulary annually which, of course, requires changing their intellectual furniture. That may mean reading books. They should be chosen for their mental alacrity and richness of language as much as for their knowledge of the sport. Especially for the Olympic Games.

We didn't think we would hear the expression ‘poetry in motion' again since it was banned on the weekly
Riverina Express
in Wagga Wagga in 1959 after over-use by the sports editor, Jim ‘Pappy' Sullivan.

However, Our Office wishes to record a use in the commentary on the artistic gymnastics men's team options.

And the great over-used word of sports commentary – and currently an over-befriended word generally in the English language – is ‘focused'. You are focused, I am focused, we are all focused.

Who wouldn't be focused when competing in the Olympic Games? Or any competition? We would've thought that, as when facing execution, it must surely ‘focus' the mind.

Babble comes in all the familiar forms:

The oral tradition of sport has been known in the past for its originality and colour.

No longer.

We have noted forced sentimentality manipulated by the use of the expression, ‘It's terrific/nice to see' (meaning heart-warming) as in, ‘It's nice to see the Chinese men here' (in the gymnastics).

We, ourselves, don't know why it is ‘nice to see the Chinese men here'. Maybe the commentator had personal arrangements with the Chinese men gymnasts.

Much of the problem comes from the use of professional weekend sports commentators and retired former sportspeople who are accustomed to speaking to the regular weekend sports couch-potatoes familiar with the game and the players and who are sport statistics buffs.

They should keep in mind that, especially during the Games, even sports-buffs are watching sports about which they know nothing.

We get knowing remarks such as, ‘They will now have to go through to the repechage' (rowing) which does not necessarily make any sense to Our Common-and-
Garden Variety Olympic Games Spectator who is interested in the
Games as Games
, and may well only watch sporting events every four years (yes, hard as it may be for the sports commentators to believe).

The great disaster is always the coverage of the swimming and running. It is useless to Our Games Spectator to call races by competitor names and not by nationality.

How many viewers know the names and nationalities of the competitors, even from their own country?

Swimming lanes are not numbered on the floor of the pool (could they be supered in the studio?) and therefore it's useless for the commentators to direct attention of the viewer to ‘lane five', especially if not all lanes are in shot. By the time we have counted to lane five, the magic moment has passed.

Mindless sports lore, jargon and superstition abound, as in ‘the domino effect' – that one win will cause other wins. Why not one loss then causing a domino effect of further losses? Can't the morale domino fall either way? And if so, how would it then ever be reversed? And what is ‘swimming tough'?

And we are told again and again that a certain performance or other is ‘what the Olympics are really about'.

During the women's hockey, it was about ‘coming back from being behind' but there have been other more banal assertions: ‘it's about racing', ‘it's about the unexpected', ‘it's about winning'.

Technical sporting terms when explained are fine. But
in a new sport such as beach volleyball, why should the commentator talk blithely about ‘spikes' and ‘reverse gigs' and ‘hustles' without explanation?

What could they say and who should say it?

It would be good to have a physiologist and a sport psychologist as commentators so that when a swimmer comes out of the water and is interviewed pool-side and says that he had ‘the lactic acid taste' in his mouth, we get to hear about lactic acid and its place in the body and in sports (lactic acid comes from the sugars and starch which release energy but when breathing is wrong, lactic acid accumulates and the muscles tire and, presumably, the swimmer was referring to this, but there is much more to be said about it by a commentator).

It would be good to hear about the role of adrenalin other than in the colloquial sense (it stimulates heart action, raises blood pressure, releases glucose, relaxes the air passages, and prepares the body for physical action; but there are many questions to be asked about it and how it is managed and exploited by professionals).

We hear much about the alleged ‘tactics' and ‘game plans' of the teams but we are never shown charts or outlines of these alleged game plans and how they are applied.

Neil Brooks once asked gold-medal swimmer Susie O'Neill what had been her ‘plan'.

‘To win the gold; have a good time …' she told us.

We suspect many ‘game plans' are like that. The only game plan we know is ‘Expect the unexpected' (and
how do you do that?!) and ‘Take advantage of windows of opportunity'.

We would be interested in the social and educational backgrounds of the competitors – family lives in a caravan or lives in a mansion in Toorak; trains in their private pool or trains in the town creek; what are their academic records (or do questions such as these infringe some dopey Australian egalitarian code?)

We probably do not need ball-by-ball game description; that is, telling us literally what it is our eye is seeing, ‘a swing and a miss', ‘he runs with the ball' and so on. I suspect the tradition comes from radio where the listener needed some help.

Could the sports come to the arts for help? Might be worth a try.

A Suggestion:
We would make the radical suggestion that television uses scriptwriters drawn from among imaginative writers.

At least seventy-five per cent of the commentary could be loosely pre-scripted. These loose scripts could be evolved from watching past games, talking with sports specialists and working at venues in the atmosphere of the Games; by research; by language enrichment; and by imaginative foreshadowing.

It couldn't be duller than what we are getting.

Use of the medium of television

There is a ‘WR split box' which appears on the screen during the coverage of events. It tells Our Olympic Games Spectator nothing. We can work out that WR stands for World Record but what is ‘a split'? Other
strange codes and numbers come and go.

The screen clocks show time-expired but not
time-remaining
which is useless for Our Games Spectator who does not know how long the ‘quarter' or ‘half' of the particular sport is. Nor how many innings there are, say, in baseball.

The Games are a perfect example of where advertising has to be used judiciously; instead, it is used rapaciously and disruptively.

It is a lurid warning about advertising and serious broadcasting.

The Olympic Games coverage is a perfect example of where the ABC as the public service broadcaster should have natural, unchallenged rights to coverage.

We feel that we should lay down some rules about the intellectual life in Australia before it is
all too late
.

We need to look at some feuds and discords which ride around the paddock of Australian intellectual life, often like fly-demented horses.

So let us then put on our gumboots and thrash about in this muddy paddock and try to catch them.

First, some working definitions.

An intellectual is someone who tries to be aware of the processes and limitations of their own thinking. ‘An intellectual is someone whose mind watches itself,' said the French writer, Albert Camus.

The intellectual engages in inquiry.

Those who work in the production and distribution of knowledge we call the
intelligentsia
along with those who seek to influence public opinion by public activity.

Politics and intellectuals

Dramatisation of one's position by, say, street demonstrations or political campaigning is not intellectual activity; it is not ‘inquiry', as such. It is perhaps ‘displaying' or pitching one's ideas. Or polemics.

These have a place in the grand scheme of things. We suppose. Although we were always a very uncomfortable demonstrator.

John Maze used to have a demonstration banner saying ‘Yes'. A banner for all occasions. And at a pinch it could be interpreted as saying ‘Yes to life'.

Politics may eventually lend itself to inquiry (say in the quiet of a university when retired prime ministers critically review the policies created while they were in power).

Politics then is another activity, and worthwhile, even if it may be related in some ways to intellectual activity at odd contemplative moments.

It can, sadly, also become anti-intellectual when it prevents people speaking, by censorship, by picketing and disrupting the intellectual activities of opponents. And by dismantling or handicapping those institutions perceived to be the source of contrary ideas or ‘wrong thinking'. And by sponsoring attitudes and behaviour which silence the opposition or interfere with the expression of their position.

Those who
observe
politics, the uncommitted voters, may gain some intellectual value from the clash of political views even while those involved in the clash are not themselves involved in intellectual activity.

That is, the observer can be intellectual but rarely the participant (at the time).

That is why one doesn't bother ‘arguing' or ‘debating' with one's political opponents except as part of a public event which is, in fact, a display of positions.

The expert and the compulsion to speak

An expert is a professional specialist, someone who devotes their working life to the study of a subject, and is of high standing among others who do likewise. But an expert, while crucial to intellectual life, is not necessarily or always an intellectual.

Sadly, those of intellectual inclination are not intellectual all the time.

The media comes to the expert and says, ‘You are the expert, you must be able to tell us the answers.'

The expert thinks, ‘Yes, I am the expert. I must have the answer.'

And then feels compelled to ‘give an answer'.

This is plainly the case with academic specialists.

The most devastating example in recent years was when Oxford historian Hugh Trevor Roper ‘authenticated' the
Hitler Diaries
which turned out to be faked.

He claimed afterwards that he had insufficient time to make a final answer. Yet he felt compelled
to have an answer.

(This observation comes from Richard Jenkyns, a fellow of Lady Margaret Hall, Oxford).

Specialists are also forever tempted beyond their expertise.

Generational superiority

There was a program run on the ABC called
Timeframe.

We use this only as one example in a widespread disorder.

Timeframe
was publicised as a 15-part series on Australian social history.

The first episode had the intellectually embarrassing tone of, ‘Ho ho; what dumbos everyone was back in the 1950s'. The 1950s has been receiving much ridicule in recent years.

It is used as shorthand for the Silly Old Australians of That Generation.

And oh-how-out-there we are now.

We have established a Friends of the Fifties Society to put this aright.

So we see Australia's relationship to the British Crown in the 1950s presented in
Timeframe
as ludicrous.

A reviewer in the
Sydney Morning Herald
expresses this generational arrogance (and fallacy) when reviewing
Timeframe.

She says, ‘In three decades … Australians had moved from a child-like naivety to a greater self-awareness.'

Her comments also reflect the position of the program.

But this program, and the reviewer, grant no political sophistication to the position about royalty held by people at that time.

This misses very serious points.

First, there were then, as there are now, a multiplicity of positions about royalty and the UK relationship.

Second, the UK relationship was ‘functional' for
Australia for a long time; that is, in our interests, and
also
emotional because most of the people of Australia had living blood ties with the UK.

Many saw themselves, quite correctly, as having dual allegiance.

Much of the republican huffing and puffing (and conversely, some simple-minded pro-monarchists) seems ignorant of the ever-changing relationship between the UK and Australia. That is, we have been disengaging from the UK and headed towards a republic since 1842.

In 1842, New South Wales and Tasmanian got their first elected legislatures and South Australia was promised self-government when its population reached 50,000.

Every decade from then on saw disengagement in the relationship regardless of the coloration of the party in power.

Political emotion in Australia, such as street crowds in the past gathering to see the Queen, or more recently, to see the then President Clinton, has always been fairly astute and enjoyable (and harmless) and has expressed and celebrated serious political
feelings.

The behaviour of those who took to the streets to welcome the Clinton visit expressed a serious political reality. And this was before he became the most famous sexual politician in history.

And anyhow, who wouldn't pack the streets to see a beautiful young queen. Many do during the Gay and Lesbian Mardi Gras.

Left/Right/Left

Let's drop the use of the Left/Right categorisation as a way of dismissing a policy proposal. Or worse, as a factor in making decisions about people's careers and appointments.

The sanctimonious pseudo Left/Right loyalties do nothing but close down argument and bedevil the conversation of the intelligentsia (while not meaning anything to the average voter).

It is the single most damaging vice in the conversation of the Australian intelligentsia. It still makes analytical conversation on political matters virtually impossible and it is utterly out of step with reality.

Only the intelligentsia want to hold to the division – usually as a substitute for strong personal identity and nostalgia for the old socialism/capitalism debate.

Left can only apply to those working for or desiring radical economic and political transformation of the society.

Sure there are still Leftists around, but they are not in the mainstream debate at present.

Gee whiz or soft rock truths

These are those misapplied ‘truths' from science and philosophy which are flitting around intellectual life at present.

They are in the category of the truth from physics which shows that rocks are ‘soft'. That is, when pressure of even a human hand is applied to a rock, it imperceptibly ‘squashes'.

But the rock is not soft when you kick it.

Another example is the fashionable saying
that when a butterfly flaps its wings in an Amazon forest, it changes the climate here in Australia
. This is supposed to give us an appreciation of the delicate balance of the universe. One of the things we have learned is that the universe is far from delicate.

Or the idea
that every seven years, every cell in our body is renewed
and that something follows from this in understanding our personality.

Or that
we all now have a molecule of Hitler in the makeup of our bodies
. We don't know what this is supposed to tell us. That we all have the capacity now to be Hitlers?

Or that
there are no ‘systems'; that underneath all matter is a nonstructure of chaos
. This is supposed to either give us a moral holiday or lead us to a ‘deeper' non-rational, mystical understanding of the nature of things.

However, above whatever is happening at the molecular level, many ‘systems' and arrangements and fixed patterns do operate (at least for long enough to matter to us tomorrow).

Or that
there are no ‘trends' just expanding and contracting systems
(Stephen Jay Gould in his book
Life's Grandeur
).

There are enough statistical ‘trends' to be useful in everyday life even if they are part of an expanding system which may or may not be about to contract.

Or the philosophical truth
that through the act of observation, the observer always changes that which is observed
. The glance of a mouse changes the universe. Yes, maybe, but in most cases, not enough to matter. Some mice are
very, very good at observing without changing that which they observe at least, for what our father would call ‘all practical purposes'.

Or that logically, there are
no provable facts: everything is therefore a form of fiction
. We have separated fact from fiction for centuries because we find it helps make life manageable. Who would you like to operate on your body, someone who had studied physiology or a surrealist painter such as Salvador Dali?

That all personalities are slow burning fires: everything is in constant change and flux
. Yes, but not fast enough for it to matter tomorrow. Or in some cases, not fast enough for our liking.

There are two very fashionable primitive beliefs which people love to say.

They are
that for every advance in technology, the technology strikes back
negating the advance or advantages of the technology.

And that
medical treatments and drugs always have unintended repercussions which cancel out their benefits.
That antibiotics breed monster bacteria who are immune and put us at ever-increasing risk.

The truth is that antibiotics have worked miracles for decades now and, with some exceptions, will continue to do so – in all probability. And those which cease to be effective will, in all probability, be replaced.

Both these fashionable truths are primitivist thinking. They draw on the primitive believe that there is inexorable fate dooming us to eternal suffering and all our intelligence cannot escape it.

Another dopey idea which resurfaces frequently is that it is
sane to be paranoid.
Paranoia is a clinically definable delusional state and is disruptive of mental life and behaviour. To be
sceptical
, to be
suspicious
in some circumstances, and to know when to be sceptical and when to be suspicious may be a
sane
posture but it is not paranoia.

They imply that there is no point in trying to do anything long-term or rationally constructive when all these forces are arrayed against the human effort. Let's get pissed.

As
everyday
humans, we cannot perceive these philosophical or scientific
truths
nor do we live with these kinds of truths.

As with Gould's idea of there being no ‘progress', these proclamations are not functional truths.

There
can be
progressive patterns in any short-term set of factors, even the short term of a lifetime, which are useful to perceive and which can for a time be the basis of public or personal policy.

For example, fewer people die of common ailments now than one hundred years ago because of improved sewer systems and water supply and immunisation.

This may or may not continue, but for an important period of time for many millions of people, it mattered.

We cannot live by imperceptible change.

We live by short-term truths, useful collective hypotheses, functional imprecision, general statements which include important exceptions, suppositions accepted as working truths, acted upon, while held in doubt.

The above fashionable and intriguing ‘truths' may be
conversationally amusing but they are of little use.

We have to live with more mundane truths.

As the American philosopher C.I. Lewis said, ‘There is no
a priori
reason for thinking that, when we discover the truth, it will prove interesting.'