 A lot of people dislike critics or wonder why they're even needed. When the Australian criterati is made up almost exclusively of pontificating berks, bandwagon jumpers, wannabes with vested interests, inveterate snobs, out-of-touch wowsers and the plain deluded, it's hard not to have some sympathy with that view...
Andrew Bolt isn't exactly a critic - although, considering the rumour that he gets around $300,000 a year for writing his column for the Herald-Sun, I'd suggest they get him to do as many different jobs as they possibly can over there - but his occasional ventures into the world of the arts are always fun to read. Who could forget the time he took a page-long swipe at Finding Nemo for teaching our kids that, uh, the environment wasn't just there to be eaten? And this year's swipe at Australia was just as much fun, and no less incoherent. Maybe he thought the film was bad because it mentioned the Stolen Generations without giving equal time to Bolt's folder full of facts refuting it? Maybe the film was bad because the cast and crew said the Stolen Generations were bad in interviews? And maybe the film was bad because Bolt dropped his choctop in his lap during the bit where Hugh Jackman took his shirt off. Who really cares? Bolt didn't seem to. Just so long as he got to remind people that, as "Australia's Last Angry Man", he'd never forget the numerous lefty lies sapping this country's moral whatsis, he seemed happy with his day's work. Towards the end of 2008, The Age ran on its back page an interview with columnist Catherine Deveny, accompanied by a photo of her lying on her couch in a semi-provocative pose. Because, it seems, that's what a serious broadsheet does with its columnists. But thanks to the many layers of irony that Deveny wraps around herself like a spacesuit, enabling her to survive in a world where her bullshit would otherwise be toxic, there is simply no way to point out that this particular photo might have been counterproductive if she ever wanted anyone to take anything she has to say even remotely seriously. That's because she "goes there". She's "the columnist you love to hate". She's someone who "says the unsayable". And if you were to point out that the only places she seems to be going lie down the well-worn paths of "religion doesn't make much sense", "private schools aren't that good for the community as a whole" and "gas-guzzling cars are bad"...well, you're clearly just a hater and therefore you secretly love her because she's the columnist you love to hate, right? Right? And so she gets to write TV review columns where she proudly says she doesn't watch television then goes out of her way to pick a fight with one of the nations biggest commercial networks, because having her slag them off week in week out without pause or originality is so much more entertaining than reading what someone who actually watched a television show broadcast on that network might have to say about it. Perhaps someone should point out to her that when one of the nations's top newspapers only runs one television review column in its pages (supplements are another matter) and then hands over that column to someone who clearly doesn't give a shit about television except as a venue for her to talk about herself, then perhaps we're getting the television we deserve. As for Jim Schembri - well, let's just take a look at a slice of his work from The Age's EG suppliment in early December 2008. It's a fairly straightforward story in which Jimbo chats to the director and a couple of the stars of the teen musical High School Musical 3. There's nothing from the director himself but plenty from the two teenage girls, until suddenly, around the middle of the story, we learn that the director didn't like the interview he did with Jimbo (we never find out why - Jimbo says he's "flummoxed" and there's no quotes from the director), and things get cut short. But there's still time for one last question, and part of Vanessa Hudgens answer is this: "I'm just a 19 year-old girl. I don't have karate moves in my back pocket. I don't know how to defend myself. In fact, these 40 year-old guys following me who I don't even know is creepy". Then we get this from Jimbo (using the royal "we"): "As we bid farewell we give Hudgens a small card for her 20th birthday". What we have here is an article in which the following takes place: Jimbo has an interview with the 58 year-old director of High School Musical 3. Everything goes fine. Jimbo then goes on to speak to two teenage female stars of High School Musical 3. Everything goes fine until one of the girls is explaining "how her costumes needed to be sassy rather than sexy" and the director suddenly decides he wants Jimbo to stop talking to the teen girls. The teen girls then talk about how having a 40 year-old male fan is creepy, and the 40+ year old male Jimbo gives one of them a birthday card. Surely the EG editor must have picked up on how this might have looked?
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