Oz outrage at Germaine Greer's attack on 'cultural wasteland'

Daily Telegraph ^ | January 28, 2004 | Nick Squires in Sydney and Caroline Davies

[Cincinatus' Wife]

Australia's fragile national ego was laid bare yesterday when its prime minister attacked Germaine Greer, the country's most prominent expatriate intellectual, for a scathing critique of her homeland.

The academic and Daily Telegraph columnist, who lives near Saffron Walden, Essex, prompted a frenzy of soul-searching and self-analysis by condemning Australia as a sports-obsessed suburban wasteland devoid of cerebral stimulation.

Miss Greer, 64, who left Melbourne for England in 1964, said Australia's city centres were "marooned in oceanic tracts of suburban doldrums".

The Cambridge-educated author, best known for her feminist treatise The Female Eunuch, said Australia was defined by suburban mediocrity, personified by the residents of Ramsay Street in the soap opera Neighbours.

"If your ambition is to live on Ramsay Street, where nobody has even been heard to discuss a book or a movie, let alone an international event, then Australia may be the place for you," she wrote in The Australian newspaper. "The pain of watching its relentless dilapidation by people too relaxed to give a damn is more than I can bear."

It was the country's parochialism and lack of professional opportunities which had forced a million Australians to go and live abroad, she said, most of them in Britain and America.

She said she resolved to leave Australia at the age of 12 because "I had been bored ever since I could remember". In the event it took her another 13 years to escape, one of a generation of Australian intellectuals, including Barry Humphries and Clive James, who never returned.

Her attack touched a raw nerve and prompted a ferocious counter-attack from her former countrymen.

Yesterday the prime minister, John Howard, weighed into the debate, describing the opinion piece as "hopelessly out of date".

"I thought that was a particularly patronising, condescending, and dare I say elitist article," Mr Howard said. "I thought it was pathetic, I really did.

"What she basically says is that the average Australian is too stupid to think about anything that's the least bit philosophical or important."

For most of their 215-year history Australians have suffered from a deep inferiority complex, ever-sensitive to jibes from outsiders that they live in a remote outpost of Anglo-American culture.

In recent years the self-doubt has swung the other way, producing a jingoistic confidence buoyed by sporting success, an enviable lifestyle and showcase events like the 2000 Sydney Olympic Games and last year's Rugby World Cup.

But the fact that her critique has sparked such an impassioned public debate suggests that Australia's self-image remains eggshell-thin and that "cultural cringe" is alive and well.

The Herald Sun newspaper in Melbourne said Miss Greer's "pompous diatribe" was patronising. "Lest she might be forgotten, the otherwise forgettable Ms Greer returns every so often to tell us where we have gone wrong," the paper railed.

Phone-in radio stations and newspaper letters pages have been inundated with angry rebuttals. One letter writer, from a smart, harbourside district of Sydney, described Miss Greer's attack as "astoundingly ignorant". The writer said: "I am tired of clapped-out intellectuals belittling the Australian suburbs."

A radio station in Sydney ran a competition in which listeners were invited to compose a song belittling "Greer's sneer" and defending the Australian way of life.

Miss Greer was unrepentant yesterday. "I am astonished and flattered that the prime minister should have the time to respond to an article which is an expression of opinion," she said.

[Cincinatus' Wife]

I'm sure she has an opinon on America too.

_______________________________________________________________________

Germaine Greer, the adolescent eunuch The Herald Sun -[Full Text] GERMAINE Greer is at it again - bagging Australia.

The expatriate Ms Greer wrote in The Australian yesterday that she was 12 when she decided she had to get out.

The tone of her pompous diatribe suggested that even at 64 she is still beset by adolescent confusion.

Ms Greer has achieved notoriety by being outrageous.

She has thus become something of a cult figure among those unable or unwilling to see that the empress has no clothes.

Lest she might be forgotten, the otherwise forgettable Ms Greer returns every so often to tell us where we have gone wrong.

In her latest gratuitous homily she rails at suburban Australia - the "endless, ever expanding replications of (Neighbours) Ramsay St".

Patronisingly, she paints a false picture of the great Australian dream, reflecting the depth of her contemporary ignorance of the country in which she was born: "If your ambition is to live on Ramsay St where nobody has ever been heard to discuss a book or a movie, let alone an international event, then Australia may be the place for you."

Her assessment of Australia's economy is immediately suspect when she writes (incorrectly) that even Australia's own car, the Holden, is made somewhere in Asia.

Her complaint that Australians have to go overseas to pursue their careers is curiously insular for someone who loves to hog the international stage.

Ms Greer's aversion to watching first-hand Australia's "relentless dilapidation by people too relaxed to give a damn" has led her to choose to live in class-ridden Britain where everyone knows their place.

But is her secret fear that in Australia's egalitarian suburbia she might disappear without trace? [End]

[dfwgator]

So she's Australia's version of Gore Vidal, only more masculine.

[BunnySlippers]

She doesn't wear underpants either.

[GeronL]

why do anyone in the UK or Australia care a whit about her opinions??

[Cincinatus' Wife]

She doesn't wear underpants either.

It won't help.

[Cincinatus' Wife]

LOL

[Cincinatus' Wife]

8-21-98 Hillary Clinton Owes an Explanation to Women of the Third World***For decades, we women of the third world have looked to Britain and America in matters feminist. When I was studying physics at Nagpur University in India, I kept a copy of "The Female Eunuch" by Germaine Greer hidden among my textbooks -- which I would pull out and read late at night after my father had gone to sleep.

In those days, we listened carefully to every word Gloria Steinem and Betty Friedan uttered. Because we didn't know how much liberation we should rightfully want.

It was personal liberation we were most confused about. On the professional level, we third world women of the post-war era enjoyed many opportunities for advancement -- India has trained as many female doctors as male for decades, and many of my friends studied science or engineering, as I did.

…………………If we are to be guided by the words of Patricia Ireland, President of the National Organization for Women (NOW), the American feminist movement -- which taught us about sexual liberation, birth control, domestic violence, and sexual harassment -- is now teaching us to preserve our marriages even if our middle aged husbands engage in sexual liaison with women young enough to be our daughters. Moreover, the message is we should overlook our husbands' sexual lapses for the sake of our children.

Of course, we are not as fortunate as Hillary. Most of us neither have high paid careers as lawyers, nor husbands we can hold under our thumbs in some sort of a Faustian political bargain. Many of us come from a world where polygamy is still practiced -- one of my closest friends grew up in an Indian household in which her mother, the discarded first wife, suffered daily humiliation while living under the same roof as her father and the father's second wife. Chinese women of a certain generation can recall a time when middle-aged men with money and power frequently acquired young concubines.

To us, the Clinton-Hillary situation resonates with that horrific past we have struggled so much to put behind us. American feminists say that Hillary has a choice. But that is precisely the point. So many of the women around the world do not have the choice that Hillary has. That is why, to many of us third world women, Hillary Clinton's words of love and forgiveness were shocking, mystifying, and ultimately infuriating.

Hillary Clinton plans to attend a summit on Women in Emerging Democracies in Ireland at the end of August. But that Hillary Clinton and the American feminist movement condone Bill Clinton's actions constitutes to us a serious betrayal of trust. If she fails to offer us an explanation of her feelings and reactions towards Bill Clinton's confession, we women of the third world will consider it so much hypocrisy when Hillary Clinton and the American feminists start preaching liberation to us at the upcoming summit.***

[GeronL]

Patty ireland... Hillary Clinton....

your giving me a headache now.... blah blah blah...

[Brian Allen]

As [With apologies to him] one of Hollywood's better known philosopers and bird fanciers, Jack Nicholson, recently observed on learning there are four times more single women over forty than single men: 'feminism has come home to roost!'

Bump/Ping

Germaine [The Helen Reddy of pseudo intellectuals] who?

[dennisw]

She's a man babay!!!! YEEAAAAAAAAHHHHHHRRRRRRRRRRRRGGGGGGG!!!!

[helives]

hahaha......I live in the sunburnt country and England can have her. Its safe here, its sunny most of the time and its a beautiful place to live. It has space to breathe, abundant beaches with sand...(lol) and you can buy a steak without mortgaging your house. All these things she despises.

Well heres the clues to her demented outburst. a) The Miss says it all!!

b) Maybe she forgot to take her medication since the article sounds like a diatribe brought on by dementia

c) She hasnt lived here since 1964....umm things have changed.

d) Shes a sad old woman.

[Cincinatus' Wife]

Jack Nicholson, recently observed on learning there are four times more single women over forty than single men: 'feminism has come home to roost!'

[Cincinatus' Wife]

Bump!

[Cincinatus' Wife]

***"Aussies", when speaking Strine, will tell you they come from "'Stralia". Australians also refer to their country as "Oz" (phonetic version of Aus), which can be a tad confusing to those who are more familiar with Dorothy and her gang. Anecdotally, this one appears to be more popular amongst expats than locals, and is also well-used by Australian newspapers in headlines because of its brevity.*** Source

[Brian Allen]

<< God bless Australia, God bless America, God bless western civilization >>

Brian: I'll drink to that!

Brian's wife: Huh! You'll drink to anything!

Brian: Awright then, I'll drink to that. too!

God bless America, God bless Australia, God bless the Nation of Israel -- and God bless the Judeo-Christian/Western Civilization we and our First and Best [Aussie] Allies have long vanguarded -- and, together, will for ever guard.

BumPing

[Cincinatus' Wife]

I think the old gal needs a

[Brian Allen]

<< I think the old gal needs a .... >>

By the look of the picture on the front cover of her book -- and on reflection upon what Siggy Freud had to say about folfs like her -- that's likely not all she needs.

[Cincinatus' Wife]

Well, I'm not going to post a picture of that.

[sauropod]

"She has thus become something of a cult figure among those unable or unwilling to see that the empress has no clothes."

Oh please! Not that!

[sauropod]

More single women over forty than single men....

Sounds good to me ;-).