Quick Shots - 02/Mar/2016

Cardinal Pell And The Australian Inquisition

Jeez Louise, Cardinal George Pell, he o the moral high horse has been grilled about what he knew o the Ballarat Pedophile priests in his time at Ballarat and East Melbourne. We're learning more of the kind of moral fibre this man possesses in the last two few days and it's proving all the prejudicial views people might have had against him, to be quite true. He is at heart, a gormless little petty bureaucrat in the service of his career with the Roman Catholic Church.

During Rafferty's time, after Sleeman had resigned, a delegation went to Pell to complain about Searson, but Rafferty said their concerns were dismissed. 

Pell told the Royal Commission that was because he was deceived by Archbishop Little and the education office, the latter perhaps because they wanted to keep a lid on matters and were scared he would ask "inconvenient" questions. 

Furness summarised: so Pell was deceived by Bishop Mulkearns and one or more consultors in Ballarat, Archbishop Frank Little and the Catholic Education Office in Melbourne? "That is correct," the cardinal replied. 

Furness: "That's an extraordinary position, Cardinal!" 

Pell: "It was an extraordinary world of crime and cover ups and people not wanting the status quo disturbed. When I became Archbishop [in 1996] I turned the situation right around so that the Melbourne Response procedures were light years ahead of all this obfuscation and prevarication and deception."

You gotta laugh only if it weren't so grim, sad, and evil. It sure doesn't look good to be the high priest of an organ that spent considerable energy ignoring the obvious cries for help. How can we ever take this man seriously ever again?

'Selma'

A historic recreation pic about the troubles in Selma Alabama in 1965, and Dr. Martin Luther King's part in making sure black people got to register to vote. Good performances but terrible directing. The pacers all over the place and frankly, the exposition gets so long an boring I nodded off for a few minutes. It could have been handled lot better than what's on screen here. Very disappointed because the crits and Rotten Tomatoes rated it so highly.

'South Park' Season 19

Sort of amazing that this show keeps going. The usual foul language and inappropriate humour is here but strangely restrained. The pastiche of bad taste is not quite translating into belly-laughs, but more of a muted chuckle. They've targeted political correctness and are going after it hard, but there's something a bit amiss in their scatter gun approach.

More Thoughts On Michael Jackson

Still Mourning, Still Trying To Figure Him Out


I've been thinking about Michael Jackson a lot because I'm finding it hard to remember a time I wasn't aware somehow of his work. I imagine it would be harder for people younger than Gen-X to fathom a world where Michael Jackson wasn't around on the celebrity gossip rags or on the airwaves.

Michael Jackson made his debut at the Apollo in 1967, and rose to prominence in 1968. It's interesting to note that the rise of Michael Jackson the performer begins during the epoch of the civil rights movement and Martin Luther King making his famous "I have a Dream" speech.

For 40years, there was Michael Jackson's persona in the public sphere. He's been around as long as say, Robert Redford or Dustin Hoffman. That 40years is actually looking like a very long time in the public consciousness.

Consider these random facts: his arrival on the public consciousness predates the moment George Steinbrenner buys the New York Yankees by 5 years, and 7 years before the renovated stadium re-opened. He was there before the World Trade Center opened in New York City. He arrived in the year Australians chose to let the Indigenous people of Australia be counted as citizens. His arrival predates the finishing of the Sydney Opera House. The Beatles were still together, producing 'Let It Be' and 'Abbey Road'.

His arrival happened the year of the Tet offensive in the Vietnam War. By the time he died, the Americans were just about to pull out of Iraq's cities ahead of a draw down.

More importantly - I've been pondering this - the end of that 40 years marks the first black American President in Barack Obama. And I keep thinking that across those 40 years, I cannot deny that maybe Michael Jackson did so much to move the world's perception, to turn Reverend King's vision from a dream to an electable reality.

Let's face it, Michael Jackson was so weird, that next to him, Barack Obama looks like... a very normal man. A man so normal he'd pass as politically white. And here's the key about being thrust next to Michael Jackson: Michael Jackson and his very weirdness pushed the boundaries so far, so wide, so, out-there that we - all of us -look normal, even though we are all slightly weird in our on little ways. By the time a de-polemicised black candidate turned up, the world was ready for Obama.

I'm not saying Obama got elected because Michael Jackson directly enabled him through his weirdness in 2008. No. What I am saying is that over the many, many years in between, Michael Jackson and his entire weird persona crossed over so many borderlines that eventually he weirded us all out. not only did he weird me out, he weirded out everybody to the extent that by the the Obama came along, the weirdness he infected the world made Obama look... decidedly normal.

"What is normal anyway?" I can hear you ask, and I'd not be able to give you a workable answer. But the 'normal' in this instance would include notions of being closer to the middle of the spectrum in things such as fashion, social status positioning and even sexual orientation.

So this is what I thnk about all this: In the future, when historians look at the second half of the 20th century, they're going to have to come to terms with Michael Jackson as a cultural influence. We might think of him as 'Whacko Jacko' today, but in 100years time, people might actually come to understand him as the man who changed the cultural landscape of America for the better. There is no doubt in my mind today that we lost a giant.