Even before the poll the Voice felt like a lost cause

Author's note: I wrote this on 9 October, in the week leading up to the Voice poll on 14 October.

Australians are being asked to alter their birth certificate with very little information. I know, I know the trolls have been making this point for a long time and it’s time to move past it, but that doesn’t mean it’s not true. If you watch Netflix you’ll see how deeply people feel about family ties. I watched a TV show about a doctor who inseminated hundreds of women without their consent with his own sperm, the children of those procedures – carried out in a fertility clinic in Indiana – are rightly outraged by the liberties the physician took with their paternity, making himself a kind of divine vessel in the process of ruining other people’s idea of who they are. In the case of the Voice it strikes me that part of the problem arises from a similar place linked to the very identity of voters. A legislated Voice is like a passport, you can even let yours expire and then reapply for another one. But in order to do so you need a birth certificate at least. The Voice vote is like asking someone to change details on their birth certificate.

What?

If you had to alter your birth certificate to change the name of your father, how would that make you feel. Would you feel as though you’d been lied to, cheated, deceived? Or would you simply say “So what?” and move on blithely? I don’t know about you but this seems like a big deal.

The problem for Albanese and his ministers is that if you start describing how the Voice will work you’re going to get bogged down in distracting detail. I understand completely their need to keep the debate limited to “Yes” and “No”. When the Australian Electoral Commission (AEC) was forced by the media to get involved in the short-lived “Tick” and “Cross” debate they simply refused to be drawn out on the matter, saying again and again (and again in ads) that voters are being asked to simply write “Yes” or “No’ on the ballot paper. The AEC understands that even to talk publicly about the confusion created was to continue sowing confusion, so they aborted the juggernaut as quickly as possible and the media obediently moved on. 

That’s not to say that everyone moved on, by no means. Many people out there in La La Land believe that they’re being conned and that they’re having the wool pulled down over their eyes. But we don’t need to worry about the fringes. It’s the middle we’re concerned about, the majority 80 percent who count.

Even given this section of the population there are many diverse viewpoints in play, and it’s within this cohort that the arguments about detail will continue to be important right up to polling day. I’m writing this on 9 Oct so polling day is still in the future, but according to opinion polls the Voice is looking unlikely as a going concern. Not to say that opinion polls are all that important, we know that people routinely lie to pollsters for various reasons, but still the impetus seems at the moment to be behind the “No” position. Given that the most likely reason people will have for voting “No” is the lack of detail – it’s an issue unaligned with any particular political position, after all – I think that the lead-up to 14 Oct has been mishandled by the government. It seems to me that having Nathan Cleary come out in favour of the Voice is the Voice’s “jump-the-shark” moment, the moment when you hear the wind whistling through the eaves just before the tornado hits. I fear for the Voice. It sounds like a lost cause to me.

Details of Assange case are starting to disappear

I was reminded of Julian Assange last night when another segment came on the nightly news detailing the progress of the extradition case currently being heard in the UK. Assange is still in prison and his future remains up in the air. I wonder how he is faring and I remember again the first time I saw Julian, in 2009, when I was at my computer and I saw a video of a young man enthusiastically making an announcement at a podium. Assange quickly became a global phenomenon and the waters soon became muddy.

I’ve long been a supporter of Julian though I don’t think he’s ever been a journalist. Because he was publishing documents it’s possible to confuse categories but his relationship with the media has always been contradictory and rebarbative. The number of journalists this publisher has pissed off is very long and I have no doubt he’ll continue to try to use the media for his own purposes as time passes.

‘Don’t extradite Assange’ read this sign (see above). ‘Don’t extradite our rights,’ it goes on, conflating the destiny of the sign’s subject and that of the person holding it. I can feel the anger and I share a part of it myself. I just don’t know what the US has against Assange, and hope that, at the very least, that part of justice that is the public airing of positions can be allowed, with the help of the appropriate authorities, to take effect. 

The above photo shows the beginning of the forgetting. It was necessary for the Australian Broadcasting Corporation to put up a shot showing a newspaper headline in order to orient viewers. Perhaps without such an establishing shot many would be puzzled over the identity of this person with the strange name.

Assange will continue to polarise and to unite. The following photo shows a few of the people who were outside on the street in London for the protest against the UK authorities. People are angry that Julian is still locked up and in a way they have a right to be angry. I sometimes feel puzzled by the state of affairs but I want to know more. 

A challenge for culture warriors is keeping the community engaged

American broadcaster NBC has said it won’t screen the Golden Globes Awards for a while because of underrepresentation of minorities in the voting panel. This comes on the back of revelations that the number of people watching the Oscars had halved in the last year. Just as Netflix had started to capture a quantity of gongs commensurate with its reach, people had started to abandon awards nights, and even traditional allies had turned sour.

This reflects a wider problem with awards of all kinds. I’ve written before elsewhere about how, in literature, there’s a too-small pool of talent choosing who wins prizes. Everyone knows everyone else and no-one’s honest so the same people keep getting accolades. We need to make sure the pool of talent used is as wide as possible, but we should be careful not to be complacent and just award prizes to the products that tick all the right ideological boxes but that are otherwise ordinary.

When Elon Musk came out with his “Aspergers” revelation we saw the community respond mostly with positive comments. Some people were not happy but most people said nice things about the billionaire, and whatever you might think about moneybags like Musk taking credit for being a little different the episode showed us how important identity is for the way that people value cultural products. 

If Musk is anything, he’s part of popular culture. If Andy Warhol were alive the artist would make a screenprint of Musk’s face for use on T-shirts. Responses from RW culture warriors to the NBC story, however, show that a backlash has already started – even before the project has fully worked itself out. Many people are unhappy with the “woke” factory that parts of the industry have become. This path is still unrolling itself along time’s bright axis so it’s too early, now, to give a definitive answer based on evidence, but I predict that the two sides will continue to bicker online until someone sets up a “Just Art” award committee somewhere that has as its overt focus the ignoring of ideology as a criterion for valuing such things as books or movies. 

“The Purelys” might be given each year to TV shows that are good despite the use of a wide range of gender-identifying types from many ethnic backgrounds, but who will be on the panel of judges? A random cohort of Twitter users, chosen on the basis of their visibility on the Netflix hashtag, perhaps. Or else a committee of university academics, following the Nobel’s methodology. Who gets to choose what is “good” and what is merely pedestrian? Do we allocate value on the basis of dollars alone, or do we wait, like patient children, until posterity tells us what is worth caring about?

A little ruckus over the Sussexes’ second child

This article isn’t a swipe at the media but is, instead, a swipe at those who exploit it. I’ll start on 15 February when, at 7.30am Sydney time, America’s Associated Press tweeted that Duke and Duchess of Sussex were expecting their second child. What followed in my limited universe of hopes and aspirations was very small, the contretemps, and hardly worth mentioning but for the consistency of the replies to my adventure, which had been, as follows:

Odd! Considering the Sussex' difficult relationship w the media, why trumpet about Megan again being in the family way? I don't understand ..

Just to make it clear I was genuinely puzzled I put a small emoji in at the end of the post, a quizzical face with a half-frown and blank eyes. I thought the emoji might take any sting out of the post, render it bland and qualify it with the sort of humour – obvious and conventional – that you need to use on Twitter if you want to avoid difficult interactions with people who are more likely to express anger than to empathise with what you’re feeling.

I got anger. One person replied:

They confirmed the news to get it out of the way so paparazzi wouldn’t have an incentive to stalk them for a scoop. Are you new here?

This person was more reasonable:

Because think of all the media outlets commenting on how fat she's getting over the coming months? If they drip feed the news they want the media to have then fair play to them.

As was this (not entirely convincing) riposte:

Meghan is an American actress and celebrity. We would care if she wasn't married to Harry. We're just especially delighted because they are an incredible power couple who are deeply in love. I'm so glad he's away from that toxic family and living his best life.

Over on Facebook I also had grief, having posted this:

Associated Press just announced The Sussexes are expecting a new child. Find it hard to judge Megan but it seems odd to go to the media again after having just won a court case against the British tabloids. If you're going to critique the media -- and even take them to court -- surely you'd want to avoid using them entirely. It seems silly to me, but others will have different views, I'm aware ...

A person used Facebook to snippily correct my spelling of the duchess’ name (I’d put “Megan” – a capital crime in itself), and added:

The case was around the press printing a private letter between Meghan and her father.

The royal tradition of sharing the news of new arrivals is something quite different.

She went on to say that she saw a different standard being applied to Meghan compared to other members of the royal family, with a coda containing information to the effect that she wasn’t a fan of the royals in general – which I took to mean that she supports the idea of an Australian republic.

With one of my Twitter adversaries (almost readying himself for pistols at dawn) I had a further discussion. He said,

I don’t know how to tell you this, but when people get pregnant they often announce it.

To which I replied (considering his response to at least have been civil):

Sure mb to family, but not to the world. Megan and Harry have made a point of critiquing the media. Megan even won a court case recently. If William mentions it in passing to the media that's enough, surely.

To which he responded:

We announced ours on Twitter and Facebook. We don’t have a spokesperson. 

Don’t you have something better to clutch your pearls over?

Ouch! As a parting shot I replied:

I should get new pearls. My old string has been worn down to nubs from constant fretting.

He finally shut up, probably because I’d added another emoji to my humorous tweet, this time a face with eyes of different sizes, as though my avatar were demented, and with its tongue sticking out of its mouth. This emoji was more aggressive than the first one – the replies to my fairly innocuous tweet had been, some of them, unnecessarily nasty – but it still contained a sting, just to let my interlocutor know I wasn’t a complete pushover. Someone else said,

They quit being working royals. They didn't enter a monastery

*Sigh* 

It was all – the sarcasm, the threat of a flame war if I carried on (which I didn’t), the negative emotions being expressed rather than positive ones – all of it was pretty standard for Twitter. Here was all the evidence anyone could need of how fear and loathing has come to characterise public debate, and while reactions to my well-meaning comment were often humorous, I was, in all cases, the butt of the jokes. Not the media and certainly not Meghan who, as had happened so many times, was clearly a figure whose destiny provokes the strongest possible reactions in people.

The AP story that caused all the reactions had the title, “Duchess of Sussex expecting 2nd child, a sibling for Archie,” and was, therefore innocent enough. It also contained an image showing Harry and Meghan walking along together before a collection of stray individuals. The royal couple are holding an umbrella – or, at least, Harry is. Meghan in the photo has her hand gripping Harry’s right arm. In her right hand she holds a clutch and she is dressed – looking slim and terrific (absent baby bump) – in a light-blue gown. They are out for the evening perhaps, I thought to myself, at a concert. 

In fact it had been an awards night. (This article kindly lists all of Meghan’s fashionable clothing, just so the photo is not wasted.) Marie Claire had a story about the same event, which was in March last year.  

But – don’t look at me! (maintain a civil tongue, now) – three days before the AP story went up, the Sydney Morning Herald had a story headlined, “Meghan Markle wins privacy battle.” 

Meghan Markle has won her privacy battle against a British tabloid, with a court ruling the publication of a letter she sent her father was unlawful.

The video on the newspaper’s website started with a still image that was also taken at the 2020 Endeavour Awards, the only difference between the two images being that for the video the SMH photo had been taken from a different angle.

Back on Facebook someone I only know from using that platform for communication, said:

They want it both ways and all on their terms

Which I thought summed up the situation perfectly, and which had been – in my initiative sallie – the nub of the matter. The royals in question were milking an opportunity to raise their brand since – now that they’d split formally from Harry’s dysfunctional family – they would in future partly rely on money they could earn from their own enterprise in order to pay the bodyguards and the hotels and the first-class seats in international passenger jets (at least, once the vaccine had started to kick in and borders opened up again).

Bing lied to me. Harry and Meghan are no longer “senior” royals, and in a January 2020 story Time put up this:

In a statement shared on their official Instagram page on Jan. 8, the Duke and Duchess of Sussex said that, as they transition away from their role as “senior” royals, they plan to “work to become financially independent, while continuing to fully support Her Majesty The Queen.”

In the AP story there’s this:

A Buckingham Palace spokesman said: “Her Majesty, Duke of Edinburgh, Prince of Wales and the entire family are delighted and wish them well.”

Rancour abates on account of the happy occasion (blood is thicker than water) despite a tense separation of what were – once upon a time – shared interests. But being aspirational Harry and Meghan are not going to let a good opportunity pass by them. They do, indeed, want to have their cake – be unburdened by the exigencies of royal routine – and eat it, too – they’re not going to miss a chance to capitalise on the fever for royalty shared by most of the community.

It ensures an unlimited supply of lucrative offers from different parts of the global community. For these two are, without question, global superstars. The crème de la crème. Yet people still sympathise with them. With Meghan especially. As though they were people “just like us”.

Her problem is that relations with The Mail on Sunday (the British tabloid she sued in court) and its ilk – economic loss will be offset by publicity for the machinery of signification – are likelier to continue, in future, fraught if – as she’s done with her pregnancy announcement – she cravenly capitalises on the intersection of family and public sphere. 

Of course, we cannot know what the future holds. We can only hope that, unlike their grandfather, her children grow up content with their lot and able to lead fulfilling and productive lives. While, considering what happened to Harry’s mother, kicking up a fuss over the expected baby is probably not wise, retirement would lead to a fall in income.