I suppose when you follow the Woody Allen trail of filmic apologia for his fascination with young women, the lens settles on the troubled mind. The pursuit of the younger woman by the older man is not only the preserve of Mr Allen. Try Mr Polanski. The seventies seemed to be a time when the world was cluttered with these creeps “outing themselves” – a pride of predators – so to speak.
However, it was 20 years before in the early 1950s that I first encountered this syndrome in the film Baby Doll. I was a teenager and older men chasing young teenage women confused me, but then I had the naivety of no sexual experience.
There was this societal response of averting one’s eyes from such behaviour. At school, there was never an open forum to discuss what was happening in contemporary society. Looking back at the trailer of the film, the voice over has a dark, oleaginous, lascivious tone. While there was widespread “tut-tutting” about the film, what was the long-lasting effect? The creation of short revealing nightwear for young women. Yes, a life lived constantly with Women Objectification.
A new book entitled “Consentement” has been published as reported by the Guardian Weekly. The author is Vanessa Springora, who was abused by one Gabriel Matzneff, another writer who preyed on the underaged. When he was interviewed on a talk show in 1990 in Paris, Matzinoff is reported to have responded to a question about his penchant for women under 20 by saying the older woman has known “disillusionment” whereas the “not yet hardened” are nice to sleep with. This statement enraged a Canadian author, Denise Bombardier, who called out his actions. For her action the Paris male-dominated intelligentsia mocked her; called her bitch.
Twenty years later, same location, Paris, Ms Springora releases the book, described as a memoir of being abused by Matzinoff when she was 15 and he three times her age. This time, his casual insouciance has been replaced by his flight from Paris and a trial set down for September this year.
As the Washington Post reminded us this week, France prohibits sexual relations between an adult and a minor under the age of 15 but has no minimum age of consent. The French government has said it will “act quickly” to amend statutes so that an adult who engages in sex with someone younger than 15 would be charged with rape.
I have placed an order for the book.
Machias Seal Island and the Improbability of Puffins
I was reminded of a trip to Machias Seal Island when I read about the roll-out of the COVID-19 vaccine to the remote islands off the Maine Coast. But the ownership of one of these islands has been disputed between Canada and the United States.
I have previously written about the Canada and Denmark dispute over the Hans Island between Greenland and Canada.
This is another of those anomalous situations that is the subject of an ongoing dispute between Canada and USA.
In 1783, the Treaty of Paris settled the Revolutionary War, but it left unanswered questions about the Maine–New Brunswick border. In 1820, when Maine became a state, its government defined its boundary as far north as it could. The so-called Aroostook War ensued, with militia mobilisation on each side and cross-border arrests eventually leading to a solution brokered by diplomacy rather than force. The resulting treaty, signed 175 years ago, determined the current crooked shape of northern Maine and should have solved the cross-border tensions, except that it failed to account for Machias Seal Island and the smaller adjacent North Rock.
Our American friend who owned a house in Maine knew that the only way to get to this island was to take a boat from the Maine port of Cutler.
The reason was that Anonymouse wanted to see the puffins, which nest every year on Machias Seal Island in late spring. During the nesting season these crazy looking little birds have flaming orange beaks.
The North Atlantic Ocean can be a very rough journey for a small, converted fishing boat. However, this day, the swell was tolerable. This was essential because alighting from the boat on the slipway can be too dangerous to land safely and you can go there for nought, not being able to land.
This day we landed and were led by a grumpy Canadian marine scientist up to the lighthouse. This lighthouse was built by the New Brunswickers in 1832 and has been manned by the Canadian coast guard or its former equivalent ever since. We sheltered against the lighthouse and in pairs we were led to a hide. There were several small hides in the middle of the puffin colony. The puffins clustered around and all over the slightly undulating and rocky surrounding area. The puffins used the roof of the hide as a landing strip, and repeatedly there was a crash as they landed hard. They then hopped away off the “runway” to allow the next bird to land.
Normally a hide is a place which allows you to wait and wait until the bird turns up for a brief sighting. Not in this case – the puffins were in their hundreds nearby, they waddled, they posed, they are an unforgettable little auk, each with an individuality known only to each other’s partner. These birds are completely unknown in southern waters just as penguins are unknown north of the Equator.
After about half an hour, the experience is ended, one is escorted back down the boardwalk and as we were about the last pair to visit the birds, it was not long before we were boarding the boat and heading back to the American mainland. No, we did not need a passport, nor on the other hand were we allowed to roam the Island.
The puffin had been an emblem on a series of books in my childhood, and this was the first time I had been up close – if not personal – with an improbability of puffins. A remarkable experience capped off by the extraordinary return when the Ocean was a millpond, a gentle end to a long day.
Mathias Made it – Freed from Morrison
“Cecilia Malmström consistently received broad support from the Member countries, and the outcome was close. We are grateful for all of the support throughout the process. Sweden will now join the consensus behind the Australian candidate” says Minister for Foreign Trade and Nordic Affairs Anna Hallberg.
In commenting about his bid to run for this position, I was biased because of his political antics in Australia, but then he became more recognisable as a chameleon – a very clever one, who has used Australia as his stepping stone back to Europe. He is the ultimate mercenary, and there is no doubt in my mind that it was the United States as the deciding factor. Biden’s staff recognised that he was not bound to any ideology but is very smart and any indiscretions like being “outed” as one of the puerile “big, swinging dicks” was only his attempt to acclimatise to the maturity of Australian culture.
While being supported by Australia was essential, I suspect that the Americans may have been lukewarm towards Malmström and in the end I suspect the US needed Australia more than Sweden at this time. It would not have escaped Biden’s attention that Australia has had an excellent record in containing the COVID-19 virus and Sweden not so much.
Let’s face it, Cormann is a German, being born in the German-speaking sliver of Belgium. As I have stated, he has a good working relationship with the German Government, and as it became increasingly clear, he was only using Australia as a temporary watering stop. His charm, his fluency in the influential languages enabled him to gradually gain traction from a perceived “no hoper” position. This only reinforced the fact that he had maintained his own counsel and had sounded out his potential allies among the German-Benelux mob. Possibly the attempted intervention of certain local political figures to try and stop his appointment may have brought a transitory shadow, but political feather dusters tend to be blown away rather than have any lasting effect.
Remember the OECD is the successor to the Marshall Plan. For the past 16 years, the Secretary General has been a Mexican; for the previous 12 years a Canadian – one just South; the other just North. Very close for comfort. Also note the time these guys held office. Cormann may still be there when Morrison is just a Johannes Leak painting in some distant alcove of Parliament House.
I have been scanning both the New York Times and Washington Post for news of the Cormann appointment. Nothing. I am nevertheless reminded of the late Jim Wolfensohn, who grew up in Australia to become an international banker. He set his sights on becoming the President of the World Bank. To further this ambition, he became an American citizen. Some 15 years later his long game was rewarded, and he headed the World Bank from 1995 for 10 years. There was no chauvinistic roar as I remember it when he got the job. In 2010 he quietly reclaimed his Australian citizenship.
Cormann has been underrated; but he was the European who wanted to return there and get Morrison to back him. Very smart, but if not for this personal armoury, it is doubtful whether he would have won. Despite the so-called public relations propensity of the Prime Minister (and those “puff pieces” from DFAT through their Shield mouthpiece) to try and get the credit, it was Cormann himself who convinced the panel.
Congratulations; and thus I know where you will be in six years’ time unless there is a skeleton whose rattling has yet to be heard or that your youth doesn’t assure against your mortality. I am not so sure about Mr Morrison or Cormann, your successor in the role of Minister of Finance in six years’ time.
And talking about political timing, there would have been a problem if he had remained a Liberal strategist after the annihilation of the Liberal party last Saturday. But he had long since gone. Now he can stride to work from June along the Seine in the 16th Arrondissement with an independent air.
And for your successor as Minister for Finance, two questions: How much this circus cost Australia? And for what purpose?
But in the words of those McCain ads, ah Mathias, you’ve done it again.
A Violent Society ready to be Tamed?
Ever since Cain killed Abel, human beings have killed one another, and those closest to the person with the weapon are often the least immune.
I watched the gun culture of the United States grow and remembered that decades ago I penned a piece on the Hoddle Street massacre. It took another massacre at Port Arthur for most of this country to wake up to itself. Therefore, the anonymous random murders of those who are a victim of one person’s accumulated hatred were laid to rest by the incoming Prime Minister, John Howard, an unremarkable man achieved a remarkable outcome.
The country has been ravaged by criminal gangs killing one another in order to control the dark side of our economy. A multicultural society admits those who have been brutalised as young children, whether Lebanese, Iraqis, Sudanese to name a few – who have come to accept death on the street as part of everyday life. In contrast, our children can stroll through a shopping mall where there are no gun-toting security people at every corner, but on returning home are able to retreat into a virtual world of cyber violence. Cyberspace is full of it. Aggression and violence underlie the promotion of sport. Then have we addressed the acceptable level of violence. Can it be zero ever?
When my then teenage sons were working through the pentathlon sports, they then had to learn how to shoot with a centre fire pistol at a stationery target 10 metres away. Owning these pistols required me to be fingerprinted and to have a secure pistol safe. What struck me about the pistol club crowd was how normal, almost introspective they were. They never paraded around in combat uniforms. They treasured their pistols; they would come to the range and fire repeatedly at the one set of targets. Walk down the range, check how they had done, replace the target, walk back up the range, confer with their fellow members and start again. They were quiet, and frowned upon any activity that could be interpreted as aggressive. It was important to be calm as firing the pistol was synchronous with your heartbeat, and the slower that was, the more time to get your aim correct. My sons never pursued pistol shooting, but they learnt the etiquette. Technology for pentathlon now allows the pistols to be simulated with laser weapons and live ammunition is no longer required.
John Howard’s response to the gun culture was immediate. After he made his stand, for a time he wore a bullet proof vest when addressing crowds. As you watch Morrison, you just get the feeling that he would not emulate John Howard. He would just be over-run by the Shooters and Fishers sympathisers for a start. They were not as organised in the 1990s and probably the mood following Port Arthur would not have given them much oxygen. The West Australian family massacre in 2018 is the only mass shooting in Australia since Port Arthur. In fact, both suicide and homicide by guns have fallen since the 1980s and this fall was not interrupted by the COVID-19 virus outbreak. Therefore, the gun mob now have gained some more oxygen, especially as the need to get rid of feral animals is looming as another battleground to justify the wider use of firearms.
The Christchurch massacre two years ago in New Zealand was particularly vile. Perpetrated by an Australian, the mosque massacre showed that the New Zealand gun restrictions needed to be tightened. However, the terrorism in the wake of the American invasion of Iraq, plus 9/11 maybe have had a desensitising effect on all of us.
While there is a great deal of talk of Muslims being part of the community, especially after the Christchurch massacre, much of that empathy is as superficial as green drought. How can a Society increasingly brought up in an egalitarian world not be affronted to see the blokes in casual wear being trailed by women in complete shapeless black clothing from top to toe? Publicly we are affronted by the antics of One Nation, but much of the racism just as publicly identifies deeply held biases. Yet why am I not affronted by the Christian sects that insist on the women wearing bows in their hair so Christ can recognise when he, enraptured, comes again. I just dismiss it as “quaint”. Yet why do we tolerate Scientologists to exist despite their repressive tactics? They are not a quaint group. As we single out groups our biases just hop around.
Most of us keep our biases to ourselves and the ballot box is where we can unleash them – at least somewhat. It leads to the appearance of civilisation. Nevertheless, ongoing violence is often rooted in differences in belief, which is ever present in a so-called multicultural society.
This country is a long way from resolving its problem with systemic violence. I thought that once the use of weaponry has been put in its rack, Australia could now concentrate on violence abatement. For in the USA this question has not been resolved because the right to bear arms is an excuse for violence as recently shown in Washington. The Constitutional mantra begins: “A well regulated militia being necessary to the security of a free state…” – however, those January 6 images just evoke a hollow laugh. The one thing Trump exposed was the fact that America is at heart a violent society, obsessed with firearms and which treats women like dirt.
Women’s movements seem to flame up and then the gender mismatch resumes, with a few male sacrifices, but nothing really changes.
Here in Australia, the knife has replaced the gun as the instrument of choice when the fist and the rape are not enough. There are now young women who do not need fancy plumage to attract attention. They have existed but they have been pushed aside to be a voluble fringe, living your life on talk shows being very clever but totally irrelevant.
Ms Tame, beware the elements of sleeplessness, isolation, burnout and boredom. Fortunately, Grace Tame has been given a year to continue her quest, but her challenge is to destroy the novelty of being just a young articulate woman and lead a well-resourced crusade to displace the male and female misfits and rent-seekers who dominate the parliaments – especially those who have formed cute gangs called “wolverines” (I suggest Ms Kitching ditch the group) and the like.
The ballot box is Ms Tame’s ongoing relevance. I am sure she does not need any help in identifying the targets, but make sure that those who stand and may be pre-selected be assessed by someone like Cathy McGowan, who engineered a remarkable outcome in her seat of Indi – orderly non-dynastic succession planning by an Independent.
My epilogue to Meekness
Remember, children, particularly those of you dressed in pink.
Gentle Jesus, meek and mild,
Look upon a little child;
Pity my simplicity,
Suffer me to come to Thee.
Lamb of God, I look to Thee;
Thou shalt my Example be;
Thou art gentle, meek, and mild;
Thou wast once a little child.
Lord, I would be as Thou art;
Give me Thine obedient heart;
Thou art pitiful and kind,
Let me have Thy loving mind.
As a child I recited the first verse before bed. But I always had difficulty with the word “simplicity”. Still have.
Needless to say, these verses by that great feminist irony, Charles Wesley are sung often by all girl choirs.
Mouse Whisper
An alternate view of Big Swinging Dicks as said to me in Fred Brophy’s pub in Cracow is that they were in fact metroGnomes. It depends on your way of assessing these things.
