Category: Language and Literature (Page 2 of 3)

via Australian Conservative.

During the years of the Howard government, the funding of left-wing magazines like Meanjin and Overland was never reduced.

The Literature Board of the Australia Council has just reduced Quadrant’s grant (which is used entirely to fund literary content) from $50,000 to $35,000 per annum.

Quadrant publishes ten times per year. Meanjin and Overland, which publish quarterly, receive annual grants of $50,000 and $60,000.

Have a look at the list of journals supported by the Literature Board, and judge for yourself whether literature expressive of the whole spectrum of Australian political thought is funded on an equal basis.

The Board’s view seems to be that whatever its literary merit, a magazine which publishes short stories, reviews and poetry which are not consistent with the Board’s opinions is not deserving of the same level of funding.

Why not email the Board, and let them know you think justice and transperency in grant administration are important for their credibility, and for the future of Australian literature?

In this case, marriage.

Inevitable disclaimer: I like some gay people, OK?

I like about the same proportion of  gay people I know as straight people I know. My brother is gay. My brother in law is gay. The best man at my wedding, my best friend at the time, was gay.

I absolutely believe homosexual men and women should be protected by the law from any form of discrimination on the basis of their sexuality. I believe the law has no place in people’s bedrooms, provided what happens there is between consenting adults. I think homosexual domestic partnerships should be recognised and given some protection, for example in matters of life insurance and superannuation.

However, I do not approve of homosexual behaviour. I believe it is harmful for those who indulge in it. Accepting that it happens, loving some people who do it, does not mean I have to believe it is a good thing.

States should not be pressured into calling homosexual domestic partnerships ‘marriages.’ They are not marriages.

Some non-religious reasons for this view are discussed on Secular Right.

That the meaning of words should not be arbitrarily stretched to the point of emptiness for political purposes is just one reason. Here’s an excerpt:

There really is a slippery slope here. Once marriage has been redefined to include homosexual pairings, what grounds will there be to oppose futher redefinition — to encompass people who want to marry their ponies, their sisters, or their soccer team? Are all private contractual relations for cohabitation to be rendered equal, or are some to be privileged over others, as has been customary in all times and places? If the latter, what is wrong with heterosexual pairing as the privileged status, sanctified as it is by custom and popular feeling?

World Wide Words defines a snollygoster as ‘a shrewd, unprincipled person, especially a politician.’ 

Snollygoster has not been heard much for the last sixty years.

President Truman used it in 1952, and defined it, either in ignorance or impishness, as “a man born out of wedlock”.

Many people put him right, some quoting this definition from the Columbus Dispatch of October 1895, with its splendid last phrase in the spirit of the original: “A Georgia editor kindly explains that ‘a snollygoster is a fellow who wants office, regardless of party, platform or principles, and who, whenever he wins, gets there by the sheer force of monumental talknophical assumnacy’.

Remind you of anyone? It’s been used of Arlen Specter (well, by me, anyway), but I was thinking of someone else.

It’s no surprise that snollygoster is making a come-back.