Saline Drip for My Ego

I concur with the Archbishop on most all of what he says here. His understanding that as an Anglican churchman he is subject to a constitutional separation of church and state is admirable. He touches on why Anglicanism appears to be in crisis. As the name implies, Anglicanism is very English. A lot of things simply aren't spoken about. My more vociferous critics will insist that that suggests we are being silenced. Far from it, we are being allowed a voice that is heard without judgment. My sex life is a matter for my conscience.

All emphasis mine:


LOCATION: http://www.abc.net.au/lateline/content/2004/s1053387.htm

Broadcast: 25/02/2004

Archbishop Peter Carnley suggests 'lifelong friendships' over gay marriage



TONY JONES: President Bush's statements have naturally echoed here in Australia, where, late last year, the Prime Minister argued passionately against legalising gay marriage.

"You're talking here about the survival of the species," Mr Howard told an interviewer in Darwin.

But at least one very senior churchman is offering up a third way -- not gay marriage as such, but recognition of lifelong friendships between two homosexuals which would give them the same legal status as a heterosexual married couple.

I spoke to Archbishop Peter Carnley in Perth a short time ago.

TONY JONES: Archbishop Carnley, President Bush says he's been driven to act by activist courts to prevent the meaning of marriage being changed forever.

Do you have any sympathy for his action?

ARCHBISHOP PETER CARNLEY, PRIMATE OF THE ANGLICAN CHURCH OF AUSTRALIA: I think I understand where he's coming from.

I think he's wanting to defend the concept of marriage as a union between a man and a woman from attack.

Whether he's quite right in his analysis of that I very much doubt because I think you have to remember that homosexual people only make up less than 10 per cent of the community and I think the other 90 per cent is able to sustain the institution of marriage if it wanted to.
I think the interesting thing about the present is that marriage between heterosexual peoples is a bit shaky these days.

I think there's so much divorce and fracture of relationships and de facto relationships and a disinclination to commit at all so I think that's probably more serious than what is happening amongst gay people.

TONY JONES: Do you think it would change the equation at all if gay couples did not use the term 'marriage', did not appropriate that term?

ARCHBISHOP PETER CARNLEY: I personally do think that.

I think it would help their cause, their own cause, in fact.
I've always argued that marriage is properly used of male and female relationships and we should in fact term same sex relationships, friendships in the first instance, rather than marriage.

I don't know of too many gay people who think of themselves, if they are in a long-term committed relationship, who want to see themselves as husbands and wives, for example.

I think it's a much more equal relationship of friends.

TONY JONES: Tell me, George Bush was obviously horrified by this, but what did you think when you saw the thousands of gay couples lining up to have their unions made legal outside San Francisco or lining up at San Francisco City Hall to have that done?

ARCHBISHOP PETER CARNLEY: Well, I was rather uncomfortable with it myself a bit.

I thought it was all a bit frivolous and you had to ask yourself whether these relationships were really serious long-term committed relationships or if this was just a bit of a stunt.

And I think real, solid relationships probably are formed in private and quietly rather than that very public festive kind of atmosphere.

TONY JONES: But you're not opposed to gay unions being made legal.

ARCHBISHOP PETER CARNLEY: Well, it depends on the reason.

I think I understand it if same sex partnerships want to be legalised in some way -- for holding property together, for example, to secure inheritance, superannuation payments and, very importantly, to claim the responsibilities or the rights of next of kin if one of them happens to die.

I think I can understand all that.

So to register a relationship for those purposes I think is understandable and I don't think you have to use the term 'marriage' of it.

TONY JONES: The President and here the PM have got themselves deeply involved in this issue.

Do you think it would be divisive in Australia if it became an election issue here as it's clearly going to be in the US?

ARCHBISHOP PETER CARNLEY: Oh, I think it would be divisive because I think people take strong views on either side on this issue.

Some people are very threatened by gay people claiming to be entering into a relationship which is more or less a marriage.

I think people would divide over it.

It would be a divisive issue.

I have no doubt about that.

TONY JONES: Since our laws are essentially based on a system of morality, would you be at all concerned that changing the laws to create legal gay unions would somehow give moral righteousness to those unions?

ARCHBISHOP PETER CARNLEY: Yes.

That would be the next step, I think.

That's a question that is very greatly debated at the moment, particularly in the Christian churches themselves.

There is a very open debate about how we should deal pastorally with gay and lesbian people at the moment.

I think we have to acknowledge that and I think we have to acknowledge that even Christian people read the biblical texts relating to homosexual relationships in different ways so there's certainly a debate going on about that, but I think that's quite a different debate from the debate about legalising relationships so that one person can be recognised as the next of kin of another, for example.

I don't think that's a difficult moral question at all.

TONY JONES: I know that a few years ago you recommended that your church consider blessing monogamous committed gay relationships.

Do you still believe that?

ARCHBISHOP PETER CARNLEY: I think I was talking in terms of the blessing of a friendship.

If you think of same sex relationships in the terms of the category of friendship, I think that takes a lot of heat out of it because I think there's nothing wrong with blessing friendships.

I think that's perfectly all right.

But that avoids, of course, or doesn't address the moral question of what is to happen in terms of behaviour within those relationships.

I think that's another question.

TONY JONES: But it is effectively a way of blessing a gay marriage without calling it marriage, a sort of splitting hairs, isn't it?

ARCHBISHOP PETER CARNLEY: Well, no, I don't think it is splitting hairs because I think it is possible for people to be friends, even to live together in the same house, for example.

We used to think when I grew up of same sex relationships as relationships between people we called bachelors, and we didn't even think of what might happen in bedrooms.

And I think what happens in bedrooms is very much more an individual decision that couples must make according to their own conscience, and I think the churches can give them advice on that.

Unfortunately, the churches' advice at the moment is probably pretty various -- different advice -- and that's because we've not reached the point of a mature mind on it.

We're still debating the issues.

TONY JONES: A mature mind.

I mean, you have suggested to your own church that it needs to come to terms with the reality of gay relationships.

What do you mean essentially by that?

ARCHBISHOP PETER CARNLEY: Well, they exist.

Gay relationships certainly exist.

And whilst some heterosexual people might say that those relationships are unnatural, if you talk to the gay people themselves, they'll say what is unnatural for them would be a heterosexual relationship, so you can't appeal to a kind of natural law to solve this problem.

I think it's a much more complex problem and I think the churches have got to look again at the biblical material, they've got to look at the natural law argument and just think through the whole issue, and I think you have to do that realising that there certainly are in the world real people who are in real same sex relationships.

You cannot avoid it.

TONY JONES: You mentioned, looking again at the biblical material, and to some degree you have been doing that in one of your recent papers, which has been put forward for discussion, let's put it that way, you seem to suggest that there are parts of the Scriptures which appear to accept same sex relationships.

ARCHBISHOP PETER CARNLEY: Oh, well, yes, the story of David and Jonathan, for example, a very intense friendship of two males.

I think that's a very clear story in the Scriptures, and the story of Ruth and Naomi too, two women with a very intense and loyal friendship.

I think they are clear stories that can be brought to bear on this particular issue.

TONY JONES: In the case of David and Jonathan, it's in the Book of Samuel, I think, it talks about a relationship that is wonderful, even greater, than that of a woman -- a love even greater than that of a woman.

Are they, do you believe, are the Scriptures there talking about a homosexual relationship?

ARCHBISHOP PETER CARNLEY: No, I don't think they are.

I think they're talking about a relationship between two men of a very deep and loyal kind.

I think they're not talking about a homosexual relationship as we would think of one today because the concept of a homosexual person, an exclusively oriented homosexual person, is a 19th century concept.

It was a discovery of the 19th century.

So that certainly wasn't in the minds of the biblical writers.

I think when the biblical writers wrote, they thought that all human beings were heterosexual and what we could call today homosexual behaviour was therefore a deviant behaviour, but we might not think of that in that way today.

TONY JONES: There are not hints, do you believe, in that section of the Scriptures that their relationship may have been sexual?

ARCHBISHOP PETER CARNLEY: I don't think there are too many hints.

Some writers try and read that into it, but I think it is a neutral text on that one myself.

TONY JONES: And you also raise, somewhat ambiguously, if I may say so, the question of Jesus and his relationships with men.

And in particular you refer to the disciple, the male disciple in this case, whom Jesus loved.

ARCHBISHOP PETER CARNLEY: Yeah.

A good example of a same sex relationship, of what I would call friendship, a deep loyalty and love.

It is nothing to do with sexuality at this point.

TONY JONES: But when the issue of sexuality is raised alongside these examples, what is the point you are seeking to make because those who oppose your way of looking at it would simply say if there's no sex involved, it isn't a homosexual relationship, no comparison?

ARCHBISHOP PETER CARNLEY: Well, I think the first category to clarify is whether you are going to speak of same sex relationships as marriage or basically friendship, and I think they are two different things.

Marriage is a relationship between a man and a woman, a husband and wife, basically for the purpose of mutual support but also for bringing children into the world and to create an intergenerational family.

And I think basically a homosexual relationship is a relationship of a different kind and that's why I don't want to use the category of marriage in relation to it.

I think it's fundamentally a friendship.

Now just what behaviours can go on in that relationship is what we have to sort out.

TONY JONES: In recognising, though, as you call it, the reality of those relationships, do you believe the Church should ultimately accept gay sex as being a legitimate part of that relationship?

ARCHBISHOP PETER CARNLEY: Well, it's hard to know.

I think if you did a count of Christians in churches these days, you'd get a mixed message, but there are certainly a lot of people I know in Christian congregations who are not too fazed by the presence of gay couples in the congregations.

Just what those gay couples do at home and in their bedroom is just not a question that people raise.

They accept them simply as human beings and relate to them as human beings and support them as human beings and I think that's probably a good thing.

TONY JONES: Can I ask what do you think about that?

Do you believe what they do in the privacy of their own homes -- that is, gay sex -- is immoral?

ARCHBISHOP PETER CARNLEY: I think it's basically a question for them to decide.

I think it's a personal question, an individual question, and they have to decide that in accordance with their own conscience.

And I think the Church is in the position where it must clarify its teachings so that it can point them in one direction or another.

And it just is a fact in the Christian churches at the moment that there is great diversity on that matter.

So my role in the Anglican Church, for example, is to try and lead our congregations through a study process to come to terms with the complexities of the issue and to study the texts and the various arguments that are put together for and against homosexual behaviour and just commend it to homosexual people as the best advice we can give them for the moment.

But I think in the course of time that will clarify.

TONY JONES: Archbishop, one final question -- it comes out of what you just said.

Do you regard sexual morality as being subjective?

ARCHBISHOP PETER CARNLEY: No, no, I don't.

I think it has to be argued publicly.

I think it's possible to say, for example, that it is objectively quite clear that promiscuity is a bad thing.

I think we can say that and we can say it for good reason.

We can say it is a health hazard, for example, and so I would say very clearly and objectively that promiscuity is a bad thing and that faithfulness in relationships is a very good thing.

I think that's objectively supportable too.

I think the problem is when you start to talk about same sex relationships, long-term committed relationships, you have got something which can qualify to be called faithful.

And if the Bible is in support of faithful relationships, that particular argument would lead you to support faithful same sex relationships so that's the kind of debate we're in.

TONY JONES: Archbishop Carnley, I'm afraid we are out of time.

We could probably talk about this for a great deal longer but we thank you very much for taking the time to join us tonight.

ARCHBISHOP PETER CARNLEY: It's a pleasure, and the churches will talk about it for a great deal longer, I can assure you.

AMERICA'S SWEETHEART IS BACK. DID YOU MISS HER?

Courtney Love once promised that her debut solo album, America's Sweetheart, would have "one song about a fictional boy who saves fictional rock and roll in a fictional town." Change "boy" to "girl" and the premise remains the same

Love's ironically titled album, set for a February 10 release, is as much about herself as about the state of rock, with a thematic structure similar to Liz Phair's Exile in Guyville. Love, however, isn't simply answering one particular album, as Phair did with the Rolling Stones classic Exile on Main St. Sweetheart, even more audaciously, takes on the entire male rock pantheon, offering Love herself as its redeemer.

"Hey, God, you owe me one more song/ So I can prove to you/ That I'm so much better than him," she wails in the opening battle cry, "Mono," whose intro riff echoes the sound of early MTV promos.

The layers of meaning evoked by the title and lyrics of the song are purposeful: They suggest being on one's own, the recording process, kissing and disease — motifs that repeat throughout the album.

The "him" remains unidentified, but one can't help but imagine she's referring to either her late husband, Kurt Cobain, and to the rumors that the Nirvana frontman had a hand in writing Hole's Live Through This, or to Eric Erlandson, her main songwriting partner in Hole. Of course, Love has also claimed the song is actually a "Fred [Durst] murder fantasy." Or, as she later hinted, about Eminem. Or even Jack White. In the end, the real "he" behind the song is irrelevant; it's every He.

Love drives that point home throughout the rest of this fast-moving album, citing past and present punk and rock heroes: Black Flag's "Rise Above" and the Damned's "Smash It Up" in "Mono"; the Velvet Underground's "All Tomorrow's Parties" in "Sunset Strip"; Prince's "Erotic City," the Ramones' "Pinhead" and the Clash's "London Calling" in "But Julian, I'm a Little Older Than You" (whose title refers to Strokes frontman Julian Casablancas); and the self-explanatory and intentionally misspelled "The Zeplin Song" ("Why does the song remain the same?" she quite reasonably inquires).

The list goes on, and Love never fails to note where she stands in all of this. Like a boasting, battling MC, she promises hope (she's going to "come and save the day"), threatens danger (she knows "where you live" and she's "coming for you") and brags that when all is said and done, she's still going to be the best you'll ever have ("You'll never ever ever f--- like me/ So baby why why do you even try?").

Love's at her best when she links her bravado to raging riffs, as in "Hello." You almost believe she'll deliver the goods when she sings, "You're going to hear the lost chord tonight." That chord's a myth, of course, and not every promise can be fulfilled.

America's Sweetheart embraces other contradictions as well. "Hold on to Me" is about vulnerability, and she has said it was inspired by the time she stayed up all night scribbling poetry with Russell Crowe, broke down in tears and had to be comforted in his arms. Yet the song is sung as though she were the strong one offering comfort rather than needing it.

"Sunset Strip," meanwhile, concerns a girl who's either moving or about to kill herself. It mourns her position at first, then celebrates her self-destruction and "no tomorrow," defiantly listing all the reasons she pops pills: "I got pills 'cause I'm bored/ I got pills 'cause you're dead/ I got pills 'cause you're not the one".

The bottom-heavy, bluesy "All the Drugs" takes the addiction theme further, as if the layered guitars' texture imparts meaning to the damage and delight implied by "all the drugs in the world."

Love's always more impressive as a banshee than as a sweetheart — even she realizes this, swiping at her most tender moment on the album, a nostalgic power ballad, by giving it the title "Uncool." She's a fascinatingly messy bundle of contradictions, a destroyer and creator in equal parts, who gives voice to things we dare not say. America's Sweetheart may not save rock and roll — but can anything?


-------------------------------------------
Three chords in your pocket and you think you're going to bring back punk-rock?- Courtney

TEENAGE WHORE

When I was a teenage whore
My mother asked me, she said, "Baby, what for?
I give you plenty, why do you want more?
Baby, why are you a teenage whore?"

I said, "I feel so alone and I, I wish I could die"
I've seen the things you put me through and I, I wish I could die

When I was a teenage whore
The rain came down like it never did before
I paid good money not to be ignored
Then why am I a teenage whore?

I've seen your repulsion and it looks real good on you
Denying what...what what you put me through

Get out of my house...get out of my house!
Get out of my house...get out of my house!

When I was a teenage whore
My mother asked me, she said, "Baby, what for?
I give you plenty, why do you want more?
Baby, why are you a teenage whore?"

I've seen your repulsion and it looks real good on you
I don't want to live what you had...you have put me through
I wanted that shirt and I, I wanted those pants
It's all the lying put me through and I
I never...whoa!


AWFUL

Swing low, sweet cherry
Make it awful
It's your life, it's your party
It's so awful
Let's start a fire! Let's start a riot!
Yeah, it's awful
It was punk
Yeah, it was perfect
Now it's awful

They know how to break all the girls like you
And they rob the souls of the girls like you
And they break the hearts of the girls

Swing low, cherry, cherry
Yeah, it's awful
He's drunk, he tastes like candy
He's so beautiful

He's so deep like dirty water
God, he's awful
You're lost, oh, where's your daddy?
It's so awful

And they royalty rate all the girls like you
And they sell it out to the girls like you
To incorporate little girls

Hey, run away with the light
Run away, it's divine
Let's run away, yeah, tonight
And we'll steal the light of the world

Swing low, sweet cherry
Yeah, it's awful
You're ripe for the picking
It's so awful
You've got your youth
Don't waste your money
Yeah, it's awful
I was punk!
Now I'm just stupid!
I'm so awful

Oh, just shut up you're only sixteen (2 x's)

If the world is so wrong
Yeah, you can break them all with one song
If the world is so wrong
Yeah, you can take it all with one song

Swing low, sweet cherry
Make it awful
They bought it all, just build a new one
Make it beautiful
Yeah



RETARD GIRL

Retard girl makes us sick
Retard, poke her with a stick
Well, she walks funny
Kind of like a pig
God, I hate that retard girl
See the retard girl walking in the schoolyard
In the same dress from fourth grade
See the retard girl cross-eyed in the schoolyard
Looking for the friend she made
The retard girl, retard girl
The retard girl
Yeah, don't forget her face
As shines the moon among the lesser fires
She is sucking dick out in the yard
Well, she walks funny
Kind of like a pig
God, I hate that retard girl
Hey, the retard girls all walk funny
She don't think like the others do
See the retard girl squirming in the mud
Throw her in the trash can
See what she does
The retard girl, retard girl
The retard girl
Yeah, don't forget a face
I asked her mother, "Why'd you implode?"
Well, her head's so big
It just might explode
And she walks funny
Kind of like a pig
God, I hate that retard girl
Hit her
See that retard girl staring at the sun
What does she see?
See the retard girl stare at everyone
I hope she doesn't see me
Retard girl, the retard girl
The retard girl
Yeah, don't forget her face
Retard girl
The retard girl (2 x's)
Don't throw her away



DYING

You see the cripple dance
Pay your money, baby
Now's your chance
Eyes like cyanide

I am so dumb
Just beam me up
I've had it all forever
I've had enough

Remember, you promised me
I'm dying, I'm dying, please
I want to, I need to be
Under your skin

Our love is quicksand
So easy to drown
They steal the gravity, yeah
From moving ground

Remember, you promised me
I'm dying, I'm dying, please
I want to, I need to be
Under your skin

And now I understand
You leave with everything
You leave with everything I am
Withering

And now I know that love is dead
You've come to bury me
There's nothing left here to pretend
Anything

Remember, you promised me
I'm dying, I'm dying, please
I want to, I need to be
Under your skin

I'm dying, I'm dying, please (3 x's)
Under your skin

Under your skin

Cathy Lumby is an amazingly clever person. The brightest star in the Australian Cultural Studies firmament and very good at pushing just the right buttons. Cathy was one of my favourite tutors as under-grad. To be a professor at Sydney Uni so early in her career is exceptional.

So, Catharine Lumby on why Arts Degrees scare the horses. Enjoy.


No claptrap - the truth about cappuccino courses
By Catharine Lumby
February 5, 2004

As the academic year revs up again, it's clear our universities are confronting enormous challenges. Thousands of students failed to get a place. Only the most academically gifted have a hope of a government-funded place in the most desirable courses. Resources in many institutions are stretched to breaking point.

In such an environment, you might expect our Federal Government to be leading discussion on the big questions. Are Australians prepared to mortgage their houses to put their kids through uni? Should universities stay generalist or specialise? How do we compete on the global stage?

Instead we're getting rants about how "political correctness" and "cappuccino courses" are warping students' minds.

John Howard led the charge years ago when he branded academics idle and claimed English departments were being subsumed by "claptrap" such as cultural studies. And now the federal Education Minister, Brendan Nelson, is pursuing the same ill-informed agenda.

And ill informed it is. I know because I teach some of the very stuff this Government claims is poisoning the educational well.

It's true that students in my first-year course in cultural and media studies, for instance, are exposed to feminist theorists, Marxist thinkers and scholars who think the Western media trade in racist stereotypes.

They are also asked to think about how things like class, gender and sexuality are represented in popular culture.

Proof, you might think, that I'm intent on turning them all into dutiful lefties. Certainly that's a mistake some students make in the first few weeks of class.

But leftists aren't the only thinkers they're asked to read. And after they've actually attended a few lectures they discover that the whole point of the course is to debate and critique the ideologically diverse thinkers they've been asked to read. If they're really paying attention they learn that scepticism is the essence of academic inquiry and that they can take any position they want as long as they can back it up with evidence and a reasoned argument.

But why encourage them to think about this political stuff in the first place anyway? Why not just settle them down with a good play or novel and teach them to appreciate the prose?

Well, partly because if the playwright is Shakespeare or the novelist is Jane Austen, then concepts such as race or class or gender are pretty much unavoidable. And partly because a good humanities education equips students to grapple with the ethical dilemmas of their time.

Students are hungry to debate these concepts because they are trying to formulate their own values. And a focus on values is what Howard keeps telling us our education system needs.

But if brainwashing isn't a problem, then surely dumbing-down is. What about all those trendy courses on Madonna? Oddly enough I can't find a single pop star in the University of Sydney course handbook. Reassuringly, Virgil, Descartes and God do rate mentions.

All that's happened is that a handful of courses in a variety of disciplines now examine popular cultural texts as well as the classics. Ranking things in order of aesthetic merit isn't the only reason to study them.

Cultural and media studies courses are popular with students because they offer tools for thinking about the world around them.

Next time federal politicians decide to dispense free advice about what ought to be taught in our universities, they ought to do what all first-year students are expected to do in their essays. Do some real research first. And put reason ahead of emotion.

Catharine Lumby is associate professor of media studies at Sydney University.

NYT this time. This has made it through whatever processes exist for picking up howlers and nobody saw it. Basic journalism, avoid cliches. Here's a good example of why:


Discussing new Mel Gibson film, the Passion


-------
By LAURIE GOODSTEIN

The same brutality in the film that has caused such an emotional response among many Christian filmgoers has alarmed some Jewish leaders who say it could stoke animosity toward Jews.

Christian supporters of the film say it merely adheres to the Bible. But some Jewish leaders say that it distorts the Scriptures and that they are alarmed at the prospect of the movie's being accepted as gospel.
--------

And the obvious problem is that the movie IS quite literally gospel. The entire point of the film is to present the gospel narrative. It is not as Ms goodstein suggests a film of the Scriptures.

I imagine that our writer means that the film is an inacurate portrayal of history. If so, why use a word so open to causing confusion? Ignorance that 'gospel' in that usage is colloquial? Ignorance of what the gospels are? I do think that even the most vociferous of Jewish critics would agree that the gospels are well... the gospels.

I wonder if the people at NYT have a dictionary, or can work out how to find one on the web?

It wasn't too hard for me and I did very poorly in journalism as an undergraduate- it was my weakest unit.

-----
gospel

\Gos"pel\, n. [OE. gospel, godspel, AS. godspell; god God + spell story, tale. See God, and Spell, v.] 1. Glad tidings; especially, the good news concerning Christ, the Kingdom of God, and salvation.

And Jesus went about all Galilee, teaching in their synagogues, and preaching the gospel of the kingdom. --Matt. iv. 23.

The steadfast belief of the promises of the gospel. --Bentley.

Note: It is probable that gospel is from. OE. godspel, God story, the narrative concerning God; but it was early confused with god spell, good story, good tidings, and was so used by the translators of the Authorized version of Scripture. This use has been retained in most cases in the Revised Version.

Thus the literal sense [of gospel] is the ``narrative of God,'' i. e., the life of Christ. --Skeat.

2. One of the four narratives of the life and death of Jesus Christ, written by Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John.

3. A selection from one of the gospels, for use in a religious service; as, the gospel for the day.

4. Any system of religious doctrine; sometimes, any system of political doctrine or social philosophy; as, this political gospel. --Burke.

5. Anything propounded or accepted as infallibly true; as, they took his words for gospel. [Colloq.]

Journalists are the lowest form of life there is.
SPECIAL SALINE-DRIP MANHATTAN JOURNAL SUPPLEMENT



Meet Michael Riedel, the man with a complex about his penis size who led the critical charge against Taboo. He intentionally published mis-information regarding Taboo in the New York Post. A sane journalist might stop propogating mistruths after being required to publish a correction in NYP. Bur Mr Riedel is neither an ethical nor even a competent journalist and continued to make the same 'mistake' in several other forums. I am yet to see him produce anything that isn't anti-Taboo vitriol.

What could cause one person to be so hateful?

The really sad thing about this man? THIS is his big moment in the sun. He can be terribly proud that he helped sink Taboo today, tomorrow he'll be a nobody. Notcie that he effectively concedes same in the first paragraph.

A question that arises for me is how Mr Riedel reviewed opening night. Given that his 'review' was online while he was still schmoozing at the after-party I have to wonder whether it was pre-written.

Those who can, do. Those who can't, become critics.

-------------------

Michael Riedel
Wednesday February 4, 2004
The Guardian

At War With Boy George

When Boy George's career as a Broadway performer comes to a grinding halt next month with the closing of his sad little musical Taboo, I want to hire him as my press agent.
By regularly attacking me in print, on TV and even on stage during his show, George has elevated me from obscure theatre reporter to, in the words of the Toronto Star, "one of the most influential (and feared) media figures in Manhattan". I want George to know I am grateful, so grateful that when I learned he has taken to calling me a "fucking cunt" on stage, I decided not to retaliate in my New York Post column.

As soon as I heard Rosie O'Donnell was going to plunk $10m of her own money into an autobiographical musical about Boy George (he wrote - what? - two songs that are famous), I knew this had the makings of a bomb. O'Donnell may be many things (loud, vulgar, brash, even funny) but an experienced, level-headed Broadway producer with taste she is not.

She hired a British director who was fired from his last Broadway show. She designed a freakish ad campaign that sold about two tickets and had to be revamped. She fought with the actors and gave George too much control (he vetoed her plan to replace the director). I reported all this (gleefully), which prompted Boy George to write me a thoughtful letter. I printed it in my column. Then, in a New York Times interview, George turned into a vicious beast, saying he wanted "tear my head off" and challenging me to a "duel of wits".

O'Donnell banned me from the opening of Taboo, but I snuck into the party anyway and introduced myself to George. He was polite. We agreed to battle it out on a TV programme I host. On the show, George was warm, funny, well-spoken and made a good case for his show.

We parted, I thought, friends. And then, on America's highest-rated national morning show, he called me an "idiot". After that, our relationship steadily deteriorated. Sadly, George's wit has deteriorated as well. Calling me a "fucking cunt" and "ugly, ugly, ugly" on stage is not exactly the stuff of Noël Coward. I'm sure he dreamed of a big stage career, of replacing Nathan Lane in The Producers maybe, or playing Lady Bracknell in The Importance of Being Earnest for the National. Alas, those dreams have been dashed by a little tabloid reporter whom George has put on the map.

A memory.
SPECIAL SALINE-DRIP MANHATTAN JOURNAL SUPPLEMENT


Funny creature, memory. A completely random train of thoughts just led me to realise that within my first hour in Manhattan I completely bombed out on ordering a drink. I did what I'd do in Sydney and simply asked for a VLT. The few places in Sydney that I am likely to order a drink that is a perfectly clear order; vodka, lime & tonic.

In Manhattan it was enough to cause a mild situation with the waiter.

I now suspect that my fundamental mistake was that no such drink exists in American parlance. My order means a vodka and tonic with a trace of 'lime' syrup in it. In no way does the syrup taste like lime as nature knows it. It does add a refreshing edge to the vodka and tonic.

My guess is that it sounded to the waiter as if I was going to be as difficult as to ask for a vodka and tonic with lime fruit in it. The waiter clearly didn't want to say no, good Manhattan service is like that. She was probably desperately searching her brain for solutions.

It's probably lucky I shut up. I can only guess Gareth used sign language for 'don't worry, he's Australian' to rescue the situation or somebody at the bar was sent to fetch me a lime! Either way I got a gin and tonic and enjoyed it immensely.