It seems to be de riguer for a certain type of journalist to write stuff on ANZAC Day saying that it’s a jingoistic load of crap celebrated by right-wing lunatics. Now, there’s certainly an element of society which seems to see ANZAC Day as a “glorious tradition”, and that tries to harness it to an unpleasant kind of nationalism. I really resent that. But that doesn’t mean that all people who find importance in ANZAC Day are racist thugs. I resent that implication too. I wrote a post in 2007 in response to an article by Tracee Hutchinson which describes the way I continue to feel now:
ANZAC day is about remembrance. It is about remembering those who died fighting under the Australian flag, and those who were wounded. It is also about honouring those who came back safely, and saying that we appreciate their sacrifice. While we may be able to see with hindsight that a particular war was not a good idea, or was motivated by improper political motives, this does not mean we should dishonour the people who fought and died in them. Part of the message of ANZAC day is that war is a terrible thing. Certainly, my forebears seemed to have been indelibly scarred by it.
ANZAC day tells us that we wish for peace in all areas of the world where war rages. …
Anyway, this ANZAC Day, my ire has been raised by Catherine Deveny and her inane twitters on the subject. To wit:
I came across Deveny’s twitter via Pavlov Cat’s piece at Still Life With Cat. Black Dog also has a great response to Deveny. Go read both posts, they are very well written. They say it better than I can. But I will say a little bit.
Of course some people enlisted because they wanted adventure, or because they wanted to be a hero. That’s the kind of thing which is attractive to idealistic young lads and lasses, and that’s part of the tragedy of it – they wanted adventure; many got death, injury and horror instead.
I understand on one level where Deveny is coming from. She’s having a knee-jerk reaction against the popular media coverage which portrays the ANZACs as unalloyed heroes. So instead, she reacts against this by saying the opposite: that the ANZACs are racist, homophobic and misogynist, as well as rapists and bullies. It’s trite and ill thought out. Like much of Deveny’s writing, it attempts to be iconoclastic and witty, but it fails miserably and ends up being offensive.
Just because the ANZACs fought in a war doesn’t mean that they were bad people. Not every ANZAC was a hero, but not every ANZAC was a monster either. In fact, I’m pretty sure that most of them were just ordinary people, with normal foibles and flaws. That is precisely one of the sorrows of war – decent ordinary people go and kill other decent ordinary people.
On a day like this, we should not glorify war. We should stop and think about the horror that war wreaks. It doesn’t just result in physical injury and death, but it leaves mental scars which continue on for a long time afterwards, in individual and collective psyches. Ordinary, decent people die because of war, they are injured or suffer for long afterwards. It’s something we want to avoid, if we can. But nor should we just forget war, or insult those who fought, died, or were injured in wars.
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At this point, the David Cameron first law of twitter applies: ‘too many tweets make a twat’.
Can I just say I hated Deveny before it was cool?
Seriously, she’s a latte-belt version of Andrew Bolt. The same appealing to prejudice, just aimed at different people.
I loathe the cloying, self-righteous demands that we all suspend critical thinking around ANZAC and Remembrance Days and think of all Australian soldiers as “our heroes”. The stifling of real debate around these days is a big problem. But Deveny isn’t solving that at all.
In fact, as you can see by Bolt’s latest piece, Deveny has given Bolt a free kick, allowing him to throw in genuine scholarly questioning of ANZAC myths with her rubbish. Bolt of course demands nothing less than total subservience to his version of ANZAC, and Deveny’s foolish outburst helps him to do that.
Catherine Deveny is insane.
I was going to say that I didn’t know anyone who disparaged ANZAC day anymore, but I’d forgotten about CD. She was on Q&A when I sat in the audience, and her desperate attempts at relevance and comedy made me wonder why on earth she was selected. Most of her twitter output is so offensive, I never know whether to reply and get into an argument or not.
David J – that is SO spot on. I have disliked Deveny for a long time myself (see here, here, here, here, here and here). I find that her articles are frequently ill-thought out and display unpleasant classist stereotypes, among other things. And, as you say, she gives free kicks to the likes of Bolt.
No, we certainly shouldn’t suspend critical thinking around the ANZAC myth. One thing that interested me on reading Les Carlyon’s Gallipoli is that the terrible charge of the Battle of the Nek (in which men were ordered to charge over in waves even though it was clear after the first wave that they’d all be slaughtered) was commanded by Australians, not English. We’re perfectly capable of demanding pointless and stupid sacrifice of life all on our own.
Oliver, I think my Mum told me about that Q&A. I can’t actually watch Deveny, she makes me want to come out in hives because of her capacity to embarrass herself.
DJ Some of that “genuine scholarly questioning” is clearly not very good, as the reviews Bolt links to are able to show. Geoffrey Blainey (normally a polite and restrained reviewer) was particularly brutal about the Reynolds/Lake effort in his ALR review.
Lorenzo, yes I saw that review. From what Blainey said, they skipped over World War II and concentrated on other wars which were less justifiable. WWI is a pretty whacky war, at least from a modern perspective. But in WWII (a) we were fighting fascism in Europe (b) we were defending our own country from attack. So much more likely to be a jus bellum.
Apparently the threatening Andrew Bolt twitters Deveny has been taking seriously are fake, generated by people who don’t like Bolt. I must admit I had my suspicions when I saw the ‘Bolt’ twitterer start advocating violence.
This is getting really toxic.
Surely The Age is committing a form of child abuse by keeping her on.
I’ll just add to the consensus that CD is an absolute fuckwit.
“Latte-belt version of Andrew Bolt.” Yep that certainly hits the spot. She’s certainly a lot dimmer than AB
Just quietly, I’d say Mr. Bolt would be quite often caught among the latte belt himself.
Well, actually, my coffee of choice these days is a cafe latte. Does that make me part of the latte set? Club Troppo has an interesting post on the “latte set” concept.
I suspect, without being sure, that lattes are passé. The “latte set” probably drink chai lattes with organic yak’s milk or something like that these days.
I’m a double espresso person of a morning, myself. Heartstarters are always a good thing
Hey, it’s not just about reminding ourselves of the horror of war, or that those who fought aren’t necessarily “bad people.”
War, unfortunately, is necessary, and it is necessary more often than we would like. For example, World War II was fought against an implacable foe that, by any definition, was utterly evil. It wasn’t merely a “just” war, it was necessary. And not just because of the holocaust; the Axis literally had plans to genocide or enslave the nations they were fighting against.
So please, let’s not turn ANZAC day into a memorial of grief as if war is some kind of natural disaster that selectively picks off young men; it’s more multifaceted than that.
A few comments on the comments…Catherine Deveny uses a form of over-the-top kite-flying to get people talking. I think she probably overdoes it, but I’m pretty sure it’s deliberate. Andrew Bolt does the same thing; I’ve emailed him challenging some rubbish he wrote and he replied – a polite and sensible response, quite at odds with the style of his blogs. There is so much noise around – twitter, blogs etc – sometimes people think they have to scream/be extreme to be heard. Then, others up the ante and the whole thing gets out of hand – toxic as someone above noted.
We would all agree WW2 was a just war against ‘an implacable foe’ – but it was the direct result of WW1 – a really stupid war. War breeds war. As someone born during WW2 and growing up under the nuclear threat of the 50s, I stop sometimes in sheer amazement that I, and the world, are still here.
My generation are the ones who were dubious about ANZAC Day and about the Vietnam War, though I was appalled at the way people treated the soldiers then, (one of the benefits of WW2 was the end of colonialism, and the Vietnam War seemed to be trying to perpetuate that, under the guise of fighting the Communist Menace) – and not only us war babies (we predate the boomers, but you never hear that term these days): my father, who served in WW2, has NEVER marched on ANZAC Day.
What I really hate about the recent ANZAC commemoration is the way politicians and others use it, and the repeated statements that Gallipoli made Australia a nation. Not for me it didn’t. Not for my father. Not for most women?
I am moved by the old men who have survived, and I’m happy for the recognition they are getting in their old age (although my father still doesn’t participate). But I don’t like the manipulation of emotions. An example: my grand-daughter, then aged 7, went with her parents to the state funeral procession of one of the last WW1 soldiers, Alec Campbell, in Hobart a few years ago. Photos of her wrapped in the Australian flag appeared in several newspapers, looking sad, with soppy captions. In fact she wrapped herself in the flag, and was looking unhappy because it was freezing cold and she was bored. It will be interesting to see if this photo is reprinted in the future as an example of the younger generation’s sadness about the old diggers.
The Age has given Deveney the sack.
L Plate Lawyer, was just about to update the thread with the announcement Deveny had been given the sack.
Am I totally silly for feeling a little bit sorry for the woman? The paper has let her run around being provocatively offensive for years, and only now it sacks her? Still, the comment about Bindi Irwin was just so totally inappropriate on so many levels. Well and truly beyond the Pale.
I’m not Deveny’s fan, but I think sacking her was short-sighted.
I agree the Bindi remark was offensive, because she was talking about an under-age child. But, although I was startled when I first read it, I thought she was onto something—having a go at the image she projects, and the media’s responses to it. I think she was having a go at that aspect of the Bindi phenomenon, although she clearly went too far this time.
Ironic it was the (awful) Logies that did it.
Tatyana, yes, to be honest, I do find the Bindi phenomenon very disturbing myself. Bindi behaves like a mini-adult, not a child, and in that sense, Deveny was latching on to this impression. She just did so in a way that was pretty awful.
Interestingly, my four year old daughter finds Bindi disturbing, and it’s not because I have discussed the Bindi phenomenon with her. Eaglet No. 1 told me, “Bimby doesn’t talk like a real person”, which is pretty much spot on. (“Bimby” is Eaglet No. 1′s name for Bindi – she refused to believe me when I said her name was “Bindi”, and in some ways it’s oddly appropriate). Eaglet No. 1 was a bit confused and amused by all Bindi’s faux “ockerisms”, her favourite being “What a ripper, bonzer snake!”
LE – I also feel a little sorry for her. Personally, I think she should have been lined up for a good talking to/sacking for her ANZAC comments.
CD defends herself by saying that her comments were taken out of context. How much context is possible when someone twitters? I’m not particularly technologically savvy – but I understand there is a character limit?
L Plate Lawyer, yeah there’s a character limit, from what I recall. I have made about 5 “tweets” in my whole life – I don’t have anything to say which is that important or interesting enough to be updated every few hours. Blogging is hard enough.
On my drive home just before I was thinking about a tweet seeming like a throw away comment – but because it’s written and capable of being read by everyone, it’s much more than that. As you can tell, there’s another post brewing.
No pity. Sure someone should have sacked her years ago, or never hired her. But surely her own feeble little mind could have told her that she was acting like a complete twat?
She publicly advocated the statutory rape of an 11 year old; she’s uneducated, dumb, can’t write, and is a bogan. What a pity we no longer have ‘transportation.’
Fortunately, we have Medicare. So let us hope/pray for her healing and Redemption.
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