Neil Young's "Living with War"

An effusive American press bloc has embraced Neil Young as the country's latest anti-war hero after getting a whif of his latest album, "Living With War", in which ol' shaky laments living under the Bush Administration, and, strangely enough, living with the moral-weight of the Iraq war on his back. The Ghost has always been impressed by Young's Jekyll and Hyde musical output, where he's able to jump between rusty, distorted guitar, and introspective country balladeer without missing a beat.

So The Ghost's been looking forward to wrapping his ears around "Living with War", which has been described as one as the most unproduced and rawkus albums to have been released in recent memory. And I have to admit that on first spin it was all a little underwhelming. The production was so loose it was barely-there, with Young's voice fading in and out ad nauseam, drowning in the 100 strong choir he throws behind (and often in front) of him and his band. But as the albums rocks and lurches towards its conclusion you begin to realise you're not listening to something that's was created as a polished musical opus (it is in no way polished), but instead should probably be viewed as a passionate commentary on this new-world paradigm the US has, in part, created in the last five years. Young wrote and recorded "Living with War" in a couple of weeks during April, and the product is an album that's full of vitriol and lyrics , whose targets move quickly between the war in Iraq, the wire-tapping scandal and Bush's insidious Christianity.

When viewed in this light, Young's shrill, drowning vocals sound more like impassioned and desperate wails than some lazy ramblings from a man who forgot to bring his sound engineer. Good fucking on him I say. "Living with War" is a powerful recorded broadside to the Bush administration that hits with a thud. It wouldn't have the same effect on paper. It's kind of like when, earlier this month, James Wood, writing in The New Republic,
asked whether comedian Stephen Colbert's stand-up routine at the White House Correspondents Dinner was actually funny. Here's a highlight:

Obviously enough, this is designed not to amuse, but to wound, to goad, to irritate. It is not comedy; the discourse has moved location, from the funhouse to the church, and it has become preachy and a little earnest.

As you can probably guess from the above quote, Wood's answer was largely no, not really, but that Colbert wasn't trying to be funny; he was trying to make a point. "Living with War" fits into the same category. And like Colbert's performance, Young's new album doesn't provide all that many chuckles along the way.

Lists, arseholes and metaphors

Now I'm probably mistaken but I'm sure there's some old idiom that states "lists are like arseholes - everybody's got one, and everyone seems propelled to use them". But then I'm probably getting my metaphors confused, which is almost a certainty at this stage of the working week. Metaphors about arseholes and list aside, there is still a scientific equation which states that the number of lists used by any given publication is inversely related to amount of quality work said publication produces.

So it came as no surprise that after logging onto The Age this morning and clicking through to Friday's EG music section, which remains one of the only reasons The Ghost keeps logging on the The Age's website (other than Schembri's weekly diatribe) every week, I discovered The Age's sporadically readable part-time music critic, Craig Mathieson, had provided us with his list of 101 albums every music fan simply must have in their CD collection. For anyone who's suddenly decided they need a music collection, or wants to boast like a pretentious twat at parties about how much better the Flaming Lips were when they were sucking down acid, rather than Veuve Clicquot, it's the perfect list: Bob Dylan's Highway 61 Revisited, which happens to be the Ghost's favourite album of all time (speaking about hanging-out tastes like badges of honour), Telvision's Marquee Moon, Tom Wait's Blue Valentine, and a bunch of other predictables. You can check Mathieson's excuse for a story here, but, unusually, it's not his choice of music that's forced the Ghost up on his high horse today; instead today's rant is dedicated to the often used form of list-journalism, and how a once reputable publication like The Age has spawned a nascent form of baby boomer journalism - a desperate attempt to wrestle power from away from those pesky new gen xers, while at the same constantly trying to keep up with the xers, their blogs and their new media.

Mathieson's EG list feature may have actually set a new level for laziness in Australian feature writing; it just reeks of the baby-boomer rot that's been eating away at Spencer Street for a little while now. There is the requisite blend of new and old classics, a mixture of a few hip, new albums and artists most of the paper's older reader would never of heard of, and then some albums that either border on cheesy or completely obscure. It's this deperate grab for the middle of the road, to try to provide everyone of their readers with something but giving most people nothing, that's most frustrating to long-time readers of The Age. You can come to expect more lists stories that try to straddle the modern/classic dilemma facing the majority of The Age's boomer management, more culture pieces poached from an international papers or journals, and larger photo by-lines for all the dozens of the baby-boomer culture warriors and opinion writers The Age has running around its corridors these days. Because who wouldn't want to see a picture of Jim Schembri decked-out in Wu-Tang, a smug grin creeping over his face, thinking how he's just so clever as he imbues himself with another layer of irony. Jackass.

Wired blows the whistle on AT&T

Caption: the entrance to the "Secret Room" in San Francisco, Room 641


The US media and the US public feigned a level of indignant outrage when, in December last year, the New York Times broke the news that President Bush had authorised the National Spy Agency (NSA) to listen-in on peoples' telephone calls without first going through the relevant courts to get a warrant. The wire-tapping arrangement had been in place since Bush first signed off on the decision a few months after the S11 attacks, and Bush has sinced claimed the temporary powers Congress gave him in the days after September 11 were enough for him to allow the NSA to listen in on US citizens without a warrant.

Then, not long ago, came the news that one of the world's largest telecommunications companies, AT&T, was believed to have been implicit in helping the NSA tap US citizens' phones and internet by installing computer equipment designed to monitor who was calling where, or the websites they were looking at. The question of how closely AT&T worked with the NSA is now before a Californian court, but the battle has turned to documents currently being kept secret by the San Francisco judge overseeing the case, in the name of, according to AT&T anyway, commercial concerns.

A group of some of the US's most important newspapers and press agencies - The LA Times, San Francisco Chronicle, Bloomberg, Associated Press etc - have all applied to bring the evidence into the public domain; so far they've been unsuccessful in their attempt. But now Wired, one of the US's most comprehensive technology news magazines, have decided enough's enough and published the damning documents, which describe some "secret rooms" built deep inside the company's HQ in various capital cities around the US. You can access the documents, in full, through the Wired website before most US citizens have the chance to check them out (it's around 3 or 4am in the US as I type). Orwell can eat his heart out, this is the real thing.

From Fairfax to the ABC: Mark Scott makes the leap

The big media news today is the decision to appoint former Fairfax editorial director Mark Scott to run our national broadcaster. The ABC's old Managing Director, Russell Balding, decided to bugger-off and earn some real money late last year, and since then the ABC's been under the guidance of Murray Green; although, in all reality, the broadcaster has been in a state transition since the vehemently divisive Jonathan Shier left at the end of 2001. The first MD to be appointed from outside the national broadcaster since Shier left five years ago, Scott will arguably be the most important head the ABC's had for quite some time. His time at Fairfax showed he's just as comfortable wielding an axe - something that's going to become more and more contentious, although some would argue necessary, in the next few years - as he is making editorial decisions.

No-one's really sure of what to make of Scott's appointment, with many at the ABC describing him as an unknown entity, which really means most people at the national broadcaster are not quite sure where his political allegiances lie, or whether he'll collapse under the government's reform agenda. The statement from the ABC's newly-elected staff board member, Quinten Dempster, who's position is set to be eliminated by the federal government in the next month or so, echoing concerns about Scott's broadcasting experience are more about Scott's reportedly close ties to Communications Minister Helen Coonan than anything else.

What was interesting, though, was how Scott's beloved Sydney Morning Herald reported the decision. "'Mark who?' to run ABC" lead the SMH's story, referring to a quote from Dempster about how few at the ABC had actually ever heard of Scott. In media circles he's known as a pragmatic numbers man; someone who probably falls on the "business" side of the "journalism business" equation, and someone who probably had a fair bit to say about the recently announced restructures and redundancies at Fairfax's fledgling buisness masthead BRW. The Ghost doubts very much that those bunch of broadsheet junkies at the ABC are unawares of who Scott is, or what he's been doing for the past few decades. Again, it's just probably politiking on Dempster's behalf.

But The Ghost is sure the subs at the SMH, who have been sweating over Scott's cost-cutting reign ever since he was given sole control of all the Fairfax broadsheets - SMH, The Age, The Sun Herald, and the Sunday Age - about four years ago, loved the chance to get one last poke at their boss before he left the building. What will be even more interesting - at least from The Ghost's vantage point - than watching what Scott does with ABC, its culture and its funding, will be how the Fairfax broadsheets, especially the SMH, who Scott had the most direct contact with, will cover Mark Scott's reign as head of the ABC. Don't expect the nation's broadsheets to go easy on Scott, I'd say expect the opposite, but I'll keep you up to date.

"Death Metal" band wins Eurovision; contest's credibility skyrockets

Just a quick heads-up to anyone who hasn't heard the biggest news of 2006 - that Finnish heavy metal band Lordi has taken out first place at this year's Eurovision Song Contest, with an inspirational number called "Hard Rock Hallelujah". For a band that looks like it's been struggling with an extreme case of psoriasis since the mid 1800s, Lordi has done quite nicely for itself. In what's grown into the most extreme, and probably most democratic version of the Idol phenomenon, Eurovision has actually turned up a pop group worthy of all the attention, if only for their elaborate make-up and tongue-licking theatre show. And the always cynical Terry Wogan, who provided running commentary for about the 400th year in a row, kept any sardonic comments to himself when Lordi came to collect the prize and and perform a reprise of its new hit - which is something Eurovision really hasn't seen for quite some time.

Office work and mental fatigue are related

The Ghost was busy observing the weekly urban drinking ritual made popular by excitement-challenged corporates - where, come 5pm Friday, suits of varying shapes and sizes scamper out of office buildings all over the city, loosen their top buttons, maybe even take the tie down a notch or two, and try to forget they've got to return to their highrise job in another 72 hours by getting drunk and chatting up their co-workers - when I realised I'd temporarily turned into one. Yes, the dirty Levis had been ditched for pinstripe suit-pants, and the tatty Metallica t-shirt had given way to an ill-fitting Geoffrey Beene number. So what did The Ghost do? Well I went to the bar, grabbed another pint, waded through Jim Schembri's latest masterpiece, titled "That Guy Moment", chuckled quietly at the thought of starting a blog dedicated to championing the professionalism and prose of good- old Jim, and felt a whole lot better about life.

The Ghost only has another week to go in tie land (one down, one to go etc), and once out should have sufficient time and mental inspiration to start posting more regularly, and on topics that actually adhere to the loosely stated modus operandi of this blog: to write on media-related issues, and nothing else. But just to tie anyone over, below is the opening par of the New York Time's review for the Da Vinci Code film (Schembri gave it two stars), which has just been released worldwide:

CANNES, France, May 17 — It seems you can't open a movie these days without provoking some kind of culture war skirmish, at least in the conflict-hungry media. Recent history — "The Passion of the Christ," "The Chronicles of Narnia" — suggests that such controversy, especially if religion is involved, can be very good business. "The Da Vinci Code," Ron Howard's adaptation of Dan Brown's best-selling primer on how not to write an English sentence, arrives trailing more than its share of theological and historical disputation.

But The Ghost has only read the first paragraph of the book - which did confirm the Time's assessment of Dan Brown's writing ability - and only seen the trailer for the film, so who am I to judge? Anyway, The Ghost can only agreee and make a empassioned call for more literature, film, music and theatre reviews to include jibes like this - preferably in the first sentence so the reader knows where the reviewer stands. Because, as Peter Parker's dad said in the first Spider Man film: "with great power comes great responsibility". I'm glad to see the New York Times takes its power and its responsibility seriously. We could use some more of the same Down Under, and not just when it comes to The Da Vinci Code.

Schembri goes in hard at The Age

If there's been one writer who epitomises The Age's rapid tumble from grace, from a thoughtful broadsheet with an emphasis on breaking hard news to a paper filled with tabloid gossip and inane society pieces, it's Jim Schembri. Prior to Andrew Jaspan taking over at The Age, Schembri was an agreeable enough film reviewer, whose film recommendations - interspersed with the odd little self-indulgent quip - The Verbose Ghost sometimes respected and even chuckled at (only privately though). Now, under Jaspan, he's been let loose on any topic he trips over - literally. Yesterday his piece was based on an informative and overly-long shopping docket he's received, which has to be read to be believed.

But it's today's piece, "Prepare to catch a code that will shake the very foundations of mankind" , which finally broke The Ghost's back and forced us into the Schembri debate. But if you want to read a Schembri bitch-slap, then just google him and read the thousands of acidic words he attracted after his cutting blog satire, which you can read here - 'cause Schembri's a symptom of what's happening at The Age, not the cause. He's copped enough for the moment.

So in today's Age we see his piece on Da Vinci Code marketing, which pops up at the top of page 3 or 5 (don't have a hardcopy handy at the moment) in the front news section of the paper. The problem is it's Schembri's usual tripe: hard hitting sarcasm that could have been written by a 5-year-old North Korean kid with a hangover; long and convoluted insights into his personal life; and an attempt to belittle anyone with the slightest interest in the subject he's indulging.

Here's a little from today's offering, talking about merchandise:

The first thing we must do is dismiss the press notes as they do not count as official merchandise, although they do contain what every journalist craves — a two-paragraph synopsis of the film that will allow me to bluff my way through any conversation with anybody who has actually read The Da Vinci Code.

This leaves us with three items — torch, notebook, hat. If we take the first letter of each item — T(orch) N(otebook) H(at) — and rearrange them we quickly discover that the letters will not make a word, however hard we try. If, however, we add a vowel, I(nvite), we now have TNHI, which, rearranged, gives us the Da Vinci codeword — THIN.

I'll stop, but you get the picture. Even worse than Schembri's writing was The Age's decision to run it in the hard news section of the paper, with prominence and without an edit. Schembri doesn't do hard news, and Jaspan knows it and loves it; he's the hilarious new pin-up boy at The Age, but too bad the rest of Melbourne's not laughing with Schembri. Jaspan's eithier given his new love some Terry McCrann editorial freedom (Herald Sun sub editors have direct order not to touch his copy, and it shows), or he's one of the most incompentent editors a daily broadsheet has seen for quite some time. Especially when the SMH is running with a real news story about the Da Vinci Code marketing, which shits all over Schembri's predicable cynicism The Age calls hard news.

What the f*#k is "Manna from Heaven", and what was it doing on the front page of the Aus?

With last night's big spending budget riding on the back of yesterday's Beaconsfield escape, today was probably the biggest single news day the Aussie press has seen for at least a year - especially for print media, who didn't get a real bite at the miners' 6am escape.

So, as you can imagine, The Verbose Ghost was eagerly anticipating this morning's papers, if only to compare how each editor dealt with the two stories - which story would command precedence and how each paper would spin the budget. Most of the smaller, single paper states were a given: the NT News, The Advertiser, The Courier-Mail and The Mercury all ran with a huge front-page pictorial splash of the miners finally walking to freedom; but the bigger papers were never going to be so clean cut.


The Age and The Herald Sun in Melbourne all ran with the miners on the front and a detailed budget pull-out inside each papers' Beaconsfield wrap-around. But it was the Australian, under editor Michael Stutchbury, who provided the most obfuscating lead headline of all the papers, when they led with "Manna from Heaven". Not only had the Aus gone with Costello's vote-grabbing budget, but it had muddled the message as well as the meaning of its lead by using such grandiose, pseudo-religious language. "Manna from Heaven" actually referred to the green Costello was peddling as he gloated about how big his surplus was last night in the House of Reps, but you wouldn't know it unless you read the fine print. It could have as easily referred to the miracle-like escape of Brant Webb and Todd Russell after two weeks trapped under ground. But no - on the most important news morning of the year, the Aus decided to chance its arm and try an intuitive, attention grabbing headline. It failed miserably. No wonder its readership is embarrassingly low.

Leunig cuts a forlorn figure on Enough Rope

On tonight's episode of Enough Rope Andrew Denton spoke with Australia's most famous, and controversial, cartoonist, The Age's Michael Leunig. Denton rightly has the reputation as Australia's most masterful interviewer, needling and prodding when it's necessary, but astute enough to know exactly when to pull back so as to coax even the most reticent celeb or public figure into opening up. But his job tonight was a walk in the park, because Leunig was simply so captivating in his self-loathing and paranoia that Denton just needed to sit there and ask the simple questions.

For most of the interview, Leunig sat uncomfortably in the hotseat as he starred down at the floor. Rarely did Leunig look up to meet Denton's gaze, unless, of course, he was forced up by one of the long uncomfortable pauses Denton so often leaves between questions, which he drops in on occasion in the hope the subject will give a little more away. He was scattered as he tried to find words for what he described his profession - a "last resort" after working in factories up until the age of 20.

As a sometime fan of his fuzzy and cushy liberalism, it was a sad sight watching Leunig walk an increasingly fine line between scatterbrained utterings and compassioned insights into his job as a cultural, political and social commentator. There was a naivete in his high-pitched, airy voice, and a droopy sadness in his eyes as he looked down at the floor, transfixed by some recessive memory or black thought that he'd bottled up and unintentionally let out on national television. His family, he said, were largely estranged, although he admitted he was still the black sheep of his family. And he's long been a black sheep among Australia's popular political cartoonists, where cynicism and sarcasm reign supreme, and ambiguity is treated with cautious disdain. Living far from Melbourne at his farm in eastern Victoria, he produces his daily cartoons from home and spends the rest of his time raising and home-schooling his two children while working on his property. He has no time for Australia's Sydney-Melbourne media establishment, and would probably like to keep it this way.

Leunig's long been attacked by conservative columnists like the Herald Sun's Andrew Bolt, as well as from within the political blogosphere (see Andrew Landeryou), and tonight's performance will only add fuel to their fire. But it really shouldn't. If anything, it should probably tell them to back-off because tonight Leunig looked to be in a sad state - someone who would rather be out of the journalism game (if that's what you'd call it) than be misunderstood any longer, or driven further into despair. Even the most conservative of pundits can acknowledge when someone's almost beat, and back-off. This isn't bloodsport, it's just journalism guys.

The media becomes the story in Beaconsfield

News on the miners trapped almost one km underground has been scant since they were discovered alive at least 10 days ago. The Australian media descended upon the Beaconsfield mine as soon as it became obvious this wasn't standard tragedy story, but the agononzing days that followed have been a desperate grab-bag of stories about Beaconsfield's reaction, the trapped miners' mental states, and even the content of their iPods. Th latest news comes from Dave Grohl, who received word that one of the miners had asked to listen to the Foo Fighters while waiting for the rescuers to poke through the rubble, and quicker than mine manager Matthew Gill could say "the who Fighters?" Grohl had given a commitment to come down to Tassie to have a beer and a feed with the two men if and when they get out of the mine.

It's been an entertaining couple of weeks down in Beaconsfied for our fourth estate; embarrassing to watch and read the gratuitous verbiage, but fascinating nonetherless. I don't think anyone was surprised when the journos decided to brandish their pens and turn their cameras on themselves when there was nothing else to report on -because, after all, journos and producers are a narcissistic lot, not to mention being prone to bitchiness and gossip. So poor Naomi Robson, hey. The Today Tonight journo (the descriptor's applied very loosely these days) was reported to have had her personal make-up trailor down in Beaconsfield, and her prissy atitude became the butt of the rest of the media's jokes. Well, if there's one rule in broadcast journalism, it's this: if you can't actually do your job better than your competion and peers, then the least you can do is look better than them. So in the past few days the nations hacks have become more important than the actual story, which isn't surprising or unusual if you follow the backroom gossip that appears in Crikey or on Tim Blair's blog, but it doesn't usually pop up in the mainstream press, especially www.news.com.au, or The Age.

Laugh if you will at the coverage, but this arvo the media became the real story (at least until the miners come out tomorrow), with the death of long time Nine reporter Richard Carleton. A heart attack forced the 60 Minutes reporter to the floor during a press conference earlier this afternoon, and poor Carleton was pronounced dead at a local hospital not long after. It's not up to me to vale or eulogise Carleton, but this latest twist, in the story that's had everything, will just raise the international interest, and if a media deal hasn't already been done, will raise the eventual price considerably. How Channel Nine handles Carleton's death will be a story in itself, but it will be interesting to find out whether anyone questions whether his employer, in its battle to get the ratings wood over its major competitor, Channel Seven, knowingly pushed Carleton too hard in Beaconsfield. It is, of course, a two way street: Carleton was a passionate, dedicated reporter who kept digging right until the end, and his posthumous legacy will no doubt be one of a reporter who worked himself to death.