Quite an interesting week, last week. Not only did our political leaders completely lose the plot by spending the best part of it arguing about a ute, but both Farrah Fawcett and Michael Jackson dropped off the twig. As is typical in Australia, the first Jackson jokes started circulating within an hour, for example, the undertaker not knowing what to do with the body because plastic recycling night wasn't until next Tuesday, but then deciding to melt it down and turn it into a plastic toy so that Jacko could keep on playing with little boys. Or the one about Jackson's manager having to cancel his upcoming tour dates, ie. the date with Dylan, 7 , from Atlanta and Peter, 9, from St Louis etc etc.
Pretty tasteless jokes, those, but at least the whole Jackson episode has got the economy off the front page for the time being. As someone who has to grapple daily with the fallout from the GFC, the last thing I want to do when I come home after another crummy day at the office is read all about it again in the paper. However despite my general aversion to GFC-related press it was hard not to derive a degree of perverse amusement 3 weeks ago from the histrionic media reaction to a supposedly "good" piece of economic news, namely that the economy had avoided recession.
The media reaction was so over the top you might be forgiven for thinking that a cure for cancer had been found, the war in Afghanistan had ended or even better, Alan Jones and Andrew Bolt had disappeared up their own backsides. But no, instead, the cause of the media frenzy was the fact that economy had grown by a paltry 0.4% in the March quarter and as a result, Australia had avoided a technical recession.
I don't want to rain on the media or K-Rudd's parade here, but this was hardly a reason to break out the Bollinger. Under normal conditions, the Australian economy comfortably grows at over 3 per cent per annum, and that's before any artificial government stimulus. When you consider that for the past 5 months, Kevin and Wayne have been doing a fair impression of Imelda Marcos in a shoe shop, an annualised growth rate of 1.6% doesn't exactly suggest that we're firing on all cylinders economically. However, look on the bright side. At least most of us in Australia aren't employed by Chrysler and don't own real estate in Detroit.
Regardless of whether this latest set of economic figures represent good or bad news, the most disturbing thing is the reverential attention paid to them by press and politicians alike. It was almost as if the GDP figure were meant to be a barometer for the national mood. If the figure is positive, then great, K-Rudd is a genius and let's all party like it's 2007. However, give us (gasp) two consecutive quarters of negative growth and we should kick out the government and all reach for a bottle of Prozac.
This attitude, of course, is lunacy. Assuming that the happiness and wellbeing of your citizens is assured provided the country's GDP is heading up is a very narrow view for any government to take, not to mention dangerous. However, in the last 50 years, more and more governments around the world have essentially adopted this approach, often at the expense of important social programs. It is no wonder that the 19th century historian Thomas Carlyle described economics as "the dismal science".
One of the problems with adopting an economist's measure as a proxy for a country's wellbeing is that things that an economist might regard as good because they contribute to economic growth have very poor social outcomes. Similarly, things that in no way contribute to GDP can have very good social outcomes. For example, a disturbed lunatic going into Walmart and buying a gun and ammunition ahead of embarking on a killing spree is considered as contributing to the economy, while someone volunteering their time to assist a charitable organisation is not. We all know whose behaviour is the more socially desirable, however when you focus purely on what is the better economic outcome, you can derive a fairly perverse result.
This is of course an extreme case, however using this sort of logic it is easy to see how the Western world's single-minded pursuit of economic growth at the expense of the other things that make a society tick has led to a some very undesirable consequences. You would have to acknowledge that it has also had the consequence of making us more wealthy, but is more and more wealth necessarily the key to greater contentment? If you take someone like Michael Jackson as an example, the answer is a resounding "no".
Numerous studies have shown that achieving a basic level of wealth definitely contributes to a person's wellbeing. That makes sense, after all - not having to worry about how you are going to afford the mortgage next month or how to fix that annoying rattle in the car would be a big relief to people on the breadline. However, the same studies also show that beyond a certain level of wealth, the effect on happiness is negligible or, to borrow an economist's phrase, there is very little "marginal utility" associated with the surplus cash. What does however show up a strong contributor to happiness is interaction with other people.
Intuitively, we all know this. We all dutifully put in the long hours at work so that we can earn more loot and buy bigger houses, flasher cars and more exotic holidays. However, at the same time we complain incessantly about how work dominates our lives and lament the fact that we've completely lost touch with all the old friends and perverts we spent so much time with at University just goofing off and drinking beer. Yet instead of reacting against this, year after year we line up for more, kidding ourselves that in 5 or so years we can get off the treadmill and afford to do all those fun things we've been putting off for years. Nice idea, but sorry, but the GFC has put paid to that idea for the time being.
Some governments have realised that the single-minded pursuit of economic growth isn't necessarily the best way to ensure the happiness of their citizens and have therefore started looking at other measures. Bhutan, of all places, have recently taken it to the logical extreme and implemented a "National Happiness Index". How this will work exactly is hard to know as an index like this is very subjective and pretty hard to measure, however the Bhutanese are to be commended for at least giving it a try. Even a nation full of notorious whingers such as Britain have toyed with implementing a similar measure to gauge the national mood, and it is probable that in the face of the economic carnage wrought by the GFC other nations will follow suit.
It is to be hoped that they do. If there is one lesson that can be learnt from the events of the last 18 months is that booms never last forever, fortunes can be lost in an instant and that basing your mental wellbeing on the amount of cash in your account is fraught with peril and likely to result in some nasty ulcers. Governments should now recognise this and instead of engaging in ridiculous backslapping over a piddling economic growth figure, redirect their energies at rebuilding the social networks that have been severely run down over the past 60 years in the race to become rich. Who knows? It might just lead to a more happy and contended population and therefore, more years in office for the government bold enough to reject the mantra of economists and strike a new path.
In the end, however, economics is likely to claim us all. It certainly did a number on Jacko, rest his soul. Spending more than he earned for years led to an economic imperative to earn more cash. To do this, he signed up to do 50 concerts in London however the stress associated with the concerts plus the heavy training to get in shape no doubt contributed to his heart attack.
Economics -1. Jackson - nil. How dismal.
27 June 2009
09 June 2009
Not Happy, Johns
Another footy season is well underway and as is the norm, stories about footballers behaving badly are legion. Generously sprinkled throughout the sports pages of the national dailies are reports of Ben Cousins flipping the bird live on Channel 10, Tim Cahill being booted out of a Sydney nightclub or in the NRL, another debacle occurring at the hapless Cronulla Sharks. As a cricketer, Andrew Symonds had to muck up pretty spectacularly in England in order to get his fair share of column space in amongst all the misbehaving footy players.
When you consider some of the truly newsworthy things going on in the world, the fact that some of these things make the paper is an indictment on both sports journalism as a profession and all of us as readers. Most of the things that sportsmen get up to either on or off the field, for example, losing your temper, drinking to excess and chasing tail are things that all of us are guilty of from time to time. Very few people care when Joe Public engages in this sort of behaviour, however slap a Waratahs or Collingwood guernsey on the offender and suddenly it is front page copy.
The media when confronted with the latest scandal are quick to get on their high horse about footballers being "public figures" and "role models" and needing to set an example for their young fans. Well, bollocks to that. Since when did being a sublimely talented athlete oblige someone to stay at home, read the bible and cook a roast for their grandmother every Sunday when most of their mates are out doing what young people like to do? Ask any high-profile sportsman and you would find that pretty much all of them either intensely resent the media attention paid to their every move, or at best accept it with a weary exasperation. In truth, apart from needing to be more self-aware than the rest of us due to their public profile, the only real behavioural obligations that footballers should have is to ensure that their conduct does not breach their contract of employment with their club nor transgress the other standards expected of the rest of civilised society.
The second point is highly relevant when you consider the recent expose concerning Matthew Johns in New Zealand in 2002. In this case, the behaviour exhibited by Johns and his teammates as represented on the 4 Corners report was so repellent and bizarre that it would be newsworthy in its own right even if the participants weren't members of an NRL team. It would certainly have featured prominently in the Adelaide Advertiser where serial killings, indecent exposures and perverse sexual acts are the order of the day. Yet strangely given a media which usually dines out on stories of this nature, this particular scandal took 7 years to come to light, and was uncovered by the ABC, of all organisations. Yes, the boring fuddy-duddy, pinko-lefto ABC, who couldn't normally distinguish a crossbar from a point post, somehow managed to scoop the sporting scandal of the year.
How did this happen, or not happen, as the case may be? It's hard to believe that Johns' employer Channel 9 and the press in general weren't aware of what happened that fateful night in Auckland. In fact, Channel 9 journalist Danny Weidler has admitted that had known about what happened for years but "didn't consider reporting it". One can only speculate why he chose not to do so. Based on the media storm over the past few weeks, it can't have been because the story wasn't newsworthy. The cynical but most logical solution is that Channel 9 deliberately hushed the incident up.
If there has indeed been media a cover up, then it doesn't take much of an imagination to work out why. The simple fact is that despite their recent retirements and various misdeanours during and after their careers, Johns and his brother Andrew are Rugby League royalty. Andrew is regularly bracketed with Wally Lewis as the greatest player to have played the game in the last 30 years, while Matthew was a more than serviceable 5/8 for Newcastle and until his fracas came to light, a rising media star on the Sydney Footy Show. Given the clearly explosive nature of the story, Channel 9 would have been hoping like anything that the woman involved kept her mouth shut and that the whole thing got quietly put in the "what goes on on tour, stays on tour" category. Unfortunately for both Johns and Channel 9, this ultimately didn't happen. And as is usually the case when this sort of transgression came to light, the consequences for Johns, his family, the NRL and the media have been quite severe.
But then, so the conseqences ought to be. Given the circumstances, the argument about whether high profile sportpeople should be subjected to more scrutiny than the rest of us is irrelevant. So too is any hand wringing about the effect this is having on Matthew Johns's family and the fact that the sport of Rugby League has been brought into disrepute. What is most important, and what has been lost in all the column space written on the subject, is the effect Johns' and his teammates actions had on the victim.
Picture this. You are a young girl, 19 years old, newly sexually aware and heading off to footy match. You wangle your way into the players' inner sanctum after the game for a few drinks, one thing leads to another and then suddenly you are back at the away team's hotel for the after party and more than likely, a bit of a one-on-one tumble with one of the players. However, the atmosphere very quickly turns ugly and all of a sudden it's not one but several players taking turns on you while a number of their teammates stand round laughing and joking and calling you every derogatory name under the sun.
The position of a woman in this type of situation is very awkward. Apart from the immediate issue of the physical and sexual abuse she is being subjected to, there are more consequences if she complains. Because she willingly went back to the hotel with probable intent to have sex, she runs the risk of being dismissed as a slut and having the blame for what happened shunted back on her, even though no woman in their right mind would have gone back to the team hotel knowing what was in store for her. The law in this area is quite tricky too. Rape is a very difficult charge to make stick, one of the reasons being that the question of consent is quite a blurry one. In this situation, an accused can quite easily argue the point that if the victim didn't consent to have sex, then what was she doing back at the team hotel? Further, the only witnesses in this case would be Johns' co-accused, who would hardly support her version of events.
According to reports, there was nonetheless a complaint made shortly after the incident and a police investigation which failed to result in any charges being laid. Johns and his Cronulla teammates doubtless heaved a huge collective sigh of relief, dismissed the whole thing as just another day in the life of an NRL footy player and went back to sticking their fat heads in scrums. However, clearly that was not the end of the matter as far as the victim was concerned. She has carried the incident round with her for 7 years and has only now found out the courage to speak out and tell her story. Despite some ignoramuses claiming she was only doing this to big note herself and get her 15 minutes of fame, this can't have been an easy decision for her to make. In telling her story, she would have to revisit afresh the mental anguish of reliving the incident and risked being judged in the court of public opinion, not knowing which way it would fall. Would she be seen as a naive but nonetheless innocent young girl who was taken advantage of by a bunch of boorish louts, or would she be seen as a filthy tart who asked for everything she got?
As it turns out, though, her role in the whole media story has been very secondary, with everyone instead focussing on the effect on Matthew Johns and his family and the damage the incident has done to the NRL. Surprisingly, the one notable exception to this came on "A Current Affair" when Tracy Grimshaw interviewed Johns and his wife shortly after the story broke. I didn't see the interview but it was widely reported the next day how Grimshaw had repeatedly tried to get the Johns' to stop focussing on how this had affected them and instead to see the incident through the eyes of the true victim of the piece. Needless to say, neither Johns nor his wife Trish got the point, with Trish saying the greatest crime committed was infidelity to her - the clear implication being that the trauma to the victim was secondary to the trauma suffered to their marriage.
Similarly, the NRL has come out and made its usual banal statements about these sorts of incidents needing to be stamped out as they bring the game into disrepute. What they completely fail to see is that these sorts of incidents will NEVER be stamped out until footballers stop behaving like oversexed gorillas, start exercising a modicum of self-control and understanding the pain and hurt that their actions are likely to cause the victim. One simple question they should ask themselves when confronted with this sort of situation is : "Would I be pleased if this was happening to my girlfriend or my sister?", or even "Would I like to read about this in the paper tomorrow?" . The answer to both questions would of course be an unequivocal "no".
Because these things keep happening, the NRL should take the initiative and start educating its players better in this area. While elite sportmen live in a heady and sometimes surreal world, and while they should not have their every move scrutinised, they do need to have regard to the moral and social codes that the rest of us in society live by. Whatever the NRL are currently doing in this area to educate the players is clearly not getting through the large layers of meat around their brains.
A good way for the NRL to start would be to publicly name the rest of the anonymous and gutless Cronulla players who were involved in the incident and have them publicly apologise to the victim. I don't, however, think that will happen. Apologising might be the noble thing to do, but it would probably adversely affect the players' marriages, not to mention bring the game into disrepute. And we all know those considerations are far more important than what has happened to the victim.
When you consider some of the truly newsworthy things going on in the world, the fact that some of these things make the paper is an indictment on both sports journalism as a profession and all of us as readers. Most of the things that sportsmen get up to either on or off the field, for example, losing your temper, drinking to excess and chasing tail are things that all of us are guilty of from time to time. Very few people care when Joe Public engages in this sort of behaviour, however slap a Waratahs or Collingwood guernsey on the offender and suddenly it is front page copy.
The media when confronted with the latest scandal are quick to get on their high horse about footballers being "public figures" and "role models" and needing to set an example for their young fans. Well, bollocks to that. Since when did being a sublimely talented athlete oblige someone to stay at home, read the bible and cook a roast for their grandmother every Sunday when most of their mates are out doing what young people like to do? Ask any high-profile sportsman and you would find that pretty much all of them either intensely resent the media attention paid to their every move, or at best accept it with a weary exasperation. In truth, apart from needing to be more self-aware than the rest of us due to their public profile, the only real behavioural obligations that footballers should have is to ensure that their conduct does not breach their contract of employment with their club nor transgress the other standards expected of the rest of civilised society.
The second point is highly relevant when you consider the recent expose concerning Matthew Johns in New Zealand in 2002. In this case, the behaviour exhibited by Johns and his teammates as represented on the 4 Corners report was so repellent and bizarre that it would be newsworthy in its own right even if the participants weren't members of an NRL team. It would certainly have featured prominently in the Adelaide Advertiser where serial killings, indecent exposures and perverse sexual acts are the order of the day. Yet strangely given a media which usually dines out on stories of this nature, this particular scandal took 7 years to come to light, and was uncovered by the ABC, of all organisations. Yes, the boring fuddy-duddy, pinko-lefto ABC, who couldn't normally distinguish a crossbar from a point post, somehow managed to scoop the sporting scandal of the year.
How did this happen, or not happen, as the case may be? It's hard to believe that Johns' employer Channel 9 and the press in general weren't aware of what happened that fateful night in Auckland. In fact, Channel 9 journalist Danny Weidler has admitted that had known about what happened for years but "didn't consider reporting it". One can only speculate why he chose not to do so. Based on the media storm over the past few weeks, it can't have been because the story wasn't newsworthy. The cynical but most logical solution is that Channel 9 deliberately hushed the incident up.
If there has indeed been media a cover up, then it doesn't take much of an imagination to work out why. The simple fact is that despite their recent retirements and various misdeanours during and after their careers, Johns and his brother Andrew are Rugby League royalty. Andrew is regularly bracketed with Wally Lewis as the greatest player to have played the game in the last 30 years, while Matthew was a more than serviceable 5/8 for Newcastle and until his fracas came to light, a rising media star on the Sydney Footy Show. Given the clearly explosive nature of the story, Channel 9 would have been hoping like anything that the woman involved kept her mouth shut and that the whole thing got quietly put in the "what goes on on tour, stays on tour" category. Unfortunately for both Johns and Channel 9, this ultimately didn't happen. And as is usually the case when this sort of transgression came to light, the consequences for Johns, his family, the NRL and the media have been quite severe.
But then, so the conseqences ought to be. Given the circumstances, the argument about whether high profile sportpeople should be subjected to more scrutiny than the rest of us is irrelevant. So too is any hand wringing about the effect this is having on Matthew Johns's family and the fact that the sport of Rugby League has been brought into disrepute. What is most important, and what has been lost in all the column space written on the subject, is the effect Johns' and his teammates actions had on the victim.
Picture this. You are a young girl, 19 years old, newly sexually aware and heading off to footy match. You wangle your way into the players' inner sanctum after the game for a few drinks, one thing leads to another and then suddenly you are back at the away team's hotel for the after party and more than likely, a bit of a one-on-one tumble with one of the players. However, the atmosphere very quickly turns ugly and all of a sudden it's not one but several players taking turns on you while a number of their teammates stand round laughing and joking and calling you every derogatory name under the sun.
The position of a woman in this type of situation is very awkward. Apart from the immediate issue of the physical and sexual abuse she is being subjected to, there are more consequences if she complains. Because she willingly went back to the hotel with probable intent to have sex, she runs the risk of being dismissed as a slut and having the blame for what happened shunted back on her, even though no woman in their right mind would have gone back to the team hotel knowing what was in store for her. The law in this area is quite tricky too. Rape is a very difficult charge to make stick, one of the reasons being that the question of consent is quite a blurry one. In this situation, an accused can quite easily argue the point that if the victim didn't consent to have sex, then what was she doing back at the team hotel? Further, the only witnesses in this case would be Johns' co-accused, who would hardly support her version of events.
According to reports, there was nonetheless a complaint made shortly after the incident and a police investigation which failed to result in any charges being laid. Johns and his Cronulla teammates doubtless heaved a huge collective sigh of relief, dismissed the whole thing as just another day in the life of an NRL footy player and went back to sticking their fat heads in scrums. However, clearly that was not the end of the matter as far as the victim was concerned. She has carried the incident round with her for 7 years and has only now found out the courage to speak out and tell her story. Despite some ignoramuses claiming she was only doing this to big note herself and get her 15 minutes of fame, this can't have been an easy decision for her to make. In telling her story, she would have to revisit afresh the mental anguish of reliving the incident and risked being judged in the court of public opinion, not knowing which way it would fall. Would she be seen as a naive but nonetheless innocent young girl who was taken advantage of by a bunch of boorish louts, or would she be seen as a filthy tart who asked for everything she got?
As it turns out, though, her role in the whole media story has been very secondary, with everyone instead focussing on the effect on Matthew Johns and his family and the damage the incident has done to the NRL. Surprisingly, the one notable exception to this came on "A Current Affair" when Tracy Grimshaw interviewed Johns and his wife shortly after the story broke. I didn't see the interview but it was widely reported the next day how Grimshaw had repeatedly tried to get the Johns' to stop focussing on how this had affected them and instead to see the incident through the eyes of the true victim of the piece. Needless to say, neither Johns nor his wife Trish got the point, with Trish saying the greatest crime committed was infidelity to her - the clear implication being that the trauma to the victim was secondary to the trauma suffered to their marriage.
Similarly, the NRL has come out and made its usual banal statements about these sorts of incidents needing to be stamped out as they bring the game into disrepute. What they completely fail to see is that these sorts of incidents will NEVER be stamped out until footballers stop behaving like oversexed gorillas, start exercising a modicum of self-control and understanding the pain and hurt that their actions are likely to cause the victim. One simple question they should ask themselves when confronted with this sort of situation is : "Would I be pleased if this was happening to my girlfriend or my sister?", or even "Would I like to read about this in the paper tomorrow?" . The answer to both questions would of course be an unequivocal "no".
Because these things keep happening, the NRL should take the initiative and start educating its players better in this area. While elite sportmen live in a heady and sometimes surreal world, and while they should not have their every move scrutinised, they do need to have regard to the moral and social codes that the rest of us in society live by. Whatever the NRL are currently doing in this area to educate the players is clearly not getting through the large layers of meat around their brains.
A good way for the NRL to start would be to publicly name the rest of the anonymous and gutless Cronulla players who were involved in the incident and have them publicly apologise to the victim. I don't, however, think that will happen. Apologising might be the noble thing to do, but it would probably adversely affect the players' marriages, not to mention bring the game into disrepute. And we all know those considerations are far more important than what has happened to the victim.
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