Please wait. Contacting image service... loading

Article text

FIRST-CLASS INVECTIVE IS
BECOMING RARER
WRITERS'
WORLD
^ By MAURICE DUNLEVY
none Help
YHE NSW Premier, Sir
Robert Askin, last week
called TDT staff "larrikins"
and "muckrakers". He also
told us what he thought was
going on behind "their bland
and smirky exteriors".
It occurred to me then that
such invective is becoming
rare in public life and yet
when I was a boy it seemed to
be part of the stock-in-trade
of every self-respecting poli
tician. Jn fact, some of my
earliest literary efforts involved
writing political speeches full
of abuse. Sometimes I doc
tored speeches written by oth
ers, inserting insults like plums
in " a pudding full of political
platitudes.
But these days, just as you
see fewer fist fights at every
level of public life, so you
hear fewer full-blooded insults.
One of the reasons is that
public debates are now con
ducted mainly in the mass
media and they are controlled
to a great extent by stiff libel
laws. The speeches I used to
write were for soap-box or
ators who spoke to a largely
approving rabble on street
corners. They would have
fared badly in defamation
actions and even worse on to
day's radio and television
shows. So puritanical are our
media today that the best way
to keep your face off the silver
screen is, as one of the Chic
ago demonstrators showed in
1968, to paint a four-letter
word on your forehead.
These days, as David Wil
liamson's 'Don's Party' re
minds us, we have transferred
the street-corner invective of
the past to the suburban patio
and lounge-room.
If you want to know what
it used to be like, you can
refresh your memory in Bill
Wannan's latest anthology,
'With Malice Aforethought:
Australian Insults, Invective,
Ridicule and Abuse' (Lans
downe, 128pp., $4.95). It is a
wide-ranging collection but it
shows that the great masters
of public invective and ridicule
were people of the past, people
such as John Norton (propri
etor of Sydney Truth), Henry
Lawson, George Reid, Billy
Hughes and Sir Robert Men
zies.
Norton was the monarch of
alliterative abuse. He called
Prince Alfred, Duke of Edin
burgh, "one of the most pru
rient-minded, lecherous-living,
brothel - bilking, tradesmen
tricking rascals that ever ran
amok". He described Queen
Victoria as a "flabby, fat, and
flatulent looking scion and the
successor of the most ignoble
line of Royal Georges".
And out of that ignoble line
he selected one, George IV,
for special treatment: "the
biggest blasphemer, the great
est liar, the foulest adulterer,
the most infamous swindler
and impudent turf blackleg or
'welsher' that the world has
ever seen. He was a bigamist,
a wifebeater and a madman
with prolonged. lucid inter
vals". After that, you must ad
mit, it is a bit lame to hear
Mr Whitlam merely predicting
that one day Australia will be
a republic.
Henry Lawson was also a
dab hand with royalty. He
used verse for his portrait of
Queen Victoria:
The Queen has lived for seventy
years and three; ■
And few have lived a flatter life,
more useless life than she;
She never said a clever thing or
wrote a clever line,
She never did a noble deed, in
coming times to shine.
Of the politicians Sir George
Reid seemed to me to be the
wittiest. When a woman told
him at an election meeting
that if he were her husband
she would give him a dose of
poison, Reid replied: "Madam,
if 1 were your husband I'd
take it". Another time he was
hit by an egg. He gazed con
temptuously at it and said,
"Another of my opponents'
arguments — rotten, of
course". Even better I think is
the story Manning Clark tells
in his 'Short History of Aus
tralia'. Reid was speaking in
the Melbourne Town Hall
when a heckler pointed at his
enormous stomach and
asked, "What's it going to be,
George — a boy or a girl?''
Reid replied, "If you had
anything to do with it, it
would be a kangaroo".
Billy Hughes seems to be
poorly represented in Bill
Wannan's book, but it does
contain the story of Hughes
attacking Alfred Deakin's pol
icies. "And one statements
brought Deakin to his feet
with a cry, 'I deny it! I deny
it!' There was a dead silence
in the House. Hughes stood in
his place with his hand to his
ear, and the silence lasted so
long that the Speaker asked
whether the Honourable Mem
ber had finished his remarks.
Then Hughes looked round at
the House and looked at the
Speaker and said, 'Oh no, Mr
Speaker, I was just waiting for
the cock to crow'
Sir Robert Menzies is, of
course, famous for the way he
could put down an injector.
"I wouldn't vote for you if
you were the Archangel Gab
riel", a woman yelled at an
election meeting. Menzies re
plied: "If I were the Archangel
Gabriel, madam, I'm afraid
you wouldn't be in my elec
torate''.
Then there was the heckler
at Oakleigh who asked Men
zies, "VVotcba gunna do about
'ousing?"
Menzies: "Put an 'h' in
front of it".
You could write an M.A.
thesis which compared the de
cline of the Liberal Party with
the decline in the standard of
its public invective. What a
difference there is between the
wit of Menzies and the maud
lin pretensions of Snedden.
Arthur Calwell may not
have been as witty as Menzies
but he could be more insult
ing. Mr Wannan omits his
"Two Wongs don't make a
white" but includes his por
trayal of communists: "Patho
logical exhibits . . . human
scum . . . paranoics, degener
ates, morons, bludgers . . .
,pack of dingoes . . . industrial
outlaws and political lepers ...
ratbags. If these people went
to Russia, Stalin wouldn't even
use them for manure".
'With Malice Aforethought'
has 12 sections covering vari
ous fields, including politics,
the law, the clergy, explorers
and growls from Grub Street.
It's a lively book, but as Mr
Wannan himself acknowledges,
it only skims the surface.
Could I suggest that there is a
goldmine of invective in Aus
tralian newspaper editorials, in
Hansard, and in the early files
of the Bulletin (it was partic
ularly good on sabbatarianism,
Iarrikinism, the Chinese, the
Aborigines, and Canberra). In
fact, you can read almost as
much abuse in F. K. Crowley's
new historical anthology —
largely drawn from news
papers — 'Modern Australian
Documents'.
Moreover, insults are still
here on the lips of living men,
if you know where to hear
them.
For more than 20 years I
have frequented the Sydney
Domain which is where all
folklorists should begin their
collections. 1*11 never forget
the first delightful shot I heard
fired there. "This morning",
said the rationalist-agnostic
from his soap-box, "I went up
to St Mary's there . . ."
"What the hell would an
agnostic like you be doing in
a church like that", a woman
shouted.
"My good woman", said the
agnostic, "I go there every
Sunday — to put crabs in the
holy water".
$