April 21 – 27, 2018
News
Comment
Comment
Omar Sakr
Hiding anger in the face of bigotry
“I have lived my life in the shadow of a myth: the angry Arab, the enraged ethnic, the unruly barbarians. It was made mythic only by a white conservative media. At home I knew one reality close to this – worn Arab hands that held the cane, the belt, the brush, the wooden spoon, the broad shoe, the vacuum cord that split my skin – but this iteration of violence was not what the world feared. It was the public kind they knew and cared about, specific acts of violence by men of colour that could fire the torrid imagination.”
Comment
Paul Bongiorno
Turnbull’s home fires blazing
“Credlin is no run-of-the-mill commentator. One veteran Liberal says there’s no doubt she’s one of the key campaign strategists for the Abbott camp. ‘She’s a player,’ he says. Just how big a player is hard to determine. But so deep are the suspicions within the party that another backbencher says he wouldn’t be surprised if she had a hand in a sensational story, in the News Corp tabloids, saying Turnbull has personal investments worth a million dollars in a fund that profits when Australian companies lose.”
Letters, Cartoon & Editorial
Culture
Profile
Evelyn Ida Morris’s piano forte
After a decade of critical acclaim as Pikelet, musician Evelyn Ida Morris is releasing the first music under their own name – a grand suite of piano songs, both sung and speechless, about the experience of being non-binary. “Non-binary is very strange, because it’s about preserving that internal space, and feeling proud of it, and finding ways to communicate it.”
Opera
Opera Australia’s ‘La Traviata’
Elijah Moshinsky’s interpretation of Verdi’s tragic masterpiece La Traviata has been wowing Opera Australia audiences since the ’90s. The latest iteration – both visually rich and lovingly handled by its stars – doesn’t let down the canon.
Portrait
Poet Hera Lindsay Bird
“The day is bright and the wind pulls at strands of Bird’s dark hair. She’s talking about poetry and process and her first book, Hera Lindsay Bird. She has a habit of not finishing her sentences, jumping from thought to thought. She pauses to see if I’ve caught up. ‘A lot of the real basic, good, dirty jokes in my book come from playing with metaphor. It’s just a fun, easy way to find it. If you just throw a whole bunch of dirty words in with a whole lot of poetic words…’ ”
Food
Potato gnocchi with brussels sprouts, hazelnuts and kaiserfleisch
“The tiny spud-pickers’ cottages dotted around the farms are testimony to a world where creature comforts were non-existent. And now at the beginning of May each year, when the harvest of potatoes is settling into full swing and the temperature is starting to drop, Trentham celebrates its heritage with a yearly Spudfest. So, to feel part of the local pride on May 5, here is a potato gnocchi dish, resplendent with brussels sprouts and hazelnuts – all things that thrive here in the hills of central Victoria.”
Books
Life
Travel
Shetland Islands
The windswept Shetland Islands harbour a culture equal parts Norse and Scottish, leaving English-speaking visitors feeling always on the edge of something familiar.
The Quiz
Quotes
POLITICS
“I’m not Santa Claus.”
The treasurer denies suggestions he is going to deliver a Father Christmas-like budget. He did keep a list of children in his last portfolio – none of them were naughty, but he still tortured them all in detention.
HUMOUR
“It stayed with me, that I’ve never seen him laugh. Not in public, not in private.”
The former director of the FBI reflects on the fact that he never once saw Donald Trump enjoy a joke. Either the president is too insecure to enter into the vulnerability inherently demanded by humour, or he found little levity around the man investigating whether he watched a Russian piss show.
GENDER
“I would never knowingly put in place a gender manipulation programme pretending to be about anti-bullying.”
The former prime minister denies introducing Safe Schools, except he did. He calls it a gender manipulation program, except it isn’t. Maybe he wouldn’t knowingly exploit vulnerable children for political gain, except he does.
DEPORTATION
“How exactly can someone pretend to ‘be Jamaican’ when they are British and have lived here all their lives?”
The British Labour MP questions advice given to members of the Windrush generation before being deported, with government documents recommending they pretend to be Jamaican and adopt the local dialect. Lammy’s question describes obscene inhumanity and also the development of white ska music.
MUSIC
“When someone calls you racist, what they are saying is, ‘Hmm, you actually have a point, and I don’t know how to answer it.’ ”
The musician answers once and for all the question “Are The Smiths overrated?” Yes, yes, yes. Also: their singer was a smug prick whose general lack of curiosity about anything but himself turned him into a condescending bigot and conspiracy theorist.
MEDICINE
“It’s time Australia joined them and legalised cannabis for adult use.”
The Greens leader calls for legislation to make cannabis available to adults. In certain circles, this was reported as news.
