Got to keep the rabble from getting themselves het up

Via Professor Bunyip, one of our fair land's most delightful practitioners of the Queen's English, comes this opinion piece from The Age. It was written by the CEO of the the Equal Opportunity Commission, and it was written to defend Victoria's anti-vilification laws.

There's plenty to hate, ironically enough, about this piece. The tone of smug Humanist bigotry, for a start. The implication that there is no need to point out faults in different religions because all reasonable people know that all religion is bunk. The ignorance of Christian dogma, and the assumption that we need a government department to tell us what we as Christians believe.

But I thought I'd put all that aside and just look at one little paragraph that caught my attention.

There are exceptions under the act that cover the work of artists, performers, journalists, academics and scientists, as long as that work is engaged in reasonably and in good faith.

Isn't it interesting that the act makes exemptions for 'artists' and 'performers' but not for religious leaders. Why? Presumably this is because, unlike Christian pastors, artists have a higher calling and, unlike Christian pastors, an intimate connection to the transcendent 'other'. Furthermore, unlike Christian pastors, it's an artist's responsibility to challenge a recalcitrant public and, unlike Christian pastors, inform them about new points of view.

Obviously you can't say the same thing about Christian pastors... unless of course you're one of those ignorant bigoted Bible-thumpers who wouldn't know an Andres Serrano retrospective if it pissed on their leg.

Pro-blogging and pro-having a life

Earlier today I was reading an article about a clash between people who support the war in Iraq and people who don't. The two sides were labelled "anti-war" and "pro-troops".

It seems sort of unfair to define one group by a negative and the other by a positive. It's like there's a subtle level of editorialising going on. I've always appreciated the fact that, in the abortion debate, the two sides are generally referred to as "pro-life" and "pro-choice". Both sides are defined by a positive, by what they have to bring to the debate. As the culture wars have heated up over the last few years, I've occasionally noticed references to "pro-choice" and "anti-choice", but such ratbaggery has been rare. In discussing the debate, most people have realised that both sides have something positive to say, even if they don't agree that the other side trumps theirs.

Wouldn't it be nice if the sides in the issue of support for the Iraq war could be so civilised?

It'd also be nice if biscotti rained from the sky, and about as likely. For a start, it's hard to determine exactly what an anti-war person is protesting. The initial invasion? The continuing actions of troops? The fact that George W Bush continues to live and breathe? And if we try to switch anti-war to pro-something, it's near impossible to determine what they want. Pro-peace? Everyone wants peace; they just don't agree about how to get it. Pro-diplomacy? With Saddam Hussein? That's a difficult one to morally defend. Pro-containment? Irrelevant now that Saddam has gone, and slightly, well, reprehensible. Pro-sovereignty? It's probably the best one I've come up with, but one must question whether it's acceptable to let a people suffer under a tyrant merely in the name of self-determination. The opposite side would presumably be pro-intervention.

It's easier to claim the moral high ground when you're anti-war than when you're pro-sovereignty. Pro-sovereignty sounds like a position taken by a dry bureaucrat in a comfortable UN office in Geneva. Anti-war is passionate, if not particularly coherent. It's much easier, and more satisfying, to scream NO WAR and NO BUSH and NO BLOOD FOR OIL rather than to put forward some different solution to the problem.

Pro-choice, pro-life. Pro-sovereignty, pro-intervention. Such titles may not give you the same little thrill of self-righteousness, or the same confident sense of untrammeled, black-hearted evil in your opposition, but they're fair, and perhaps uncomfortably indicative.

Time for you to earn your keep, my pretty.

I started this blog as a test, to see how many hits I'd get from the 'Next Blog' button. After a week, and discounting my own visits to the page, I've discovered that the answer is two.

That's not many.

The good news is that this means my main blog is getting around ten to fifteen hits a day from people who aren't me. It's not great news, but it means that I have a readership, even if it's only a couple of people. I haven't told anyone I know about my blog, so everyone who reads it has come via a comment left on their site, a blogroll, a couple of posts in other blogs, or via the Next Blog button.

Now that this experiment has yielded results, I've decided to make this blog my Ranty Page. I've made a conscious decision to avoid politics and other contentious issues on Get On The Blandwagon!, but I occasionally have things I want to say and it's handy to have them in an accessible, public place. I can vent them without spoiling the convivial atmosphere at the main blog.

Well, that's the theory anyway.

I'm a loser, baby, so why don't you kill me.

This is an experimental blog to see how many hits a site gets just from readers hitting the 'Next Blog' button.

It's unlikely that anyone could find this blog otherwise, except by going via my profile, which I don't imagine would happen too often.

My theory is that 'Next Blog' visits would equal about five a day, assuming that the system is completely random. I'll run this for a month or so, see how it goes, and check daily

Current Hits - 0
BW - 687