A nice conversation with Emilio, the burly, big-faced, homely Spanish-Australian economist keen on Borges, Bunuel, Sherlock Holmes and Socratic dialogue.
‘Whose was the theory’ he asks me, delving among the lollies, ‘of the wowser and the larrikin? Was it Robert Hughes?’
‘I don’t know, I never heard of it.’ I take a mint leaf.
‘In this theory,’ Emilio took takes a red frog, ‘and it explains everything, Australians only ever elect a wowser or a larrikin.’
‘That sounds right.’
‘Of course it’s right, you do the numbers.’
‘Fraser . . . was a wowser . . .’
‘And Hawke a larrikin. Keating was a larrikin.’
‘And Howard a wowser.’
‘And Rudd . . .’
‘A wowser. There’s no getting out of it.’
‘Wran was a larrikin, Unsworth a wowser, Greiner a wowser, and . . . what’s his name, he chundered on me in Vietnam.’
‘Fahey. I’m sorry to hear that.’
‘Carr was . . .’
‘A wowser. He was. He is. He chews carrots and drinks pure water.’
‘Iemma a wowser . . .’
‘And Nathan a larrikin.’
‘Do the people always vote for larrikins?’
‘No, no. That’s the point, you see. That’s the theory. They vary according to the era, the zeitgeist.’
‘But . . .’ I dared a chocolate bullet, inflamed with this new dialectic. ‘Beazley was neither. Whitlam was neither.’
‘They were a mixture.’
‘That’s right, they were a mixture.’
‘And they both lost.’
‘This is very good.’
‘It’s excellent. But who thought of it first?’
I went back to my office with its blocked-off water view of Pinchgut and thought of the convicts (larrikins) and the warders (wowsers) guarding them and of Peter Ustinov’s famous exchange while filming The Sundowners with a shy Australian stockman.
‘I hope,’ the stockman said, with gruff slow delicacy, ‘you don’t think worse of us because we’re descended from convicts.’
‘No,’ said Ustinov, ‘no, no, no . . . What does concern me, however, is that about half of you are descended from warders.’
I imagined Fraser, the ascetic, puritan screw, turning the key in the lock of the cell of the drunken Bob Hawke, and Howard the short-arse hangman slipping the rope over the blindfolded Mark Latham and it became very clear.
What a wonderful idea. I wonder whose it was.
Name:
Aussie Larrikin is dead, Abbott and Julia are certainly not larrikins, the closest I come to one is Albanese…on the other side, none, or were Holt or Gorton larrikins or did they look like ones….
To be a larriking you have to be creative and humane.
…I must have thinking of Larry King…
edit: larrikin
This Aussie larrikin myth needs to be put to sleep. As recently as the early 80s Larrikin was a dead word along the lines of cobber and quid.Someone like Ray Martin reactivated the word to mean safe,smiling, not up himself,beloved by grannies everywhere and very straight.
Gorton would definitely fit the description of larrikin. In fact he and Bob Hawke would be on top of the tree of recent politicians as ‘larrikins’.
No, it’s not a wonderful idea.
In fact, it’s not an idea at all.
It’s simply another variation on the common human impulse to claim that those who think differently to you do so not because they see the world differently, but because at their heart their lurks some sort of ineradicable moral or intellectual defect. They’re stupid, or evil, or ‘wowsers’.
It reduces history and politics to melodrama.
It’s a waste of time.
C’mon Polybius, is just a bit of fun…’fun’seems to be lacking here…
I don’t know how can you say that fun is lacking here, Helvi, what with Bananaman pulling improbable objects out of his bottom every five minutes and Reader 1′s exquisitely detailed descriptions of her/his drug experiments.
Wowser.
Quite right. Plus I can make parcel bombs.
What’s that supposed to mean?
It means he can blow people up, like the guy down the road a couple of years ago who blew up his ex-girlfriend’s mother with a bomb intended for the daughter. Curiosity can be fatal sometimes.
Polybius is trying to lighten up this blog,that’s all. I appreciate it very much. Let’s not go to those ugly bicycle lanes of the past…
No more personal abuse or swearing, please.
It’s a parcel bomb joke. And I did actually receive a parcel today. I don’t often receive parcels.
This is getting too weird. You people are a cult and you are up to some weird shit. Up is down. White is black.
To Polybius and Canguro, the “you people” Reader1 is here referring to simply means “me”.
To Reader; “we’re through the looking glass here people!”
I’ve just read your comment to Untitled’66 on the other thread.
Once again, language appears to have deserted you.
I always divided them into Fathers and Uncles;
Frazer was a father, the father who thought he knew best every time all the time.
Hawke was a father to you but an Uncle to everyone else. You were always a bit wary to bring a girlfriend home.
Keating was a father, who thought he was an Uncle, always gave you a couple of dollars, but never enough to do anything constructive with, never notes always coin.
Beazley was a good Uncle, a bit melancholy but always could have a laugh with the kids, your mum was always trying to match him up with someone, anyone, like Ernest Borgnine in Marty.
Howard was an Uncle, the drippy Uncle that smelt of camphor and tinned asparagus. Never danced at weddings, came with two stubbies and drank Scotch.
Whitlam was an Uncle, the smartest sibling in your Mother’s family, who adored him, when politics was mentioned you volunteered to do the dishes.
Latham was an Uncle, always hit the tennis ball onto the roof in backyard cricket and get the kids to go up and get it.
Rudd was the father, always late for Parent Teacher night, too tired on the weekend to play, and the garden was always a mess.
Gillard is a Mother, she was a favourite Aunt, but now she is a mother, the kids don’t tell her anything and roll their eyes behind her back when she talks to them.
We vote Uncles in until they become Fathers and then we vote them out, or we vote Fathers in until they become Uncles and then we vote them out. What we really want is a second cousin who’s a Tradie and he’ll give you a discount on a kitchen renovation.
Abbott is a cousin to your Father, who you just call Tony he is usually left alone to tend to the BBQ making a big song and dance about how important it is to get a good fire going, and exactly timing how long a steak should be cooked on either side (you volunteer to get him a drink and never return).
Very good, allthumbs, very humorous, it also made me think… perhaps Holt and Gorton were nice uncles after all…is Turbull the rich uncle whom everbody ‘likes’, even they don’t really, they just want to have their share of the inheritance…
Uncle Bob Brown did not lecture the kids, but he knew heaps and told us important things about environment…
A good theory….but what on earth was Dunstan, then, Bob?
Like Whitlam, a mix.
Interesting theory. Abbott may be a prime Wowser-Larrikin of the first order in both departments.
Let us continue to hope he will never be elected; I still think he is unelectable.
Did the Libs have to sell Ashby’s arse in order not to sell Tony’s arse? Tony Windsor made Tony Abbott his bitch yesterday in Parliament. Abbott’s “I would do anything to get the job” is more articulate and eloquent and concise statement of his reason for being, than all of “Battlelines”.
Too right allthumbs. Windsor is just the man to wheel out the crap that Abbott now likes to pretend never happened. If he crosses his fingers, the lie doesn’t count, perhaps.
Larrikin and Wowser. Both in huge measure.
Deakin. Jack Lang. Thedore. McEwen. Menzies. Stan Keon. Curtin. Chifley. McMahon. Casey. Barry Jones. Kim Beazley jr (tho not sr).Various Downers. Wran. Cain. Cairns (Jim not Kevin). Lionel Bowen. None of these, for beter or worse,was either a wowser or a larrikin.
Jack Lang wasn’t a larrikin? News to me.
John Cain was a wowser class one; the others, however are more debatable.
PS The late Senator Pat “K-K-K” Kennelly associated with the last of the true Melbourne larrikins when young.
Gordon and Hawke were dead set alcoholics
Socrates himself was permanently pissed….
LOL, Hudson….
It’s a reference to :
“Immanuel Kant was a real pissant
Who was very rarely stable. Heidegger, Heidegger was a boozy beggar
Who could think you under the table.
David Hume could out-consume Wilhelm Freidrich Hegel,
And Wittgenstein was a beery swine
Who was just as schloshed as Schlegel.
There’s nothing Nietzsche couldn’t teach ya’
‘Bout the raising of the wrist.
SOCRATES, HIMSELF, WAS PERMANENTLY PISSED…
John Stuart Mill, of his own free will,
On half a pint of shandy was particularly ill.
Plato, they say, could stick it away;
Half a crate of whiskey every day.
Aristotle, Aristotle was a bugger for the bottle,
Hobbes was fond of his dram, And Rene Descartes was a drunken fart:
“I drink, therefore I am”
Yes, Socrates, himself, is particularly missed;
A lovely little thinker but a bugger when he’s pissed!”
‘The Philosophers’ Song’ by
Monty Python of course.