The National Times, parochialism, the Yarra as coffee and religion comes to the emerald city

(Above: eek, a religion writer in the header. Screen cap, so see below for link to blog).

Now I'm starting to get totally confused.

Drop into the Sydney Morning Herald this morning, and at first glance it all seems reassuring. There's Miranda the Devine banging on about the evils of the western suburbs and Islamic gangs and the powerlessness of the police, and the dangers of criminals of Middle Eastern origin and appearance, and deviant so called cultural sensitivities when we all know that the entire suburb of Auburn is populated by crims and Muslims (and if you can't add up two and two to make three why are you reading this?)

Which is not to say, hastily I should add, unless you take me the wrong way, that these miscreants have anything to do the law-abiding, Allah-fearing Muslims who make up the Muslim community, even if you could count those angels on the head of a pin.

Yep, all seemed in order in the world.

So it has been and so it will be, and that's the way things are, and you can read about it here in Common sense and sensitivities, or you can have a life. Your choice. Me, I felt vaguely dirty, and too tired to argue, and then moved along.

But as I looked a little further, in depth as it were, zooming past the usual Annabel Crabb, this time about our new roving ambassador Brendan Nelson and his cute little ear-ring, who was up next but Danny Katz, writing about Melbourne's tepid brown river: it's coffee.

First there were mental convulsions about the use of 'it's'. Did he mean it as "the brown river: it is coffee" or did he mean Melbourne's coffee, in a possessive way?

Never mind, the cunning lad can get away with it either way, but once upon a time reading Katz would have been a thrill for Sydney perverts who clicked on The Age banner, and tried to get back into the mind set of wearing black and getting food poisoning at Mario's in Brunswick Street.

Then who should turn up in the SMH but Paul Austin, the state political editor of The Age, babbling on about how Brumby must explain fire-prevention delays. Who? What? Where? Why on earth should I give a toss about this chappie Brumby when it's Nathan Rees who's ruining the universe, which is to say Sydney.

There's only one pleasure in all this. It must be equally disturbing to Melbourne people who like to read The Age, the most leftist socialistic rag in Australia, only balanced by the right wing leaning of the ABC newsroom and The Australian.

Suddenly they have to deal with Miranda the Devine and Elizabeth Farrelly, and Gabrielle Carey trawling one more time over how she wrote Puberty Blues with Kathy Lette (as well as a recently published memoir of her mother). Which as we all know was set in Cronulla, part of the parochial world of the Shire. Try explaining the significance of that kind of parochialism to someone living on the Mornington peninsula with its wide ranging interest in international affairs. (Truth is more dangerous than fiction).

I guess I'm wondering where all this dangerous homogenization is going to lead us.

Parochialism is one of the more endearing qualities of Australian life. When in Melbourne, always boast of the coffee and sneer at the deep north. Never mention you're from Sydney, unless you have the capacity to spray spittle in a sneering way (as in I was from Sydney, then I saw the light, and it was a sensational, salubrious southern light).

When in Adelaide, mutter darkly about eastern staters and how they never understand anything, or at least how they never grok the curious parochial incestuous mindset that infests the state.

When in Sydney, do a Miranda the Devine and talk about the dragons living in the western suburbs. Especially the fiendish Islamics. Whatever you do, stay in the eastern suburbs or the north shore. Never ever visit Cabramatta for some delicious shar shu pork or cantonese style roast duck. Remember a village is a village, and just as no one in Melbourne crosses the Yarra, so once you go beyond Sydney University on Parramatta road you will suffer ethnic trauma that might rob you of your mind.

So now I'm wondering, puzzled, disturbed. Is the new National Times format a deviant plot by Fairfax to civilize the emerald city with talk of Melbourne coffee (why not catch a shuttle flight right this moment to savor a sip in one of those decadent alley ways and lanes?)

Is it the only way that the cunning southern burghers have found to offset the hideous Melbourne tourism advertisements, involving a huge ball of string and stupid people getting lost in the town?

Will Fairfax thus become a national symbol of leftist thinking, a bit like a local New York Times? And will this help them on the money trail as they seek cash for content?

Or will Sydney philistinism and hedonism triumph?

Whatever, can we just lose that bloody awful big bloody ball of twine?

Anyhoo, I was so disturbed while at The Age site that I clicked on religion writer Barney Zwartz's God after Auschwitz.

It'd copped a spot in the banner (see above), not the sort of thing we'd expect in Sydney, where we have the likes of Gerard Henderson to remind us that in this modern world very little is known about the likes of Auschwitz. So discussing the effects of concentration camps on belief systems is nigh impossible in Sydney. And if you don't believe me, try finding a spot dedicated to religion in the Sydney Morning Herald website (here's the site map, go for it).

Zwartz provides a thumbnail sketch to all the usual arguments about god and suffering and the presence and meaning of evil in the world, in the inimitable southern way, but I did perk up a little when I came to this bit:

I say God doesn’t answer to me, he owes me no explanation. That’s one of the lessons of Job. So when we offer explanations we must be humble about it. But that doesn’t make everything arbitrary, because God is a God of love and grace, and redemption.

God owes no explanation? So why on earth did She sponsor the good book, which rambles on across sixty six books, provides all kinds of genealogical details, but doesn't sort out a few crucial questions left over for the past two thousand years as a result of Her unseemly absence. Like when's the rapture happening (since it didn't land in the eighteenth century as predicted by the millenarians)?

Not to mention why She came up with evil and suffering, and then She had to wheel in free will as a 'nothing to do with me' out clause. By golly, I'd want a liquidated damages clause in that kind of contract with humanity, especially for late performance and other sundry breaches of care. Duty of care? Enough already. Just wheel the defective product out into the marketplace, offer one son and a limited one month warranty, and when it breaks down, blame the Chinese sub-contractor.

But Barney then offered a capper:

... if you reject religious accounts altogether, what account can you give of suffering?

Well indeed, we're born into this vale of tears, and then we die, and it's all Her fault. How to account for that?

But I did feel relieved as a result of this brief mental visit to Melbourne.

For a brief nanosecond of a moment I hadn't thought of real estate, and how the market was going and whether prices were on the up, especially for one room dog boxes with a glimpse of harbor views.

Thank the lord on Saturday Fairfax Sydney will still be printing the truth that counts in this tortured world ...

As for the National Times, culturally who's taking over whom, and does anyone remotely care?

Probably not, but I thought today I should wear black, seeing as how we're now in the business of shipping Miranda the Devine to Melbourne ...

(Below: and now in honor of The Punch's honorable tradition of publishing a barely relevant still, below a scene from Puberty Blues where a defiant, petulant teenage girl takes to the surf at the end of the show. Come to think of it, it's also in honor of Greg Sheridan, who doubtless can even now write a column explaining why women should be sitting on the beach, and acting as proper surfie chicks).