Saturday, July 28, 2007

So Much Manne Love

Australian conservatives hate Robert Manne. Indeed their hatred for him seems, at times, and obsession.




Andrew Bolt hates him:

Bolt wrote piece after piece on the 'Stolen Generations propagandist Robert Manne' and how this leftist intellectual was propagating the 'myth' of the Stolen Generations with zero evidence. The catalyst for Bolt's obsession was a Quarterly Essay written by Manne called 'The Stolen Generations and the Right' which dealt with the shrill denials from every conservative you can imagine that the Stolen Generation was a provable fact. The problem for Bolt was, and still is, that it is a provable a fact.

Bolt's attacks on Manne reached a fever pitch at about mid last year when he decided he'd debate Manne on the evidence for the 'myth' in question. It was a sight to behold, I know because I was there. Bolt seemed to actually believe that he could apply the same tricks and distortions he used in his columns to the debate but there was one problem, Manne would this time be allowed to reply.

By the end of Manne's speech Bolt was finished on the issue. Manne gave him a massive dossier of documentary evidence detailing the policy, including numbers of children taken and reasons why. The audience was also given an address with which to look it up ourselves. The dossier sat in front of him throughout the rest of the debate as if mocking every word he had to say. "Name ten!" he cried and Manne would just point to the papers. Bolt's been unusually silent on this issue ever since.

The Australian hates him:

For a long, long time the good people at the Oz have loved nothing more than to have a crack at Manne. A recent example is the infamous attack on the 'Psycho Left' only a couple of months ago. It was a broad swipe at a few public intellectuals who had dared to claim that certain actions performed by the Howard Government had 'silenced dissent' (Silencing Dissent being a title of a recent book). The problem with the attack was that it was pure hate rather than rational argument. The book in question holds many chapters from a range of authors which deal with things ranging from the governments vigorous plugging of leaks to it's treatment of those who criticise it publicly. I began reading it with scepticism, but finished it firmly believing that it had successfully made it's case. The Australian though, distorted it's argument and implied that the book's thesis was that leftist voices are gagged Stalin style.

Manne replied with a letter, which they unfairly edited, and they responded with this. Manne went from defending himself against their juvenile attack to an apologist, even admirer, of terrorists within one day. They'd so distorted what he'd written in the past that Raymond Gaita wrote in his defense, which they unfairly edited, and Gaita was forced to write again to clear the editing 'mistake'. Eventually Manne was allowed a full reply which exposed the ridiculous distortions made by the Oz against him.

The funny thing is that Manne only wrote the introduction to Silencing Dissent. He'd merely summarised the books arguments and had added a few minor comments of his own, yet instead of tackling the entire book, it's arguments and the many authors within it they almost entirely focused on Manne. It's an obsession.

Christopher Pearson hates him:

Recently Pearson wrote some scathing articles on Manne's apparent love of 'the noble savage' by addressing comments he'd made in a book review in The Monthly. Pearson spent two weeks on this, so it wasn't just a passing issue for him. Here, and Here. In his last one he attempted to argue that Manne had brushed over claims made in Louis Nowra's Bad Dreaming in order to paint pre-contact Aboriginal life as Utopian and assert that infant sexual abuse wasn't widespread in Aboriginal culture. The problem was that it was Pearson who had taken liberties with Nowra's work, as Manne successfully cleared up today :

'After Pearson's article appeared, I emailed Nowra with detailed questions concerning his evidence. I received an unanticipated reply.

"I have now read Pearson's article. I thought my position was clear. All sources, from the First Fleet marines onwards, right through to the anthropologists, pointed out that Aboriginal children were treated so well and with such loving that some white commentators thought their upbringing was too libertarian ... The important thing is this: the horrors that are meted out to some poor Aboriginal children (both girls and boys, from the age of mere babies) were totally unnatural in pre-contact Aboriginal life. My point was that some sexual abuse and violence towards women is a pathological distortion of pre-contact life. As for the abuse of young children it has no traditional base."

Following Nowra's email, Pearson has two alternatives. He can accept that concerning my critique of Nowra, his case is completely false. Alternatively, he can claim that Nowra has failed to understand the argument of his own book. '

Ouch! So what is it about Manne that draws such derision from the Right? Why is it that when Manne simply writes a review he is attacked. Why can he not write an introduction to a book and not be stomped on by the usual suspects? There's just too much Manne love on the Right these days.