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Keywords: The Sparrow

  • AUSTRALIA

    The roots of troll culture are closer than we think

    • Jeff Sparrow
    • 25 September 2015
    6 Comments

    The common perception of internet trolls is that they are outsiders descending on a particular platform in order to wreck it. But there is a close relationship between trolls and the culture in which they operate. If you're a publisher seeking virality, you need to foster the strong emotions in which social media trades. Getting people to love your content is great, but outrage, incredulity and even hatred also work.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    The emptiness of reform rhetoric in Australian politics

    • Jeff Sparrow
    • 08 September 2015
    5 Comments

    The recent National Reform Summit was lauded as an attempt to 'rediscover the art of reform that in the past generation helped to drive high living standards and made Australia the envy among smart nations'. Yet the urgency with which Australian pundits demand 'reform' corresponds with a peculiar opacity about what the term actually means, with its past association with the socialist movement but more recent appropriation as a neoliberal mantra. 

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  • MEDIA

    Ashley Madison leak exposes a prurient and uncaring society

    • Jeff Sparrow
    • 26 August 2015
    15 Comments

    The media has greeted the infidelity website leak with unabashed glee. We could instead ask why so many ordinary people are seemingly so discontented with their marriages, and what might be done to alleviate the wretchedness both of those who cheat and those who don't.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    The gloriously flawed humanity of our federal politics

    • Andrew Hamilton
    • 20 August 2015
    9 Comments

    Recent weeks' events in federal politics stretch the imagination. The search for historical parallels brought me to the start of the Burke and Wills Expedition to the Gulf of Carpentaria, the disappearance of Azaria Chamberlain, and the race that saw Fine Cotton unravel. Each of these events was characteristically Australian. In Les Murray’s memorable phrase, they all had sprawl: the mingling of excess, overweening self-confidence, and the cutting of corners. 

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  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    Warm fuzzy flipside to a fidgety control freak

    • Brian Doyle
    • 08 October 2013
    5 Comments

    We did not see eye to eye, yet no one cared more about the work we did. He was subject to fits of temper, and you never met a gentler man. He held grudges, and was the soul of mercy. He was the worst manager I ever saw and the best employee. He had been a quiet drunk and when he realised he'd damage his new children he stopped and never took another sip. Lots of people knew him and no one knew him well.

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  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    Nothing romantic about living in squalor

    • Ellena Savage
    • 15 March 2013
    5 Comments

    The Arts Minister Simon Crean's new Creative Partnerships initiative is another more-of-the-same, fund-career-administrators-and-educators-and-leave-artistes-to-their-hellish-squalor kind of model. Art can be a satisfying occupation, but artists cannot live on self-satisfaction alone.

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  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    Best of 2012: The many sins of Brian Doyle

    • Brian Doyle
    • 07 January 2013
    1 Comment

    I missed my cousin's funeral because I had weekend plans with a girlfriend that I was not man enough to break; and this beloved cousin was a nun. Wednesday 16 May 

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  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    The many sins of Brian Doyle

    • Brian Doyle
    • 16 May 2012
    11 Comments

    I missed my cousin's funeral because I had weekend plans with a girlfriend that I was not man enough to break; and this beloved cousin was a nun.

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  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    Best of 2011: Breast sandwich

    • Mary Manning
    • 04 January 2012
    2 Comments

    'I'm Shareena,' she says. 'I'm your radiographer for today. For your breast screen.' An old man looks away from the waiting room television when he hears the word breast. His eyes linger over my sensible tailored shirt and I wonder if I have left a button undone. Published 19 April 2011

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  • MARGARET DOOLEY AWARD

    Gillard, work and welfare

    • Sarah Burnside
    • 17 August 2011
    8 Comments

    Opponents of workplace regulation are well-resourced and powerful. In order to meet them head-on, the Government must do more than invoke the value of hard work. After all, if work automatically confers great dignity, what does it matter that conditions are unsatisfactory?

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  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    Dorothy enjoys a funeral

    • Brook Emery and Rodney Wetherell
    • 05 July 2011
    2 Comments

    Awful to think of her lying in that polished box, plump though somewhat wasted. It's a mercy, someone's bound to say, yet tearful Bill may not agree.

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  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    Breast sandwich

    • Mary Manning
    • 20 April 2011
    5 Comments

    'I'm Shareena,' she says. 'I'm your radiographer for today. For your breast screen.' An old man looks away from the waiting room television when he hears the word breast. His eyes linger over my sensible tailored shirt and I wonder if I have left a button undone.

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