It is becoming common to describe people who offer political, economic and cultural comment in the mainstream media as Grumpy Old Men. It is a nice insult that warms the hearts of those of us whose commentary is confined to the fringe media.
They have learned nothing, we think, forgotten nothing, have nothing new to say but come to every topic with minds made up. They are jaundiced, reactionary, pompous and are read only by other Grumpy Old Men, particularly by those in government (much to our secret envy).
And though the mainstream commentators include women and people who are relatively young, we happily judge that their writing, too, wears the musty robes of dyspeptic male gerontocracy.
We, of course, are different… ‘But, wait a moment’, my inner self interrupts, ‘Are you really so very different? You are also of a certain age; I suspect that most of your readers are also of a certain age. And you are undoubtedly a man.’
‘But, even so, I am still different’, I assert to myself. ‘I am a knight in shiny trousers, independent in judgment and motivated purely by concern for the public interest. Whereas they worship at the shrine of plutocracy, receive their messages from the economic high priests, and predictably criticise politicians for fiscal cowardice in the face of misinformed public opinion.’
‘And at whose shrine do you worship’, my guardian scold demands.
‘Well, I suppose I worship at the shrine of personalism. I might be said to receive my messages from Catholic Social Teaching, and I predictably criticise politicians for conniving with conventional economic ideologies and their beneficiaries.’
‘So, a different message, it seems’, my judicial self says dispassionately, ‘but the same delivery by interchangeable Grumpy Old Men. And the same lack of rapport with the contemporary Australian audience that thinks in text messages and images and lacks any taste for reflective reading or argument.
‘OK’, I concede to my alter ego, ‘I may be a Grumpy Old Man. But what is so wrong with Grumpy Old Men speaking to other grumpy Old Men who share their convictions and intellectual style? After all preaching is mostly done to the converted. And doesn’t it need to be if our convictions are unpopular, whether, for example, we are appalled by the brutal Australian treatment of asylum seekers or by the craven abandonment of the Medical Co-payment. People need encouragement to keep holding unpopular views.
‘Of course, if we can make the argument to a wider audience, or to a smaller, more influential audience, that is all the better. And better still if we can persuade the authorities to change their policies.’
On a roll I declare, ‘We Grumpy Old Men have something to offer to public discourse, too, particularly our skills in argument and rhetoric. Writing to persuade people is a craft, and it should be encouraged, particularly in a culture where more informal and briefer forms of communication are in vogue. It helps deepen public conversation.’
And, craftily appealing to the pretensions to learning of my interior interlocutor, I insist, ‘there can be much to learn from exchanges between learned Grumpy Old Men, even at their most Grumpy. Jerome and Augustine going head to head with icy politeness and distilled rancour could teach even modern columnists a thing or two.’
To blot out the sound of silent scepticism, I rush on, ‘There is Grumpy and grumpy. There is surely a difference between offering reasoned criticism of another’s position and attacking by explicitly, or by innuendo, their good faith, their character or their intelligence. The latter appeals to schoolboy debaters and to strong haters but it narrows the possibilities for reasoned and reflective conversation.
‘That is real Grumpy. Why, even you’, I say to placate my doppelgänger, ‘tell me how dead set boring you find attacks on Cardinal Pell and Prime Minister Abbott. The conversation soon becomes like the frustrated barracking at a football match between two inept teams, full of ritual abuse, and fed by resentment at having to waste time being present at such rubbish. And that’s the kind of stuff you expect from the commentators in mainstream media. Those pestilential haters are the real Grumpy Old Men.
If I hoped for solidarity and mercy from my inner alias, I was mistaken. Amid the deafening sound of one hand clapping, he asked quietly, ‘And you never descend to that? ‘No, never!, I declare passionately, ‘Well, hardly ever…’
Andrew Hamilton is consulting editor of Eureka Street.