THE JACKSON WELLS REPORT

She's from Mars, he cowers in terror

Paul Comrie-Thomson: Well, in opposition to John Gray: Men Are From Mars - Women Are From Venus we have not just a counterpoint but a counter-blast. The Myth of Mars and Venus: Do Men and Women Speak Different Languages? is written by Deborah Cameron, Professor of Language and Communication at Oxford University. It’s said that women universally instinctively shrink from coarse and gross expressions, but what do we find in Papua New Guinea?

Deborah Cameron: Well, in the village of Gapun it’s women who specialise in coarse and gross expressions. Women are generally thought to be the headstrong ones who can’t control their emotions and men think they’re above language that’s coarse and gross. Women specialise in a genre called kros which is the Tok Pisin word for 'angry', where basically you sit in your house and ventilate any grievance you have against another person by just embarking on a monologue of obscene abuse, so obscene in fact that I can't give you the flavour of it by reading out any of my transcript on the air.

This is something almost exclusively done by women. Occasionally men who've been widowed have a kros, but other men feel the need get their wives to do it for them because it is thought to be a women's speciality. Basically this is a culture, and not the only one either, where women are from Mars and men are from Venus. Men pride themselves on their ability to keep the conversation diplomatically indirect and polite, whereas women just say what's on their minds, often very obscenely.

Source: Counterpoint, ABC Radio National, 17 December 2007

The dumbing out of Labor politics

Keith Jackson

The Fabian Society was founded in London in 1884 as a vehicle to reform society through incremental change. The group immediately drew many intellectuals to its ranks, including George Bernard Shaw, HG Wells and Emmeline Pankhurst. The Society is named after the Roman general Quintus Fabius Maximus who advocated what would now be termed guerilla tactics rather than head-on battles against Hannibal's Carthaginian army.

The Australian branch of the Fabians is associated with, although separate from, the Labor Party. I belong to the NSW group which has an active program of meetings and a role as an incubator of ideas and debater of policy for what used to be termed the ‘left’ or, my preference, socially progressive side of politics.

Now to the Central Policy Branch of the NSW Labor Party. This is the brainchild of Senator-elect Mark Arbib, soon to step down as the state secretary of the party. It was a creative response to plunging party membership, declining branch activity and the dumbing down or even elimination of genuine grassroots debate in the ALP. Mark’s solution was to establish a central policy branch, to operate under the auspices of head office and to devote itself to debate on policy. This branch was established this year and, recognising a good idea, I joined.

There are a number of reasons why a person decides to become politically engaged. The highest reason is to work for a better society through more effective and more ethical government. The basest is to acquire personal power and aggrandisement. Mostly, in the one individual, as you might expect, these motives are blended in various proportions.

But politics without ideas is the empty pursuit of power. A number of his colleagues have accused John Howard of lacking intellectual drive, especially in his final and fatal election campaign.

And politics without community involvement is a form of dictatorship. Benign maybe, but certainly a dilution of democracy.

In 2000, then ALP state secretary, Eric Roozendaal, set an objective of stretching NSW ALP membership to 45,000 in five years. Membership at the time was 22,000. It is now 16,500. Instead of Roozendaal’s doubling, there’s been a decline of 25 percent. Not good for the party organisation and not good for democracy.

Through entities such as the Fabians and the Central Policy Branch, the progressive side of politics has a prospect of re-engaging people in the political process through the power of ideas rather than the power of numbers. I think it’s in all our interests that this process of ‘dumbing out’ succeed.

PR born in 'action for the general good'

Keith Jackson

The term ‘public relations’ was coined in the United States in the 1830s. At that time, it referred to ‘action for the general good’, which I hope you agree is a resonant phrase. The term then dropped from currency for some decades until it was revived to describe the activities of late 19^th century press agents. These errant journalists were employed by the emergent class of US robber barons to protect their reputations from a newly intrusive press. Ruthless tycoons used philanthropy to balance the ledger with God and PR to balance the ledger with their fellow citizens. It’s amazing how so little has changed.

In the early 1920s Edward Bernays, a nephew of Sigmund Freud, published the first book on PR – Crystallising Public Opinion, still in print 90 years later. Bernays, a dominant and controversial character, dominated the intellectual development of PR for most of the 20^th century. He was 104 when he died and offering counsel to the end. His definition of public relations – advice for action based on social responsibility - drew from both the original 1830s idea of ‘action for the general good’ and Thomas Jefferson’s principle that, in a democratic society, every activity must depend on and respond to the consent of the people.

These are high notions – great human values. So where did it go wrong? As PR gathered in momentum and grew in commercial influence after World War II, Bernays’ extended his original definition to “action, which will serve both the organisation’s and the public interest”. He added the concept of ‘organisation’. Unexceptional you might think. But what if the organisation’s interest and the public interest conflict, as they so often do? Well, then you have to make a choice. And that’s when, ethically, it gets really interesting.

It’s been said that the term “public relations ethics” is an oxymoron, like “Army intelligence”. The truth is that PR ethics range from pinnacles of moral courage to thoroughgoing venality. Ethics developed to preserve and protect the social and human relationships necessary for all of us to live reasonable lives. The implications of ethical failure are invariably truncation of decency and generation of harm. A subject for another day.