farmdoc's blog post number 683

Randy Cohen (pictured). He’s an interesting fellow. Wikipedia says that after obtaining an Arts degree majoring in music, he spent several years writing humour pieces, essays, and stories for leading US newspapers and magazines. For seven years from 1991 he was a writer on 950 episodes of Late Night with David Letterman, winning three Emmy Awards along the way. His fourth Emmy was for his work on TV Nation. Since 1999 he’s written ‘The Ethicist’ column in the New York Times Magazine. I subscribe to, and love, his weekly Ethicist podcasts. They’re succinct, fast-moving, and highly thought provoking. Nowadays, when I come across situations – in my life or in the news – with ethical connotations, I ask myself ‘What would Randy say?’ Two recent examples are: What would I have done had I, like Messrs Briggs and Jones, found $125,000 cash in a handbag in a supermarket carpark? And what would my reaction have been had my passport data been used by one of the team who bumped off Mahmoud al-Mabhouh in Dubai in January? Sweetheart Vivienne and I discussed these two questions over dinner last night. I can predict fairly accurately what Randy would’ve said about the money. But his response to the passport matter’s less certain. You see, he received his fifth Emmy Award as a result of a clerical error. And he kept it. So how could I not add him to my list of favourite journalists [1, 2]. Keep it coming, Randy.

farmdoc's blog post number 597

Maybe it’s a hangover from my Save Albert Park years, but I cringe whenever I hear someone utter the words ‘world class’. Because in my experience people who’re doing or making something genuinely world class – i.e. among if not the best in the world – simply go about their business without crowing or bleating about it. And conversely, those who bang on about doing or making something ‘world class’, are big-noting if not fooling themselves and others, for in the main they’re aspirational nobodies and wannabes but neverwillbes. This, I suspect, is a minority view among my countrymen. I see Australians as generally a parochial lot. Maybe because we’re a second-world country far from all the first-world countries which we aspire to emulate or surpass. And we don’t see third-world countries as fair dinkum competitors let alone national role models. Of course the media have a stake in perpetuating our faux sense of national self-importance on the world stage. That’s par for the course for them. Segueing across to golf, that’s why I found this item by sports journalist Jake Niall (pictured) in last Saturday’s Age, to be so insightful and thus refreshing. The fawning over Tiger Woods in Melbourne recently made me cringe. And clearly it made Niall cringe too. Also I like what he wrote about Olympic medals vis-à-vis Peter Carey and Tim Winton. So I hereby add Jake Niall to my list of favourite journalists.