24. Cory Bernardi

Hi. I am Greg and I want to grumble about Cory Bernardi. There is a lot of that about lately as many people have rushed to social media to vent their outrage at Cory’s book, The Conservative Revolution.

But what is striking – and what I want to grumble about is how few of the people sounding off have actually read the book. Some admit they haven’t read it, many more are just hurling generic abuse with no real engagement with the text – which to me is just a little too close to what the right does when it dismisses whole swathes of research on the basis of alleged “common sense” or anecdotal experience.

Now I understand that you may not want to legitimise or reward conservative propaganda by buying the Bernardi book, and sometimes parody is the best way to attack offensive views. But sarcasm is often a low form of wit and much of the commentary is not critique – it is simply abuse. Even if his ideas are wrong, silly or offensive, he has held these views throughout his political career. What makes writing them down so special as to warrant this outcry?

What we should really be outraged about is that a man who holds these views got re-elected to the Senate almost by default. Sitting at the top of the Liberal ticket in South Australia (what was that about him not representing the views of the government), he didn’t attend various campaign fora in the lead up to the last election, said very little publicly and did not feature in the media which fixated on the Presidential-style contest.

How many people who put a 1 in the Liberal box on the big Senate ballot paper knew that they were voting for a conservative revolution built, according to the advertisement for the book, on faith, family, flag, freedom and free enterprise. A nice alliteration, even if somewhat self-contradictory.

So fine, go ahead and grumble about Cory and his book, but where was this critique in the lead up to the election when it might have mattered more? Where was the media exposure? How many now exercising their wit and outrage actively campaigned for something different? And what of those who actually hold such beliefs, I doubt we will change their mind by simple abuse. Social media is easy, social change is hard.

I am Greg, and I am grumbling.

This Grumble can be heard online or by podcast.
First Broadcast: 14 January 2014