ideas: from people
Showman Mel’s river of dreams
Mel loves his job. He doesn’t love it quite as much as acting on Broadway, which he did for 33 years, but there can’t be that many more genuinely, infectiously enthusiastic tour guides across these United States as TourMobile’s Mel. He might be the most remarkable person I’ve ever met.
How faith, and America, can heal
The Trial of the Catonsville Nine is many things Australians dislike about Americans: political, patriotic and preachy. But unlike the worst of the United States, the play is also deeply questioning of its place in the world. It prosecutes American exceptionalism and the greyness of, and uneasiness between, faith and justice.
Dismantling the Liberal bomb…
The two most important things we’ve learned about Malcolm Turnbull of late are these: that he should probably have joined the Labor Party, and that he’d probably make a very good prime minister. The former is a hypothetical; the latter fast becoming one. For many reasons, the former barrister and investment banker is the proverbial square peg in the round hole.
How Bartlet made me an idealist
The juxtaposition between the fictional White House of The West Wing and the real-life geopolitical events played out on the news stoked a burning cynicism of the political process. More than that, it planted the seed of romantic idealism of how the world should work that continues to nag me every day.
MY10: Songs that make me sing
I love lists. I like reading them; I like comparing them; I like compiling them. I recognise they’re entirely silly and offer no real use to anyone, but I love them all the same. And music is, as Julie Andrews would sing, a very good place to start. Here, in particular order, are the ten songs that make me sing.
I am always right. Almost always
I am unshaken in my resolve to uphold personal truth. But it comes with a level of intolerance, of righteous duplicity, that doesn’t quite sit comfortably with me. There is a fine line between defending your core beliefs and being a zealot. But do we censor our biggest ideas?
Plumber’s crack out of line for elite
I’m coming out. Loud and proud. My people have been hiding in the shadows for too long, silent, anonymous, cowering from decades of persecution and biggotry. Well I will not hide anymore. I will not stay silent. My name is Jason Whittaker, and I am an elite.
If all you have are big ideas…
And in this fledgling blog dedicated to big (and small) ideas, the very antithesis to why they are important. Angels in America, a Broadway play-turned-Hollywood television mini-series, has had more affect on my than anything else I’ve seen on a screen of any size. Tony Kushner’s Pulitzer Prize-winning script, declared as one of the most important works of contemporary literature, is teeming with ideas. On everything: sex, religion, politics, justice and the so-called American Dream.
The importance of ideas
“Just once in a while let us exalt the importance of ideas and information.” Those are the words of pioneering American newsman Edward R. Murrow. I love the quote, and his many others like it. It may sound a particularly high-minded agenda for what will inevitably be another inconsequential blog-of-consciousness. But I reckon it’s a good place to start.
Who am I? A journo, that’s who
I’m a journalist. And if that’s as far as you read, the characterisation sits just fine with me. Broadly curious, deeply engaged; a writer, a reader, a listener, a restless thinker, a zealous debater. A media junkie for whom interventions have failed, as much an occupational hazard as it is an obsessive hobby. A life-long devotee of dead tree media not afraid to get his fingers ink-stained for a great broadsheet read, but excited by the opportunities of digital convergence and a paperless media future (you can be both).
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