The Zero Room

I don't claim to know a lot, but I can say with reasonable confidence that Steve Martin isn't a racist. Or at least I can't say that he is one, and on balance, it seems jolly unlikely. I don't consider myself a fan of Martin's work; I hold The Jerk to be one of the funniest films of all time, I have a sneaking fondness for banjo music, and I think the way that over the last couple of decades he's shunned "success", in favour of doing what he enjoys, is admirable, but his early stand-up comedy and later films do nothing for me.

I think the joke at the centre of this putative scandal falls flat, but there's the germ of something amusing in there. On the question of whether it is clearly offensive, if you're going to insist that gags of the form "white people do X like A and black people do X like B" are inexpressible, you're going to have to erase almost all of the recordings of American stand-up comedy from the 1980s; a paradigmatic example of doing the right thing for the wrong reason. Martin's joke here doesn't even really fit that form; it's a pun that depends on your knowledge of the sterotypical names that people in certain ethnosocial groups give their children. All names are funny when you stop to think about them, and they usually tell you something about when and where a person was born and what their parents were/are like.

I myself am of european descent, and raised in the outer suburbs of Sydney. The whole way through primary school in the 1970s, I was one of three Matthews in my class. Think about it. Ten percent of my class (including the girls) answered to Matthew. Matthew is probably one of the dullest names in existence, but the 1970s was a very dull decade; Australia was and is a very dull country, and the Sutherland Shire is probably the dullest part of it. No hippy ever said "I want my child to be a free spirit, to joyously roam naked and free through a world of bliss. Therefore, I shall call him Matthew!" I'd wager there are far more Matthews in accountancy than bohemia.

I have nieces and nephews who are doomed to live their entire lives with names like "Jayden", "Keely" and "Makenna" because my siblings are bogans. In most situations it is entirely unjust to make assumptions about people based on their social background, but nonetheless if you meet a "Jayden" you will not be entirely surprised to hear that his father is anglo-Australian, reasonably affluent, hates "poofs", as well as immigrants (who are taking "our" jobs), and finds his chosen profession of driving loads of dirt around in a truck immensely fulfilling.

Now you may think I'm quite a snob for saying something like that, but I've decided that I'm not going to care about what somebody thinks about me if a) it doesn't matter, or b) the person in question has ample evidence to doubt the feared negative assement. For example, last week my GP enquired about my mental health. I went on a bit of a rant about how the miserable culture in Coffs Harbour was getting me down, before realising that I possibly sounded a bit elitist. I prepared to mount a defence along the lines of "I lived in Western Sydney for years - some of my best friends are toothless junkies," but decided I just couldn't be bothered.

A few days later somebody asked me how I felt about feminism, in the middle of a conversation about something else entirely. I tried to say something to the effect that it appalls me that ideas which ought to be considered a part of fundamental morality are still marginalised to an "-ism", but made a balls-up of it and started to fret that I sounded like I was actually dismissing feminism outright. Then I thought bugger it; this person knows me fairly well, and knows my wife well enough to know that she wouldn't be married to a raving misogynist, and this isn't what I'm here to talk about, so I changed the subject back. If he wants to think ill of me without adequate justification, it's not something I can afford to worry about.

I concede that in many circumstances one should be careful about what one says on the Internet, but not because a single statement can be taken out of context. If anything, the Internet makes context more plentiful and easily aquired than ever. Charges such as racism, sexism, or homophobia are very grave, and anybody who makes them without adequate evidence, or without bothering to look for evidence to the contrary, is contemptible. Taking such people seriously, with the accompanying anxiety, overthinking, and self-censorship, is corrosive to creativity and ordinary civic or social discourse. The proper response to somebody who says "Aha! You've covered your tracks pretty well for the last fifty years, Steve Martin, but this tweet PROVES you are a racist!" is to ignore them.

I had no idea that the benefits of vocational education were so substantial as to be retrospective in effect. I'm getting a bit old to be starting a business now, but perhaps with a UTS Bachelor of Business under my belt, I too could go on to start a successful business seven years earlier.

Dr Poche completed a Bachelor of Business with the NSW Institute of Technology Sydney (now UTS) in 1979.  He went on to become one of Australia’s most successful business people, responsible for founding freight company Star Track Express in 1972.

Ever seen or heard or otherwised experienced a work of art that deeply touched and transformed you? Well, you can banish those often awkward and uncomfortable feelings and remain staunchly unmoved by just reminding yourself that you are merely engaged in consuming the products of the creative industries. Purchase it, maybe rate it or provide some customer feedback, then move voraciously ever onward to the next product.

As the brilliant Tressie McMillan Cottom says, as soon as we adopt neoliberal language, we limit ourselves to arguing for neoliberal outcomes.