Wednesday, September 25, 2013

Drug dealing and honest work -- same thing, really

We all know that things are tough at Fairfax these days, but just how tough only became apparent with this morning's perusal of the insights available at Daily Life, where moonlighting Radio National web editor Daniel Stacey explains why the TV series Breaking Bad is so much more than a show about a man whose moral flaws become fissures. Stacey is one deep thinker, that's for sure.

"The show resonates because Walter White’s journey towards moral annihilation describes, albeit in hyperbolic form, the experience awaiting anyone joining the modern workplace."


"Breaking Bad illustrates the devil's bargain all young people face, entering a jobs market where most of the outcomes their work will create–pollution, inequality, misinformation, division–are at odds with their personal morality."


"The gangster metaphor plays to Gandhi’s observation that a society should be judged by how it treats its weakest members. Society allows that many of the poor are forced to sell addictive, harmful products to make a living, and compete for clients in never ending bloody turf wars. Is it any surprise then that at the big end of town the same thing happens with oil – where the addiction is structured into the economy, the harm global, and the turf wars, well… wars?"


"...the way to get wealth and power isn't to carry out humble teaching or police work, it's to find employment in jobs that serve profit and ignore consequence. For White that job is cooking meth, for the rest of us it means working for companies that pollute the environment, feed people products that kill them, and shear off mountain tops to generate power for air-conditioning units in the suburban homes in which we raise our children."

And finally, this gem: 

"There is a shade of Walter White in all of us when we try and hide, excuse and eventually give up justifying the negative work we do. When we work for and consume the products of companies that contribute to anthropogenic climate change, sweatshops, obesity, diabetes, species extinction, conflict and hate, and pretend that these outcomes will never come back to harm our families or haunt us in the suburban Arcadias we're so obsessed with building (and fleeing to)."

As noted, things must really be bad at Fairfax, where the stock of resident idiots has now fallen so low they have had to borrow one from the ABC. Because Stacey does not have one of those squalid, profit-oriented jobs -- the ABC is good like that -- he can opine on the moral fitness of others with   absolute confidence. Then he can post another Phillip Adams audio, loiter at the bicycle rack or write his next contribution for Daily Life.

As for the rest of us, out there working for the man, why, we're no better than ice dealers!

A FURTHER THOUGHT:  When we get the long overdue inquiry into the ABC -- a Royal Commission, preferably -- one term of reference needs to be the way in which the ABC goes about filling vacancies. The paper trail that led to Stacey's current position might provide some fascinating insights.

24 comments:

  1. Fascinating that Fairfax papers now carry a masthead statement 'Independent, always' yet they have this close organisational and staffing relationship with a taxpayer funded media body that has become increasingly the propaganda unit for the side of politics that's likely to give it the most money when in power!

    The only excuse, BTW, for Stacey's effort is that he is in year 11 - perhaps he is!

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  2. You mean the plods don't get overpaid a fortune to do SFA? First I've heard of it.

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  3. Perhaps your final quote is his personal confession and admission of guilt. this may be a cry for help, or a plea for stern punishment. Even rigourous.

    Cheers

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  4. The Old and Unimproved DaveSeptember 25, 2013 at 6:16 PM

    That paper trail wouldn't involve a klepto Labrador puppy, would it?

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  5. If Fairfax keeps employing enough monkeys they will eventually write a line of Shakespeare...well maybe not with the present quality of monkeys they are allowing publication.

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  6. Surely this man breathes! and He breathes out......Carbon Dioxide a gas that " that contribute to anthropogenic climate change," Why he is "no better than ice dealers!. What does that mean: Off with his head or an oppressed "black" hero of modern life?.

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  7. His employer is about to go out of business. He will therefore not have to work one of those evil jobs. He will presumably be able to live off the smug he generates.

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  8. The Old and Unimproved DaveSeptember 26, 2013 at 6:13 AM

    Got the new theme music for Radio National ...

    "How You Gonna Keep 'Em Down On The Pharmaceuticals, After They've Seen Stacey?"

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  9. To go directly from reporter to Editor of Radio National Online is pretty impressive!

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  10. Oh the irony. Here is Mr Stacey lecturing us about the evils of our jobs harming the planet, and all the while he's paid by us so he can write this rubbish. Time to shove the chick out the nest!

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  11. I work as a volunteer in the disability sector, am I forgiven if I do not get paid after all I regard what I do as not producing pollution, although I do clean up a fair bit of it, enhancing equality not inequality, I do not issue information at all just mostly help with personal care so misinformation, and I promote unity not division, in that I am a human being and I unite with the people I help who are incredible magnificent people.

    I wonder if Daniel realises that his article bears out all that he says, by producing this article he has contributed to pollution, inequality, misinformation, division

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  12. That pillow biter from the greens really does have a lot to answer for when we see the outcome of the thourough brainwashing of idiots. Of course they do provide a ready pool of doped out dills for places such as our LABC etc.

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  13. Hate to disagree, but a Royal Commission into the ABC is the last thing that we need. Another lawyers' picnic and 3 years of excuses for inactivity in the interim. We all know that more is better than less, and both the ABC and SBS have expanded significantly under the former Government's reckless spending policies. But, enough is enough, and it falls to Turnbull to man up and make some hard decisions about the role and funding of both public broadcasters.
    BTW - in a public sector career of over 30 years, the only time I attended a job interview with a union representative on the panel was at the ABC. I didn't get the job!!!

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  14. No mention of Walt's lung cancer, it's not like that had anything to do with Mr White's foray into his dark trade.

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  15. We have let our educational system raise a generation or more of guilty over-indulged cry babies, Prof, all screaming about going to hell in a hand basket, when in fact, no-one is going there at all.

    In world terms, economic growth has drawn hundreds of millions out of poverty and permitted the environment to be cleaned up much more than it has ever been. Resources are further explored and new energy technologies abound. Lives are becoming better and more equal in basic terms, and jobs are much more interesting than they used to be. Information is far more readily available. Culturally and economically, people can thrive as never before.

    Why can't the inheritors of this vibrant new workforce and culture in fortunate nations like Australia see that the future is grand? Well, the CO2 cult has puffed the smoke of corrupted science throughout the educational system and the media. Simultaneously, the historical guilt industry has been in overdrive.

    Worried fruitcakes have always been with us, Prof, it just that now there are far more of them. Let us tell them now that history shows this: losing sight of rational realities and putting out the hand of understanding to totalitarians everywhere will get that hand chopped off for your pains. The current lot of totalitarians, the Islamic ones, are particularly skilled at dismembering parts of the body.

    The body politic, children, as well as the body corporeal.

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  16. Why would anyone in their right minds pay good money to read such utter rubbish?

    It's enough to drive you to drink, oops - I mean drugs.

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  17. Finally Daniel has made the penny drop and I suddenly realize I'm a victim of 'The Man' and just as soon as I get the compo I'll be able to afford a subscription to Fairfax and become a fully paid up member of the enlightened.
    Hang about.. there's this really fascinating bloke from Scientology at the door...

    observa

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  18. Nice spot Sir Bunyip.
    When the ABC isn't stopping our cattle trade or spooking Indonesia on their leaky boats they are promoting a very successful violent US cable TV show? Next they will be adding free advertorial spots to the current violent Grand Theft Auto V simulation (via ABC2 good (sic) game.
    When will the wreaking ball end?

    http://rolloutyourprejudice.blogspot.com.au/2013/09/grand-theft-auto-v-should-have-stuck.html

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  19. Good grief. Makes you wish for a Depression / Wiemar Republic catastrophe to wake up this no nothing, numbnut, self-absorbed
    waste of oxygen misanthrope.

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  20. Sounds like the author on a year-10 school debating team? Does he have some other good advice like there should be world peace? How about waking up to the real world where people have to do something productive to make an income. Sometimes life is hard - but the author will find that out when he eventually grows up.

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  21. Anything associated with the ABC, whether it be so called news reporting, childish sneers passing for satire programmes, audience participation where the Dorothy Dixer method rules supreme, or bloggers who can only express themselves using foul language is to be avoided. This fellow is simply another who will be totally forgotten within a year or two. Don't worry about the looniie left and its damaging influence. Figures show that both the Age and the ABC preach to the hard core of left wingers who will never be any different. The recent election showed that despite both throwing all they could at reasonable conservative views our voters heartily endorsed the Coalition.

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  22. Ghandi's comment is even more ironic when you consider how the untouchables are treated in India.

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    1. His grand-nieces weren't so untouchable.

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  23. Daniel Stacy must sleep the sleep of the just,knowing that he's so morally pure and self-righteous.I could deploy that classic epithet which has always been one of the best rejoinders to those who hold such a smug and lofty view of themselves,to wit-'Let he who has not sinned,cast the first stone' But here's the thing.Working (sic) as he does at the ABC,(Atheist's broadcasting corporation) it's a given that to assume he would have a knowledge of the Bible would merely show that I'm from the more earth raping,polluting,overly fecund benighted classes-that is to say,those whose hands are sullied by the evils of manual labour and honest toil and are condemned thereby on account of that.

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