Ramsay Street Neighbours
Germaine Greer is a name to conjure with, but that doesn’t make her infallible. Actually, like most storied talismans, Ms. Greer lately appears to offer the good right along with the bad, a sort of sociopolitical Monkey’s Paw. For Australia Day, Ms. Greer offered her assessment of Australia, but insofar as what she says has any validity, it is well outweighed by the injustices she perpetrates (and perpetuates from her own life for that matter). So when the headline on her recent opinion piece is “Slack and Insufferable,” I have to wonder if she recognizes the irony. Her piece is itself as insufferable as its research is slack. By the end, I’m left wondering if she wouldn’t rather live in Iceland than England. First of all, England is where Australia gets most of what she complains about. Second, Iceland is the only country I can think of that didn’t decimate a native population, has a robust political and intellectual life, where urban or rural life dominates over suburban, and where the economy’s development doesn’t rely on the decimation of natural resources but harnessing them instead. Since summer in Iceland is mercifully brief, the kinds of relaxation that offend Ms. Greer are less available to the population, so although they, too, rely heavily on imported manufactured goods, at least they’re probably pretty wound up over it.