Get a Grip
By Kaz Cooke
Penguin, 1996. 245 pp., $16.95 (pb)
Reviewed by Phil Shannon
The festering season is near upon us, the peak season for suicides, domestic disharmony and political drought (no GLW!). May I prescribe a course of Kaz Cooke to cope with the bleak times ahead. Her latest book will tone that yuletide-flabby political consciousness, eliminate harmful cholesterols of the spirit and keep you laughing all the way to being a better person and political activist.
With all the accuracy of a hypocrisy-seeking missile, Kaz seeks out and ridicules the lying, the pompous, the rich, the fatuous, the parasitical, the small-minded.
Skase, the royals, Peter Reith, Gareth, mad Francais bombers all lie naked and exposed under withering bursts of Kaz wit. When poor old Bill Hayden and his poor new autobiography meet a Kaz reinforced with smoking-withdrawal testiness, he doesn't stand a chance, along with the journos who:
"... quote his pathetic opinions, suggest that any of us might be in any way interested in tired old has-been up-themselves dill-brain bloody neo-conservative idiots who think nuclear weapons are a tickity-boo idea and, unsolicited in any way, crap on about the size of Bob Hawke's private parts.
"Did I mention that I am giving up smoking?"
Nicotine-dependency stress syndrome also fuels the treatment given to: "you fundamentalist Christians and weaselly so-called morals campaigners who are against people having sex without a permit from the government ('marriage licence') and against gay people getting married and having children. Shut up."
Journalists who reach for the "political correctness" keyboard button, the "Patterson's Curse of our age", used by smug sexists, crude homophobes and resurgent racists to stifle debate and beat back the tide of social progress lapping their heels, get the following advice: "Stop it or you'll go bland".
A scarring trip into the depths of cable TV land in Blighty elicits the following vision of the future of the infotainment revolution:
"... hours and hours of insincere presenters, distinguished only by their mediocrity, and wearing their very shallowness as a badge of nothing more than proximity to questionable celebrity. They will gallop through people and matters poignant or trivial, with never a change in expression or emphasis."
A case for curriculum reform and teaching the truth about Australia's history is made in a few well-chosen words about Australia's Aboriginal history:
"... an uncivilised race who have been entirely assimilated and are grateful for the advent of civilisation upon their tragic and quite old Stone Age culture because of the introduction of modern medicine, education, syphilis, smallpox, racial prejudice, the concept of real estate, the church's attitude to women and sex, Tasmania, long skirts for horse-riding, child-stealing, unpaid domestic service and the British legal system."
And who can forget the New Age, with their wacky beliefs like disease being caused by negative thoughts, not germs:
"Already the New Age view seems to be that starving Africans are just not being perky enough about their life choices, and double amputees, deep down, don't really want to travel."
The fashion industry, the beauty industry, Helen Garner, Wayne Carey and others who would keep women intimidated, powerless and free from feminism are a recurring theme treated with a mix of outrage and laughs.
It is also the small and humdrum aggravations that a dose of Kaz can cure. I liked the weird and petulant answering machine as much as Kaz's reflections on the traumas of Crossing the Rubicon of 30 years of age:
"Truly Horrible Truth # Four
"Because of substance abuse and anaesthetic use during your twenties you will find there are three brain cells left: Francine, Ern and Brenda. Francine does the right side of the brain, and Ernie the left, and Brenda knows where the keys are. We mourn the tragic passing of Ian, who used to fit names to faces. (Ian, of course, was lost during the hideous Tia Maria/Mullumbimby Heads incident of 1987)."
Christmas book-buying score for good laughs and good politics — Kaz Cooke 1, P.J. O'Rourke 0.