In his review of Brendan Gleeson's Australian Heartlands, George Megalogenis lets Gleeson (and all of us polemical ranters) have it between the eyes:

Two years ago, a Howard government minister thought it would be a terrific idea to hold a citizenship ceremony at a hardware store in Brisbane. Multiculturalism meets materialism. This could be the anecdote to nail the banality of acquisition. But in the hands of Brendan Gleeson it becomes something else again.

Here's how he deals with the Bunnings moment and its MC, Gary Hardgrave, the then minister for multicultural affairs.

"The minister had previously staged citizenship ceremonies at car factories, football matches, surf lifesaving championships and on airlines. Hardgrave laughed off political and community criticism of the Bunnings event, remarking that the offer of free catering was too good to turn down. The combination of ideological extremism and slapstick popularism surely marks this out as a uniquely asinine form of conservative radicalism."

It is the asinine in the last sentence that diminishes Gleeson's argument. Just when he has the reader engaged, a form of literary Tourette syndrome seems to strike: he can't resist one last jab.

This is a common failing in nonfiction, here and in the US. Too many authors from the Left and Right are united by an excess of passion and an absence of humour

The risk with bile in cultural commentary is it can easily galvanise both sides without advancing the discussion. Those who share the author's opinions receive validation and those who don't can excuse themselves from reading on. Both sides remain as they were, in the trench of prejudice.

Megalogenis has a good point. Historians and journalists must avoid polemics if their work is to be of lasting value. They need to assess both sides of the argument dispassionately. Future readers want as full a picture of the times as possible.

It's just that in extremist times, such as we have had here in Australia since the embarrassing advent of John Howard, or in the US since the absurd advent of Bush2, polemical writing, or ranting and raving, becomes irrepressible.

But if you think I have been polemical in using the qualifiers "embarrassing" and "absurd" in describing the two leaders, please be aware that my natural tendency was to add three or four more bilious adjectives. Thus, I have shown considerable restraint.

When right wing governments are in power, as they are all over the world, it must be hard for left-leaning mainstream journalists to repress their outrage and write measuredly. I'm sure Megalogenis, who writes for The Australian is far from conservative; at least that's how I read most of his articles. Ditto Matt Price, Steve Lewis, Cameron Stewart and others. And of course Phillip Adams, The Australian's lone, genuine, 100 per cent lefty. But the newspaper they work for is over the hills and far away to the right.

The same constraint does not apply to right wing journalists under the same regimes, who let fly their wacko fondness for antisocial ideology with government-approved zest. The same newspaper's Janet Albrechtsen, Frank Devine, P.P. McGuiness, General Greg Sheridan, and occasional guest columnists Andrew Bolt and Mirko Bagaric, would not have been out of place in Joseph Goebbel's office.

The weird thing is that you rarely, if ever, have the reverse: Left wing governments with a cheerleading left wing press. Please correct me if I'm wrong. And surely you won't make the mistake of referring to Stalin and Mao as leftist governments who inspired left wing ravers. These twin terrorists may have emerged from socialist/communist ideology, but their political practices were pure right wing.

So it is in the natural order of things for leftist polemicists to flourish on the fringes in reactionary times like these. They amount to a safety valve for themselves and their readers, who rarely get to read and hear commentary reflecting their beliefs. Today, thanks to the Internet, we no longer have to resort to the samizdat, the clandestine distribution of government-suppressed literature or political tracts, to rally the like-minded.

Polemical writing is of the moment and not meant to be in contention for journalistic awards. Being of the moment, it becomes a reflection of the time in which it was written. For the most part, none of us are looking to find favour with the establishment. We try to be accurate with the facts, and to give credit (links) to sources, but, having done that, we are free to rant and rave and go off on tangents no sane editor would allow.

And we love to let fly with sneering contempt. For example: When the left engages in polemics, it comes from a noble, compassionate heart. When the right engages in polemics, it comes from a desiccated heart, a limp dick and a lifelong constipation.

When Gleeson used the word "asinine" he spoke for all of us, because in real life, that is exactly the word, robustly loathing, to describe Hardgrave's "conservative radicalism".

-- TG Willikers