Over at “The Monthly” on Slow TV, lives a great two-part video taken from the Sydney Writer’s Festy discussing the abuse of language.
In the past, I’ve been sarcastically critical of Annabel Crabb’s work on Twitter (which, let’s face it IS rubbish like most if not all Twitter content). But here in this panel discussion, with Nathan Rees and Christopher Hitchens (may be overcome his present travails), she shines.
Have a look.
I hope you enjoy it.
Window Dresser's Arms, Pig & Whistle 
Enjoyable.
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Sometimes I get annoyed by what Christopher Hitchens writes. But I never get annoyed by him when he speaks, he is so good a pulling words and stories out and making them somehow more meaningful than anything that’s being said around him.
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Something that occurred to me when I was listening to them; the inevitability of cliches. They are cliches because they are so often the strongest and most eloquent way to say something, and to avoid one is to find oneself floundering (cl) and unable to be elegant. In that way I thought that Nathan Rees’s talk was the “plainest” – though later he threw himself vigorously into pollish – annabel’s was the most comfortable, and christopher’s was the most elegantly and continentally cliche laden….thus we hang off every word (cl)
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Yes, she’s quite good here, Ems. She’s in her element. She loves words and phrases, language generally and, as a journo, she kept many “interesting” utterances made by pollies. It’s her field. However, that’s where her talent ends. With language. As a political journo, or as a thinker, I think she has a long way to go.
I’ve listened to the whole program and Hitchens never fails to increase my admiration of him. Every time I hear him, even for mere seconds, he fills me with joy and gratitude that such people exist. Highly envious of him. Every one else around him always sounds like an intellectual and moral pigmy, with the exception of very few who may be considered his equals and even fewer who could be considered his betters.
Solid as a rock.
Thanks for the link. I go to the ABC fora often but I wasn’t aware of the existence of the Slow TV site.
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Thanks ‘Mou. The reason you don’t see Slow TV on the ABC site is because it’s at “The Monthly”.
Cheers, Emm
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