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No one was ready for 2020. None of us was really prepared for the bushfires, or coronavirus, or the fear and uncertainty about what these crises mean for our families and our lives.

At Guardian Australia, we werent either. Along with the ongoing climate emergency, these have been the biggest stories and the greatest reporting responsibilities of our generation. They hit as we were already under pressure, from the digital platforms eating away at our advertising revenue, and from the populist forces all the way up to the president of the United States who want to undermine facts and truthfulness as the parameters of a civic conversation, eroding the very foundations of what we do.

Like everyone from frontline health workers to the cafe owners with no customers we adapted. I scrambled to figure out how to lead a news organisation via Zoom from a desk in the corner of my bedroom. Reporters conducted interviews online or shouted questions from across the street to the newly unemployed on the Centrelink queues that were suddenly snaking along city blocks.

We thought hard about how best to serve our readers who we knew were scared and potentially overwhelmed by information. From kitchen tables and home offices and makeshift bedroom desks across the country we ran a seven-days-a-week live blog to keep pace with the rapidly changing story, and used summaries, explainers and a data tracker to give readers quick access to the information they needed. We tried to avoid the sensational, to stay focused on facts. We questioned what we were told. We found new ways to talk to readers, Zoom-facilitated book clubs, and roundups of all the joy available online when our worlds contracted to our homes.

Meanwhile, the economic impact of the virus so exacerbated the financial squeeze on media businesses that some were forced to close and most of us had to cut costs.

It was a pandemic paradox readership of most news sites soared, ours grew by 104% to reach 11.6 million Australians in March but newsrooms kept closing, especially in the regions. At least 500 Australian journalists are likely to lose their jobs this year, according to the Media, Entertainment and Arts Alliance, on top of the 3,000 or more jobs lost over the past decade.

But the crises also demonstrated why factual news is indispensable and how information can save lives and soothe uncertainties. Readers showed that they value what we do with their attention and also with their wallets. Most mastheads reported increases in subscriptions. At Guardian Australia, where readers are asked for voluntary contributions so our reporting remains open rather than paywalled, reader contributions went a long way to addressing the ad revenue decline.

Now we emerge from lockdown with even more questions to ask than before, and more urgent solutions to discuss. Surely Australia cannot continue without a credible national policy to address global heating? Having accepted that unemployment benefits were insufficient for those made unemployed during the Covid-19 crisis, how can they possibly revert to levels below the poverty line? Since scientific advice served us so well during the pandemic, surely policymakers should continue to heed it? And no, we havent forgotten sports rorts or the need to hold governments accountable for their decisions and their spending.

With fewer journalists to ask those questions, the ABC facing funding cuts, a commercial media industry ownership more concentrated than ever, and vast tracts of Australia with no reporters at all, we need to step up. Studies in the US have shown that when factual local news disappears readers can turn to more partisan and polarising alternatives. We cant let the news vacuum in Australia be filled by shrill voices trying to find an audience with climate denialism and confected culture wars. Scrutiny and accountability cannot be abandoned.

We set up Guardian Australia seven years ago to create a new independent, influential source of reliable Australian news because we believed a diversity of news voices was something a healthy democracy needed. That need is now bigger than before and, with the support of our readers, we intend to find a way to meet it. The vicissitudes of 2020 prove, once again, that the alternative is unthinkable.

Guardian Australia has set a goal of growing its community to 150,000 supporters. Become a supporter with a contribution of any size or share this article with family and friends to help us reach our goal. Thank you

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Information can save lives. Help Guardian Australia reach 150,000 supporters - The Guardian

SALT LAKE CITY Elmer Fudd is still chasing the silly wabbit. Only hes not carrying a gun. Gone is his extended musket, or what was essentially a hunters rifle. This time, he holds a scythe. Occasionally. Not all the time. Sometimes hes chased around. Sometimes hes in hiding.

Why did animators take away the gun? Gun violence. Peter Browngardt, the executive producer of the new Looney Tunes cartoon shorts on the HBO Max streaming service, told The New York Times that Fudd wont have his traditional weapon in the new version.

Were not doing guns, he said. But, we can do cartoony violence TNT, the Acme stuff. All that was kind of grandfathered in.

Instead, Elmer Fudd embraces the scythe, a tool that cuts crops like grass and wheat. It features a large curved blade at the end of a short handle. You could argue thats also a violent weapon, assuming Fudd is supposed to cut away at the rabbit if and when he catches him.

This brief moment sparked conversation on social media and in national headlines. People wondered why the character would be without his iconic weapon, especially since the new cartoon shorts include a number of other mature moments by Looney Tunes standards. For example, the new series shows a moment where Porky sucks snake venom out of Daffys leg. A ghost of Tweety haunts Sylvester. Satan makes a cameo, too.

Browngardt said the show has some edge.

Some of them have maybe gone a little too far, so they might come out in a different format. Maybe theyll come out packaged for an Adult Swim type of thing.

That might seem like an odd comment about a cartoon for children. But Looney Tunes has rarely been a cartoon for children.

For a brief moment, Looney Tunes joined the culture war. Critics wondered if the show was pro- or anti-gun. Did it represent the movement to eliminate guns from our culture? Or was it just about making a safer show for kids?

It might have been a fleeting moment. We may forget the argument in days ahead. But the brief discussion about Elmer Fudd losing his gun speaks to the current state of child animation and where the industry heads next when creating cartoons and productions for children.

The book Reading the Rabbit: Explorations in Warner Bros. Animation, by Kevin S. Sandler, explains that creator Tex Avery said he leaned more toward the adult audience. And animator Chuck Jones said the cartoons were absolutely made for adults.

So those 1940s Looney Tunes shorts that aired? They were absolutely not for children, said Kyra Hunting, an assistant professor of media and arts studies at the University of Kentucky.

The original shorts were shown before movies, giving people a chance to watch something comedic and lighthearted before movies began. Sometimes they were connected to pretty adult movies, Hunting said.

Warner Bros. evolved over time and the characters became more popular. Spinoffs came next, like Tiny Toon Adventures and Baby Looney Tunes that were family-friendly and oriented toward children.

Hunting has watched the entire new series already. She said the show is really an update to the original version rather than a spinoff or reboot.

The Looney Tunes characters bring a sense of nostalgia for people. Theyve existed for more than 60 years, so it makes sense for streaming services like HBO Max to embrace them, according to Kendall Phillips, a pop culture professor at Syracuse University.

The reason you use a character like Bugs Bunny and Elmer Fudd is for that nostalgia value ... you know audiences know what these are, theres a certain kind of cultural cachet and recognizable aspect of these characters, Phillips said.

These characters evolve over time and adapt to our changing times, Phillips said. We reboot famous characters to align with modern American culture.

Sometimes that means characters will be intertwined in the ongoing political culture, too, according to Phillips.

Were constantly recycling culture, he said. Were telling the story of whoever again. We tell these stories over and over again. But every time we tell them, we change them because we dont want to just hear the same story. We want to hear the old story adapted to our new situation or new culture or new ideas.

And now, the gun becomes the thing that really is important, Phillips said. That says something about our culture at this moment.

So what does replacing Elmer Fudds gun with a scythe have to say about our culture at this moment? According to Phillips, Warner Bros. has made the decision that gun violence is not something they want to continue to include in their childrens narrative.

The studio didnt make the decision to remove violence altogether. Theres still dynamite. Theres still slapping and punching.

Taking away the gun is a sign that Looney Tunes has joined the culture war, though, Phillips said.

We are at a point where it would be actually difficult to think of what could be an innocent element of pop culture now, because if Warner Bros. had included guns, they would have been making a choice, Phillips said. If they didnt include the gun of the past, they would have been making a choice. So to me, this says less about Warner Brothers and Elmer Fudd and more about where we are as an American culture, where everything has become part of this very difficult partisan divide.

Warner Brothers doesnt seem to want to remove violence, but I think they want to stop normalizing gun culture in America.

For some families, the issue of guns could be a soft spot. Families across the country grow up surrounded by guns. In fact, Phillips said he grew up around guns. The change, he said, could mean that Warner Bros. might want to encourage people to respect guns.

So, in some ways, if you really respect gun and gun culture, you shouldnt want children to think that guns are playthings because ... they are deadly weapons, he said.

Creating an animated cartoon like Looney Tunes that pays homage to its adult beginnings in its new modern child market is difficult, Hunting said.

HBO Max and Warner Bros. need to be careful with how they portray the show, Hunting said, since theres still a lot of Bugs Bunny and Daffy Duck merchandise for sale at stores across America. So you have to be mindful of stakeholders. (HBO Max declined to be interviewed for this story,)

And in that way, the new Looney Tunes has done a good job, Hunting said. The show pays homage to the original, while remaining safe for children.

The show must tread that line between really creating value and respect to the original history without going way over the line where kids cant watch it anymore.

Tim Winter, president of the Parents Television Council, said he applauds any corporate commitment from Hollywood to entertain children without gun violence.

I hope that this is the first of many such commitments by the studio to eliminate graphic gun violence, he said.

Winter also said he hopes the same will be considered for all of its programming, not just cartoons, but in all of its programming. If its going to be responsible with cartoons, why stop there?

Its good both for children and for weasley wabbits everywhere, he said. But I hope this is demonstrative of a bigger commitment by the studio to be mindful of its content.

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How Looney Tunes joined the culture wars - Deseret News

But widespread protests across the US immediately spread to similar outbreaks in different countries with very different histories.

This is just part of a globalisation phenomenon supercharged by social media and the self-serving desire for instant gratification.

It quickly and inevitably has become caught up in constant culture wars underpinned by an infinity of claims to moral superiority and denunciations of any alternative.

That can easily lead straight to farce in a brutalist model of enlightenment that rejects any concept of free speech, strongly disapproves of different views and cannot countenance even the more valuable lessons of hard experience.

Protesters outside Flinders Station in Melbourne during a Black Lives Matter rally.AAP

Cancel culture has plenty of its own historic roots although mostly not recognised by those averse to anything but their preferred versions of history.

But the modern adaptation is particularly absolutist in part because its perceived enemies are so numerous, usually impossible to define or limit but easy to decry.

That means no end to the ability to be offended and therefore to demand the offence be stopped, sometimes violently, sometimes by instant condemnation in an online brand aware world with no hard borders except for those of China.

From withdrawing Gone With the Wind from HBO Max or the series by Australian humorist Chris Lilley from screens; from defacing a statue of Captain Cook in Sydney or Winston Churchill in the UK or beheading one of Christopher Columbus in the US, the urge to succumb to the authoritarian impetus of a vengeful mob is much the same. No shades of grey, no sense of nuance and certainly no sense of humour allowed.

At least the BBCs streaming service realised it had gone too far in pulling a classic Fawlty Towers episode. It will return it to the platform, with "extra guidance and warnings... to highlight potentially offensive content and language". Of course.

Beneath the absurdities theres a much broader cultural battle confronting and convulsing the West.

The centre ground is deliberately hollowed out in favour of extreme partisanship or, even worse, extreme censorship. Cancel culture is the eager inheritor of this intolerance.

This has certainly gone mainstream and well beyond the confines of scared university leadership redefining the meaning of liberalism for students and lecturers alike. The derisory term "snowflake" has developed for good reason but it's not confined to one generation.

The notion of The New York Times firing its opinion page editor for running a column by a Republican senator, for example, is as deeply flawed as the bile from many commentators on Fox.

The centre ground is deliberately hollowed out in favour of extreme partisanship or, even worse, extreme censorship.

Cancel culture is the eager inheritor of this intolerance. The translation allows no acceptance of social advances also engendered by an often brutal past nor the difficulties of reversing past injustices. Just as it dismisses societys ability to learn from history and to reform itself rather than attempt to recast the past.

Australia is certainly not immune from this sort of pandemic even if Scott Morrison maintains he doesnt want to get involved in the history wars.

He is understandably confident he has the support of most Australians when he says his focus is the need to get people back into jobs on what needs to be built up rather than what should be torn down.

But he also knows sensitivities have to be managed in a political climate prone to sudden storms of destruction and always looking for easy answers and figures of blame.

So the Prime Minister quickly apologised for any offence created by his remark last week that there was no slavery in Australia, in order to head off the outrage about Australias history of kidnapping Pacific Islanders and the effective slavery of many Aborigines.

I acknowledge there have been all sorts of hideous practices that have taken place, he said on Friday. And so I'm not denying any of that, OK? I'm not denying any of that. And I don't think it's helpful to go into an endless history wars discussion about this. It's all recorded.

His emphasis remains on the crucial but stubbornly elusive challenge of practical reconciliation despite all the money and good intentions and policy efforts devoted to it in recent decades.

The challenges of Indigenous incarceration go across so many different areas of public policy, he said. Its health policy, its youth policy, it's suicide policy, its employment policy, its welfare policy, this is an incredibly complicated area and not all Indigenous experiences are the same.

All true. The larger question is whether these arguments can ever emerge from the dead end of repeated failures or be diverted once again into simplistic accusations of racism.

The answer wont be found on Twitter.

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Culture wars cancel the past and present - The Australian Financial Review

In Boston, Massachusetts, a statue of Christopher Columbus was beheaded this week. In Richmond, Virginia, protesters toppled a statue of Jefferson Davis, the president of the Confederacy during the Civil War.

NASCAR announced this week it would ban the Confederate battle flag from its races. Credit:AP

Virginia's Democratic Governor Ralph Northam ordered a giant statue of Confederate general Robert E. Lee to be removed "as soon as possible" from the state capital and placed into storage. The HBO Max streaming service has temporarily removed Gone With The Wind from its library to add contextual material about the film's race politics.

At times, the zeal for justice has tipped over into the "de-platforming" of those seen as insufficiently committed to the anti-racist cause.

When David Shor, an analyst at progressive data firm Civis Analytics, tweeted a summary of an academic paper that found race riots reduced the Democratic vote share in the 1968 presidential election, he was attacked online for undermining the current protest movement.

The statue of Confederate president Jefferson Davis on Monument Avenue in Richmond, Virginia, has been torn down.Credit:AP

Shor quickly apologised but was fired a few days later after an internal review, according to New York magazine.

Debates about historical symbols that previously raged on university campuses have now gone mainstream, including in institutions that few would describe as "woke". NASCAR - long perceived as a bastion of white male conservatism - announced this week that it would ban the Confederate battle flag or "Southern Cross" from its races because many see it as a symbol of racism.

And Army Secretary Ryan McCarthy said he was open to a discussion on renaming military bases bearing the names of Confederate generals - an idea military leaders previously opposed.

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The Republican-led Senate Armed Services Committee later approved a commission to rename Army installations currently named after Confederate figures within three years. This put the committee members on a collision course with US President Donald Trump, who said he would "not even consider" renaming the bases because they "have become part of a Great American heritage".

Trump appears to have public opinion behind him on this. Several polls released this week found more Americans oppose changing Confederate place names and removing Confederate statues than support such proposals.

It's a reminder of how deeply divided American society remains - even if progressives currently have the culture war winds behind their backs.

The rest is here:
How George Floyd's death changed the US culture wars - Sydney Morning Herald

JK Rowling had been tweeting warm, gushing messages to children who submitted drawings for her new book Eight? How can this have been done by an eight-year-old?! when, abruptly, her Twitter feed took a sharp swerve sideways.

She shared an article about period poverty in the developing world and Covid-19, tacking on her own, snarky take. People who menstruate. Im sure there used to be a word for those people. Someone help me out. Wumben? Wimpund? Woomud?

It was an odd way to launch the latest salvo in the most toxic of culture wars. If you failed to recognise the phrase people who menstruate in an article about menstruation as an assault on your human rights, you havent been keeping up with the roiling war over trans issues.

Rowlings tweet elicited equal parts applause and vitriol, as she knew it would. Days later, her name was still trending on social media. Daniel Radcliffe, Eddie Redmayne and Emma Watson distanced themselves from her. She was threatened on Twitter with cancelling, punching and death.

The ugly episode underlined how polarised any discussion about the issues affecting trans and gender non-binary people has become. It is so incendiary, so mired in dogma, that most sensible, compassionate people approaching it with an open mind and a genuine desire to understand, take one look and back away.

In a longer and more nuanced post, Rowling delves into why she finds the phrase people who menstruate to be hostile and alienating; develops her own thinking on sex and gender, and proffers five reasons why she is worried about trans activism.

Reasons 1-3 are to do with her charitable work and free speech. Fourth, she wonders whether as a mentally sexless teenager,she too might have tried to transition. The fifth is that she is a domestic abuse and sexual assault survivor with concerns about single-sex spaces. When she read about the Scottish governments gender-recognition plans, she went to a very dark place inside my head, as memories of a serious sexual assault I suffered recurred on a loop.

On the one hand, how could you not feel empathy for Rowling, especially after the Sun followed up with a repugnant front-page interview with her first husband under the headline I slapped JK and Im not sorry?

On the other, why is she conflating her experience of domestic violence with rights for trans people? The two have as much to do with each other as octopuses and stilettos. As she acknowledges, trans people are frequently victims of violence.

In this particular culture war, where words are weapons of mass outrage, there is no room for nuance. Both sides trans activists and gender critical feminists are convinced that they are compassionate, well-meaning people whose duty it is to police the other sides speech. Both claim a monopoly on the science. Both throw around unlikely scenarios and terrifying statistics. For both, social media is their theatre of war.

But theres only one group directly affected. For all the hysterical arguments about bathrooms or elderly women scared to use the Marks and Spencers changing rooms, the only people whose rights are up for grabs are trans and non-binary people. And they, for the most part, are quietly getting on with their lives, far away from the arguments about biology and the shouty slogans. If youre a young person with gender identity issues, for whom life is a daily struggle against isolation, bullying, prejudice and violence, the culture war swirling around you is a distant roar.

So far, blessedly, that culture war has been a distant roar in Ireland too. Here, in 2015, without much drama, the Gender Recognition Act passed. Since then, Ireland has been offering an administrative process for transgender people over 18 to achieve full legal recognition of their preferred gender. To be clear, this is no utopia in which to be a trans person, but it has got some things right.

Five years on, were managing fine in the bathrooms department. There have been no showdowns in womens changing rooms, no explosion in men who never intend to transition clamouring to be recognised as legally female. In all, by mid-2018, fewer than 300 gender recognition certs had been issued.

Onto those terrifying statistics. Rowling claims there has been a 4,400 per cent increase in British girls being referred for transitioning treatment, she says. This is accurate, but its coming from a starting point of just 40 girls in 2009. She suggests the increase is fuelled by misogyny; in reality, more young people coming to terms with their identity is positive and empowering. She acknowledges that transitioning is a solution for some gender dysphoric people, but even this seems to imply there are good genuine trans people and bad fake ones.

Autistic girls are hugely overrepresented, she says. And yes, studies have found a substantial overlap between transgender identity and autism. But it would be grossly ablest to use this as a basis to withhold treatment, especially when depression and anxiety are also highest among this group.

Most controversially, Rowling claims that between 60-90 per cent of gender dysphoric teens will grow out of it. This figure is based on flawed research which included children who didnt meet the criteria for dysphoria.

The truth is there are no easy answers here. There are risks involved in medical treatment. There are risks to withholding it. Every situation is unique and best figured out privately by those affected and their doctors.

Despite what those who have taken to calling themselves biological women insist, affording equal rights to trans people does not erode anyone elses rights. Human rights are not a zero sum game. There is no quota on the number of women allowed to exist in the world.

Continued here:
Jennifer OConnell: There are no winners in trans-rights culture war - The Irish Times