Taking aim at a soft target
Sport is like a mask that people put on to sound off about the world. Many people who consider themselves to be broad-minded will quickly reveal their prejudices when the subject turns to sport.
-
Martin Flanagan
Martin Flanagan is a journalist and author who writes on sport, Australian culture and the relationship between indigenous and non-indigenous Australia.
A timely reminder from 'The Grapes of Wrath'
John Steinbeck's novel of working-class poverty is as relevant as ever.
Go Gogs! Never too young to take sides
That was the first word of the little bloke that I heard. Gogs. Meaning dogs.
In tune with one another
You can read this as a book about the music industry. You can read it as a book about the mysterious synergies of art. Or you can read it is a book about the non-erotic love that can exist between men. It is a theme which arises in sport where it is quickly reduced to clichés and thereby belittled. This book is much more like the real thing.
Peace lies in the middle ground, not on the extremist edges
The atrocity in Nice on Bastille Day felt like the worst of all the recent atrocities. The most heartless, the most demented.
Reasons to be worried
She was blonde, bulky and she'd been drinking. She told us with deafening certainty that it was "inappropriate" to talk politics in a New York bar.
Mystery man whose song defined 1970s Australia
Gypsy Queen is a song of the road no less than the poem Walt Whitman wrote a century earlier.
Face that launched a thousand rip-offs
There were plenty of good-looking actresses around in her day but, as a star, she has outshone them all.
Thanks for the offer, but I'm really not that old
It's not the end I mind. It's the bits and pieces dropping off along the way like a rusty old car with the exhaust pipe dropping off.
Multiculturalism: not an ideal, but a reality
We need to create human societies from people of many different backgrounds.
Search pagination