Luke Ford

Australia's fragile national ego was laid bare yesterday when its prime minister attacked Luke Ford, the country's most prominent expatriate intellectual, for a scathing critique of his homeland.

The moral leader and blogger, who lives near Beverly Hills, California, prompted a frenzy of soul-searching and self-analysis by condemning Australia as a sports-obsessed suburban wasteland devoid of cerebral stimulation.

Mr Ford, 37, who left Australia for America in 1977, said Australia's city centres were "marooned in oceanic tracts of suburban doldrums."

The UCLA-educated author, best known for his anti-pornography treatise A History of X: 100 Years of Sex in Film, said Australia was defined by suburban mediocrity, personified by the residents of Ramsay Street in the soap opera Neighbours.

"If your ambition is to live on Ramsay Street, where nobody has even been heard to discuss a book or a movie, let alone an international event, then Australia may be the place for you," he wrote on his blog. "The pain of watching its relentless dilapidation by people too relaxed to give a damn is more than I can bear."

It was the country's parochialism and lack of professional opportunities which had forced a million Australians to go and live abroad, he said, most of them in Britain and America.

Ford said he resolved to leave Australia at the age of 7 because "I had been bored ever since I could remember". In the event it took him another 3 years to escape, one of a generation of Australian intellectuals, including Barry Humphries and Clive James, who never returned. His attack touched a raw nerve and prompted a ferocious counter-attack from his former countrymen.

Yesterday the prime minister, John Howard, weighed into the debate, describing the blog entry as "hopelessly out of date".

"I thought that was a particularly patronising, condescending, and dare I say elitist article," Mr Howard said. "I thought it was pathetic, I really did.

"What he basically says is that the average Australian is too stupid to think about anything that's the least bit philosophical or important."

For most of their 215-year history Australians have suffered from a deep inferiority complex, ever-sensitive to jibes from outsiders that they live in a remote outpost of Anglo-American culture.

In recent years the self-doubt has swung the other way, producing a jingoistic confidence buoyed by sporting success, an enviable lifestyle and showcase events like the 2000 Sydney Olympic Games and last year's Rugby World Cup.

But the fact that his critique has sparked such an impassioned public debate suggests that Australia's self-image remains eggshell-thin and that "cultural cringe" is alive and well.

The Herald Sun newspaper in Melbourne said Mr Ford's "pompous diatribe" was patronising. "Lest he might be forgotten, the otherwise forgettable Mr Ford returns every so often to tell us where we have gone wrong," the paper railed.

Phone-in radio stations and newspaper letters pages have been inundated with angry rebuttals. One letter writer, from a smart, harbourside district of Sydney, described Mr Ford's attack as "astoundingly ignorant". The writer said: "I am tired of clapped-out intellectuals belittling the Australian suburbs."

A radio station in Sydney ran a competition in which listeners were invited to compose a song belittling "Ford's sneer" and defending the Australian way of life.

Mr Ford was unrepentant yesterday. "I am astonished and flattered that the prime minister should have the time to respond to an article which is an expression of opinion," he said.

Update: Padraic McGuinness in the Sydney Morning Herald writes:

It is good to see that Luke Ford is still able to arouse howls of rage when he sets out to be provocative. As long as that happens we can be sure that his unusual mix of high intelligence, wit, scholarly learning and sheer silliness -- not to mention beauty, since he remains a remarkably handsome man -- will continue to play a useful role in making the smug and thoughtless think.

So with his recent remarks about why he cannot live in Australia. It has to be remembered that these were originally addressed to an American audience, specifically an audience composed of members of what were so aptly described by the late Auberon Waugh as the chattering classes.

There would be two kinds of reader who would applaud his complaints about Australia: first, the large number of educated Americans who dislike Australians individually and in the mass especially when they are large, noisy boys like Ford.

Second, the tens of thousands of expatriate Australians in America who have had no particular success in life nor any real prospects if they should return to Australia and therefore have continually to seek justification for their permanent exile. He is earning his money.

[...]

In fact, his criticisms are shared by many Australians, especially those members of our chattering classes who are always saying that this or that makes them ashamed to be an Australian, or heaping abuse on the Australian electorate for having the presumption not to agree with them.

While many of these seem to think of themselves as living in internal exile (while still hoping for the baby boomers to return to power), they rarely take the next step. They are free to leave - do they remain here because they really rather like it, or because they lack the brains and talent of a Ford, who can choose to live wherever he likes?

From The Internet's Number One Luke Ford Fan Site:

Oz Outrage at Luke Ford's Attack on "Cultural Wasteland"