{"id":119432,"date":"2025-09-04T23:37:24","date_gmt":"2025-09-04T23:37:24","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/119432\/"},"modified":"2025-09-04T23:37:24","modified_gmt":"2025-09-04T23:37:24","slug":"when-wealth-buys-moral-bankruptcy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/119432\/","title":{"rendered":"When wealth buys moral bankruptcy"},"content":{"rendered":"

As the world burns, the rich raise a glass \u2014 and the bill is paid in conscience, not cash, writes Dr Rosemary Sorensen<\/a>.<\/p>\n

WHAT\u2019S THE WORD for when the gap between what\u2019s happening in the world and what tiny elite groups focus on is so enormous it\u2019s a bottomless pit?<\/p>\n

Is it merely grotesque? Does the definition of delusional fit? Or do we just sigh and accept it as normal human behaviour?<\/p>\n

Trying to work out how we can go on chatting in newspaper columns and social media about summer wardrobes and food trends, I came up with my own way to describe it: osso buco thinking. It\u2019s the dinner party way of doing things: Tut tut, isn\u2019t Trump awful the way he\u2019s destroying America? Oh dear, did you see the photos of that boy splattered with guts in Gaza? Excellent osso buco, Antony, do you use that sustainably-sourced butcherarium in North Fitzroy? Pass the Grange.<\/p>\n

As we confront, or turn away from, the daily news of violence and destruction, it does make some sense to keep and even foster the nice things, a sort of bulwark against the hard, cruel, relentless pounding. But we\u2019re past that now. We do know that, in wars past, media reports were both delayed and managed, so that populations not in the conflict zones were kept to some degree ignorant of the horror.<\/p>\n

\"Growth<\/a><\/p>\n

My grandfather, who earned some medal for some act of bravery in the Middle East in the First World War, returned, went bald almost overnight, then kept silent about what had happened for the rest of his (too short) life. We kept that medal in a carved stone box, which was lost when my grandmother died. Only through reading, not from my grandfather\u2019s experience, did it become possible to imagine what those soldiers and civilian populations went through.<\/p>\n

Now, we can see the images immediately. And the articles and books are there for us to read, even as the denials of violence \u2013 whether in Gaza or America or wherever else fascism is jackbooting along the streets \u2013 are reported faithfully by weak, corrupted media.<\/p>\n

So, here\u2019s my question: should the few remaining competent news outlets suspend the \u201clifestyle\u201d stuff, at least until we wake up to some signs that this polluted tide is turning?<\/p>\n

Here\u2019s the \u201cstory\u201d that pushed my tolerance over the edge \u2014 in The New Yorker<\/a>, a review of the Waldorf-Astoria\u2019s new Lex Yard<\/a> restaurant:<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

\u2018A carrot-coconut soup, soft as sunshine and gently sweet, poured tableside over ribbonlike curls of carrot and turnip, shaved to translucent thinness, made me sigh with pleasure. A plump fillet of halibut, pan-roasted in olive oil until tender and satiny, was a brilliant shock of white in an elegant magenta consomm\u00e9 of dashi and beetroot.\u2019<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

This is not satire, although if it had popped up in the McSweeney\u2019s Bluesky feed<\/a>, it would have made sense.<\/p>\n

The review is ridiculous, but comes from that food-porn tradition that used to be sort of entertaining, even for those who wouldn\u2019t want to pay exorbitant prices for a shave of carrot and a fish in broth. What is galling to the point of nauseating is the accompanying photographs of the renovated New York hotel. It\u2019s not nearly as awful as Trump\u2019s Oval Office, which shines with more and more gilding every time he humiliates another foreign head of state there. But it\u2019s pretty darn awful.<\/p>\n

If New York is a special case, built on the very premise that greed is prestigious, it\u2019s still weird that we let the Neros<\/a> of the world fiddle while the planet burns. It sets the tone, too, for places where the wealth divide is not quite so huge and the pretensions comparatively modest.<\/p>\n

\"Putting<\/a><\/p>\n

And so, here in \u201cOi Oi Oi\u201d, we have the comforting tradition of The Age<\/a>\u2019s Good Food<\/a> section, still earnestly eating their way around the filthy mess the world is in, these lifestyle pages valiantly confounding the notion that our lifestyles are lighting fools the way to dusty death.<\/p>\n

A recent review<\/a> of the Cherrywood at Residence<\/a> restaurant at the University of Melbourne\u2019s Ian Potter Gallery muses about \u2018whether chefs are artists\u2019 and decides that:<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

\u2018Art reflects culture, it brightens our cities and our lives, it gives us pleasure, and it challenges us to understand the experiences of others.\u2019<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

So much to wonder about in that definition of art \u2013 and how a plate of pasta, too, might challenge us \u2018to understand the experience of others\u2019.<\/p>\n

I think we do have to carry on, with the everyday as well as the lifestyle culture stuff that is the cushion against the awful realisation of just how vile people can be. But, at the same time, we need to stop carrying on, or to modify how we carry on, to somehow acknowledge what is happening right now to those very cultures that spawned hotels like the Waldorf-Astoria and, down the chain, distractions such as arty food. \u00a0<\/p>\n

Life, as Malcolm Fraser<\/a> once intoned, rather inappropriately, wasn\u2019t meant to be easy. It sure does seem that, for large chunks of the world\u2019s populations, that is so. And the question is, is it ok for the few of us for whom it is relatively easy either not to notice or to notice and not let it affect us.<\/p>\n

How you\u2019d register that the world is changing while you taste the consomm\u00e9, I\u2019ve no idea. That Cherrywood reviewer does register something when she notes that the restaurant serves \u2018a very rich chicken broth poured from a kettle over aromatic tarragon into tiny cups. \u201cI could drink a whole mug of this,\u201d my dining companion said, to which I replied, \u201cYes, and it would cost you $100\u201d. At $10 a shot for the broth, it\u2019s a lovely but very expensive couple of sips.\u2019<\/p>\n

Expensive \u2014 that\u2019s what this kind of dining and thinking is, but not just in monetary terms. It\u2019s ethically ruinous.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

Dr\u00a0Rosemary Sorensen<\/a>\u00a0is an IA columnist, journalist and founder of the Bendigo Writers Festival.<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tSupport independent journalism Subscribe<\/a>\u00a0to IA.\n\t\t<\/p>\n

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