the disagreement was really only about whether CJ was joking about Australians being the most cultured people on Earth: really he wasn't....Just watch the video.

Which bit am I misunderstanding!? I agree with you on practically everything, except your hair-splitting over "crit in comedy" vs. "comedy in crit".

I just don't see the difference between "everything is sophisticated humor" (me) and "sometimes he uses jokes to soften real opinions" (you).

of his website. It was a live interview not an article and I am only retelling one little part of the interview. He has a lot of good interviews there.

I think you misunderstand. I reallly like Clive James (and Australia, I'm married to an Australian after all!). He would be great to have at a dinner party. He is great to read. He is erudite and broadly knowledgable. He over-extends himself sometimes, but so what? Don't we all. (I said this all already!) I think he would disagree that everything he writes is meant to be a joke. That seems like willful misreading to me. Sometimes he is an outright humorist, but he sometimes softens serious opinions with jaunty humor. This is very clear in his video interviews where it is easier to tell when he is being serious and when he is making a joke. He has his faults of course, don't we all, for instance he also tries to hide a creeping pomposity with humor as well (or sometimes he just doesn't hide it at all!).

Really, I was just making fun of the French Theory apologists that were attacking him as if he were somekind of ego-maniacal, flavor of the month, shallow idiot. I guess that wasn't obvious.

So check out his video interviews some of them are really great. Okay I really have better things to be doing with my time.

The mistake, of course, being believing your summary of an article I still can't find on the site you referenced.

Mea culpa.

On Australia, Clive James, and his latest book (which I've read, along with everything else he's ever penned) being comedy just like everything else he's ever done, I'm standing my ground.

Greatest critic? No. Very funny pop-culture commentator? Yes. Comedian? Absolutely.

So you must either be Austsralian or have never been there.

So let's begin with the famous Culture Cringe. This term actually means something different now in the popular consciousness than it did when it was coined in the 50's. Originally it meant that Australians felt culturally inferior and defferred to the bigger countries as sources for Australian culture (particularly England, obviously). There was an assumption that everything Australian was second rate at best.

Well those days are long gone. Australians have a great deal of confidence, but there are lingering worries. Underneath they are convinced the Australia is the greatest place in the world to live and Australians are exceptional people (there is plenty of evidence for this actually being true, aside from the excessively hot weather...) BUT!!! They always worry a little bit that they might be wrong, so whenever an Australian steps out of line and disproves this theory they...cringe. Cultural cringe has litterally become a cringe at unsophisticated or bad behavior. Witness the recent cringe-fest on The Age's travel blog re: Are Australians the new Yanks? The headline alone tells you something about their new confidence level.

People like James (and Robert Hughes, etc.) left Australia basically because of the first Cringe, but as they spent time overseas they discovered that Australia was just as sophisticated (or had becoome so) and worthy of feeling self-impressed as England or the US (Germaine Greer excepted). Sure they still complained about Australian culture but this generally fits the second (unofficial) definition of Culture Cringe. A whinge from a position of underlying confidence.

What James and Jacobson (who has spent considerable time in Oz) were talking about was to some extent their surprise and to some extent the confirmation of their secrect confidence in returning to Australia periodically and finding very erudite and sophisticated people there. The small laugh is playing against the culture cringe (not juxtaposing cricket with Mozart in the way you pose, which would be a terrible joke anyway). I simplified the story drastically to make a joke.

The joke relates to Tall Poppy syndrome, a classic Australian affliction where anyone who achieves success (outside of sports) is consider up himself and cut down as fast as possible. See, so my joke was that some how this silly story meant that CJ was up himself and somehow disqualified him as a culture critic, which is ridiculous. He certainloy isn;t the greatest critic, while an excellent and entertaining writer, he rarely truly shines a light on anything (at least in anything that I have read by him, mostly in the LRB and NYRB).

The fact still remains that they were perfectly serious, and while not entirely correct, not entirely off either.

Since Clive James claiming Australians are somehow superior in the cultural endowment department directly conflicts with everything else he's ever written on the subject, I'm still plumping for "joke".

Australians are famous for cultural cringe (a subject James has exploited many, many times to hilarious effect) but not for mixing cricket and Mozart... it's such obvious hyperbole that I'm still a bit surprised you were taken in!

Get it? Cricket -- world's slowest game, reeking of establishment and Empire -- plus Mozart -- fussy, elaborate, up-tempo composer reeking of anti-establishment and hedonism -- equals "joke".

Yes there are a lot of little jokes in his commentary. He does seem to indulge in hyperbole. But he was dead serious about Australians (So was Howard Jacobson!). At first it seems like a dry joke, ha, ha, then you realize they are completely serious. (have you seen the interview shannonr?) They also proceed to take swings at the next generation whom they see as uncultured idiots (quite seriously). No, he's up himself that's for sure. Actually it is more my post that is a joke (do I really need to explain that?)

On another note I am surprised at the popularity of this article, seems like interest in culture and books is alive and well, I mean 15 posts! Wow!