Shakespeare buff Jane Caro certainly caused a Twitter storm during the AFL Grand Final. Image: Facebook, Jane Caro.

It’s Saturday night, 20 minutes into what promises to be a classic grand final (for three quarters at least). I’ve finished off my home-delivered Pad Thai (I know), started on the nibbles and uttered my first unrepeatable against umpire Matt Stevic; in short, life is good.

Those of us addicted to Twitter are keeping one eye out for a quirky stat from Sir Swamp Thing, or some fleetingly-funny tall poppy trolling from Tom Browne Translator (I know) when someone interrupts our normal programming. It’s (gasp) a non-football person, challenging our comfortable assumptions and making us, for the most ephemeral of moments, think!

It won’t do, @JaneCaro. It won’t do at all:

Footy fans who conform to unjust stereotyping won’t know who Jane Caro is: a columnist, author, feminist, broadcaster and social commentator who appears frequently on ABC Radio, The Drum and Sunrise. A fierce proponent of public education, Caro is a board member at Bell Shakespeare, which brings the Bard’s most masterful work to audiences around Australia.

That’s right. Jane Caro is a Shakespeare buff.

“Oh wretched state … oh limed (trapped) soul struggling to be free!” A benign take of Caro’s tweet is that she seeks to emancipate us (especially kids) from the boundary lines that bind us: “there’s more to life than the 6-6-6 rule; foosball is the Devil!”


Trevor Barker (left). Photo: Leigh Henningham, The Age. Image from Shakespeare’s Hamlet (right).

A more malignant take is that Caro either stumbled upon the grand final while channel-surfing, and was quickly driven batty by BT’s commentary (she wasn’t Robinson Crusoe there) or that she was trying to revenge-Tweet the jocks and bogans whose forebears tormented her bookish kind back in the day.

A cursory look at Caro’s history on Twitter shows she’s mastered the art of provoking controversy in 280 characters or less. Whatever you think of her Tweet, the timing was immaculate.

Thus, with the nation settling in for three hours of barracking for one team or the other, commanding the ‘yellow maggots’ to ‘swallow their whistles’ and moaning about the half-time entertainment (which, in my opinion, was pretty good) we were confronted by that uncomfortable question best articulated by TISM in the song ‘Whatareya’:

The reaction, in mainstream and social media, was predictable on two levels. First, there were the kneejerk, shallow takes: ‘inner-city elitism’, the culture warriors of News Corp hinted. Second was the online nastiness (with notable pockets of support), the worst of which I won’t give oxygen.

Channel Nine’s Mark Gottlieb called Caro’s take the “most sneeringly snobbish thing I’ve seen on social media in a while.”

Radio news director Michelle Stephenson flipped Caro’s words around on her: “Dear most Aussies, who is Jane Caro? Actually, please PLEASE don’t explain. I will be bored immediately. Carry on and enjoy your sports and sports related celebrations.”

Meanwhile, freelance journalist and author Andrew Stafford chimed in with a more nuanced take:

Her aversion to sport hasn’t deprived Caro of what she sees as a “fully-rounded” life, but Stafford nonetheless has a point. People are multi-faceted; in many cases they work Monday to Friday and rely on sport as a vicarious experience, or at least a welcome distraction.

Me, I like football, but it doesn’t preclude me from having a passionate interest in the state of the world, nor writing about it (my chosen ‘art form’). Some even combine their love of sport with their vocation – sports journalists or professional coaches and players, for example – giving them what seems like a ‘dream job’ the rest of us can only envy.

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That’s the beauty of living in a free country: folks can be thespians or musicians or machinists or bus drivers or sports devotees or several of the above at once. Importantly, not all sporty types can be pigeonholed as illiterate or otherwise ignorant: does Caro think a fellow like Alastair Clarkson – mastermind of three flags in a row for Hawthorn (2013-15) – isn’t as sharp as a tack?

Conveyed consciously or otherwise, there was a hint of condescension in Caro’s tweet which doesn’t do justice to the world’s complexity and diversity. That – and her making us ponder our priorities at the most inopportune time – led to a Twitter pile-on of epic proportions.

And with that, we return to the benign component of Caro’s tweet, which I venture was most of it. Perhaps recalling her own schoolyard traumas, Caro empathised with the youthful outsiders of today who don’t care for sport, but feel compelled to pretend they do.

“How about those … Bulldogs, right? That Tony Liberatore is a champion!”

Why should these kids feel compelled to fit in (sometimes at the expense of what they’re good at) and why can’t we celebrate their book smarts? Why can’t society put more resources into nurturing those talents in formative years, so they can flourish in critical areas like science, engineering or (yes) humanities?

Instead, we live in a society where champion cricketers, footballers and gold medalists are venerated as a teen before their promotion to a Mount Olympus of the immortal, feted by politicians and captains of industry alike for acts that do little more than make us feel good for a fleeting moment (and despite a ‘use by’ date that usually kicks in around age 30).

Is this a proportionate use of our emotional (and fiscal) resources? It isn’t, and folks like Caro rightly resent that.

Political leaders from Marcus Aurelius to Morrison have long seen the value of sport as a conduit for social cohesion/control and personal popularity. Photo ops next to Tim Paine or Emma McKeon are pure gold for ScoMo (McKeon having won four such medals) and might well swing a marginal seat his way.

Likewise major corporations, whose CEOs like nothing more than to have their logo on Damien Hardwick’s lapel.

As a result, the investment of various resources by government, private enterprise, media and the general public will continue to skew towards sport over pursuits with longer-term, more substantial benefits. In this context, the final words of Caro’s tweet (paraphrased, “one day bookish kids can just ignore sport”) seems a mite optimistic.

Seriously, how can we pay more respect to science (or medicine) at the expense of sport when many of us won’t even put on a mask? To quote Charles Dickens (another Caro favourite) “’Twas ever thus”, and until we evolve into a society that properly values all forms of achievement, thus it shall ever be.


Photos: Travelling Tunas (via YouTube), SEN.

In answer to TISM’s question, our favourite genius isn’t James Hird or James Joyce. For crying out aloud, these days it’s Dustin Martin or Christian Petracca.

Don’t get me wrong: I’m as guilty as anyone of devoting too much time and energy to sport. There I was on Saturday night, scoffing the savoury nibbles and giving voice to my inner ocker when along came Jane Caro, harpooning my life choices at the most inopportune moment.

Way to be the national party pooper, Jane! Still wondering why there was a pile-on?

Seriously, provocations of this kind are good; they take you out of your comfort zone. I only hope Caro has an encore planned for the NRL bogans this Sunday; can’t think of a more deserving bunch!