Burlesque

Burlesque (pronounced ber-lesk)

(1) An artistic composition, especially literary or dramatic, that, for the sake of laughter, vulgarizes lofty material or treats ordinary material with mock dignity.

(2) A humorous and provocative (often bawdy) stage show featuring slapstick humor, comic skits and a scantily clad female chorus; by the late nineteenth century striptease was often the main element (the usual slang was burleycue).

(3) As neo-burlesque, a late twentieth century revival (with rather more artistic gloss) of the strip-tease shows of the 1920s.

(4) An artistic work (especially literary or dramatic), satirizing a subject by caricaturing it.

(5) Between the seventeenth and nineteenth centuries, a play parodying some contemporary dramatic fashion or event.

(6) A production of some kind involving ludicrous or mocking treatment of a solemn subject; an absurdist imitation or caricature.

(7) Of, relating to, or characteristic of a burlesque; of, relating to, or like stage-show burlesque.

(8) To represent or imitate (a person or thing) in a ludicrous way; caricature.

(9) To make ridiculous by mocking representation.

(10) To in some way use a certain type of caricature.

1650–1660: From the French burlesque, from the Italian burlesco (ludicrous and used in the sense of “parodic”), the construct being burl(a) (joke, fun, mockery) + -esco (the adjectival suffix used in English as –esque).  The Italian burla may ultimately be from the Late Latin burra (trifle, nonsense (and literally “flock of wool”) and thus used to suggest something “fluffy” (in the sense of being “lightweight” rather than serious) which was of unknown origin.  Alternatively, some etymologists suggest burla may be from the Spanish burladero (the protective barrier behind which people in the bullring are protected from the bull).  The verb burlesque (make ridiculous by mocking representation) came directly from the noun and was in use by the 1670s.  The spelling burlesk is archaic.  While the derived form unburlesqued means simply “not burlesqued”, preburlesque is a historian's term meaning “prior to the introduction of burlesque performances”.  Burlesque, burlesquer & burlesqueness are nouns, burlesqued & burlesquing are verbs and burlesquely is an adverb; the noun plural is burlesques.

The original mid-sixteenth century meaning was related to stage performances and meant “a piece composed in the burlesque style, a derisive imitation or grotesque parody, a specific development from the slightly earlier adjectival sense of “odd or grotesque”, taken directly from the French burlesque.  The more familiar adjectival meaning (tending to excite laughter by ludicrous contrast between the subject and the manner of treating it) was in use by at least the late 1690s.  As a definition that’s fine but in the hands of playwrights, satirists and such there was obviously much scope, prompting one journalist (a breed which seems first to have been described thus in the 1680s) in 1711 to clarify things in a London periodical:

“The two great branches of ridicule in writing are comedy and burlesque. The first ridicules persons by drawing them in their proper characters; the other, by drawing them quite unlike themselves. Burlesque is therefore of two kinds; the first represents mean persons in accoutrements of heroes, the other describes great persons acting and speaking like the basest among the people.”

The meaning shifted as what appeared on stage evolved and by the 1880s the typical understanding was something like (1) “travesties on the classics and satires on accepted ideas” and (2) comic opera which tended towards vulgarity.  From this came the still prevalent modern sense of “variety show featuring music, dancing and striptease” although some historians of the industry link this use directly from the mid-nineteenth century tradition of “scantily-clad performers who staged the sketches concluding minstrel shows”.  The implications of that evolution didn’t impress all and by the early twentieth century, in the US, the word “burlesque” had become verbal shorthand for “entertainment designed to titillate, verging on the obscene while avoiding prosecution”.  The term “neo-burlesque” (a revived form of traditional American burlesque performance, involving dance, striptease, dramatic performance etc) emerged in the 1990s, describing the stage shows which sought to re-capture the once respectable spirit of burlesque as it was performed in US clubs before “changing attitudes” saw the performances outlawed or marginalized.  Whether attitudes really much changed among the general population has been debated by historians but the US political system then (as now) operated in a way in which well-funded groups could exert a disproportionate influence on public policy and while this often was used by sectional interests to gain financial advantage, some also decided to impose on others their view of morality; it was in the era of the crackdown on burlesque shows the Motion Picture Production Code (the so-called “Hays Code” which, remarkably, endured, at least on paper, until 1968!) was created as a set of “moral guidelines” with which the Hollywood studios had to conform.  So the “culture wars” are nothing new and in the US, there has always been a tension between puritan religiosity and political freedom, the two forces reflecting the concerns and obsessions of those from the “Old World” of Europe who in the early seventeenth century founded the settlement which ultimate became what came to be known as “America”.

Although often hardly “respectable” theatre, burlesque has a long tradition in performance and almost its techniques will long pre-date recorded history.  The essence of the form was based on an exaggerated “sending up” or a derisive imitation of a literary or musical work and can be anything from a friendly joke to vicious ridicule.  Historically most associated with some form of stage entertainment, burlesque was distinguished from parody in being usually stronger (though not always broader) in tone and style and often lacked the edgy subtlety of satire.   It was the Athenian playwright of Ancient Greece, Aristophanes (circa 446–386 BC), who the late Medieval scribes declared “the father of comedy” and while that was a little misleading, he would occasionally use the device of burlesque in his plays though the satyr plays probably were the first institutionalized form of burlesque.

Empire Burlesque (1985) by Bob Dylan (b 1941).

Early in his long career, Bob Dylan must have noticed the press seemed to be more interested in discussing the stuff about which he didn’t comment that that which he’d taken the time to explain.  Whether or not that’s a factor, Dylan appears never to have explained the meaning behind the title of his 1985 album, Empire Burlesque.  Although some speculated it may have been a metaphor for the nature of “the American Empire” (however defined), there’s nothing substantive to support the speculation and a more grounded theory came from the Beat poet Allen Ginsberg (1926–1997) who recounted how Dylan had once told him: “That was the name of a burlesque club I used to go to when I first came to New York, down on Delancey Street.”  Ginsberg thought it “a good title” for an album.

Intriguingly, the satyr play was a kind of coda.  In Greek theatre, the convention was to present four plays in succession: three tragedies (though not necessarily a trilogy) with a satyr play appended as the final piece.  Typically, in a satyr play, a mythical hero (who may have appeared in one or all of the foregoing tragedies) was presented as a ridiculous personage with a chorus of satyrs (creatures half man and half goat (or half horse) with prominent, erect phalluses (it was satyr imagery which in Europe made the goat a symbol of lust and, two millennia on, cynical Berliners would refer to the notoriously philandering Dr Joseph Goebbels (1897-1975; Nazi propaganda minister 1933-1945) as “the he-goat of Berlin”)).  As far as is known, the satyr plays almost always were ribald in speech and action as well as in costume and their purpose has been debated by historians.  While classical Greek tragedy is almost wholly devoid of comedy (in the sense of set-pieces although there’s the occasional sardonic quip or grim observation that would have enticed a laconic guffaw) the satyr play concluding the tetralogy would have worked as a sort of palliative burlesque after the catharsis of three acts of fear, loathing and, not infrequently, death,  Their dramatic function clearly was a form of comic relief but coming immediately after three works of earnest high-seriousness, they must have has the effect of “calming the senses” of the audience after the intense, exalting spiritual experience of the tragedies.  That’s interesting in that it implies it was thought desirable to return the audience to “earthly life” and remind them what they had just experienced was not “reality” and their emotions had just been manipulated by a technique.  It all sounds rather post-modern and in a similar literary vein, the “clowning interludes” in Elizabethan plays can also be seen as a type of burlesque; in William Shakespeare’s (1564–1616) A Midsummer Night's Dream (1590) the interpolation of the play of Pyramus and Thisbe performed by Bottom and his companions was the bard making fun of the “Interludes” of earlier types.

An expanded vista derailing the Pronomos Vase (red-figure pottery Ancient Greece, circa 400 BC) believed to depict the whole cast and chorus of a satyr play, along with the playwright, the musician Pronomos, and the gods Dionysos and Ariadne.  The scene is thought to capture the figures after a performance which, in modern use, would be thought a “behind the scenes” grab.   The vase was discovered in 1835 in a tomb in Ruvo di Puglia, Italy; it’s now on permanent display in the Museo Nazionale in Naples.

To make things difficult for students, there are linguistic traps in the terminology and despite the similarity in the spelling, there was no connection whatever between satyric drama and satire and some seem convinced there may have been none between it and Greek comedy.  For structuralists, it can be a difficult field to study because over the centuries so many contradictory texts and commentaries emerged and that’s at least partly attributable to the influence of Aristotle (384-322 BC) who looms over the understanding of Greek theatre because his writings came to be so revered by the scholars of the late Medieval period and especially the Renaissance.  As far as in known, the Greeks were the first of the tragedians and it’s through the surviving texts of Aristotle that later understandings were filtered but all of his conclusions were based only on the tragedies and such was his historic and intellectual authority that for centuries his theories came to be misapplied and misused, either by mapping them on to all forms of tragedy or using them as exclusionary, dismissing from the canon those works which couldn’t be made to fit his descriptions.

The Pronomos Vase as displayed in Naples.

Nor was burlesque confined to drama; it was the most common structure used in the mock-heroic poem to ridicule the often overblown works of romance, chivalry and Puritanism.  Dripping often with irony and a confected grave decorum, the classic example is English poet & satirist Alexander Pope’s (1688-1744) The Rape of the Lock (1712), cited by some (however unconvincingly) as the spiritual origin of “high camp”.  Also, because the gothic novel often was written in such self-conscious “high style”, the form lent itself naturally to burlesque re-tellings, something exploited to this day in Hollywood which has often made sequels to horror films in comedic from.  The burlesque (in the sense it was a descendent of the Greek satyr play) could also be positioned as something transgressive although it must be wondered if this sometimes was a product more of the commentator’s view than the positionality intended by the author.  This aspect of burlesque is explored in the genre of literary carnival when a technique is borrowed from the Socratic dialogues (in which what appears to be logic is deconstructed and proved to be illogical).  Carnivalesque elements are inherent in burlesque (and can exist in satire, farce, parody and such) and a theory of Russian philosopher & literary critic Mikhail Bakhtin (1895–1975) was that in its disruption of authority and implication of possible alternatives, carnival in literature was subversive and the use of burlesque in the form was a concealment (in the sense of avoiding the censor’s pen) of what could be a liberating influence; Bakhtin’s particular target was the “suffocatingly sacred word” in Renaissance culture but his theory has more generally been applied.

The noun amphigory (burlesque nonsense writing or verse) dates from 1809 and was from the eighteenth century French amphigouri of unknown origin but presumed by most etymologists to have been a jocular coining although there may have been some influence from the New Latin amphi-, from the Ancient Greek ἀμφί (amphí) (on both sides) and the Greek γύρος (gýros), derived from the “turning of the meat on a spit” (as a calque of Turkish döner into Greek).  The notion was of “making the whole” (ie “circle on both sides”) but a link with the Greek -agoria (speech) (as in allegory, category) has been suggested as a simpler explanation.  The word “amphigory” found a niche in literary criticism and academic use (recommended for students wishing to impress the professor) to describe a particular flavour of burlesque or parody, especially a verse or other text in which the impression is for a while sustained of something which will make sense but ultimately fails, an oft-cited example being Nephelidia (literally “cloudlets”) by the English poet Algernon Charles Swinburne (1837–1909) in which the writer parodies his own distinctive style.

In A Dictionary of Modern English Usage (1926), Henry Fowler (1858–1933) noted the wide application of the words often listed as synonymous with burlesque (caricature, parody, travesty etc), citing the not uncommon use of burlesque to describe a “badly conducted trial” or “a perverted institution”, adding the two critical distinctions were (1) burlesque, caricature & parody have, besides their wider uses, each a special province; action or acting is burlesqued, form and features are caricatured and verbal expression is parodied and (2) travesty differs from the others both in having no special providence and, in being more used than they (though all four may be used either way) when the imitation is intended to be or pass for an exact one but fails.  Were Henry Fowler alive to see TikTok and such, he’d realize not many are reading his book.

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The difficulty in assigning synonyms to “burlesque” is that things are not only nuanced but historically variable; what would in one time and place have been thought satirical might in other circumstances be called a parody.  The earliest known use in English of the noun parody was by the playwright Benjamin Jonson (circa 1572-circa 1637) who would have understood it as something close to the modern definition: “a literary work in which the form and expression of dignified writing are closely imitated but are made ridiculous by the ludicrously inappropriate subject or methods; a travesty that follows closely the form and expression of the original”.  Parody was from the Latin parodia (parody), from the Ancient Greek parōidia (burlesque song or poem), the construct being para- (beside, parallel to (used in this context in the sense “to mock; mockingly to present”)) + ōidē (song, ode) and from the technical use in theatre came the general meaning “a poor or feeble imitation”, in use by at least the late 1820s.  So, depending on the details, a parody could be a type of burlesque but might also be described as a satire, ridicule, lampoon or farce.  It was Benjamin Jonson who in 1609 debuted his “anti-masque” an innovation which took the form of either (1) a buffoonish and grotesque episode before the main masque or (2) a similarly farcical interlude interpolated during the performance (if performed beforehand, it was dubbed an “ante-masque”. One variant of the anti-masque was a burlesque of the masque itself and in that sense there was a distinct affinity with the Greek satyr play.

So in literary use, synonyms for burlesque must be applied on a case-by-case basis, caricature, parody and travesty all used variously to refer to the written or preformed forms imitating serious works or subjects, the purpose being to achieve a humorous or satiric purpose.  In this context, burlesque achieves its effects through a mockery of both high and low through association with their opposites: burlesques of high and low life can thus be though a kind of specific application of irony.  Caricature, usually associated with visual arts or with visual effects in literary works, implies exaggeration of characteristic details, analogous with the technique of the political cartoonist.  Parody achieves humor through application of the manner or technique (typically well-known poets, authors, artists and such), often to an unaccustomed (and, ideally, wholly incongruous) subject while a travesty can be a grotesque form of burlesque, the latter also nuanced because travesties can be intentional or just bad products.  All of these forms can be the work of absurdists, that genre ranging from the subtle to the blatant and they may also be spoofs.  Spoof was a neologism coined in 1884 by the English comedian Arthur Roberts (1852–1933) as the name of a card game which involved deception, trickery and nonsense.  From this the word came to be used of any sort of hoaxing game but it became most popular when used of literary works and staged performances which is some way parodied someone or something but the point about the use of “spoof” is should describe a “gentle” rather than a “biting” satire, elements of the burlesque thus often present in spoofs.

South Park's take on Donald Trump (b 1946; US president 2017-2021 and since 2025).  Somewhere in probably every South Park episode, there are switches between parody, satire, ridicule, lampoon and farce with elements of the burlesque often in each.

A distinction certainly is drawn between political burlesque and political satire.  Political burlesque is a particular application of the satirical which relies on parody and exaggeration (often absurdist) to mock political figures, events, concepts or institutions and the purpose can range from the merely comic to the subversive, the two poles not being mutually exclusive.  In the burlesque, a politician’s traits, patterns of speech or behaviour (scandals are best) are explored and sometimes exaggerated to the point they become obviously ridiculous or absurd, the best practitioners of the art using the amplification to take things to a logical (if improbable) conclusion and while it can be done almost affectionately, the usual purpose is to draw attention to flaws such as incompetence, corruption, indifference to others, hypocrisy or ideological fanaticism.  Essentially a political cartoon writ large, it’s a popular device because in masking the message in humor, there’s usually some protection from a defamation writ, witness the relationship between the animation South Park and Donald Trump.  The tradition is old and evidence is at least hinted in graffiti unearthed in Ancient Rome but material from in recent centuries is extant and techniques of the English artists William Hogarth (1697–1764) and James Gillray (1756-1815) remain in use to this day, illustrating the way political burlesque is best understood as a sub-set of political satire, separate but (often) equal as it were, the differences in tone, method, and degree of exaggeration a matter of tactics rather than strategy.

As an umbrella term, “political satire” has a wide vista in that it can be subtle, dry, ironic & biting, deployed with wit & understatement but it can also switch to (some would say “descend to”) the burlesque in becoming loud, exaggerated and even grotesque in fusing elements of slapstick and farce.  While burlesque amplifies absurdity, venality or whatever is being critiqued, satire need only “point it out” and some very effective satires have done nothing more than quote politicians verbatim, their words “hoisting them with their own petard” if the mixed metaphor will be forgiven.  So, all political burlesque is political satire, but not all political satire is burlesque.  The companion term in politics is vaudevillian and that describes a politician for whom “all the world’s a stage” and politics thus a form of theatre.  Their performances can (sometimes unintentionally) sometimes seem to at least verge on the burlesque but usually it’s about attracting attention and a classic exponent was Boris Johnson (b 1964; UK prime-minister 2019-2022) who was said to have been influenced by Ronald Reagan (1911-2004; US president 1981-1989).  During the 1980 presidential campaign, a reporter asked Mr Reagan: “How can an actor run for President?”, receiving the prompt reply: “How can a president not be an actor?”  Some have of course been more adapt than others at “flicking the switch to vaudeville” and Paul Keating (b 1944; Prime Minister of Australia 1991-1996) whose vocabulary was rich (if not always refined) used to use what he called his “dead cat strategy” which referred to introducing a shocking or controversial issue to divert unwanted attention from other, more embarrassing or damaging news.  It was most graphically expressed as “tossing a dead cat on the table”.

Lindsay Lohan in burlesque mode in I Know Who Killed Me (2007).  Neglected upon its release, IKWKM has since been re-evaluated as a modern giallo and has acquired a cult following, sometimes see on the playbill of late-night screenings.

As popular entertainment, burlesque performance enjoyed a revival which began in the 1990s and in the twenty-first century it’s now an entrenched niche as well a minor industry in publishing.  By the 1960s, what was called burlesque had become rather tatty and the common understanding of the term was something not greatly different from a strip club with a slightly better class of drunk in the audience, the women there to disrobe in the hope of encouraging the sale of expensive alcoholic.  What in the 1990s was dubbed the “neo-burlesque” was not a reprise of how things used to be done but a construct which might be thought a more “women-centric” interpretation of the discipline and while there will be factions of feminism which won’t take that notion too seriously and dismiss as “false consciousness” the idea of women publicly taking off their clothes as a form of “empowerment”, the latter day performers seem to treat it as exactly that.  Despite the criticism of some, burlesque seem now to verge on the respectable and, internationally, there are various burlesque festivals and a Burlesque Hall of Fame (the grand opening, perhaps predictably, in Las Vegas).

Burlesque and the Art of the Teese /Fetish and the Art of the Teese (2006) by Dita Von Teese (stage name of Heather Renée Sweet, b 1972).  Perhaps surprisingly, despite the phrase “the art of the teese” being at least potentially a piece of “ambush marketing” piggy-backing on the success of the acclaimed (48 weeks on The New York Times Best Seller list) book The Art of the Deal by Donald Trump and Tony Schwartz (b 1952), Mr Trump didn’t sue Ms von Teese.  Maybe he’s a burlesque fan-boy.

In the modern era, no figure is more associated with the neo-burlesque than Dita von Teese and her janus-configured book Burlesque and the Art of the Teese / Fetish and the Art of the Teese is similar to Mr Trump’s magnum opus in being a hybrid: part memoir, part instruction manual.  This significance of publishing the burlesque and fetish components as separate sections was presumably to make the point that while there’s obvious cross-fertilization between the two disciplines and for some the former may be a stepping stone to the latter, there is a clear distinction, one a piece of performance art, the other a deliberate statement of deviance; decisively one must step from one into the separate world of the other.  Ms von Teese’s book documents the “dos & don’ts” of each “calling” and. as she explains, the point about the neo-burlesque was it was less a revival than a re-defining, the thematic emphasis on style and glamour rather than sleaze, more aligned with the image (if not exactly the reality) of the Berlin cabarets of the 1920 than the seedy Soho strip joints which once so tarnished the brand.

Blurb

Blurb (pronounced blurb)

(1) A brief promotional piece, almost always laudatory, used historically for books, latterly for about any product.

(2) To advertise or praise in the manner of a blurb.

1907: Coined by US graphic artist and humorist Gelett Burgess (1866–1951).  Blurbs are a specific type of advertisement, similar exercises in other contexts known also as “puff pieces”, “commendations” or “recommendations”.  The use of "puff" is thought based on the character "Mr Puff" in the burlesque satire The Critic: or, a Tragedy Rehearsed (1779) by the Anglo-Irish Whig playwright Richard Brinsley Sheridan (1751-1816).  Generally, blurbs contain elements designed to tempt a buyer which may include a précis (something less than a detailed summary), a mention of the style and a recommendation.  The term was originally invoked to mock the excessive praise printed on book jackets and was often parodied in a derisively imitative manner and is still sometimes critically used thus but it’s also now a neutral descriptor and an accepted part of the publishing industry.  Blurb is a noun & verb, blurbing & blurbed are verbs, blurbist is a noun and blurbish is an adjective; the noun plural is blurbs.

The blurb has apparently existed for some two-thousand–odd years but the word became well-known only after a publishing trade association dinner in 1907, Gelett Burgess displaying a dust jacket printed with the words “YES, this is a “BLURB”!”, featuring the (fictitious) Miss Belinda Blurb who was said to have been photographed “...in the act of blurbing”, Burgess adding that to blurb was “… to make a sound like a publisher…” and was “…a check drawn on fame, and it is seldom honoured”.  There are sources claiming the word was coined by US academic and literary critic Brander Matthews (1852–1929) in his essay American Character (1906) but Professor Matthews acknowledged the source genuinely was Burgess, writing in the New York Times (24 September 1922): “Now and again, in these columns I have had the occasion to employ the word “blurb”, a colourful and illuminating neologism which we owe to the verbal inventiveness of Mr Gelett Burgess”.

Burgess had released Are You a Bromide? in 1906 and while sales were encouraging, he suggested to his publishers (BW Huebsch) that each of the attendees and the upcoming industry dinner should receive a copy with a “special edition” dust cover.  For this, Burgess used the picture of a young lady who had appeared in an advertisement for dental services, snapped in the act of shouting.  It was at the time common for publishers to use pictures of attractive young ladies for book covers, even if the image was entirely unrelated to the tome’s content, the object being to attract a male readership.  Burgess dubbed his purloined model “Miss Belinda Blurb” and claimed she had been photographed “in the act of blurbing”; mid-blurb as it were.

Are you a Bromide? (Publisher's special edition, 1907).

The dust cover was headed with the words “YES, this is a “BLURB”! All the Other Publishers commit them. Why Shouldn’t We?” and knowing a blurb should not in moderation do what can be done in excess, went on to gush about the literary excellence of his book in rather the manner a used car salesman might extol the virtues of some clapped-out car in the corner of the yard.  His blurb concluded “This book is the Proud Purple Penultimate!”  The industry must have been inspired because the blurb has become entrenched, common in fiction and non-fiction alike and the use of the concept can be seen in film, television, social media and just about anywhere there’s a desire to temp a viewer.  Indeed, the whole idea of “clickbait” (something which tells enough to tantalize but not enough to satisfy without delving deeper) is a functional application of a blurb.  Depending on the source, the inspiration for the word came from either (1) the sound made by a book as it falls to the floor, (2) the sound of a bird chirping or (3) an amalgam of “burp” & “blather”.  The author left no clue.

In his book, Burgess innovated further, re-purposing the word "bromide".  In inorganic chemistry, a bromide is a binary compound of bromine and some other element or radical, the construct being brom- (an alternative form of bromo- (used preceding a vowel) which described a substance containing bromine (from the French brome, from the Ancient Greek βρῶμος (brômos) (stink)) + ide (the suffix used in chemistry to describe substances comprising two or more related compounds.  However, early in the twentieth century, Bromide was a trade name for a widely available medicine, taken as a sedative and in some cases prescribed to diminish “an excessive sexual appetite”.  It was the sedating aspect which Burgess picked up to describe someone tiresome and given to trite remarks, explaining “a bromide” was one “…who does his thinking by syndicate and goes with the crowd” and was thus boring and banal.  A bromine’s antonym was, he helpfully advised, a “sulphite”.  Unfortunately, while blurb flourished, bromide & sulphites as binary descriptors of the human condition have vanished from the vernacular.

Lindsay Lohan with body double during shooting for Irish Wish (Netflix, due for release in 2023).  The car is a Triumph TR4.

Nteflix's blurb for Irish Wish: Always a bridesmaid, never a bride — unless, of course, your best friend gets engaged to the love of your life, you make a spontaneous wish for true love, and then magically wake up as the bride-to-be.  That’s the supernatural, romantic pickle Lindsay Lohan (Mean Girls, The Parent Trap) finds herself in upcoming romantic comedy, Irish Wish.  Set in the rolling green moors of Ireland, the movie sees Lohan's Maddie learn her dreams for true love might not be what she imagined and that her soulmate may well be a different person than she originally expected. Apparently magic wishes are quite insightful.

Blurb Your Enthusiasm (2023, distributed by Simon & Schuster).

Louise Willder (b 1972) has for a quarter century been a copywriter for Penguin, in that time composing some 5000 blurbs, each a two-hundred-odd word piece which aims both to inform and tempt a purchase.  Her non-fiction debut Blurb Your Enthusiasm is not only a review of the classic blurbs (the good, the bad and the seriously demented) but also an analysis of the trends in the structure of blurbs and the subtle shifts in their emphasis although, over the centuries, the purpose seems not to have changed.  Ms Willder also documents the nuances of the blurb, the English tendency to understatement, the hyperbolic nature of Americans and the distaste the French evidently have of having to say anything which might disclose the blurb’s vulgar commercial purpose, tracing over time how changing attitudes and societal mores mean what’s now written of a nineteenth century classic is very different to when first it was published.  Inevitably too, there are the sexual politics of authorship and publishing and blurbs can reveal as much by the odd hint or what’s left unsaid than what actually appears on a dust cover.  Academics and reviewers have perhaps neglected the blurb because traditionally they've often been dismissed as mere advertising but, unless the author’s name or the subject matter is enough of a draw, even more than a cover illustration or title, it’s the blurb which can close the sale and collectively, they’re doubtlessly more widely read than reviews.  Blurb Your Enthusiasm is highly recommended.

Founded in New York City in 1924 by Richard L Simon (1899–1960) & Max Lincoln Schuster (1897–1970), Simon & Schuster was in 2023 acquired by private equity company KKR (Kohlberg Kravis Roberts & Co).

In 2025, there emerged an indication there was, at least in one corner of the publishing industry a push-back against what might be called the “I’ll scratch your back if you scratch mine” blurb with the  publisher of Simon & Schuster’s flagship imprint in the US announcing it will “no longer require authors to obtain blurbs for their books”.  Revealed in an essay in Publishers Weekly, it was explained that while Simon & Schuster never had “a formal mandatory policy” about the matter, a culture had evolved to make blurbs “tacitly expected” and the responsibility of harvesting them from famous writers, celebrities and such devolved upon authors, their agents & editors.  The publishing house rejected the notion the blurb “production line” is “what makes the book business so special: the collegiality of authors and their willingness to support one another”, arguing the very ubiquity of the things had become “…incredibly damaging to what should be the industry’s ultimate goal: producing books of the highest possible quality.”  Memorably, Simon & Schuster’s critique of “authors feeling obliged to write blurbs for their friends” was summed up in the phrase: “an incestuous and unmeritocratic literary ecosystem that often rewards connections over talent.”  Students of the blurb will of course be disappointed if this becomes a trend and among authors it must have been fun to cast an eye over new releases just to try to work out if one individual was no longer on speaking terms with another but more practically, others did observe that while blurbs may be of marginal interest to those browsing the shelves, it was understood booksellers could be influenced to increase their orders if a book seems “well-blurbed”.  However, even if Simon & Schuster are no longer giving authors a tacit “nudge”, it may be many remain prolific blurb writers because it's a very cheap way to keep one’s brand-recognition on the shelves and up to date.

Catharsis

Catharsis (pronounced kuh-thahr-sis)

(1) The purging of the emotions or relieving of emotional tensions, especially through certain kinds of art, as tragedy or music.

(2) In psychiatry, a form of psychoanalysis or psychotherapy that encourages or permits the discharge of repressed, pent-up, socially unacceptable affects.

(3) The discharge of pent-up emotions so as to result in the alleviation of symptoms or the permanent relief of the condition.

(4) In Aristotelian literary criticism, the purging or purification of the emotions through the evocation of pity and fear, as in tragedy.

(5) In medicine, purgation, especially of the bowels.

1770: From the New Latin catharsis, from the Ancient Greek kátharsis (a cleansing) equivalent to kathar, variant stem of kathaírein (to cleanse, purge, purify), from katharós (pure, clear of dirt, clean, spotless, open, free, clear of shame or guilt, purified) + sis.    Root was the Medieval Latin Catharī (the Pure), from the Byzantine Greek καθαροί or katharoí (the Pure), plural of καθαρός (katharós) (pure).  It was probably Aristotle (384-322 BC) who was most influential in having catharsis assume its common, modern meaning: “the purging or purification of the emotions through the evocation of pity and fear, as in tragedy”.  It was in chapter VI of his Περὶ ποιητικῆς (Peri poietikês) (Poetics) he used the word in his definition of “tragedy” and although scholars have for centuries (inconclusively) debated exactly what he meant, the critical sentence was: “Tragedy through pity and fear effects a purgation of such emotions.”  The orthodoxy has long been his idea was: the tragedy having aroused in the viewer powerful feelings, it has also a therapeutic effect for after the storm and climax comes calm, a sense of release from tension, of calm (stuff purged from mind and soul).  Aristotle's Poetics remains the earliest work of Greek dramatic theory known to have survived and the first extant philosophical treatise solely to focus on literary theory, many of the definitional terms (author, poet, comedy, tragedy etc) still used today in his original sense.  In a way, he may even have been the one to have established the notion of literary theory as an idea or discipline so the work was seminal and he can’t be blamed for postmodernism.

Most of the extended senses found in Modern English are of unknown origin, the original sense from 1770 being "a bodily purging" (especially of the bowels), then an important aspect of medical practice.  After 1872 it came to be applied to emotions when it was referred to as "a purging through vicarious experience"; the psychotherapy sense first recorded in 1909 in Abraham Brill's (1874–1948) translation of Sigmund Freud's (1856–1939) Selected Papers on Hysteria  (Dr Brill’s translation the first of Freud into English).  The alternative spelling cathartick went extinct in the mid-nineteenth century while the adjective cathartic dates from its use in medical literature in the 1610s in the sense of preparations claimed to be "purgative; purifying"; more general use noted by the 1670s.  Presumably, the cures proved efficacious because the adjective cathartical soon emerged, existing also in the plural as the noun catharticals (laxatives; purging made literal).  Cathartine was a hypothetical substance once imagined to cause the bitterness and purgativeness of the dried leaves or pods of senna plants (sennapod tea remains a popular mild laxative).  Catharsis is a noun, cathart is a verb, cathartanticatharticic & anticathartic are nouns & adjectives; the noun plural is catharses.  The specialized uses in medicine include anticathartic (preventing a purging), anacathartic (inducing vomiting), emetocathartic (that is emetic (inducing nausea & vomiting) and cathartic) and hemocathartic (that serves to cleanse the blood).

The term “Catherine wheel” was originally from the early thirteenth century and described a torture device, the spiked wheel on which (according to some versions of what is thought to be a most dubious tale) the legendary virgin Saint Catherine of Alexandria was in 307 tortured and martyred by the pagan Marcus Aurelius Valerius Maxentius (circa 283–312; a Roman emperor, 306-312), thus becoming, in the associative way the Church did these things, patron saint of spinners.  She was a most popular saint in medieval times and popularized the name Catherine (and its variations), the favor enduring to this day.  It was applied from 1760 to a kind of firework which shot flame from a revolving spiral tube, creating the shape of a spinning wheel.

The modern catharsis is a public event, best enjoyed after emerging from rehab:  Lindsay Lohan (b 1986) and Oprah Winfrey (b 1954), 2013. 

Cathar (religious puritan (implied in Catharism)), dates from the 1570s and was from the Medieval Latin Cathari (the Pure), the name taken by the Novatians and other Christian sects, from the New Testament Greek katharizein (to make clean), from the Ancient Greek katharós (pure).  It was applied particularly to the twelfth century sects (Albigenses etc) in Languedoc and the Piedmont which denied and defied the authority of the pope.  The feminine proper name Catherine is from the French Catherine, from the Medieval Latin Katerina, from the Classical Latin Ecaterina, from the Ancient Greek Aikaterine.  The -h- was introduced in the sixteenth century, probably a tribute in folk etymology from the Greek katharos (pure).  Familiar in Modern English also as Katherine, Kate, Cate and other variations, the initial Greek vowel preserved in the Russian form Ekaterina.  For reasons unknown, Catherine began to be used as a type of pear in the 1640s. 

Of the Cathars: Catharism

With origins in Persia and the Byzantine Empire, Catharism was a dualist (or Gnostic revival) fork of Christianity, the movement most active during the twelfth and thirteenth centuries in what is now northern Italy and southern France.  It was not a good time to be promoting the notion of two Gods, one good, the other evil; this dualism was however the essential core of Cathar beliefs.  The good God was the God of the New Testament and the creator of the spiritual realm, contrasted with the evil Old Testament God, creator of the physical world and this being many Cathars (and not a few of their persecutors) identified as Satan.  It was an exacting creed in which all visible matter (including the human body), was created by the evil god and therefore tainted with sin.  Taint might be an understatement; Cathars thought human spirits were the lost spirits of angels trapped within the physical creation of the evil god, destined to be reincarnated until they achieved salvation through what they called the consolamentum, a highly ritualized form of baptism.

The Holy See's foreign policy when the pope did have a few divisions: The papal army, the Cathars & the Albigensian Crusade.

All this was heresy to the monotheistic Roman Catholic Church, founded on the fundamental principle of one God, the creator of all things temporal and spiritual.  The Church’s crackdown got serious during the pontificate of Innocent III (circa 1160-1216; pope 1198-1216), initially by means of political and theological persuasion but with the assassination of his emissary, Innocent abandoned diplomacy, declared his dead ambassador a martyr and launched a military operation, the twenty-year (1209-1229) Albigensian Crusadel; it was the beginning of the end of Catharism and after 1244 when the great fortress of Montsegur (near the Pyrenees) was razed, the Cathars became an underground movement, many fleeing to Italy where the persecution was milder.  The hierarchy faded but the heresy lingered until it finally it vanished early in the fifteenth century.

Simone Weil.

Simone Weil (1909-1943) was a French philosopher and political activist who, in a manner unusual among left-leaning intellectuals of the era, returned to the religion ignored in her youth and became attracted to the mystical.  Remembered for her political writings and active service in both the Spanish Civil War and occupied France, she died tragically young in the self-sacrificial manner she had lived her life.  Among the more delicate historians, (typified by Arnold Toynbee (1889-1975)), there’s often an undisguised preference for Greek over Roman but few went as far as Weil who could find no virtue in the latter and was barely less dismissive of the medieval Church.  By contrast, in the Cathars, she found exemplars of goodness although she offered few reasons and fewer still shreds of evidence for this.  Most convincing is the notion that what Weil called malheur (affliction) went beyond merely describing suffering and made of it, if not a fetish, then certainly a calling.  Weil felt there were only some able truly to experience affliction: those least deserving of suffering.  Seduced by the lure of the tragic and having trawled history, she found in the Cathars the doomed victims with whom she could identify, drawn to them as Sylvia Plath (1932-1963) was to Ted Hughes (1930–1998; Poet Laureate 1984-1998).

Simone Weil agitprop.

Although her readership remains substantially limited to those clustered around a number of academic and feminist circles, Weil’s influence on literature has been profound.  She wrote neither fiction nor poetry but in her prolific output, existing mostly in letters and notebooks (in her lifetime almost wholly unseen and edited for publication only posthumously), lay an extraordinary exploration of the contradictions and confusion of the modern world.  One gains much from reading Weil for despite her tone there’s pleasure in enjoying the lucidity and discovering an uncompromising critique of a world poisoned by the exclusivity of Christianity and its damnation of progress as heresy.  But guilt tinges the pleasure.  This tortured soul lived and died in anguish and dark despair because she knew she deserved no more in a world of where injustice had triumphed and probably forever would.  One fears that in all her brief years, she may never have felt a moment’s joy.

Litotes, meiosis & paradiastole

Litotes (pronounced lahy-tuh-teez, lit-uh-teez or lahy-toh-teez)

In formal rhetoric, a figure of speech whereby something is stated by denying its opposite, especially (though not of necessity) one in which an affirmative is expressed by the negative of its contrary (a certain class of understatement).

1650–1660: A learned borrowing from the Late Latin lītotēs, from the Ancient Greek λιτότης (litótēs) (literally “plainness” and used in the sense also of “simplicity, understatement”), from λιτός (litós) (smooth, plain, simple).  In the rules and conventions of classical rhetoric, litotes was known also as moderatour or antenantiosis; it was a device to achieve a ironic effect, emphasizing a point by stating a negative further to affirm a positive, often by the use of a double negatives.  Litotes is a noun, litotical is an adjective and litotically is an adverb; the noun plural is litotes.

Meiosis (pronounced mahy-oh-sis)

(1) In cell biology, part of the process of gamete formation, consisting of chromosome conjugation and two cell divisions, in the course of which the diploid chromosome number becomes reduced to the haploid

(2) In formal rhetoric, belittlement or notably expressive understatement.

1580–1590: From the Ancient Greek meíōsis (a lessening), the construct being meiō-, (a variant stem of meioûn (to lessen) from meíōn (less)) + -sis.  The –sis suffix was from the Ancient Greek -σις (-sis) and was used to forms noun of action), often via Latin but increasingly also from French; it had exactly the same effect as the Latin –entia and the English -ing.  Historically, the use in terms borrowed from Ancient Greek was comparatively rare but there are many modern coinages based on Ancient Greek roots, reflecting to ongoing reverence for the ancient languages.  Meiosis is a noun, meiotic is an adjective and meiotically is an adverb.

Paradiastole (pronounced par-uh-die-ast-oh-lee

In formal rhetoric, a form of euphemism in which a positive synonym is substituted for a negative word.

Circa 1640: From the Ancient Greek παραδιαστολή (paradiastolḗ), the construct being παρα- (para-) (next to, alongside) + διαστολή (diastolḗ) (separation, distinction).  Paradiastole is a noun, paradiastolic is an adjective and paradiastolically is an adverb; the noun plural is paradiastoles.

Hirohito saluting on white horse at an army parade, Yoyogi Parade Ground, Tokyo, 1933.

The use of understatement is cross-cultural and is identifiable in many languages and the English upper classes made it something of a tradition; it was never unexpected to hear some grandee refer to his forty-room country house as “the cottage” but for sheer scale, few can match Emperor Hirohito (1901-1989; Emperor (昭和天皇 (Shōwa-tennō) of Japan 1926-1989).   Having endured hearing a long succession of bad news about the state of Japanese military affairs, he learned of the defeat of his axis partner, Nazi Germany and then, the dropping of atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki.  Unlike some of the generals, admirals and politicians advising him, the emperor accepted the inevitable and on 14 August 1945, delivered a speech effectively accepting the terms of the Potsdam Declaration (26 July 1945), the Allies' demand of unconditional surrender.  It had taken two A-Bombs to summon the most memorable understatement of World War II (1939-1945):  “…the war situation has developed not necessarily to Japan's advantage...”  So, if the word “understatement” is well understood and widely practiced, why the need for “litotes”, “meiosis” & “paradiastole”, all figures of speech which are a form of understatement.  For what most people do, most of the time, there’s really no need at all and “understatement” is better because its meaning isn’t obscure, unlike the classical trio.  However, in the arcane world of literary theory and textual deconstruction, the words do have some utility to convey subtle or nuanced meanings.

Lindsay Lohan and her lawyer in court, Los Angeles, December, 2011.

A litotes is a form of understatement in which a double negative or a negation is used to affirm something positive, usually with some implication of restraint in the expression, a familiar example being “he’s not the most intelligent person I know” which people understand as “he’s a bit dim” without brutal edge and in that it’s also an applied euphemism.  It can also be used to create ambiguities in meaning, illustrated in the BBC TV comedy series Yes Minister (1980-1984) when the minister discovers his performance in office is in many places being described as “not bad” and he’s troubled because the mere phrase does not convey the meaning.  Without the context in which the words were uttered and the various non-verbal clues attached to the delivery, he has no idea whether he’s being regarded “quite good” or “not quite good enough”.  It does seem “litotes” is sometimes applied to what are, strictly speaking, an example of “meiosis”, usually in instances where what’s being described is apparently “weak or understated” but having the effect of intensification.

Boris Johnson (b 1964; UK prime-minister 2019-2022) with champagne flute (image digitally altered by In Defence of Marxism).

The nuance attached to a meiosis was it was a type of understatement downplaying the significance of something, often with the hope of creating the impression things are not as bad as they seem.  Done well, it can work:  When Harold Macmillan (1894–1986; UK prime-minister 1957-1963) casually alluded to a few “local difficulties” (the crisis engendered by the resignation of his entire team of Treasury ministers) before flying off for a tour of the Commonwealth, his words did the trick and the ructions almost immediately subsided.  Unlike litotes, the meiosis is not so associated with double negatives but is characterized by “minimizing language”.  In politics, the paradiastole is perhaps the highest form of the understatement because it’s of such utility in the deployment of that standard tool of the politician: the lie.

Donald Trump (b 1946; US president 2017-2021) on the hustings, Trump National Golf Club, Bedminster, New Jersey, August, 2024.

The paradiastole is a rhetorical device used to reframe something negative or morally questionable as something positive or at least neutral and there’s some connection with the mechanics of “Newspeak” described by George Orwell (1903-1950) in Nineteen Eighty-Four (1949) while in structural linguistics it’s defined as the “rhetorical technique of evaluative redescription”.  While most of us relate to that as “euphemism”, the paradiastole differs in that instead of being a “polite” way of referring to something, it’s used in an attempt to shift the perception of meaning.  Some paradiastoles are themselves ironic such as the use in IT to describe bugs in software as “undocumented features” but often it’s an attempt to deceive or manipulate by seeking to recast something unpleasant as favorable.

MRDA

MRDA (pronounced emm-ahr-dee-ey)

The abbreviation of “Mandy Rice-Davies Applies”, an aphorism used in law and politics to refer to any denial which is transparently self-interested.

1963: An allusion to the statement “Well he would, wouldn't he?”, said by Welsh model Mandy Rice-Davies (1944-2004) during cross-examination in a trial at the Old Bailey (the central criminal court for England & Wales) associated with the Profumo affair.

Lord Astor, Mandy Rice-Davies and the Profumo Affair

The context of Ms Rice-Davies’s answer was the question: “Are you aware that Lord Astor denies any impropriety in his relationship with you?” and the answer “Well he would, wouldn't he?” elicited from those in the court “some amusement”.  MDRA (Mandy Rice-Davies Applies) thus became in law and politics an aphorism used as “verbal shorthand” to refer to any denial which is transparently self-interested although it doesn’t of necessity imply a denial is untrue.  In general use, the fragment from the trial is often misquoted as “Well he would say that, wouldn't he?” because that better encapsulates the meaning without being misleading.

Mandy Rice-Davies (left) and Christine Keeler (right), London, 1963.  Note the leopard-print seat covers.

The Profumo affair was one of those fits of morality which from time-to-time would afflict English society in the twentieth century and was a marvellous mix of class, sex, spying & money, all things which make a good scandal especially juicy.  John Profumo (1915-2006) was the UK’s Minister for War (the UK cabinet retained the position until 1964 although it was disestablished in the US in 1947) who, then 46, was found to be conducting an adulterous affair with 19 year old topless model Christine Keeler (1942-2017) at the same time she was also enjoying trysts with a Russian spy, attached to the Soviet embassy with the cover of naval attaché.  Although there are to this day differing interpretations of the scandal, there have never been any doubts this potential Cold-War conduit between a KGB spy and Her Majesty’s Secretary of State for War represented at least a potential conflict of interest.

Dr Evatt (left), comrade Molotov (centre) and Soviet translator Alexei Pavlov, exchanging MRDAs in Russian & English, London, 1942.

MRDAs are common in courtrooms and among politicians but some became legends.  In 1954, Dr HV Evatt (1894–1965; Australian attorney-general & foreign minister 1941-1949, and leader of opposition 1951-1960), in the midst of a particularly febrile period during the Cold War, wrote a letter to comrade Vyacheslav Molotov (1890–1986; Soviet foreign minister 1939-1949 & 1953-1956) asking if allegations of Soviet espionage in Australia were true.  Comrade Molotov of course wrote back, politely denying the USSR engaged in spying anywhere.  Assured, Evatt read the letter to the parliament and the members sat for a moment stunned until, on both sides, loudly laughing.  It was a MRDA before there were MRDAs.

The Profumo affair is noted also for being at least an influence in the end of the “age of deference” in England and while that’s often probably overstated, the immediate reaction and the aftermath proved it wasn’t only across colonial Africa that a “wind of change” was blowing.  The second Lord Astor (1907–1966) was emblematic of the upper classes of England who once would have expected deference from someone like Ms Rice-Davies, someone “not of the better classes” as his lordship might have put it.  Although what came to be known as the “swinging sixties” didn’t really begin until a couple of years after the Profumo affair when the baby-boomers began to come of age, the generational shift had by then become apparent and it was something surprisingly sudden as the interest of the young switched from pop music to politics.  As recently as the 1959 election campaign, the patrician Harold Macmillan (1894–1986; UK prime-minister 1957-1963) had told the working classes “most of you have never had it so good” and for the last time they would express their gratitude to their betters, delivering the Tories an increased majority, an impressive achievement for "the last of the old Edwardians" who, upon assuming the premiership in 1957 in the wake of the Suez debacle, had told the Queen he doubted his administration would last six weeks.

In the matter of Lehrmann v Network Ten Pty Limited [2024] FCA 369

Mr Justice Lee.

Justice Michael Lee (b 1965) in April 2024 handed down one of the more anticipated judgments of recent years, finding Bruce Lehrmann (b 1995), on the civil law test of the balance of probabilities, had raped Brittany Higgins (b 1993) on the sofa in a ministerial suite in Parliament House while the victim was affected by strong drink.  Apart from the heightened public interest in the verdict, lawyers were watching closely to see if there would be encouragement for those defending themselves in defamation cases, something which had been lent unexpected strength by an earlier judgment; although the matter of rape was central to the facts, Lehrmann v Network Ten was a defamation case.  However, for those who appreciate judicial findings for their use of language, Justice Lee didn’t disappoint and although neither Ms Rice-Davies nor MRDA were mentioned in his text, as he assessed the conduct and evidence of Mr Lehrmann, they may have come to mind.

Janet Albrechtsen in her study.

In his opening remarks, the judge acknowledged the case had become a cause celebre for many and that it was best described as “an omnishambles”, the construct being the Latin omni(s) (all) + shambles, from the Middle English schamels (plural of schamel), from the Old English sċeamol & sċamul (bench, stool), from the Proto-West Germanic skamul & skamil (stool, bench), from the Vulgar Latin scamellum, from the Classical Latin scamillum (little bench, ridge), from scamnum (bench, ridge, breadth of a field).  In English, shambles enjoyed a number of meanings including “a scene of great disorder or ruin”, “a cluttered or disorganized mess”, “a scene of bloodshed, carnage or devastation” or (most evocatively), “a slaughterhouse”.  As one read the judgement one could see why the judge was drawn to the word although, in the quiet of his chambers, “clusterfuck” may have been in his thoughts as he pondered the best euphemism.  Helpfully, one of the Murdoch press’s legal commentators, The Australian’s Janet Albrechtsen (b 1966; by Barry Goldwater out of Ayn Rand) who had been one of the journalists most interested in the case, informed the word nerds omnishambles (1) dated from 2009 when it was coined for the BBC political satire The Thick Of It and (2) had endured well enough to be named the Oxford English Dictionary’s (OED) 2021 Word of the Year.  The judge's linguistic flourish was a hint of things to come in what was one of the more readable recent judgments.

Noting Mr Lehrmann’s original criminal trial on the rape charge had been aborted (after having already been delayed for reasons related to the defamation matter) because of jury misconduct with a subsequent retrial not pursued because of the prosecution’s concern about the fragile mental state of the complainant, the judge observed “Having escaped the lion’s den, Mr Lehrmann made the mistake of coming back for his hat.”  In other words, Mr Lehrmann who could have walked away with no findings against him, lured by the millions of dollars to be gained, rolled the legal dice and was found to have committed rape.  He is of course not the first to fall victim to suffer self-inflicted legal injury in not dissimilar circumstances; the writers (from different literary traditions) Oscar Wilde (1854–1900) and Jeffrey Archer (b 1940) both were convicted and imprisoned as a consequence of them having initiated libel actions.  Whether Mr Lehrmann will now face a retrial in the matter of rape is in the hands of the Australian Capital Territory’s (ACT) Director of Public Prosecutions (DPP).  In such a case, it would be necessary to prove the event happened under the usual test in criminal law: beyond reasonable doubt.  Even if that isn’t pursued by the DPP, his time in courtrooms may not be over because it’s possible he may face action because of his conduct in this trial with the handling of certain documents and another unrelated matter is pending in Queensland.

In considering the evidence offered by Mr Lehrmann, the judge appears to have found some great moments in the history of MRDAs:

Commenting on his claim to having returned (after midnight following Friday evening’s hours of convivial drinking) to his Parliament House office to write papers about the French submarines and related government matters, he observed Mr Lehrmann “…hitherto had demonstrated no outward signs of being a workaholic.”  “To remark that Mr Lehrmann was a poor witness is an exercise in understatement.”

Regarding the claim Mr Lehrmann had made to someone to whom he’d just been introduced that he was “…waiting on a clearance to come through so that he could go and work at Asis.” (the Australian Security Intelligence Service; the external intelligence service al la the UK SIS (MI6) or the US CIA (although without the assassinations… as far as is known)), the judge observed she “…kept her well-founded incredulity to herself.”, such “Walter Mitty-like imaginings” demonstrating he “…had no compunction about departing from the truth if he thought it expedient.”

Lindsay Lohan and her lawyer in court, Los Angeles, December, 2011.

The reading of the judgement was live-streamed and the passage which got the loudest chuckle was in the discussion of Mr Lehrmann’s deciding whether he found Ms Higgins attractive.  In an interview on commercial television broadcast in 2023, he’d denied finding the young lady attractive, despite the existence of comments dating from 2019 indicating the opposite.  Pausing only briefly, Justice Lee delivered this news with an arched eyebrow:  “When confronted by this inconsistency, his attempt to explain it away by suggesting the attraction he felt for Ms Higgins was ‘just like [the attraction] I can find [in] anybody else in this [court]room, irrespective of gender’ was as disconcerting as it was unconvincing.”  The judge ordered to audience to suppress their laughter.

Even regarding submarines as a likely topic over drinks, his honour was sceptical: “With the exception of Mr Lehrmann, no one who gave evidence as to their time at The Dock could recall discussing Australia’s submarine contracts with France at either table. The lack of recollection of any discussion of this topic is intuitively unsurprising.  Declaiming on the topics of who was building submarines and where they were being built was not quite the repartee one would usually expect to hear over a convivial drink on a Friday night between 20 [something]-year-olds out for a good time – even if (with respect) one would not expect the badinage of the Algonquin Round Table.” (an early twentieth century, shifting aggregation of men & women of letters who met over lunch in New York’s Algonquin Hotel, their barbs and thoughts often appearing in their newspaper & magazine columns; they dubbed themselves “The Vicious Circle” and were a sort of Cliveden set without the politics.  Cliveden was a stately home in Buckinghamshire, the country seat of Lord Astor and the scene of many of the events central to the Profumo affair).

The judge was forensic in his deconstruction of Mt Lehrmann’s MRDA he returned to Parliament House after being out drinking with Ms Higgins and others in order to retrieve his keys: “If the reason Mr Lehrmann needed to return to Parliament House was to collect his keys, he could have texted his girlfriend to have her meet him at the door or called her.  Mr Lehrmann asks me to accept the proposition that it was ‘a process to get in’ to his shared flat and that to avoid this complication, he preferred to: (a) go out of his way to go back to work in the early hours; (b) lie to Parliament House security; (c) sign the necessary register; (d) be issued with a pass; (e) go through a metal detector; (f) be escorted by a security guard to his office; (g) obtain his keys from his office; (h) book another Uber; (i) go back through a Parliamentary exit; (j) meet the ride-share car; and then (k) ride home.”

Bruce Lehrmann leaving the court after the verdict was delivered.

In psychiatry, distinction is made between the “habitual” and “compulsive” liar and while this wasn’t something Justice Lee explored, he did in one passage sum up his assessment of the likely relationship to truth in anything Mr Lehrmann might say: “I do not think Mr Lehrmann is a compulsive liar, and some of the untruths he told during his evidence may sometimes have been due to carelessness and confusion, but I am satisfied that in important respects he told deliberate lies. I would not accept anything he said except where it amounted to an admission, accorded with the inherent probabilities, or was corroborated by a contemporaneous document or a witness whose evidence I accept.”

One fun footnote from the case was a non-substantive matter, Ms Lisa Wilkinson (b 1959), the Network 10 journalist at the centre of the defamation claim, objecting to being characterized as a “tabloid journalist”.  It transpired her employment history included stints with Dolly, the Australian Women’s Weekly and commercial television including the Beauty & the Beast show.  Unfortunately, she wasn’t asked to define what she thought “tabloid journalism” meant; perhaps Justice Lee decided he’d heard enough MRDAs that day.

On the basis that, on the balance of probabilities, Mr Lehrmann did rape Ms Higgins, his claim for damages against Network Ten for defamatory material earlier broadcast was dismissed.  The judge found the material indeed had the capacity to defame but because the imputations substantially were true, their defense was sustained.  So, the only millions of dollars now to be discussed concern the legal costs: who is to pay whom, the judge asking the party’s submission be handed to the court by 22 April.  Mr Lehrmann’s legal team has not indicated if they’re contemplating an appeal.

Despite many opportunities, Peter Dutton (b 1970; leader of the opposition and leader of the Australian Liberal Party since May 2022) has never denied being a Freemason.