http://www.thepunch.com.au/author-bios/nigel-bowen/ Despite having several university degrees, Nigel Bowen has spent the last decade writing for men’s magazines and is currently Chief Subeditor of GQ Australia. A gloomy Generation Xer deeply aggrieved by the chokehold the baby boomers have maintained on the levers of power for the last four decades, he nonetheless can’t kick his shameful fascination with the Fifties and Sixties. He interviewed Matthew Weiner, the genius behind Mad Men, for the latest issue of GQ.    en Copyright 2013 The Punch penberthyd@newsltd.com.au penberthyd@newsltd.com.au Thu, 14 Mar 2013 19:00:10 +0000 Thu, 14 Mar 2013 19:00:10 +0000 Politics, opinion, world news, sports news, latest news, views, Barack Obama, Kevin Rudd, Julia Gillard, Nathan Rees, Malcolm Turnbull, Peter Garrett, Barnaby Joyce, Australian, federal politics, opinion polls, election, The Punch, thepunch, punch ExpressionEngine 1.6.7 http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/tech/rss 15 http://www.thepunch.com.au/images/punch-logo-rss.png http://www.thepunch.com.au/ 144 70 Politics, political opinion, world news, sports news and the latest news and views updated live, daily on The Punch - Australia's best conversation. Search The Punch keywords http://www.thepunch.com.au/search/ http://www.thepunch.com.au/articles/Life-will-be-swede-when-I-pen-my-allegorical-bestseller/ It’s every hack journo’s secret fantasy to pen a novel. Given that it can only be a matter of months until some upper-management genius develops a business model for the ailing print media industry that involves we human content providers being replaced with 100 monkeys (uncomplaining langurs based in a Mumbai cubicle farm, no doubt) sat in front of 100 typewriters, I’ve decided to start work on a book that will generate me some J.K. Rowlingesque coin. It’s going to be what we literary types call “allohistory” (aka alternative history). In this genre it’s traditional to write about how things would have turned out if the Nazis won WWII but that particular mule has been whipped to death, so I’m spinning a yarn about would have happened if Sweden, following the economic shocks and stagnation of the ’70s, had lurched to the Left. feedback@thepunch.com.au (Nigel Bowen) Article http://www.thepunch.com.au/articles/Life-will-be-swede-when-I-pen-my-allegorical-bestseller/#comments http://www.thepunch.com.au/articles/Life-will-be-swede-when-I-pen-my-allegorical-bestseller/#item6520 Thu, 18 Aug 2011 19:40:36 +0000 Nigel Bowen | Author bios | The Punch http://www.thepunch.com.au/articles/is-the-pick-up-movement-mens-feminist-answer/ Ever since second-wave feminism kicked off four decades ago, people have been wondering if an equivalent movement for men would emerge. There was a short-lived media frenzy in the 90s when a handful of men took to banging on drums and declaiming bad poetry about their neglected inner warrior, but that turned out to be a false dawn. Nowadays, leaving aside those fathers’ rights groups who like to create a public nuisance while wearing ill-fitting Batman costumes, there’s really no such thing as a masculinist movement. Except maybe there is. Or at least the beginnings of one. The pick-up artist (PUA) subculture has been around in some form for two decades but it crossed over into the mainstream about six years ago. feedback@thepunch.com.au (Nigel Bowen) Article http://www.thepunch.com.au/articles/is-the-pick-up-movement-mens-feminist-answer/#comments http://www.thepunch.com.au/articles/is-the-pick-up-movement-mens-feminist-answer/#item6286 Mon, 25 Jul 2011 19:45:13 +0000 Nigel Bowen | Author bios | The Punch http://www.thepunch.com.au/articles/Warmist-or-denier-ye-shall-pay-for-your-beliefs/ The most interesting thing I’ve read all year about the climate-change debate is a book that has nothing directly to do with it. Dan Gardner’s Future Babble: Why Expert Predictions Fail and Why We Believe Them Anyway explores, well, the title pretty sums it up. Gardner runs through a laundry list of culture-shaping fears and hopes and points out that they were almost always wrong. Capitalism didn’t end up on the ash heap of history. World War I didn’t turn out to be the war to end all wars. Society wasn’t plunged into anarchy by the Y2K bug. The nightmare scenario of overpopulation Malthusians have been banging on about since 1798 is yet to play out. feedback@thepunch.com.au (Nigel Bowen) Article http://www.thepunch.com.au/articles/Warmist-or-denier-ye-shall-pay-for-your-beliefs/#comments http://www.thepunch.com.au/articles/Warmist-or-denier-ye-shall-pay-for-your-beliefs/#item6305 Sun, 17 Jul 2011 20:00:13 +0000 Nigel Bowen | Author bios | The Punch http://www.thepunch.com.au/articles/boganville-and-hipstertown-arent-so-far-apart/ A year ago, my wife and I underwent a hipster-to-bogan metamorphosis. Faced with the choice of (a) continuing to service a huge mortgage on a latte-belt two-bedder or (b) have a kid, the primal drive to propagate the species narrowly won out over the Sydneysider’s obsessive determination to hold on to primo real estate. I was under the impression I was only inner-city wanker to have ever made the schlep of shame to the suburban fringe (I’m yet to meet another) but it appears not. Priced out of more fashionable suburbs, David Nichols, an urban planning academic, bought a house in the notoriously boganish Broadmeadows in 2004. Of course, the danger of making this kind of move is you’ll go native and come to suspect the people you find yourself living among aren’t the uncivilised brutes of the popular imagination and that the community you left behind is not beyond criticism itself. feedback@thepunch.com.au (Nigel Bowen) Article http://www.thepunch.com.au/articles/boganville-and-hipstertown-arent-so-far-apart/#comments http://www.thepunch.com.au/articles/boganville-and-hipstertown-arent-so-far-apart/#item6112 Thu, 23 Jun 2011 19:55:28 +0000 Nigel Bowen | Author bios | The Punch http://www.thepunch.com.au/articles/Slaves-to-the-dumbocracy-and-getting-dumber/ A quarter of a century ago, American academic Neil Postman released a book called Amusing Ourselves to Death, which argued that television was dumbing down society in dangerous ways. Decades before Kevin Rudd used his folksy appearances on Sunrise as a launching pad to the prime ministership, Postman was warning that in a culture based on visual images, a politician’s policies were becoming far less important than whether they came across well on TV. Two books released in recent months suggest that Postman’s direst predictions may have come to pass. The first is Think: Straight Talk for Women to Stay Smart in a Dumbed-Down World by American lawyer and television commentator Lisa Bloom. feedback@thepunch.com.au (Nigel Bowen) Article http://www.thepunch.com.au/articles/Slaves-to-the-dumbocracy-and-getting-dumber/#comments http://www.thepunch.com.au/articles/Slaves-to-the-dumbocracy-and-getting-dumber/#item6040 Thu, 16 Jun 2011 19:40:40 +0000 Nigel Bowen | Author bios | The Punch http://www.thepunch.com.au/articles/its-the-return-of-the-battle-of-the-sexes/ For those of certain age (that is, old enough to have spent any time on a university campus between the early 80s and mid 90s), the controversies of the last few months - the Penny Wong meow-slur, Slutwalk, the Brocial Network, the Pippa Middleton Ass Appreciation Society Facebook page, ADF sex Skyping, Julian Assange’s alleged sexual misconduct - are like déjà vu all over again. Sure we didn’t have Skype, Facebook groups or chick-magnet online-whistleblower superstars back in those antediluvian days, but Gen X women sure knew how to put on a feminist protest. To take just one example, in 1992, when the tits-and-arse tabloid mag People dared put a woman on its cover on all fours wearing what appeared to be a dog collar, a host of women’s groups, such as Student Women Against Rampant Media Sexism (SWARMS) and People Initiating Education Campaigns Eliminating Sexism (PIECES), mobilised. A newsagency selling People was smashed up, the Park Street headquarters of Kerry Packer’s ACP, which published the mag, were occupied and huge political pressure was brought to bear on Australia’s censorship body, the Office of Film and Literature Classification, to crack down hard on porn mags (something it did, hastening the demise of several). feedback@thepunch.com.au (Nigel Bowen) Article http://www.thepunch.com.au/articles/its-the-return-of-the-battle-of-the-sexes/#comments http://www.thepunch.com.au/articles/its-the-return-of-the-battle-of-the-sexes/#item5993 Thu, 02 Jun 2011 20:00:40 +0000 Nigel Bowen | Author bios | The Punch http://www.thepunch.com.au/articles/welcome-to-gattaca-whats-in-your-genes/ There are a few things I’d like to share. I’m at greater than normal risk of developing Crohn’s disease, Tourette syndrome and losing a testicle or two to cancer. On the bright side, the odds are I’ll never develop Type 2 diabetes, rheumatoid arthritis or multiple sclerosis. My IQ and episodic memory fall into the “typical” range (go to town with that one, Punchers). Although I’m of 99 per cent European extraction, my mother’s people are Haplogroup J, which arose in the Middle East 45,000 – 50,000 years ago. On my father’s side I’m Haplogroup R1b1b2a1a2f, which most likely formed in Turkey about 20,000 years ago during the last Ice Age. How do I know all this? Did I subject myself to an exhaustive battery of medical tests and spend millions of dollars tracing my genealogy back into the mists of time? Well, no. I spat into a vial, mailed it off, then logged on to a website a few weeks later to have the mysteries of my genetic code laid bare.  feedback@thepunch.com.au (Nigel Bowen) Article http://www.thepunch.com.au/articles/welcome-to-gattaca-whats-in-your-genes/#comments http://www.thepunch.com.au/articles/welcome-to-gattaca-whats-in-your-genes/#item5924 Sun, 29 May 2011 19:50:11 +0000 Nigel Bowen | Author bios | The Punch http://www.thepunch.com.au/articles/Is-it-time-the-latte-sippers-left-the-bogans/ There has been much bipartisan rejoicing, about the Greens inability to win seats in their latte-belt stomping ground. The glee on the Right is understandable, but the champagne-popping among Labor supporters may prove to be shortsighted. As is frequently observed, the ALP finds itself in the seemingly untenable position of trying to simultaneously appeal to those who — to channel the increasingly Sarah Palinesque Julia Gillard — set their alarms early and lead purposeful, dignified lives driven by love of family and nation. And those who sleep in until 11am, fire up the breakfast bong, then amble down to a café wallpapered with Bill Henson prints of spread-eagled 13-year-olds to fill in an application for yet another round of arts funding while their same-sex partner amuses the nose-ring-sporting barista with acid-tongued denunciations of the ANZAC spirit/the music of Barnesy/hard-yakka-loving brickies and their heroic working families/baby Jesus/Don Bradman. feedback@thepunch.com.au (Nigel Bowen) Article http://www.thepunch.com.au/articles/Is-it-time-the-latte-sippers-left-the-bogans/#comments http://www.thepunch.com.au/articles/Is-it-time-the-latte-sippers-left-the-bogans/#item5571 Wed, 06 Apr 2011 19:55:04 +0000 Nigel Bowen | Author bios | The Punch http://www.thepunch.com.au/articles/was-siimon-the-original-gen-yer/ For the last quarter of a century, it’s been something of a national pastime to bag ad man Siimon Reynolds for being a wanker. But if Gen Y – a group who know a little something about being pilloried as superficial, materialistic, self-obsessed fame whores – were old enough to know who he is, they might be tempted to claim the 46-year-old as one of their own and insist he be treated with more respect. Perhaps it’s time all of us — Yers, Xers and Boomers alike — rethought our attitude towards Reynolds. For a case can be made that he is not the pretentious tool of the popular imagination, but rather a prescient pioneer who intuited where society was heading and adapted to the economic and social changes being set in motion by Thatcher, Reagan and, in Australia, Hawke and Keating, at the time he was coming of age. feedback@thepunch.com.au (Nigel Bowen) Article http://www.thepunch.com.au/articles/was-siimon-the-original-gen-yer/#comments http://www.thepunch.com.au/articles/was-siimon-the-original-gen-yer/#item5038 Thu, 03 Feb 2011 19:35:35 +0000 Nigel Bowen | Author bios | The Punch http://www.thepunch.com.au/articles/i-for-one-welcome-our-new-bogan-overlords/ Come Christmas Day, many members of the book-reading class are likely to wake up to find a copy of Things Bogans Like (TBL) in their stocking. The book was released in late October but its publicist, Nicola Pitt, is “expecting a spike in sales just before Christmas as people buy the book to give to friends and family. It’s one of those gifts that result in lively Christmas lunch conversation”. Needless to say, those having lively conversations about Things Bogans Like, which has spun off the wildly popular website of the same name, are not themselves likely to be bogans and any bogan who does stumble upon the book is unlikely to find much to laugh about. In contrast to Kath & Kim’s Jane Turner and Gina Riley, the six young men (who’ve opted to remain anonymous) behind TBL satirise what they perceive as the pretension, racism, ignorance, unabashed self-interest, clumsy social climbing, sheepish conformism, hyper consumerism and reactionary politics of Australia’s rapidly gentrifying lower orders without the tiniest sliver of empathy or affection for their targets. The vicious humour of the book is irradiated with class condescension of the let’s snigger about what those people watch (trashy current affairs programs), buy (Buddhist-themed home furnishings) and name their children (Chanel or Armani) variety. feedback@thepunch.com.au (Nigel Bowen) Article http://www.thepunch.com.au/articles/i-for-one-welcome-our-new-bogan-overlords/#comments http://www.thepunch.com.au/articles/i-for-one-welcome-our-new-bogan-overlords/#item4598 Tue, 30 Nov 2010 19:55:38 +0000 Nigel Bowen | Author bios | The Punch