‘Power structure’ biffo

Uninvited burden on the Australian taxpayer Behrouz Beshani recently was gifted $125,000 by the woke judges of the Victorian Premier’s Literary Awards, who decided the entry condition that specifies contestants be legally resident in Australia didn’t count if they didn’t want it to. With authors of the four spurned and entirely legal entries unlikely to protest the decision, as that would mean no more invitations to writers festivals and “peers” looking askance during the next round of Australia Council handouts, they probably will not wish to dwell on a recent example of Mr Beshani’s command of tweeted English. Here it is:

We are not embarrassed of our bare bodies. Our flesh and bones are our political and philosophical manifesto. Our bare bodies have been the subject of your political games for years. Soon these bare lives will shatter your power structures by exposing your violence.

Mr Beshani, who has lately embraced the Christlike ideal in personal grooming, also shared a selfie of just such a hunk of power-structure-shattering man flesh. Luckily, with that prize money on the way, his tobacco habit won’t need further taxpayer support.

Worth noting is that while Premier Dan Andrews’ judges ignored both the residency condition and the stipulation that works be written in English, rather than professionally translated from Farsi, the Walkley Awards book judges couldn’t quite bring themselves to break their own rules, as the AFR‘s Mariam Robin reports.

When even the Walkleys can shame your own standards of conduct, you probably don’t have any at all.