What the fuck, Australia?

This post discusses domestic violence.

And contains swearing.

Lots of swearing.

In the last few months, the racism and sexism and misogyny and vileness in our society have all come to the surface like a nasty boil:

Australia, this is you right now. If this grosses you out, imagine what I saw while looking for it. Image: Mental bleach

First it was racism, with a 13-year-old girl calling AFL player Adam Goodes an ape, then Eddie McGuire’s King Kong comments. And all those videos of people being arseholes on public transport. And today, more racist dickheads at an NRL game.

Then there’s the menu at Mal Brough’s fundraiser, and Socceroos coach Holger Osieck saying women should shut up in public. His apology was just a clusterfuck of wrong. Someone should tell him, in small words so his little brain can understand, that telling your wife to shut up, and saying “I’m still pretty happy with my wife so everything is fine”, doesn’t actually indicate “a lot of respect for women”. Sort of the opposite, really.

And there’s the bunch of idiots in the armed forces calling themselves the “Jedi Council” (what, are they 13 years old?). And Howard Sattler’s disgraceful questioning of the Prime Minister, and Piers Akerman repeating it all on ABC tv.

And we have News Ltd reporting that a 15-year-old girl has attempted suicide and the geniuses there put the story in the GLOBAL GOSSIP section (I’m not linking to it). She’s a child, they shouldn’t be reporting it in the first place. For fuck’s sake, what the hell is wrong with people?

Then we have the decision by The Mirror to publish a fucking NINE image photo gallery of Charles Saatchi assaulting Nigella Lawson. In Australia, News Ltd and Fairfax both republished the images, thereby furthering her distress. Hopefully I’m not doing the same by writing about the appalling coverage. Dailytelegraph.com.au and News.com.au even went with a cutesy headline calling him “hubbie”. Didn’t ANYONE in those newsrooms say “hey, we’re just hurting her more if we publish the images”? Are their brains just painted onto the inside of their skulls?

This morning 3AW radio host Dee Dee Dunleavy called for a boycott of Nigella Lawson’s products unless she takes a stand against domestic violence. What. The. Actual. Fuck? By the afternoon she’d issued a clarification, saying she wasn’t calling for a boycott. But what else does “If you want us to buy your books and watch your shows on how to run our kitchens, then we need you to make a stand on domestic violence” mean, other than to say we’re not going to buy your stuff unless you do what we want, aka a boycott. And then issuing a clarification instead of an apology, which should have said “I didn’t realise that’s what I was saying but that’s what those words mean and I should never have put pressure on a domestic violence victim to be a public spokesperson and I am so very very sorry for what I said and I apologise to everyone”.

It never ceases to amaze me that people who use words for a living think so little about those words. Another example is the wording of the link to the images in Dunleavy’s post:

Dunleavy’s warning misses the point.

Trigger warnings are good. Shame there was a complete lack of thought for how distressing it might be to have the photos republished around the world.

Just because she is famous, doesn’t mean she “owes” us to be a spokesperson. In fact, at the moment we owe her. We owe her because we gawked at the photos. We owe her because all of the reporting is about her and not about Saatchi, just like it always is when Australian journalists report violence against women. We owe her because we’re writing opinion pieces and blog posts about her private hurt – this one included, and I don’t know how can I point at the coverage and yell THIS IS SO FUCKING WRONG without being just as bad as everyone else.

So. What do we do now? I don’t have any solutions but I do have a lot of swearing.

On the positive side, it’s a massive YES THE FUCK WE DO to everyone who says “Australia doesn’t have a racism and sexism problem”. It’s kinda hard to pretend it doesn’t exist now.

But on the negative side, I AM SO ANGRY AND I DON’T KNOW WHAT TO DO.

Offensive letters

Thankfully I missed the Andrew “I’m a racist cunt” Johns story over the weekend – ah, the joy that comes from great company, cold weather and a thousand bottles of red. Turns out Andrew “I’m a racist cunt” Johns called fellow player Greg Inglis a “black cunt”. Apparently Johns has also made racist comments about Polynesian players. But I think these two letters in today’s Sydney Morning Herald sum it up perfectly:

It’s a shame there are no women in the Blues to point out that racism was not the only form of discrimination in Andrew Johns’s remarks.
Barbara Kendall Newport

Andrew Johns used two-words to describe Greg Inglis. Why is all the outrage over the printable one?
Pip Denton Guildford

At work, instead of fuck, shit, dickhead, cunt in quotes or reader comments, we have to use f**k, s**t, d***head, c**t. So apparently uc, hi, ick, and un are really offensive letters. Now, I understand that news has a G rating (PG on certain stories), but if you allow c**t, why not just allow the entire word? Obviously readers know what the word is. They say it in their heads when they read it. It’s such a halfarsed thing to do – “ooh, we’ll allow you to swear, but we’ll take out some of the letters”. How does that make it any better?

2001: A racist odyssey

Ok, so the pun on the title didn’t really work, until I remembered that the sequel to 2001: A Space Odyssey is 2010: Odyssey Two, and what we have here folks is a wonderful piece of synchronicity, with two federal elections run on racism. Oops, sorry, “illegal immigration” – which doesn’t exist, by the way, because it’s not illegal to go to another country and claim asylum.

Fuck, this place has become The news with nipples and Tony Abbott, and apologies Lexy but I really have to blog about him again:

I’m going to ignore the fact that while he goes on and on and on about “real action” he has so far not offered any “real action”. There’s a vague threat to cut public service jobs and stop boat people – because that’s what Jesus would do – but why let details get in the way of a good scare campaign?

I get the feeling that between now and the federal election, Australia is going to get ugly again. We don’t need Pauline Hanson and One Nation anymore, because the new racism – cultural intolerance – is now perfectly acceptable and perfectly mainstream.

Thing is, I reckon that most people talking about foreigners being bad for social harmony aren’t even aware that it is a form of racism. And I also suspect that many of the commenters on news websites saying “oh, won’t someone think of the water crisis, and the housing affordability crisis” are using these issues as a cover for their desire to keep non-whites out. Seriously, if you’re that worried about water resources then start lobbying very fucking loudly for an end to flushing our toilets with drinking water. If housing affordability bothers you (and I say this as a renter with little chance of having a mortgage before I’m 45, if ever, probably never), then lobby even louder for a limit on the number of investment properties someone can own. How many houses do you really fucking need?

Anyway, to end on a lighter note – and before I get even more incoherent – I simply must include this:

Are Aussie racists stupid too?

Well, it does look that way, at least as far as the Hey hey it’s Saturday blackface story goes.

At the Herald Sun, Colin Vickery was hammered in an opinion piece by readers for saying Hey Hey is copping flak and rightly so:

JP of Sydney Posted at 12:43 PM Today
Your poll has over a 1000 votes and 75% believe it wasn’t racist and nor do I. Lighten up and stop being some politically correct do gooder. I am sick of people like you trying to stamp your moral ground on us. Obviously a Labor leftie you also had to mention Rudd and his useless ‘sorry’ to the ‘saved’ generation. You are a twit.

And:

martin of bayside Posted at 12:58 PM Today
Colin Vickery — You idiot ==That skit was NOT racist in AUSTRALIA it only became racist because there was a yank on the show and his reaction was way of the line for Australia ==just look back at newman and ali ==So you want every country to take up the USA standards == == How about doing us a favor you go and live there.

Yahoo readers spewed the standard vitriol towards Harry Connick Jr, mainly telling him to go home, but some perversely calling him the racist. Except for a voice in the ugly wilderness called Baker:

No wonder Australia is always high up there as one of the most racist countries in the world! 80% think it was Ok because they are white and do not know what it feels like to be discriminated against because of the colour of your skin. Let black people and other non whites make fun of themselves.

Then there’s all the readers at News.com.au SHOUTING IN CAPITALS that the skit wasn’t racist and that political correctness has gone mad. Check out poor, misguided reader Sigi:

remember the black and white ministrial show on australian television, this was americans dress and face painted, it seems the americans and australians just see no humor and can’t laugh at anything any more. And didn’t a simillar skit get done with the Lady co-host years ago. I think Micheal Jackson would be proud to think that he is remember, with such good humor by people he knew.
Posted by: sigi of qld 3:28pm today

At 4.32pm, the News.com.au poll results were:

Was Hey Hey’s Jackson Jive skit tasteless and racist?

Yes 27% (2589 votes)

No 72% (6748 votes)

Clearly we’ve got a long, long way to go.