It is often said that Australia is a cultural clone of the United States, albeit ten years behind. That seems to have been whittled down to a neat two days as we furrow our brows and wring our hands over our historical simulacra as the Americans squabble over theirs.
That’s progress, right there.
In the midst of angry debate in the US about whether statues of confederate generals should stay or go, ABC journalist, Stan Grant, wanted the wording of a plaque below a huge image of Captain James Cook amended. Grant’s argument was almost as pointless and futile as actually standing in front of Cook’s statue and quibbling with it.
Before you knew it there was a hail of angry Op-Eds amid visions of tow ropes attached to utes pulling down statues across the nation.
Full column here.
White babies are evil:
ACLU Apologizes For Tweeting Photo Of White Baby With US Flag
http://dailycaller.com/2017/08/23/aclu-apologizes-for-tweeting-photo-of-white-baby-with-u-s-flag/
In a tweet sent Wednesday afternoon, the ACLU captioned a photo of a blonde-haired Caucasian child wearing a free speech onesie and waving a flag, “This is the future that ACLU members want.”
Leftists were furious over the post because they believed it endorsed white supremacy.
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These people are insane.
these insane people are people eligible to vote. Yay!
I see Jack the Insider is catching up with his mate, Mike Bowers for the Insider’s. I can almost see Bowers sight gag but I won’t spoil it for anyone – actually it may not even happen!
Little secret, it has been shot and I believe edited and is ready to roll.
The miracle of television never fails to amaze me.
Cold again here tomorrow. Snow to 200m. May be a plan to snuggle in and watch Insiders from the bed!!
I dread the lead up to the constitutional recognition changes.
We are going to be inundated with how bad the early early settlers were in what was a very nasty assymetrical war which was dealt with by 18th century morals.
As to statues, one needs to be reminded of the good and the bad in history. Pretty well every historical figure would not have made it in today’s PC enviornment
and leave the statue of KB outside the G alone, when the head of the AFL is the same hue as POTUS, that resembling a Berocca urination, you can tear it down.
Footy tips please.
Chris Newman to Saigon for the Grand Final.
I’m in. EPL, too.
Could you take Sam Newman as well and ‘accidentally’ leave him there?
Would happily take Sam as a guest Rhys but more than happy to have Chris as our guest. Great player and skipper for Richmond and will be successful in the coaching caper.
You say in your column Mr Insider, “Maybe we all should have a Bex and a lie down”. An iconic Aussie saying I think made famous by Sydney Radio Announcer John Laws when he had a stressful caller if my memory serves me right. Bex of course long gone off our shelves due to health concerns but they sold like hot dogs 30 years ago! I myself had a couple, and a good lie down too!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BF6ffbz70SY
Back in the 50’s the next door neighbour used to get the shakes around 10:00 am. She went inside and had a bex and was fine.
I think people overdosed on them JackSprat and they were causing kidney failure amongst other things. Nice buzz with a can of Coke I found. Cheers
Bex and Vincent’s Powders as I recall JS, the drugs of choice for the housewives in the fifties and sixties. Mothers little helpers was the term used. From memory they were dispensed at local stores, as I recall having to do a runner down to the local shop when mum was “running low”.
Although the fifties was before my time, I remember the “Bex is better” ad. It ws banned because it’s
When I played cards for a living in Double Bay, I remember there was a GP who used to reply with the line “take two aspirin and lie down” every time he was interrupted during a hand. I’m glad he wasn’t my doctor.
When I was an apprentice at Leyland, in the late 60’s and early 70’s the ladies who made the wiring looms would line up at the bubbler at smoko every break and down a powder. Vincents seemed to be the hit of choice at Leyland. Some of the ladies would down a box of powders in 2 days. They’re probably all dead from kidney failure now.
And we want to legalize more drugs 🙂
Mildred: Hey, Johnny, what are you rebelling against?
Johnny: What’ve you got?
Looking forward to the day when these ‘revolutionaries’ feel the real weight of history upon them when a statue topples down on their repressed skulls.
Now please somebody build me a Roz Ward statue so I can loosen my bowels over it.
Glad you mentioned that bloody awful Christiano Ronaldo effort, bit of karma for such a vain man I guess.
I notice that some dill brain is now saying Nelsons Column should be removed and yet another dill brain is saying that Fathers Day should be renamed Persons Day so as not to offend those who don’t have a father, should Mothers Day also be renamed…….she didn’t mention that one?
My only opinion about Warnies statue is that there should have been a can of baked beans visable somewhere and might I add that I hope the pigeons make free with that bloody awful cloud thingy that megalomaniac Clover Moore wants to put up in the city all $13,500,000 of it…….there, I’m done
I was in London some years ago Tracy, and Lord Nelson’s Column had been cordoned off for about two years while they blasted the pigeon poo off his head and shoulders. Lower level intelligencia than pigeons would now have the whole state removed.
A better solution would be a new statue to modernist leftie lunacy. I recon I know where the pigeons would rather drop their poo.
This business of wanting to tear down statues etc because they are not PC is just appalling, Jack. It’s history, it’s life, it’s this planet for God’s sake. We are who we are – who we have evolved into. Nothing can change that – history is so important and so interesting.
Walk through a country like Spain, for example. The Romans, Vikings, Moors, Christians have all left wonderful reminders of their tenancy. That’s what makes them so interesting to visit.
Are we to destroy all that and live in a bleak, sterile ”now” world. Sheesh, I hope not.
Off to France next week. Looking forward to a bit of history!! Lots of cathedrals, Roman ruins, walks, etc – bring it on……
Boadicea, I think it depends on whether the people directly affected are still around. It may be fascinating now to see an ancient statue of Attila the Hun, but maybe less so had your entire family been disembowelled by him the previous week.
I’m sure you’ve noticed that Indigenous Australians are still around, and the inscription Stan Grant referred to is an affront to them and attempts to deny their existence, a deliberate lie designed to consolidate territorial claims and known to be false even by those spreading it. IMO his suggestion of removing the inscription but leaving the statue is a good compromise.
The so-called Confederate monuments that started this debate were actually anti-civil-rights propaganda erected well after the Civil War, intended to intimidate African-Americans and still standing as a daily insult to them. The decisions to take them down were made by democratically-elected local governments. The opposition came from gun-toting neo-Nazis. Think about that.
There is a place for leaving such things intact – the museum at Auschwitz is a good example.
As I’ve mentioned before, we don’t hear these complaints about the Iraqis toppling statues of Saddam, nor should we. As JTI writes, these statues are not real history so much as self-promotion by those with the power and resources to do so.
Agree one can understand a persecuted mob tearing down a statue of the persecutor in a war torn, fraught scenario.
But the deliberate amendment of plinths and so on in peacetime in a peaceful country is ridiculous.
But then I’m not too comfortable in what seems to me to be an increasingly PC society to a point where it seems ridiculous at times.
John, we are rapidly becoming a collection of minority groups.
There is always going to be some minority group offended.
Take the statues down and you offend the descendents of those who settled this country – a group rapidly becoming a minority. But there again, their feelings do not matter, do they? Being white and all that.
.I would suggest we look to the future because, if we get wrapped up in the past, there will be no future.
Maybe for the new Robert Towns statue in Townsville they need the inscription: A career blackbirder who won the plot that Townsville was built on in a game of poker.
Essentially the kind of career a puritan entrepreneur might have had a hundred years earlier.
Plenty of places named after Patrick Logan on the southside, too, and he was as vicious a tyrant as they come.
Rhys, what makes you think today’s people who are ensuring your future are any different?
There is that old joke: “Great! Only this time you hold the pigeon down and I’ll…”
Is there a statue of Cook in Hawaii with an inscription below that reads, “Tasted a little bit like chicken”?
Well played Sir!
He was actually venerated by the people who killed him. They cleaned the body, baked it to remove the skin, leaving just the bones.
Born Cook died cooked.
The Hawaiins were just out to prove who was the better cook.
You guys are being quite sharp – good work! 🙂
Cook wasn’t cooked, but was salted, smoked and cured. Then they sliced him thinly and had him on bread and that’s why they are called the Sandwich Islands. There is a Cook Monument under the sea, immune to graffitists.
Alas, no last hurrah for the Blues Jack. Season summary – vast improvement with brighter prospects for next year. Cats finished with a flourish but Crows would have to lose by a big margin to lose the Minor Prem .. Sunday games will decide the 8. D’s could fall out of the 8 if Bombers win, and either Saints or Eagles also win. Some are reading brochures, some biting fingernails. Tipping comp Minor Premier undecided. It looked like Gryzly was going to get it in a hand canter but some late mail has arrived.
Dwight, Got a close look at the ‘yabby claw’ and it is the wreckage of a nudge bar. It was damaged when The Deputy had tried to tow a car out of a bog backwards and some of it had to be cut off. The Sheriff was highly amused I had thought it some device for catching fleeing vehicles, and was keen to tell the Deputy this, and add further to his offsider’s discomfort. The little library in Wabeno is the most interesting public building I’ve seen in the US. I get my export permits on Tuesday, and then head home. Already some of the trees are changing color. Been a delight exploring this corner of the USA. WI is a lot more than black and white cows and cheese. Fishing tip – they go off the bite during an eclipse.
That library is the oldest building in town. I think they moved it to the site in the early 20s.