Monday, November 26, 2012

A More Appropriate Australia Day Celebration



EVERY SO OFTEN adversity presents opportunities for the wise eye to spot and tonight, as White Ribbon Day draws to a close, is one of those Eureka! moments when all of inspiration’s many pieces click suddenly into place. The problem is that, with all the White Ribbon publicists  and promoters packing up their press kits and quotable social workers for another year, how will Awareness Inc., sustain itself until Earth Hour arrives in four months’ time? The answer is so straightforward, so blindingly obvious, it is a genuine wonder nobody has thought of it until now: Combine the two!

At the midway point between the two guilt-edged publicity campaigns, around the date which now marks the First Fleet’s arrival, we must have a new festival of national guilt. Ardently promoted with billboards and Lateline interviews, it will include posters and TV ads featuring men’s faces in rapid close-up, each announcing “I vow never to do violence to a woman with a power tool.”

Call it Green-Striped White Ribbon Day and it’s a keeper.

Australia Day is a bit of loss, anyway, a good day for a race riot but worth not much more than that if the Prime Minister is not in the mood for a bit of restlessness in Humpytown. So why not replace it with an official festival which members of the Caring Industrial Complex can celebrate by hectoring blameless viewers about the violence they do not commit? When the day is done, all concerned can then go back to campaigning for the more nuanced sentencing of the genuinely violent.


23 comments:

  1. I thought Guilt Days were being replaced with Apologies Day. Which reminds me, what is tomorrow's apology? I'm losing track.

    Pedro of Adelaide

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    1. We're now apologising to navy ratings for having to endure equatorial rites of passage as part of their ritualistic preparation for bloody conflict. Something to do with scrotums and shoe polish. Or in the modern lexicon, sexual assault.
      It's time the nation apologised to me for when I received my initiating Royal Flush in high school. Clearly a case of sexual assault, given that it occurred in a toilet block.

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  2. watermelon day to highlight green/liebor politicians

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  3. White Ribbon!!
    Australia Zoo is a wonderful place to visit, the management culture however enjoys the shrill message of guilt associated with the looney green.
    There I was enjoying my lecture on the evils of bauxite mining in the Steve Irwin vote buying wilderness reserve surrounded by aluminium railings, when a chap, a Senator (God help Australia) who in my opinion would look more at home surrounded by small children in a bar at Pataya Beach, tells all the men in the crowd to stand up and recite an oath against violence towards women.
    Well F$*# that! I sat with my wife and two little girls, let the guilt wash over my fellow travellers and finished my egg sandwich.
    How dare they let some F*$@wit who has allowed Fair work Australia, the great destroyer of families and family business through our Parliament lay a guilt trip on me!
    My wife was very proud of me.

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    1. Good on you Anonymous. I'd rather my husband didn't stand up for that kind of mealy mouthed crap either. The rapist animals out there aren't going to be deterred by any democratic vote. Isn't the law enough? Well actually...

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    2. Statistically, men are overwhelmingly the main victims of violence. But it's the zeitgeist to focus only on women. Violence doesn't much matter against men. Unless you are gay. Then it's an outrage. More of that zeitgeist again.

      Pedro of Adelaide

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  4. Do you think there is any chance of creating a day to support that downtrodden, abused and undervalued but stoic minority group who, despite the effluent heaped upon them continue to smile against the odds and support this society financially and emotionally... the middle aged white male? We could call it; "Appreciate the poor bastard who sacrifices most of his life for you day". Catchy eh...?

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    1. Oh get a grip Xeric, it's not that bad.

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  5. Good grief Bunyip, stop giving them ideas.

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  6. PhillipGeorge(c)2012November 27, 2012 at 8:27 AM

    Neigh Prof, Australia needs a permanent monument. A Tomb of the unknown Misogyny victim infront of the National Survivors of Misogyny Hall of Fame Museum.

    Inside the museum, I was thinking of a form of aversion therapy for budding young Abbotts. Give the five to ten year old school group children something like BenTen watch bands. If a male is talking to the student groups and any child looks at the watch nothing happens. But if a female teacher/ tour guide or the canteen lady is talking the child looks at their watch it will deliver something like a taser shock rendering them convulsive on the floor for five minutes. Of course only male students need to be issued with the watches. It will reinforce the important message of valuing the intrinsic content of everything a female authority figure has to say to them.

    The Survivors of Climate Change Scepticism Hall of Fame Museum could employ a similar technique.

    The Survivors of Shock Jock Media Campaigns Hall of Fame Museum will need to think of something else though or they might be accused of copying ideas - and it could hurt their feelings.

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    1. Elizabeth (Lizzie) B.November 27, 2012 at 6:48 PM

      Oh PG, I do like the 'Survivors of Misogyny' memorial idea. We could have an honour roll, of the living, dead and very nearly dead (the good Prof has already identified for us examples of the last two in Grattan and Summers) while Labor's Handbag Hit Squad would surely be a start for the living category.

      There could also be the Tomb of the Unknown Misogyny Sufferer, for it's like having piles, many have suffered in silence and are still suffering in extremis in our universities, our schools and right throughout our public sector, although the private sector has very little misogyny because the women there may be Liberal voters.

      Real examples of females doing it tough just because they were female, or getting short shrift from genuinely brutalising males etc, would not, by the canons of propinquity, be welcome. Far too far away from the urban cafe experience to be relevant to this little show. Muslim women of course do not suffer from misogyny because they are cultural and that, natch, is very different. This also applies to tribal aboriginal women whose heavy load is taken up for them by those noble urban identifying aborigines, some luckily culturally recognisable by their strident bushland tweets about their duskier cousins.

      It's a goer, PG. A day could be devoted to our own internationally-renowned most famous sufferer of all, PM the Hon Juliar, opening celebrations by hanging tampons around the monument in memory of all the miseries of misogyny. Walking vaginas, that US import, could also add a touch of pink colour to the occasion. No male bits, real or created, would be allowed nearby, unless genuinely certified gay. Then it's OK.

      It's a goer, PG. Australia's Greenhouse of Misogyny and its Memorial within would only cost a few billion in the right luvvie hands. Give it your imprimateur Prof. You know it's the right thing to do. Until it's built though, Parliament House will just have to suffice to fly high the standard of Australian misogyny to the world, in the capable leadership hands of our top sufferer.



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    2. What a delightful riff! Both of you are a wonderfully droll individually but when bouncing together - firing on all 8! Plaudits to you both.

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  7. Hey! The Thought Police will visit you soon, Bunyip!
    And-always remember-
    BIG SISTER IS WATCHING YOU

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  8. If the White Ribbon crowd want to prevent a backlash they need to disown left-wing opportunists who try to hijack their cause.
    For example, the slimy disgraceful Faine on ABC last Friday. He devoted all Thursday and Friday to bagging anyone who questioned the behaviour of the Altona Droner.
    He is constantly demanding “evidence” regarding the Crayfish and claims there is none (clearly he can’t read). After two hours of bleating about “evidence” on Gillard he then gives free rein to some Emily’s list slapper on talk-back to draw a long bow linking Gillard’s misogyny rant to “evidence” from – wait for it – Ann Summers that Abbott is sexist and we need to stand up against Abbott “today on White Ribbon Day when we mourn the brutal murders of two young women”.
    Faino then cut off his one conservative guest who challenged this stupid tart and let her have another five minutes of anti-Abbott ranting.
    Unfortunately, the White Ribbon people need to make clear that this sort of outrageous smearing of people for base political ends will dilute their message (if it is indeed genuine and not just another GetUp! type dog-whistle campaign).

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  9. I wasn't aware of these public pledges. I have since heard of several people being asked to sign petitions and chant public pledges.
    I am happy to advocate that individuals who commit violent crime against ANYBODY be tracked down by Plod (instead of making speeches) and sentenced properly by wet-lettuce judges.
    I refuse to accept this concept that collective declarations of guilt by the innocent is somehow a substitute for proper enforcement and punishment of a guilty minority.
    They can shove their pledge ......

    The Irish Lion

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    1. Thank you Irish Lion, I hadn't realised this was what it was about. I'd really thought it was some misguided, stupid attempt to stop them by telling them it's not nice but of course, it's just a cheaper response than real deterrents.

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    2. Elizabeth (Lizzie) B.November 27, 2012 at 6:06 PM

      I am not signing anything.

      It only encourages luvvies to create yet another stupid 'industry' of complaint.

      Real offenders should be jailed and trivalising examples should be thrown out of court.

      Men and women are different and both should learn to handle the differences without resort to physical violence. Most men want to protect women, not thump them. These good men should bear no responsibility at all for what crazy and weak men do.

      End of story.

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  10. Manually-operated tools, presumably, are ok...

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  11. or more blithely; Women are heroes [only a misogynist would condescend to call them heroine], gays are heroes, blacks are heroes, foreigners are heroes, refugees are heroes, say nothing cultural relativists are heroes, guilt trippers are heroes, self flagellating I'm guilty of not saving the planet enough survivalists are heroes, black arm banders are heroes,

    Fanfare for the Common Man - no; they're all guilty for making war, oppressing women, bashing gays, sinking refugee boats, spreading conspiracy theories, and clustering together in xenophobia groups, tree cutting, oil dumping, middle east land grabbing.

    FanFare for the Common Man, has to be renamed Fanfare for the Common Person Species - but not without equal time fanfare for Polar-Bears, Ancestral Spirit Guides, Totem Spirits, and various left out un-nameable Serpent type beings.

    CS Lewis nailed it but died before he could answer his own questions. The Abolition of Man [a generic Old English word Mann is asexual and may have come obliquely from a much older word meaning/ conveying the notion of "action of the mind"] Man resides in Mind - in other words.

    Jesus in a body, washed man's feet - the physical point of contact with the world - the act was physical and at least one metaphor for the "cleansing of mind".

    The Abolition of Man is a metaphor for the subjugation of mind - any delusion will do - the principle is subjugation.

    There is a spirit that hates men's minds. Why - because it is a platform to the Worship of God. You know? - the real One.

    See Prof. These micro rants have an intent. Commonwealth - one of those lexicographic topological indicator words - was built linguistically, culturally, legally, economically on the Judeo Christian platform. Without the base there is no Commonwealth. The "chicken and the egg" arguments are a bit passe when both reside now somewhere betwixt the molars and anus of the fleeting fox. There is much discussion afoot about the distribution of feathers however and who left the gate open.

    my humble opinion.

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  12. The Old and Unimproved DaveNovember 27, 2012 at 11:30 AM

    Julia Gillard will probably convert to Christianity simply in the hope of getting a look at the recording angel's notes of past injustices.

    "Whacko, I got me a subject for another apology speech!"

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  13. Lion, this is the equivalent of the white feathers being handed out to men during WW1. And for ideologically the same reason.

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    1. Yes ... I hadn't twigged to that historical connection Winston, but that is precisely what it is.

      The Irish Lion

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  14. Nanny Roxon is watching.

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