Sunday, March 26, 2017

In which the pond endures yet more reptile chatter about 18C ... is this any way to spend a Sunday meditation?



The pond grew up in a fair average racist, ethnicist (be there such a word) household.

Well it was Tamworth and the German and Irish roots produced a certain sensitivity and a desire to respond in kind.

The pond's father, for example, loved to talk of chooms. He drawled the word out, almost drooled it, and boasted that it was a descriptor that any English person found deeply offensive ... much better, much more effective than the common or garden "Pommie bastard" ...

The pond doesn't know where he got hold of the word, but it probably came back with grandfather from the Somme, if this handy annotated glossary of slang and peculiar terms in use in the AIF is any guide ...



In its own encounters with English folk, the pond discovered that few had the first clue that 'choom' was anything but a badly pronounced version of 'chum', and they were always up for a jolly jape amongst cheerful chums ...

Never mind, this is just an aimless detour into a contemplation, a wondering, why the reptiles of Oz have reverted to a couple of mindless chooms blathering on about 18C this weekend ...

It's not as if the British press routinely parade Australian opinion pieces berating the English for their many and sundry forms of political stupidity.

Sure, they elected Tony Blair, sure they now have Theresa May, sure they have Nigel Farage, sure they have Boris and Brexit, but the British press tends to take care of all that in their own peculiar way ...

But in Australia, the colonial mentality persists, and so the lizards of Oz have imported a couple of chooms to talk about 18C ... presumably on the basis that their own team is tired of the subject, and yet somehow they must maintain the rage, and besides, chooms speak with great moral and monarchical authority ...

The first of the chooms was the tiresome, fetid, festering Frank Furedi ...




Now the pond didn't expect to learn anything new from fearless Frank ..




But here's the thing.

There's nothing to stop the pond speaking of colonialist chooms blathering on about Australian laws, or even seeking to make an equivalence with the European parliament, and we also have cartoonists who can speak with authority on the subject ...




It was almost as if Tandberg knew what was coming in fearless Frank's next gobbet ...



It's around this point that mindless parrot-like stupidity routinely enters the discussion.

The pond is so over talk of "identity politics", one of those simple-minded phrases that the pandemonium of parrots routinely deploy ... while frequently joking about the simple-minded rhetoric of Marxists ...

Why do they go on and on about it? What is it that makes this sub-species identify with this form of identity politics?

Of course, what fearless Frank is about is the freedom to hate.

"Hate speech celebrates and frees freedom and treats citizens as mature adults who may indulge in insult and abuse and spout hateful opinions in the name of enlightened democracy."

Or some such thing ... because you see, gibberish is as gibberish does, and to prevent hate speech happening, fearless Frank talks of "moral resources..."

That's usually followed by reptile talk of anarchy on social media and the end of civilisation as we know it thanks to the barbarians refusing to pay the Murdochians to get their opinions spoonfeed to them ...

Well "moral resources" came in handy in Germany in the 1930s, didn't they, and no doubt "moral resources" will come in handy on the intertubes, but if you're relying on the administrator to help out, good luck with that ...

Oh okay, a guinea to the Godwin's Law swear jar and on we go ...



Actually what compromises the quality of public life and the lizard Oz is the insistence on calling in a choom to blather on about 18C ... when we have cartoonists ready to tackle the job ...




It's almost unendurable, which is why the pond took a little comedic time out, before getting it on with the next choom ...




That talk of white privilege inevitably leads to a white male choom talking about white male privilege ... from a high Tory, high Anglican, papist-loving, neo-Marxist perspective ...





Yes, it's the king of colonialist choom trolls back for a standard lizard Oz appearance, saying the things that have already been said dozens of times before ...

What is it about this pandemonium of parrots?

Do they get the same comfort from repeating the same regurgitated lines as saying the "kyrie eleison" or "angus dei" used to offer Catholics each Sunday ... at least until they changed the lines ...




Well Louis C. K. had something to say about the joys of being white, and because O'Neill is the sort of parrot that really irritates the pond, it's best to move on quickly ... though a thought does strike the pond ...

What happens if, GOP style, the reptiles of Oz turn into the dog that caught the car, the dog that ran down the cat, only to discover the taste of the cat's claw ...

Would they know what to do with it, once they had the exhaust pipe clenched in teeth? Or would the recent GOP legislative experience be the result?

What would happen with 18C gone? How would the reptiles deal with all the vicious aggro and offensive speech that emanated from the likes of the bilious Bolter?

Surely they'd have to indulge in some decent hate speech to celebrate? Otherwise what's the point? No one seems inhibited at the moment about denouncing pesky blacks, or dangerous Islamics, or too many Asians lurking on Venus Bay and ruining the pipis ...

It's not as if 18C does much to block all the hate speech doing the rounds. Check out the comments on the YouTube comments cesspit sometime. Head off to Australian white nationalist sites or follow the thoughts of devotees of Hanson and Malcolm Roberts ...

Of course the way a troll like O'Neill flips things, you end up with an upside-down burger of sundry stupidities ...


It goes without saying that O'Neill routine exercises the freedom to be disgusting, and yet he still finds space to moan and complain and whine and whinge ... and pretend, of all things, that he is suffering from some great injustice ...



Actually slavery tolerated free speech very well, provided the only ones that were free to speak were white ... in much the same way that the reptiles of Oz enjoy white privilege, so long as the Catholic Boys' daily continues to feature old white men, a couple of tame complimentary women, and a couple of blacks who've worked out the best way to get some crumbs from massa's table ...

That helps explain why the reptiles seem to think that the only people we should be listening to this week blathering on about 18C are a couple of imported chooms ...

... who have the cheek to tell us what the Australian parliament must do....

Section 18C must be scrapped?

Must?

Well the pond might think that Brendan O'Neill, Theresa May and Brexit should be, must be, scrapped, and the Scots should run wild and free, but would be perfectly understanding, if as a result, the land of the chooms told the pond to fuck off ...

... which in turn happily allows the pond the chance to tell Brendan fucking O'Neill to just fuck off back to choom land ...

Oh the pond's father would be ever so pleased, ever so proud. The pond can imagine his Irish genes producing a tear, trickling down the cheek ...

Jimmy Rabbitte: Do you not get it, lads? The Irish are the blacks of Europe. And Dubliners are the blacks of Ireland. And the Northside Dubliners are the blacks of Dublin. So say it once, say it loud: I'm black and I'm proud.

And so to an 18C moment coming soon to the reptiles, should they ever finally catch up with that bus's exhaust pipe ....





3 comments:

  1. "The idea that the semicolon no longer has a place in compound sentences linked by a single verb."

    Sorry, I probably should have said something about the content rather than the form, but arguing with O'Neill is like punching Italian meringue. There's a satisfying sploosh, but it doesn't leave a mark.

    For what its worth, and contrary to O'Neill's sly tendentiousness ("beautiful ode to freedom of speech"), Douglass' speech was occasioned by a bunch of drunken louts, goaded by the mayor, breaking up a meeting in (non-slave) Boston to discuss how slavery might be abolished in other states. The reptiles can never, will never be persuaded that punching down is *not* the same as punching up.

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  2. Another excellent post DP.The pandemonium of the parrots is like some deeply disturbed group think. Just 18C trouble every day.... Take it away Frank.
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VBJnnzxhGbw

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  3. "Slavery cannot tolerate free speech," said Douglass

    And here we go again: is this nondescript numbnut O'Neill actually telling us that if there had been an 18C back then there'd still be slavery because nobody would have been able to speak out against it ?

    But you gotta admire the way that the reptiles can completely change the subject: in this case from what originally was simply and reasonably about "to offend, insult, humiliate or intimidate" - "because of the race, colour or national or ethnic origin" becomes all about the age old campaign for "free speech", a campaign that the censorious (and censoring) wingnuts have always strongly opposed, and still do.

    Just terrific, and they get away with it every single time, just as they are again now.

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