Kamahl, second phase play, playing the fashion card, and playing the race card

Another Friday, thank the lord, and time to go down the rabbit hole, or visit loon pond, however you care to think of the distractions that make for a pleasant day.

Here at loon pond, we're proud not to have mentioned once the shock and horror and indignation the nation has experienced with regard to the return of Daryl Somers and Hey Hey It's Saturday.

For a start we vigorously disapprove of necrophilia, when it comes to grave robbing, sex with corpses, or sex with old television formats which should have long ago disappeared into the grave yard.

Secondly we vigorously disapprove of the notion that there's a racist streak in Australia. After all, it's well known that the Cronulla riots were solely due to concerns over equal access to chicken kebabs, while the recent bashings of Indian students has always been understood to reflect concern about the lack of heat in vindaloos.

And so far as the tendency of the NT police to dress up in white robes, dangle nooses and put on a little black face goes, we've always seen this as a homage to Al Jolson in the (disputed) first ever talkie, The Jazz Singer. I mean there's culture, and then there's the NT cops, always anxious to explore the subtleties and nuances of D. W. Griffith's Birth of A Nation, one of the most compelling early silent feature films!

Perhaps they were also inspired by those good old days when Ed Devereaux played an aboriginal lead actor in black face, accompanied by the singer Kamahl, playing co-lead as another aboriginal character. Fancy that. Kahaml in black face. Those were the days:

(Devereaux's on the left).

Or what about the time that James Laurenson played Arthur Upfield's indigenous cop Napoleon Bonaparte in the TV show Boney , and poor old Bob Maza - a decent actor himself - got upset about the lack of opportunity for indigenous performers? (here if you want to remember Boney aka Bony).

Not a hint of blackface in Australia's proud entertainment past!

So that's why we haven't mentioned a single thing to do with what's got all the twits excited, and The Punch with more hits than the good old days of Kyle Sandilands. We've never seen such a flapping and a squawking on the pond in months, and it's simply swamped the news that Sandilands got back on air by being blessed by a priest (here).

"Last time I came back and I was doing the old 'Here we go again, I'm back', I think maybe I might have still had a little bit of evil in me, according to the press," Sandilands said.

"So what I've decided to do this time around is to bring a priest (in) ... it's a real priest, it's a reverend or whatever it is.

"Just to bless us and the show and get rid of any evil before we get started."

So yesterday, so ho hum Kyle. A reverend or whatever it is! Radio as a form of exorcism. But it's not evil, you dumb schmuck, it's just dumbness, and that's bloody hard to exorcise.

Time for you to invite Kamahl onto the show and put on some black face, you lost attention seeker you.

Ah yes, good old Kamahl. Not even the shameless dragging of Kahmal into the fuss - him being my late lamented aunt's favorite singer - will change my mind, not even the powerful temptation to make Kamahl jokes. Yep, Sydney Confidential have managed to drag Kamahl into the scandal in what we would understand - if we remotely understood rugby union - was a second phase play.

Which is to say the ball looks like it might be going to ground, so we need to keep it up in the air and on the move, as we excite readers with the frisson of the day. With careful juggling and massaging, it might even make it to the weekend (Livid Kamahl has had enough of Hey, Hey It's Saturday).

Oh maybe just one joke, told by the man himself:

It was 1976, seven years after the single The Sounds of Goodbye made him a national star, that Kamahl took a "good news/bad news" call from his manager. Asking for the bad news first, Kamahl was told he was on the Australian Nazi Party's list of 10 people marked for death.

"So I asked him, 'What's the good news?' He replied: You're number one.'" (here).

And here he is in a rather small lobby card:

No, our favorite item today is the news that Belinda Neal is sticking by John Della Bosca because she's a feminist:

"I made a decision to work within my marriage but certainly I don't see myself as some downtrodden person who is being submissive ..."

"I see it as a powerful decision to take control of my marriage and a joint decision to work to improve it.

"I see that as a feminist decision.

"If I were to end my marriage because I thought that's what women should do, as a feminist, then I would see myself as not being true to myself." (here).

Which somehow reminded us of Janet Albrechtsen, and her rage about feminists in her column Feminists screwing it up for sisters.

Which in turn reminded us of Albrechtsen's appearance last night on the ABC's Q & A (here for viewing and transcript), alongside Germaine Greer and sundry others.

Is it playing the fashion card to wonder exactly what Albrechtsen was wearing around her neck?

In the good old days, this kind of ersatz fabric choker (or is it a scarf?) would have been associated with what was once called 'alternative lifestyles', and even today feels right at home in the ambient world of goths, romantics addicted to Wuthering Heights, and conservatives yearning for the days of Queen Victoria.

But yes, it's wrong to play the fashion card, even with one of our favorite members of the pond, so we'd better get back to playing the race card.

Here's how it's done:

The Daily Show With Jon Stewart	Mon - Thurs 11p / 10c
Playing the Race Card
www.thedailyshow.com
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