Australia Day, and the pond is standing in it ...

(Above: putting money into the answer on being Aboriginal in the lucky country).


It wouldn't be an Australia Day without someone in the commentariat being offensive about something.

Come on down Paul Sheehan and jump from the matter of magistrate Pat O'Shane to a wider commentary about being aboriginal and black in Australia, and running out the oldest meme about how being black is a sure way to cash in the paw:

When it comes to indigenous issues, our legal and political system has monetised race. It has racialised the law. In doing so, it has created a problem about identity: who is an Aborigine? There is money involved in the answer.

Oh yes, they've monetised race all right, so there's only one answer to the question of whether you'd experience all the cash and advantages of being black in Australia ... or experience the joys and satisfaction of being a pompous, preening member of the commentariat. Go on, name one Aboriginal person in the mainstream media given a perch to squawk on a weekly basis to the masses about the way things should be, as Sheehan does so predictably and pathetically in For the sake of her Honour and ours, no more double standard.

No wonder the Herald didn't throw it open for comments, speaking of double standards as we are ...

Moving right along, it wouldn't be Australia Day without some literary or cultural critic coming up with a bunch of twaddle. Come on down Peter Craven, and hit us with your best insights on why cultural nationalism is a good thing (forced video at other end of link):

It's all good (and has particular poignancy for us) because as Australians, we so often feel lost in a vast world that we think of as somewhere else. That's the paradox that makes us sceptical about Australia Day, and it's a reaction born of defensiveness. In fact every day is Australia Day in Australia.

Dear sweet absent lord, say it ain't so. China is a vast world somewhere else, and every day in Australia is a day in Australia ...

It's true, of course, that we always feel we have to ask the question, ''How Australian is it?'' before we do anything else. We can never, like our New Zealand neighbours, just decide that now we'll make a film of Lord of the Rings.

Yes, that's exactly the sort of question people asked before throwing taxpayer money at dancing penguins in Antarctica. Are they dancing in Australian Antarctica, and how soon before Australia owns all of Antarctica? As for Mission Impossible 11, I remember a heated debate with a fellow film buff as to whether Tom Cruise should be given honorary Australian status even though he's a scientologist for all that he'd done for Australian film culture ...

When it comes to runaway productions, we can never just decide to make another gormless, useless Alex Proyas science fiction film, without asking why Alex Proyas doesn't happen to be Peter Jackson.

Meanwhile, it wouldn't be an Australia Day without someone being silly. Come on down Michael Koziol and deliver us A land of tough talk and thin skins. Koziol sees thin skins everywhere in the response to Dr. Charlie Teo's Australia Day speech, and in Melinda Tankard Reist going feral about Jennifer Wilson, while at the same time thinking the twitterati had performed an over-zealous witch hunt on Tankard Reist, before turning his attention to Kyle Sandilands and demands for his demise:

There has long been an elitist witch-hunt against Sandilands, which has taken on a competitive nature among those vying to be the final scalp-taker.

Bugger me dead, the tabloid Daily Terror and The Punch, gutter crawling trash from the outer rings of Murdochian hell are elitists? Go on, type in the tag for Kyle Sandilands at The Punch, and see what an elitist witch hunt you get ...

For the absent god's sake, will someone give the inner urban inner west chardonnay sipping elitists a break. Are we responsible for every crime against humanity and Kyle Sandilands?

Speaking of The Punch, it wouldn't be Australia Day without a completely gormless quiz to identify the Australian-ness of quiz takers (How Australian are you? Take our test ...), including this gem:

Q. Who sang in a pub with no beer?

There are, of course, at a minimum, in terms of hits, two answers, and so today the pond celebrates the epic effort of Bobbejaan Schoepen. Well done, dinky di true blue ocker Bobbejaan ...

Meanwhile, it wouldn't be The Punch without a column brooding about racism on Australia Day, decrying how Australia Day is used to brood about racism. Come on down Dai Le with Change the topic, Australia Day is not about racism.

Actually Australia Day can be about anything you like Dai Le, and you can make it a black-bashing day in the style of Paul Sheehan if you like.

What have you got, the punters are standing by, ready to have a bash at it, including Indian cricketers ...

Poor Dai Le dances around on the head of a pin as a way of avoiding the naughty "R" word:

What we do have in Australia, from time to time, is what I would call, the “tension, the drama of the human condition.” It’s a reaction to the arrival of a group of people, especially those coming here on refugee resettlement, or those who have sought asylum. And the emotions, the feelings among the general population tend to be more intense particularly in times of economic difficulties.

Oh bugger me dead, the pond grew up in a perfectly respectable racist environment. Sure we appreciated the Chinese folk in the restaurant across the road giving the white trash 'luck' soup, but we also knew we were superior. Just as we knew we had the edge on wogs ...

No big deal. Stroll across the road to China and especially Japan, and you'll get the same attitude in spades ... yes old woman who wouldn't let us into the temple because we were filthy alien despoiling gaijin, I still remember you fondly. You could have made a fine guardian of a temple in Tamworth ...

There's no need for half-baked equivocation in regard to the naughty "R" word, though there are degrees of conviction when it comes to actual racism, where prejudice often collapses when the generalised prejudice meets the individual, who turns out to be human after all. There's no need for this sort of nonsense:

The automatic human reaction to a perceived “threatened” situation is to “attack” and protect common territory. It is too simplistic to just react and call someone a racist. And I am personally offended that my country is described as a “racist” country. But we have our fair share of people who are ill-informed, uneducated, insensitive, and unsophisticated.

Yes, and racist to boot, and no benefit to sweep it under the rug in a wave of verbal evasiveness. But naturally Dai Li got the comments she was looking for:

Of course Australia is not racist. The claims of racism come from minority groups and the PC media who can’t live with their own life guilt.

Yes, and don't forget the elites. Whenever there's a problem, whenever there's smoke there's fire, so don't forget the that it's the 'leets what done it ...

So what is Australia Day for? Well there's always a chance to catch up on a little back reading, and so inspired by Bernard Keane, with Misogynist abuse online and playing the victim, we headed off to catch up on Miranda the Devine, and Travails of a pro-life feminist.

First up, you're greeted by this splendid pic:

And then you cop the Devine's seemly contribution to polite rational debate: miserable orcs, 'driven offline' by vitriol, nemesis, abuse, internet haters, twitter hate exploded, Christophobes, spite, sanctimony, anti-Christian malice, 21st century McCarthyism, the purging of Christians and abortion enthusiasts.

The funniest thing? McCarthy of course was a Christian conservative. And who on earth would be an abortion enthusiast? On the other hand, if you ever experienced an abortion in the family back in the days of the McCarthyist fifties, who on earth would put up their hands and be enthusiasts for backyard abortions? Who would be enthusiasts for women bearing a child even if the pregnancy was the result of a rape? Well you can find some Christian conservatives who would ...

It's always funny how Catholics like the Devine recognise that fundamentalist conservative Islam is an issue (oh yes, they're at work in Egypt), while mouthing the same sort of anti-gay, anti-woman, anti-porn, anti-right to have an abortion rhetoric on the domestic scene, and never capable of acknowledging that it's liberal secular values that make the difference ...

Not to worry, it seems that the Devine has been on quite a rabid roll, what with her scintillating endorsement of David Evans on the matter of climate science (Open and shut - the climate skeptic's case). Dammit, there it is again, skeptic, archaic and Unites States only please ... If you want some balance, David Evans features heavily at Skeptical Science (and here too). Dammit, there's that word again ...

And what about the Devine's proposal that monster trucks should only be driven at night when fewer cars are on the road. By golly, that should cull monster trucks. Now if only we can make bicyclists only ride at night, and in best socialist communist style, hire more flesh and blood highway patrol officers to make it happen, why all will be well on the roads. The trucks that ate Paris and cyclists ...

Then there's the Devine on the joys of flag-waving, and suddenly the true meaning of Australia Day occurred to the pond. It's doing over the Lebs:

Forget Clover Moore as the Grinch of Sydney's Christmas. The "Lions of Lebanon" with their Glock pistols and Molotov cocktails have put her to shame this holy season. While the NSW police lock down entire beachfront suburbs, instruct stores to stop selling baseball bats, and apply the full force of the law to pasty-faced nerds with a taste for Nazi literature, they continue to cower from the real hardmen, the Lebanese-Australian criminal gangs of Sydney's south-west who have ruled the roost in this city for at least a decade and now number in their thousands. (Gangster's hold on Sydney is safe).

Second thoughts, no, it's not reading yet more vicious ad hominem attacks from a scribbler who routinely decries vicious ad hominem attacks on Christians.

Hell is reading the commentariat and having a memory, and hell, it's time to head off to a barbecue ... yep, Australia, you're standing in it ...

(Below: more cartoons on the battle for Cronulla here).