Is this the best that the reptiles can do for an Oreo replacement?
It's hard to work out exactly what Sufi did in his past ...
It's hard to work out exactly what Sufi did in his past ...
Meanwhile, no one dares to go there, but the pond will go there.
You see, in the good old days in Tamworth, Sufi would have been labelled a wog, and the agrarian socialists and thugby leaguers would have run around wondering what the country was coming to …
Back in 1982, Salman Rushdie had a few thoughts on this ...
In common with many Bombay-raised middle-class children of my generation, I grew up with an intimate knowledge of, and even sense of friendship with, a certain kind of England: a dream-England composed of Test Matches at Lord’s presided over by the voice of John Arlott, at which Freddie Trueman bowled unceasingly and without success at Polly Umrigar; of Enid Blyton and Billy Bunter, in which we were even prepared to smile indulgently at portraits such as ‘Hurree Jamset Ram Singh’, ‘the dusky nabob of Bhanipur’. […]
Recently, on a live radio programme, a professional humorist asked me, in all seriousness, why I objected to being called a wog. He said he had always thought it a rather charming word, a term of endearment. ‘I was at the zoo the other day’, he revealed, ‘and a zoo keeper told me that the wogs were best with the animals; they stuck their fingers in their ears and wiggled them about and the animals felt at home.’ The ghost of Hurree Jamset Ram Singh walks among us still …
Ah yes, the good old days of Bunter …
The pond's best friend at school was Greek, alienated outsiders together, but here's the thing. No matter what a Greek might do to fit in, they weren't Anglo-Saxon, they weren't safely Protestant - indeed, they paced around the streets of Tamworth at Easter, disturbing the natives with their candle-lit rustling …and as for the wog food … (how the pond loved pepper-laden dolmans) ...
This can lead to an even more desperate syndrome, the desire to fit in, the desire to become even more Anglo-Saxon than your average fundamentalist bigot …even though there's no chance of it happening, because bigots do and think what bigots do ...
Cue the lizard Oz … and even worse, offering Sufi the cult blessing, the sanctity of a Lobbecke ...
Well the pond's having gone there doesn't give Sufi an excuse for leading off with a simpleton survey of history … even if the obvious retort is to note that Sufi himself is an example of migration at work.
The pond will leave it to others to judge whether that was a failure, and will content itself to note that Sufi's understanding of empire is curiously limited and physical.
Take Coca-Cola imperialism as an alternative; heck, take the use of the English language world-wide. Whatever the Donald says or does, the world imports and exports ideas and cultures all the time, and nothing is going to stop that in these times of the full-to-overflowing intertubes …
In fact, the United States desperately needs that flow of entertainment exports … but the pond digresses ...
Now the pond gets it. Sufi doesn't like Islamics. The pond doesn't have much sympathy with the Islamic religion, or come to think of it, Catholicism, religions that talk of complimentary women, Scientology …
The list is endless, really, and the pond has a fair intolerance of Sufi as well, but here's the thing. Either the pond could start a campaign to deport Sufi back to where he came from, or we could get along, for fear that someone might start a campaign to send the pond back to Ireland …
The pond has always found it strange when people go full Trump, apparently unaware that the white nationalist aspirations of his base would naturally include Inky, which is to say Hurree Jamset Ram Singh, unless perhaps there was a chance of claiming respectability by boasting that they also happened to be the dusky Nabob of Bhanipur ...
High time something was done about it?
Perhaps the lizards of Oz might consider avoiding giving space to Sufi, a notorious failure at matters political, as recorded by the ABC here…
As for the rest, the pond fervently hopes that the world never retreats to isolated, locked-off islands of self-regarding communities seething with paranoia and xenophobia …
Otherwise there might be a return to this sort of nonsense …
That came from …
And a few more illustrations in lieu of a cartoon celebrating the racist white nationalist Donald…
Oh heck, the pond can't resist, here's a cartoon that's doing the rounds …
Oh how extraordinarily apropos and fortuitously timely. I'd just finished reading this fascinating thesis:
ReplyDeletehttps://www.motherjones.com/kevin-drum/2018/07/theres-a-distrubing-reason-europe-has-stayed-so-peaceful-for-so-long/
Read all about how moving people en masse across borders was much superior to diaspora or even just targetted emigration. But then, think a little about what happened to Australia post WWII.
Notwithstanding, the sufiest Sufi rambled on thuswise: "The first multicultural experiment failed for all equally. No societal framework can sustain itself for long if it ends up becoming a laboratory of conflicted loyalties."
Is this guy so totally ignorant and misguided that he's never heard of the United States of America ? Has he no idea at all about the waves of immigrants through Ellis Island (about 12 million from 1892 to 1954) ? Has he never heard of:
Not like the brazen giant of Greek fame,
With conquering limbs astride from land to land;
Here at our sea-washed, sunset gates shall stand
A mighty woman with a torch, whose flame
Is the imprisoned lightning, and her name
Mother of Exiles. From her beacon-hand
Glows world-wide welcome; her mild eyes command
The air-bridged harbor that twin cities frame.
“Keep, ancient lands, your storied pomp!” cries she
With silent lips. “Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tossed to me,
I lift my lamp beside the golden door!”
Sheesh, there's just no remedy for blind, willful ignorance and stupidity is there. What would we do with them all if they couldn't find a home in Murdoch's dens of Wingnut Welfare ?
Hmmm. Now on 21 May 2018, the ABC has that Sufi "quit as the chair of the WA Liberals' policy committee", but on 15 July 2018, the Australian has Sufi as "chairman of the WA Liberal Party's policy committee". Oh yes, definitely yet another reptile who is both A and Not-A equating to zero.
In defence of the work of Frank Richards, apart from his particular spin on aspects of English grammar Jamset Ram Singh was at least always presented as highly intelligent and capable; indeed, he was one of the "Famous Five" of particularly admirable, heroic lads in Bunter's Form. He was certainly much less of a caricature than, say, the American student Fisher T Fish. Bunter's casual racism was generally used to indicate his own ignorance and stupidity, and HJRS treated it with a polite contempt that went right over Bunter's head. Unfortunately, judging from his collected thoughts Sherry Sufi seems to be much more of a Bunter and less of a Nabob.
ReplyDeleteIt's intriguing to speculate on what became of Bunter when he finally left school. I can't help but suspect that he eventually rose to giddy heights in a Conservative Government - Foreign Minister, perhaps?
Ah yes, there's no problem with befriending those who, albeit with a charming eccentricity or two, become just as we are (as clearly illustrated by Mr Richards). The waves of immigrants into America being an obvious example of the power of assimilation via "working their way up" (to be replaced at the bottom by the next wave from somewhere else).
DeleteAustralia started down the 'assimilation' route (look up how many immigrant women learned to be 'Australian' from the Women's Weekly in days of yore) but has kinda crossed over into a type of colonial multiculturalism over time - but never with a vote on it or any related matter. Like Brexit, might get the wrong answer.
Our sufiest Sufi though, really seems to be the "I'm here, you can raise the drawbridge now" kind of refugee/immigrant. And I think we have one or three of those about.