Truly, the one thing that indigenous people need right now, this very minute, is a tired old white fart explaining everything for them, what with them being stone age primitive dwellers, lost in this fair white land.
Why not integrate, you difficult, uppity, tricky blacks, and come over to the right, or should that be, the white side?
Apparently it hasn't dawned on our hole in the bucket man that the word "integration" carries a little freight, a little history, a little baggage, going right back to the glory days of Mr Devil, A. O. Neville …
Now there's integration for you … and a lot more here …
Put it another way …
But let's hear what our Henry has to say for himself …
Indeed, indeed, things were much better when blacks worked as slaves for the likes of Vesteys, for tobacco, sugar and tea, not that there have been any slaves in this country, not even with blackbirding, or Asian women trapped in brothels, or any other realities that escape the clap happy brigade talking in tongues to their imaginary friends …
It's true we are all trapped in our own prisons …
So what's the solution? Perhaps treat 'em like children, make them a different class of citizen, and see what sublime benefits have flown from white generosity ...
Indeed, indeed, lock 'em up, and has anyone considered reintroducing a good whipping with a sturdy rattan cane to sort the young rascals out?
That's our Henry, always full of solutions …gad sir, he's right, and his thinking could be applied in many fields …
Gad sir, let's hear it for imprisonment and mass incarceration ...
For some peculiar reason, the pond was reminded of the end of Rolf de Heer's film The Tracker:
The Tracker turns to look back at him.
Tracker: “Probably white fella, boss. They are murderers … shifty! … thieving! …dishonest mob! … can’t trust ‘em one bit …!
Not to mention a bloviating old fart, who should appreciate that sometimes the sounds of silence offer better solutions …
Perhaps a Rowe cartoon to wrap up the segment, with more Rowe wrappers here?
And so to the other course on the reptile menu this day, and a great reptile panic about cancel culture …
Talk about a triptych of reptile terrors, what with those bloody footballers taking the knee … why the tree killing front page was full of fear …
Entering into the spirit, the pond decided to cancel J. K. Rowling … despite the beguiling attempt by the reptiles to make her appealing, what with her being offered the reflected intense light of the cult master, and given top of the digital page status…
And then , after being given the top of the page ma, because Rowling suited the reptiles' ongoing transphobia, the full splash ...
Sheesh, is that an attempt to be kind, and to arouse sympathy? The pond thinks that the cult master knows cruelty is sometimes a form of kindness ...
But the pond had already caught up on Rowling, doubling down and deploying the victim angle - it was she that had suffered, and if she'd helped spread a little more anguish and hate, what about her, with her filthy riches, it wasn't fair, and it particularly wasn't fair at the way everybody jumped on her, when all she was doing was seeking attention, and then getting unhappy because she got the attention she sought, just the wrong, non-adoring kind …
Et tu Variety? And so on and on …
Perhaps Rowling would have benefited from expert Australian army advice …
That's at the ABC here ...but there are loons everywhere, and imagine the delight of the pond when it spotted this treat …
QAnon goes to congress… why that was way better than Mr Smith making the trek ,,,
Yes, it's Friday, and the pond is in a scattered mood, and what better way to kick back heels and relax with that lightweight croweater Penbo, he of many sorrows and assorted apologies to commissioners …
Of all the hills on which to make a stand, Penbo knows how to pick 'em …
Chris Lilley doing blackface? And as unfunny as a whack in the chops to boot? Is this Penbo's convoluted way of getting around to explaining how Benny Hill was a genius?
For the record, the pond only read enough pars of J. K. Rowling to establish that she couldn't write, but rather had that lumpen best seller style that the pond now associates with Fifty Shades of Grey, but can be found amongst other writers of the populist kind - Dan Brown anyone? These days you can't give him away in street libraries, and the pond noted a Rowling book hadn't shifted in a week in the local freebie library…
And the pond only watched a few frames of Lilley, enough to establish that he was as funny as a dose of cod liver oil trying to free Jonah from the whale …
… which brings the pond to that Penbo notion that Gone with the Wind is "quaintly innocuous".
The pond isn't that much up for banning, but that's a bit like saying that The Birth of a Nation or Triumph of the Will are "quaintly innocuous" and a Confederate flag is "quaintly innocuous" …how about quaintly insidious?
Okay, the pond will admit to the occasional awkwardness …
But do go on, because in its time living in Adelaide, the pond noted that whitebread lives and simmering racism was all the go...
As usual, Penbo, who is one of the dumber models in the reptile line-up, doesn't deliver a decent range of genuinely offensive items …but the pond still treasures its statue of Penbo in the front garden, a crow it always refers to as Penbo the fuckwitted reptile from the south … not as funny as a Kingswood - it was funnier driving a Kingswood in Adelaide, and looking at the road racing along below the rusted-out floor ...
But the pond has done its bit of cancelling by refusing to run J. K. Rowling, and poor old Penbo really has to stretch hard to match that move. He has to take cancel culture into all sorts of areas it hasn't gone, because exaggeration is the only way forward for the feeble-minded, even dragging in The Jerk, as a way of allowing Penbo to boast that he once interviewed Steve Martin (newsflash: jerk loves The Jerk).
But it's understandable that Penbo strays into jerk territory.
His lightweight attempts at comedy are about as funny as Chris Lilley in full blackface flight, but then by way of explanation, if not excuse, he does live in a land where apparently the Prime Minister is unaware of blackbirding … something the pond learned about long ago in high school …
As for first amendment rights in another country, perhaps something a little more pressing?
But the pond takes the point, perhaps it's time for the pendulum to swing back the other way, to where it's always been …
After all that frippery and nonsense, perhaps the pond should end with something more interesting …
Really. Should proud traditions and a bit of fagging, fragging and hazing be cast aside, like a statue into a Pommy creek?
A great tradition and how sad to see it ago, along with wanking and buggering in English public schools ...
But to go on, let's remember the great days of iconoclasm, when everybody was into smashing statues, because not everyone is a complete doofus at history, like our speaking in tongues PM ...
The pond isn't sure how this piece crept into the lizard Oz, but the pond can join in the spirit of the thing …
Even worse, the pond began to get the sneaking suspicion that this Brodie chappie might be an academic … as moving from talk of extermination and Tasmanian genocide to extermination by way of our Henry's 'integration' didn't seem to fit terribly well into the current reptile hysteria surrounding cancel culture.
Is cancelling the odd bit of culture up there with attempting to cancel an entire population? Who knows ...
Yes, yes, but if statues a proving a little tricky, perhaps a tree instead of a statue?
Or perhaps a reality check and a dose of self-pity and irony, J. K. Rowling style?
ReplyDeleteJust a brief reminder of the Henry’s supposed academic standing on history of Australia.
From 2009 to 2016, he was Professor of Infrastructure Economics at the University of Wollongong,
Contributor to the Cambridge Economic History of Australia.
Officer of the Order of Australia for "distinguished service to infrastructure economics, and to higher education, to public policy development and review”.
So who could argue with his inference that problems for indigenous Australians started, oh - around 1965?
Well, who, apart from that person who compiles ‘Loonpond’, anyone else who takes opinions in the Flagship as a guide on what they should question in this world, and, particularly, a few of us who had spent a little time working across northern Australia around that time.
A few reminders - in Queensland, the Aboriginals Preservation and Protection Act 1939 (itself a continuation of the Aboriginals Protection and Restriction of the Sale of Opium Act 1897) - was still in place. Your correspondent regularly broke that law by buying items direct from ‘Aboriginals under the Act’. The requirement was that money be paid to the person’s ‘Protector’, because, you understand, ‘they’ were really just like children - no real concept of money, and would only fritter it away on foolish things. Far better that it be in the care of the ‘Protector’, where they were unlikely to see it - ever.
On that abiding principle that people who had supported themselves remarkably well for - at that time 20 000 years was broadly accepted - were ‘really just like children’, a high proportion had long been handed over to the churches, to be missionised. I will not take space here to go into how missionaries utterly destroyed culture and social structure within 2-3 generations, but one might have thought a Henry, tenured at an established university, might have been aware of the cumulative effects of that.
But yeah, sure - a decision that people doing the work should all be paid the same, and, in one state, be given that pay direct, rather than vested in a ‘Protector’ - is such an obvious time marker in destruction of indigenous people, who could argue with the Henry?
Chadwick.
Pish tush Chad, the reptiles are experts at everything they preach about - just like Dames Slap and Groan, The Bromancer, Nullius Ned - you name one, and they're in the group. A lot like that all-round, widely read American expert, Jared Kushner. Like that other stable genius, there's nothing that people aren't constantly praising his incredible intuitive understanding of.
DeleteBut apropos various Queensland acts - and remembering it was mainly Queensland where the indentured Melanesian "non-slaves" laboured - it was the referendum of 1967 that supposedly empowered the Commonwealth Government to make laws specifically for aboriginals so it could over-ride rotten State stuff. Didn't seem to work all that well, did it. And now people want the referendum determination overturned because making laws specifically for one "race" is clearly racist.
"one might have thought a Henry ... might have been aware".
Oh yeah, hope springs eternal, doesn't it.
And after all that, maybe we can get on to the Black War in Tasmania and we can all learn about the enormous success of the Black Line.
GB - with several expressions of glee, my source tells me that the weekend edition includes letters praising the Henry's exceptional grasp of Australian history, and thanking him for explaining the indigenous problem in terms that a subscriber to the Flagship might understand. I did not respond in any way that reflected badly on subscribers to the Flagship, because, obviously, the source is one. Were I to heap contumely on my source, she might point out that I depend on her subscription for trivial details of content, and, if I don't like the way she does it, I could consider, gasp, taking out a subscription with my own money. An unplayable situation.
DeleteChadwick
Putting aside that Henry is wrong about virtually everything, this does point up one of the main characteristics of reptile commentary. Actually trying to do something, organising a program, setting some goals or whatever exposes you to constant whinging and nit-picking. Make some ague statement like "reaffirm our commitment to the ideal of integration . . . " and you are not really saying what you would do. Sure, there's a sub-text of putting the uppity blacks back in their place but there's no explicit statement that you would be going back to all those things that have failed so comprehensively for so long.
DeleteJust an old man moaning in the end.
Well you gotta play the balls you're bowled Chad, and indeed your 'source' is too useful to sacrifice cheaply. Stay diplomatic, good sir. But I just love that "explaining the indigenous problem in terms that a subscriber to the Flagship might understand." though - really tells us something about the 'dominant species' doesn't it - and confirms that Henry likely literally believes every word he writes.
Delete"Just an old man moaning" - who, Holely Henry or you, Bef ? ;-)
Good point GB. Therapy, as we have discussed before.
DeleteWe'd make a good chorus, Bef. Plus a few more, too.
DeletePenbo has a strange view of the US First Amendment. It prohibits the US Congress from passing laws that abridge 'free speech', but says nothing about other organizations trashing free speech. It would be vastly amusing if some Congressman proposed an amendment to the US Corporations Law declaring that a corporation shall not deny freedom of speech to its workers.
ReplyDelete