Why luvvies love calling Mandela "Madiba"

On the weekend Tim Blair asserted that those who use Nelson Mandela's clan name Madiba are "fantastic poseurs". Today he cites definitive evidence for this claim.

There are a coupla reasons leftist luvvies can't stop using the appellation. Firstly, it's familiar -- the inner-city tosser's version of calling Russell Crowe "Rusty".

Say "Madiba" and you subtly infer that you were mates with the guy -- or have at least broken bread with him on occasion. Even if you don't wish to convey that impression, it makes it seem you're an authentic fellow traveller with him. Clearly, you've been a brave and committed activist in the great man's struggle for freedom and equality.

The practice is akin to using a person's first name. Also, like the recently deceased icon's surname, it has the advantage of sounding truly African. Talking or writing about "Nelson" would just sound a bit awkward. Madiba, on the other hand, sounds intimate, affectionate and authentic.

Also, it's kinda esoteric. Not widely used in the meeja -- well, at least not until recently anyway -- it conveys to your reader or interlocutor that you have deep and detailed knowledge of the issues surrounding the person behind the name. Say "Madiba" and you're not just a brave human rights activist, you're also a scholar -- an assiduous student of the struggle against apartheid.

That said, I think it's lost much of its power in this regard. Hand-wringing meeja pseuds have really gone overboard with it, rendering it next to powerless on the socialist sneerer's smugometer. That's kind of sad -- and very much like what they did with the word "pugilist" to describe Tonay Abbott. Hell, even bogans call him that now ...

Grace Collier on union culture and corruption

Here's a really good article by Grace Collier on union culture which has some useful insights. She says that many unionists have a war mentality and therefore believe that pretty much any action can be justified as long as it can be seen to benefit the tribe. She also likens the atmosphere of many unions to that of a cult. If you keep in mind these characteristics you can see how easily corruption can flourish.

There's another aspect of unionism that increases this tendency. That is that you don't actually have to produce anything of market value when you're in a union. The money flows into its cofffers in a steady stream from the pay packets of employees no matter what. It's like taxes being used to pay government employees. It's pretty much guaranteed.

That's the opposite of being in a business -- particularly a small to middling one. In that environment, if you don't make sales, you go belly up. So all or most of your attention is directed towards that goal. You don't have anywhere near as much time to play politics.

But in a union, it's all politics. You're playing politics with the employer to increase the benefits to members. And you're playing politics with your fellow unionists to get to the top of the power structure. 

If you think of these three factors together you start to understand what a strange world these people live and work in, day in and day out. Behaviour that most people would find dodgy as is often seen as pretty much par for the course and therefore totally acceptable. It only worries them if they feel they might eventually get sprung for it.

Cory Bernardi's warnings about bestiality not that far-fetched

In various leftie strongholds there'll be a lot of eye-rolling, head shaking and even some cafe latte-spluttering over conservative senator Cory Bernardi's statements regarding gay marriage, in which he warned of the possibility of the legalization of bestiality, among other things.

But I don't think that his concerns are too far-fetched. If there's one thing you can be certain about with the cultural Left it's that they're never happy with what they get. Think about all their favourite issues like feminism, mult-culti, and environmentalism. Can you think of just one leftie warrior who has ever said: "Gee thanks, pollies. You have finally given me what I have been demanding. My work here is done. I can now stop shrieking, whining and stamping my feet and be a normal, reasonable person at last!"

No way. They're just never satisfied, these people. On the contrary, whenever they make a gain in the culture wars they are emboldened and invigorated by it, and immediately start ratcheting up their demands.

The reason for this is simple. Most of the time, deep down, they really couldn't give a tinker's cuss about the actual issues they spend their lives squawking about. The thing they're really after is the power. And the more the better.

So they can never settle. Their identity depends on upsetting the identities of others. They have to keep advocating for change, haranguing and intimidating people just to know who they are.

That's why, if they win on gay marriage, there will inevitably be demands for more "diversity" when it comes to "relationships". When you've exhausted all the human permutations bestiality is the next step. 

And the Left has certainly got some apologists for it. Take Peter Singer, one of the philosophical fathers of the Australian Greens. Better known for his views on offing tots, he's also got some pretty wacky views on zoophilia.

While most Australians think this guy is out where the buses don't go the hand-wringing, latte-slurping squitterati reckon he's the, er, duck's nuts. And there are quite a few people more extreme than him. If you think they won't be emboldened by such a radical cultural shift as the legalization of gay marriage then you really are pretty naive.

Dumb Drunk and Racist crew sneer at the bogan caste

Watched Dumb Drunk and Racist again last night. One thing that is consistently annoying about it is its simplistic, didactic, patronizing tone. But then it is on their ABC. They all have that born to rule attitude there, and they just can't help themselves.

As with so many shows on the national broadcaster, it's kinda like Play School for adults. Actually, the whole concept of taking four Indians on a tightly stage managed tour of Australia and asking them to describe their reactions at various points is like a hugely expensive and prolonged game of show and tell.

DDR is relentlessly PC, drearily predictable, and utterly obvious. You can always see exactly what the production team are trying to achieve with their cynical manipulations of their Indian participants.

For example, when Joe Hildebrand takes his guests -- all from a country in which the cow is sacred -- to a cattle sale, he confesses to being nervous about what their reaction might be. Nervous about what, I wonder? That they might not be appalled by the scene as hoped?

And when a show is made entirely by middle class urbanites there is sure to some mockery of the rural working class. So part of last night's episode involved trying to define and locate some bogans (accurately described by one of the guests as a caste in itself). The exercize involved getting one of the Indians to dress up in classic bogan garb including "wife beater", thongs, and stubbies.

Will they feature such a mocking take on members of the "sneering hipster" caste? I suspect such parodies are considered off-limits, since that would alienate the audience. No matter. To anyone not a member of this ridiculous demographic, the whole production is an unconscious self-parody anyway. 

But back to the show's perception of bogans: No doubt many latte slurping wankers watching approvingly were rolling their eyes when one of the designated bogans said that he "dropped out of school to drink and become a tradesman". Ironic, since they themselves would've dropped out of the work force to get stoned and become "artists" and academics.

They should remember that bogans such as this bloke skilfully build and maintain much of the infrastructure they take for granted, as well as generating the wealth that funds their stupid, pointless, self-indulgent lifestyles. 

You'd think that being self-described lefties and champions of the underdog, they might take the bogans' side on occasion -- or at least be less condemnatory of them. But they are too mean-spirited to manage even that. What a revolting pack of parasitic snobs they are.

Dumb Drunk and Racist was entertaining but incoherent

I watched the first episode of the show Dumb, Drunk and Racist the other night. It was entertaining, but I don't think it shed any light on the question it purportedly sought to answer: Are we really dumb, drunk and racist?

Well, who's this "we" that host Joe Hildebrand kept talking about? Hell, there are over 22 million individuals, and numerous cultural, racial and religious groups in Australia ... Or was he talking about the country's official government policy?

Obviously, there are many racist individuals, and even some overtly racist groups here. While many of these people are white -- that is, of Anglo-Celtic or Western European descent -- many are not. (I know that PC lefties find this impossible to comprehend, since they can't see non-whites as fully human individuals in their own right and so believe they are incapable of racism -- a patronizing attitude that is a kind of racism in itself.) But these white bigots, while quite numerous, are surely very much in the minority.

Sure, the Australian government was officially and overtly racist when it had the White Australia policy. But it's certainly not officially and overtly racist now -- although there are some elements of politically correct racism (you know, the compassionate, well meaning kind) that have exacerbated racial tensions, or even created some that didn't already exist.

The whole idea of taking four Indians to a racially and culturally diverse country where many thousands of their countrymen are already living, working and studying seems utterly pointless. I mean, obviously it's not a racist country, because if it were, they wouldn't have been let in in the first place, right? Or if the people here were overwhelmingly bigoted against Indians most, if not all, of them would have quickly found it intolerable and buggered off, wouldn't they?

I know the reason the show's producers chose Indians who haven't been here before was because they wanted to test the very negative stereotype of Australians currently being widely promoted in that country. But surely it would have been equally valid to just ask some Indians who lived here already if all the outrage back home was justified.

Well, there'd be no journey, no confrontation, no drama, no "colour and movement" then. You have to have people cussin' an' fightin' for it to be good TV, don't you?

And there certainly was quite a bit of that. Firstly, there was the clear, vile racism of people abusing Indian call centre workers. That was the classic white racism that people normally associate with the term. Sadly, there's plenty of that here, but I have no doubt that most white Aussies are appalled and disgusted by it. 

Then there was the clear, vile racism of the Muslim passerby who was outraged by the "Say No to Burqas" mural in Newtown.

Watch that scene closely. It's fascinating. If my memory serves correctly the Muslim guy calls the mural's creator, Sergio Redegalli a "wop, dago c**t". He also calls one of the Indians Sergio's "little lap dog", something that understandably riles the visitor.

Of course, hand-wringing lefties will ignore all of that and say that the mural's creator was the real racist. Well, if you believe that, you're conflating race and religion. Cloth is not skin, remember.

And it's a lay down misere that the sneering hipsters with the most frothing foam in their mouths about that mural will be just the kind of people who gleefully applaud the provocative trashing of  Christian religious symbols such as crucifixes and nun's habits. But with so many Christians across the globe being non-white (perhaps even the majority?) then by their own logic that would be racist too, wouldn't it?

Er, no. Lefties are special, see.

But back to Redegalli: Yes, there may be some submerged racism in his motivations for creating such a mural. But it's clearly not the main driver. If he had a big time bug up his ass about Middle Eastern people then the mural would read something like "Bugger off Arabs!" right? Hell, he's gonna be accused of racism either way, so why wouldn't he just say what he truly believes?

Nope. Redegalli is being disingenuous when he says he doesn't want to provoke people -- and he's certainly religiously intolerant. But his mural is not racist in itself.

This outrage about "anti-Muslim racism" (a nonsensical term if ever there was one) says more about the fulminator's own prejudices than anyone else's. Classic case of projection, I reckon.

Hilderbrand's own reaction was revealing too. When the artist gave security reasons for condemning the burqa after originally citing freedom of speech issues the host accused him of being inconsistent and confused.

Eh? So you're only allowed to have one reason for creating political art now?

Then when Sergio drives his car -- emblazoned with anti-Muslim slogans -- through Lakemba and doesn't get any reaction Hildebrand says of the Lakemba locals: "Seems like they're more tolerant than you are."

But hang on. Hilderbrand himself was right there when a Muslim passerby chucked a tanty over the mural. And it's an established fact that it has been defaced scores of times.

The host then contradicted himself again by farewelling the artist with a handshake and the words: "You're a brave man."

That said it all for me. That episode revealed more about the doco makers' fear of offending Islam than it did about whether "we" (whoever the hell that means) are dumb, drunk and racist.

Wonder what the next episode will reveal? I'll be keen to find out.

Olympic shooter Russell Mark condemns D'Arcy and Monk

When this silly gun photo scandal involving Olympic swimmers Nick D'arcy and Kenrick Monk started, several commentators pointed out that shooting was an Olympic sport. They observed that the outrage was all pretty absurd considering that not only were our local sharp shooters not being condemned, they were lauded for their skill in using firearms.

Interestingly, one of them -- Russell Mark -- has weighed in on the kerfuffle. He says that D'arcy and Monk do deserve to be condemned for their actions:

But Mark said the swimmers were holding the weapons in an "aggressive nature".

"One of them did a Chopper Read pose, and I think Nick's got a pistol and is pointing virtually at Kenrick's rib cage, which was an unsafe position. It was an aggressive pose with a firearm ... if I had've done that, I would have been dragged over the coals as well," Mark said.

Maybe he would have been ... And if that were the case it would have been just as silly -- perhaps even sillier -- than the present scandal.

Either way he's certainly identified an aspect of the photos that the AOC finds so offensive. It's the inherent aggression of the pose, and the invocation of the character of a vile Melbourne criminal (who subsequently became a best-selling author, by the way!), that is deemed so appalling.

So the officials' reaction pertains to symbolism more than anything else. The fact that the two swimmers have seemed to celebrate a macho, criminal and coarse side of Australian culture rather than a cuddly, sensitive, caring and sharing one is what the delicate petals at the AOC find so terribly upsetting. 

When such aspects of public behaviour are deemed most important, you know that politically correct lefties are well and truly in charge. Just as well the two swimmers weren't caught on video saying that marriage should be between a man and a woman, or that the carbon tax was a bloody great con.

If that were the case they'd be in even greater strife than they are now!

UWA O-Camp rape claims depressing, ironic in post-feminist times

One thing that constantly amazes me about these politically correct times is that even though we've had decades of feminist "empowerment" of women, as well as much "attitudinal reconstruction" of blokes, sexual assault is still disturbingly commonplace. Actually, it even seems to be more pervasive than in days of yore when the eeevil patriarchy was completely dominant.

Take this scandal currently enveloping the University of WA. There are claims of sexual assaults being perpetrated amid the beer-sodden debauchery occurring at a recent "O-Camp" in Dwellingup.

The alleged criminal acts are the most disturbing, of course. But the routine abuse of others that goes on at these events -- as well as the extreme self-trashing -- is also a worry, and seems to be highly ritualized. 

These shindigs are run by the UWA Student Guild which has its own Women's Department. You'd think that such a clearly female-friendly organization would have zero tolerance for the misogyny that fuels such destructive behaviour, wouldn't you? 

Or maybe the wider ideology that this institution (and others on campus) subscribes to is actually part of the problem. That is, could the left-wing, uber-PC practice of blaming society for everything and not taking responsibility for your actions be making young women less conscious of their own safety, as well as encouraging young men to unleash their sexual drives without any concern for the consequences?

What do you reckon?

Professor Bunyip, Saffron Howden and accusations of racism

Professor Bunyip has posted an open letter to journo Saffron Howden regarding her piece in The Age. Have to agree with him. I haven't read all of the Amazon reviews of Am I Black Enough for You? But the ones I did read, while sometimes snarky, certainly didn't qualify as racist (that is, implying or overtly stating that the book's writer Anita Heiss was inferior or even merely different because of her Aboriginality).

Fluffy wuffies have an amazingly flexible definition of racism. They use it to describe pretty much anything they don't like (which is a helluva lot). They've now made the word next to meaningless to any rational person.

And they almost never seem to want to explain why something is racist. They just label it so. Look at Howden's article. "Racism" is used frequently but there's never a clarification of why or how the examples she mentions qualify as such. About the only thing that comes close to clarifying what she might mean is this paragraph:

Heiss was one of nine Aboriginal people who took Bolt and his publisher to court over articles that implied light-skinned indigenous people chose to be black for personal gain.

Now, that may be bad, wrong, nasty or whatever. But how is even that racist? If he did do what's claimed, Bolt was being maliciously personal and accusing them of a form of corruption. What, so Aborigines are incapable of corruption, and it's their Aboriginality that makes them so? That's just too silly for words. 

Maybe it's because Howden herself is terrified of venturing a definition that she obediently repeats the politically correct line. After all, she includes this creepy little quote from Jody Broun: ''Let's be clear, Aboriginal identity is defined by us, no one else."

Broun seems to be saying that you simply aren't allowed to have an opinion on the matter unless you yourself define yourself as Aboriginal (and in the way that she and her political allies demand). If that's not totalitarian, I don't know what is.

Imagine if I, or another white person (and when I say "white" the definition does not include fair-skinned Aborigines -- er, is that qualification "racist" too?) were to say: "We define who is to be called white, and no one else." The accusation of racism -- which would no doubt be hurled, along with a host of others -- would actually be true. 

Clearly, these PC zealots believe that if they keep repeating the accusation ad bloody nauseam that it'll become true. Except it won't. All that will do is make it increasingly obvious how meaningless, hollow and fear-based their ideology actually is.

The worrying thing is, though, that their false accusations can have legal force. The Bolt verdict proved that.

So, they are a pretty scary bunch! But you've gotta feel sorry for the poor little petals, too. They've cornered themselves big time.

Trapped in a paranoid, pompous pose of lefteous indignation, they are now incapable of constructing an actual argument in response to criticism. Such a state would be sad for anyone. But if you're a writer or a journo, well, it's tragic as.

Stephen Smith, like Rudd and Gillard, is a very odd person

Heaps of commentators are really getting stuck into Defence Minister Stephen Smith, saying he should resign for his shockin' treatment of Commodore Bruce Kafer. Hell, even Mike Carlton is of this mind. Now that's saying something!

It's pretty clear that Smith dislikes his job and the military itself. That has a lot to do with why he's botched this particular issue big time. But he also seems to possess a more general lack of intuition and common sense that I find really quite strange. 

He's long struck me as being a very cold, humourless character who takes himself enormously seriously. From his demeanour he certainly seems professional but as this issue in particular has borne out he can overreact wildly and doggedly insist on the least sensible option. The cool, competent persona is just a mask. It really makes you wonder about what's going on in his head.

That's a problem with so many of the most powerful people in Labor. Take Rudd and Gillard. One is narcissistic, the other is duplicitous in the extreme. They've just had this amazing stoush over nothing more than personal ambition that has damaged the party's reputation hugely. And they don't seem to give a tinker's about that!

Political leaders right across the spectrum are all going to be highly ambitious, of course. But in all other areas of life you'd hope that most would be comparatively well adjusted. How else would they be able to connect and communicate with the voters apart from anything else? I mean, you wouldn't expect them to be full-on weirdos now would you?

You'd think that intra-Labor competition and selection processes would weed out people with such obvious personality flaws as Smith, Gillard and Rudd -- or at least not let them progress too far up the greasy pole. But the opposite seems to have happened. It really makes you wonder what the hell is going on in that party.