Funny:
Er, thanks for your support …
Marieke Hardy
The Age
June 5, 2008
Sometimes, speaking up for a belief can inflict more harm than good.
‘I WOULD like to keep our place like it is and I guess (joining the) Liberals would be natural.” This was the important announcement this week from a colourful and in no way unhinged Sydney resident, Kate McCulloch of Camden, after she had successfully prodded at her local council to reject a proposed building site for an Islamic school.
This, of course, was after she’d appeared on television wearing an oversized Akubra hat that had Australian flag postcards stapled to it like a misguidedly patriotic entrant in a primary school parade, blithely referred to our general Muslim population as “the ones that come here”, and then rounded off by declaring that famous colonials John and Elizabeth Macarthur would no doubt be on Team McCulloch were they a) alive and b) remotely concerned with local education-based planning issues. She certainly couldn’t be accused of being dull…
In terms of conservative comedians you’ve got the inherently amusing Ann Coulter, creator of such outstanding zingers as “My only regret with (Oklahoma bomber) Timothy McVeigh is he did not go to The New York Times building” and, “It would be a much better country if women did not vote.” Last I heard she had a sold-out run at the Hammersmith Apollo with her one-woman stand-up show AmeriKKKa’s Most Wanted. Or wait, maybe that was Ice Cube. Anyway, she’s no doubt doing wonders for the cause.
The same can’t be said of the vast majority of Stormfront members who appear to have trouble with spelling, no doubt sadly setting the cause of white supremacists back a couple of decades or so, and I don’t know whose side serial pest Peter Hore is on, but if he ever professes a love for literature and the Tote Hotel in Collingwood, I’m switching teams.
Sorta funny:
Not-that-funny, but possibly useful:
Bubblepedia
More sad than funny:
Wilfred Burchett. Burchett is the subject of an article, Cut to size by the force of history, in The Australian (June 4, 2008) by Mark Aarons, some reflections by Bob Gould on Ozleft, and is also subjected to critical scrutiny by Robert Manne in The Monthly (June 2008), ‘Agent of Influence: Reassessing Wilfred Burchett’. Bob Watson, a corporate law-talking guy, also has a few things to say about Burchett in The Sydney Institute Quarterly, March 2008 (PDF).
Having kept silent when you described us as “post-Maoist” (which I understood, though I think it’s wrong) I’ve got to say I’m a little bit perplexed by the “sorta funny” description – are we “haha funny”? And if so, are you laughing at or with us (sorta)?
Sorta funny as in it’s sorta funny to see Down Under Upside Down, both graphically and politically. And I’m sorta laughing with, not at, your possibly post-Maoist selves.