Interesting observation on the tyranny of political correctness.
As an indigenous person, he said, he found all that recognition of the traditional owners at the beginning of speeches patronising and insulting. I was taken aback. This man is no conservative. Far from it. He said most indigenous people agreed with him but white activists didn’t.
And when I asked him why he didn’t speak out publicly he made a key point: If he did, he would have been howled down by the Aboriginal industry of leftists and Greens. It would be too much of a burden to bear.
Well, it’s the same across a range of issues. What’s politically correct is assumed to be right and should apparently never be challenged.
Yes, I’ve always thought the ritual recognition of traditional owners was a bit tokenistic, but…
The mere fact that an idea can be branded as politically correct means that it can be challenged. The more entrenched ideas are the ones that can’t even be described as politically correct. The most entrenched are those that aren’t even recognised as entrenched.
Gavin R Putland
4 Sep 12 at 11:02 pm
Mungo MacCallum on politically correctness and civility:
and lots of examples from Catherine Deveny being politically correct.
Gab
5 Sep 12 at 12:37 am
Welcomes to country, acknowledgements of dead women beating drunks, etc, give me the absolute proverbials.
I’ve had numerous run ins with lobotomised leftists over this infuriating, offensive bullshit and will no doubt continue to in the future.
ernie drongo has a lot to answer for.
Rabz
5 Sep 12 at 6:24 am
The absurdity is there for all to see when so and so stands at a lecture in a thoroughly modern building and says “I would like to acknowledge the traditional owners of this place…..”
what? Did the Aboriginals erect the building? Do the drafting? Pour the concrete foundation? Pay the electricity bill?
Dan
5 Sep 12 at 6:37 am
Oh, Gab. Haven’t you learned by now?
It’s different when they do it, because shut up.
sdog
5 Sep 12 at 6:39 am
When the Right do it, it’s sexist, racist, and misogynistic. When the Left do it, it’s for artistic amusement (no harm intended).
Splatacrobat
5 Sep 12 at 7:36 am
Political correctness is a disease, and if it is not stamped out ruthlessly it will destroy our society.
blogstrop
5 Sep 12 at 8:10 am
I feel it is meant to make me feel like I am a visitor, not an Australian – it is divisive, us and you, you are just an interloper.
And the fawning lefty submissives grovel in their estacy.
If it could be more inclusive, recognizing all the people who have been before, black, white and yellow, who together have enabled this place, it would be better.
Helen Armstrong
5 Sep 12 at 8:52 am
There should be a grovel towards the migrants – who not only built a lot of modern australia -
but will out breed you all so there.
john malpas
5 Sep 12 at 9:35 am
I was at a meeting recently where the federal minister got up and said his welcome to country ritual (with total lack of enthusiasm btw), then some farmer got up for the next presentation and started off saying something along the lines of “I wish to acknowledge my ancestors and their fellow pioneers who built this country into the productive land it is today”. He got a standing ovation and earned a wry smile from the federal minister, who I know has been around a long time and no doubt regards this little ritual of obescience as a load of crap (no it wasn’t the federal ag minister).
Entropy
5 Sep 12 at 10:48 am
I have just returned from a seminar where the chairman started proceedings with the Aboriginal acknowledgment bullshit.
I put in my comments a complaint that this action of the Chairman caused me offence and that what he did was make a political statement which should be frowned upon in an apolitical event.
I am seriously thinking of writing to the seminar convenor and taking this matter further.
Rococo Liberal
5 Sep 12 at 1:13 pm
I always thought that Welcome to Country is a crumb throwing exercise – like the cheer up prize to the kid who brings up the rear. The left in all their moral condescension fail to see this.
Viva
5 Sep 12 at 1:16 pm
But above all else wasn’t it great to read an article by a grown up. Alex I miss you!
Daisy
5 Sep 12 at 6:11 pm
“Welcome to country” gigs are nice little earners, several hundreds of $$ per 10mins of time, depending on which family has a monopoly on the racket. Local govt organisations and NGOs seem to be the most susceptible targets in my particular area.
mareeS
5 Sep 12 at 7:33 pm
“Well, it’s the same across a range of issues. What’s politically correct is assumed to be right and should apparently never be challenged.”
You’re telling me -(comment moderated).
Big Jim
5 Sep 12 at 10:09 pm
As an Aboriginal man myself, I see when the acknowledgements are done, there are many people who are uneasy at this, as someone said before that they are trespassing. I personally don’t start off anything with this in any presentation I do. As Maree S rightly states, this a nice little earner for those in the right place. As for the ‘reconciliation’ process, there will be none when we don’t see the opportunities that have been given to us by European settlement. Remember when Dr Nelson was apologising after Rudd and everyone turned their backs at the screens. Remember Australia Day and the little fracas that was whipped up by a staffer from the PM’s office. I could go on and perhaps will later, but that is what I think of things.
Black Ball
6 Sep 12 at 10:22 am
My wife took me to see the movie, “The Saphires” on the weekend, about an Aboriginal Girl Group doing R&R gigs in country in the Vietnam war. I thought it might be heartwarming story about how a group of Aboriginals supported our troops while the white Leftards spat on them. Big hope.
Its a story about what a bunch of racist aresholes white Australians are. How a group of stable, almost middle class brown people in 1958 were invaded by the goverment men, who came to steal their children. And because the whites stole their children, they became disfunctional, stopped working, started drinking, and started abusing their children, and apparantly they got uh “got soul”. Anyway, whatever the problem, its all the fault of the white c###s.
I got so offended during the stealing children scene that I walked out of a movie for the first time in my life, loudly and rudely proclaiming it was bullshit propaganda. My wife was embarrassed beyond description, and we had a pointless argument. She is not a Lefty apologist, quite apolitical, but she has unconsciously absorbed the meme of the stolen generations – even though we have discussed the Windshuttle work which finds there is almost no evidence to support the myth. I mean, she knows its a myth, but its the myth you have to comply with because thats the PC rules. I reluctantly complied myself until fairly recently.
My wife of 30 years thinks I am becoming extremist, but I think I have got to the point where I just don’t care anymore about the power of the Left to keep me silent. I dont have to be politically correct anymore, I do not need patronage anymore, I am retired and independent of the government system – except for their taxes and regulations that is.
I am pretty sure I am not an extremist, but there are so many layers of assumption, unchallenged fabrication and distortion that its hard to know where to start arguing your way out of a spiderweb without challenging more sticky assumptions and resorting to simple self defeating truths like: “its all bullshit”.
Comments here make me realise I am not the only one who sees the emperor is stark bollocks naked, but when I try to explain to my wife, it seems all a bit obsessive. In the end I love my wife more than my freedom of thought, I think.
I wish they would make some decent movies that both men and women could watch. Propaganda like The Saphires is really bad for my blood pressure, and it will mean my wife ends up a rich widow in a trendy suburb. She is a generous woman who gives to the needy, an easy mark for the conmen from the various collectives. I will be turning over in my grave.
Jannie
6 Sep 12 at 4:05 pm
They also have that unemployable black chick that is in every fucking movie as a token Aborigine.
.
6 Sep 12 at 4:11 pm
hahahahahhahaha Funny you mention that Jannie. We must be married to the same woman or they’re twins.
I went to see the movie, didn’t walk out when that shit about the government men stealing kids came up. I started to laugh which embarrassed her to no end. We later had an argument when I referred to that crap as just leftwing propaganda. She thinks it’s true because… well that’s what the ABC and Fairfax say.
JC
6 Sep 12 at 4:14 pm
LOl.. I know. She’s in fucking everything. I mean if you’re going to pick a token at least pick a decent looking one.
JC
6 Sep 12 at 4:16 pm
I didnt think any of the group were exactly pretty, but that was because they were selected for the parts because they could actually sing, both C&W as well as Blues/Soul, not because they looked good. But the acting was juvenile, the scriptwriter must have been Robert Manne, and the producer was some government outfit.
Jannie
6 Sep 12 at 4:40 pm
why the heck would anyone watch an Australian film? serves you right …
jtfsoon
6 Sep 12 at 4:43 pm
LOL!
.
6 Sep 12 at 4:46 pm