My wife is Chinese and at breakfast this morning we disagreed about the threat of China. No idea how it came up anyway I said China is a threat because they are so big, they are a totalitarian dictatorship, they steal things and when a lecturer at the Uni of Newcastle referred to Taiwan as a separate country some Chinese students complained and he was told not to say that.
She said they don’t invade people and the administration at the Uni of Newcastle should have said to the students if you don’t like what a lecturer in Australia says about Taiwan you can go and study in some other country.
And so to the desk and the replay of Ross Cameron on China. I thought Rowan Dean made my points rather well and Ross Cameron made a lot of sense about China, especially the lifting people out of poverty story and the westernisation of culture on display at Disneyland in Shanghai. I knew he was sacked and I wanted to know precisely what he did wrong. If I hadn’t been warned by the publicity I might have missed it.
I called my wife to watch, actually I called her early in the piece so she could hear Ross making her case and she watched right through without comment.
So I said “There you go. He was sacked!”
“Why was he sacked?”
“Because of what he said.”
“What did he say that was wrong?”
So I went back and found the offence and she said.
“He couldn’t be sacked for that, there must be some other reason>”
Why would she be offended? Like most of the other Chinese in Australia and indeed in the world she has black hair, eyes of a different and somewhat distinctive shape and yellow/brown skin. That is just a matter of fact that you can see by looking.
Coincidentally, the subject of today’s letters submission…
Peter we would appear to be twins separated at birth!
Awww. My two boys.
Those upset by Ross’ booting might wish to call Foxtel and ask to have service suspended ‘until Ross Cameron is re-employed’.
Foxtel, which has to be the most overpriced entertainment option in the country (“all the ads you can watch for just $52 a month”) is terrified of cancellations and the Netflix/Stan onslaught. Enough cancellations and suspensions and they’ll pay attention.
China recently attempted to invade a bit of India. It was only a rapid and firm response from the Indian Army which caused the PLA to pull its head in.
2017 China–India border standoff
They also have large parts of India described as Chinese in the printed map in the new passports.
Taiwan has cause to be careful, and Mattis likewise was correct last week to tell them to buy more weaponry.
Pentagon official urges Taiwan to boost defence spending in face of possible attack by mainland (31 Oct)
If he just said dark haired people I think he’d still have a job.
But he went further and said slanty eyed.
You yourself did not say this and danced around it:
Why did you do this?
Yellowy skin is ho hum, but another red flag easily avoided.
I have no issue with what he said.
I think however for his employer broadcasting widely, they can rightly be concerned if someone uses language which has also been used a racial taunts.
I just don’t know why he needed to describe them thus. If he said thousands of Chinese people, or Asian people, would he have been any lesser understood? Was he trying to be edgy or funny?
Don’t know.
No he should not have been sacked. Context is everything in this case. He could have aired an explanation showing his genuineness.
oh well, another score for the perpetually offended.
Yes Bruce, and they supplied the AK47s for Mugabe’s terrorists and Red Army soldiers fought on the ground in Vietnam etc. I let that pass for the moment but you can be assured that re-education is under way!
Do you really need to ask why he was sacked? Purely and simply because he is not of the left and is not entitled to open his mouth and speak anything other that indoctrinated garbage.
Perhaps Ross might have better recast his comments along the following lines.
‘the que consisted of people who did not have blond hair, round eyes and white skin ‘
All other descriptions of human beings can possibly give offence and blond haired, round eyed people who have fair skin are not subject hate speech restrictions.
Rafe – Recent history please! 😀 Although I did go all the way back to 2012 for the passport story.
China is so nice these days that Uighurs are moving to Afghanistan instead.
For Them, Afghanistan Is Safer Than China (1 Nov)
Add in the persecution of Christians and you have to conclude Xi is a bit of a worry. I don’t see the flood of dosh leaving China for the Sydney property market ceasing any time soon.
There is reason in all things.
When the reason is not obvious, just follow the money.
Just last week Sky Australia signed an agreement to disseminate propaganda published by the China Daily News.
https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/sky-news-australia-chinas-cctv-224884
She said they don’t invade people..
Tibet 1950.
Arunachal Pradesh, India 1962.
Your senses deceive you, a good egalitarian is blind to colour or different shapes. All people must be perceived for what they are: an NPC. (progressive deca-millionaires and above excluded)
Some Chinese are remarkably ignorant of their own history. I don’t think totalitarian dictatorships do self-reflection so well. The Japanese are similarly ignorant of their appalling imperialist excursions and behaviour in WWII, but for different reasons. Maybe its an asian thing (racist!).
because “shutup Racist”!
..
He was making an argument contra fear of China and the Chinese.
Specifically the point was that those Chinese masses like the same things we do.
In context he was wryly mocking the “slanty eyed” view of the Chinese.
This was both the thrust of his argument and the phrase in context.
He was being the opposite of racist. Unfortunately, in these illiterate times, the only thing that gets through is: “He said they are slanty eyed”.
Very stupid people. He has nothing to apologise for and shouldn’t.
Slant eyes is the result of an eyelid fold extending to the corner of the eye adjacent to the nose. The medical term is epicanthus or palpebronasal fold. Most children exhibit the condition and it remains as an adult feature in people from many ethnicities, particularly Asian, Native American, Pacific Islander and to many English, Irish, and Scandinavians.
The term is accurate and useful in describing a persons appearance, and when used in proper context is not pejorative.
PC police of course object to the context. But why? Obsessive fear of racism is strong in the ethically weak, I suspect.
Quite correct.
Tempting as it is to view Cameron’s demise through the Left/Right prism of choking Australian political correctness, his booting is a cheap and easy deflection of the inevitable awkward questions that would be raised at an inopportune moment with SkyNews’ Beijing Bureau by the Chinese General Administration of Press and Publication.
Soft power being exerted through self-censorship of the freedom to make ‘ironic’ comments.
An irrelevant issue in context, but consistency is key.
Language is birdsong to the enraged left, they only take in tone and wait for the one weak note they can attack.
Being able to process context and meaning calmly and without erupting into mindless rage displays stale pale male privilege and enrages the left into murderous conniptions.
Comrades.
Is Foxtel shifting to the left then? I don’t subscribe to Foxtel but I do watch Fox News (yes, I know they are different). Using the words that Cameron did, he must have known they would be a trigger for left to commence their outrage, but maybe not a trigger for his dismissal. Are the left outraged yet?
It’s not language I would use on TV – but I am reminded of Rod Stewart’s album “Every Picture Tells a Story” where sings of a lady with certain shaped eyes …
Mr Constantine, I stand in awe. You, sir, are the Jedi master of fitting maximum message into minimum space.
I have mixed with many people of Chinese ethnicity, largely while supervising university exams, but also in other contexts.
I must be colour blind. Many have brown skin, a proportion have white skin, but I have never seen one with genuinely yellow skin.
Well, Rafe, Perhaps Ross Cameron was playing the game that so many “commentators” play. That is, they deliberately say things that sound like something offensive – suggestive of race, or whatever, in order to attract criticism. Then they hold themselves out as intellectuals whose freedoms are being constrained.
Seriously, this particular instance, in which Cameron was indulging himself and his “audience” in remarkably silly analogies and theories, was going nowhere. Then he dropped in a gratuitous physiological stereotype of people in Shanghai queueing for Disneyland. To what end, do you think?
Maybe he was sacked for stupidity?
BJ – skin color change over centuries?
He was sacked because he lives in Australia, another communist shit-hole where your every word and action is monitored and carries severe penalty.
I wonder if he had referred to them as a bunch of people you could blindfold with a piece of dental floss; would that have been ok then?
Or is all humour now banned in this shit-hole?
stackja at 1506
Doubt that it is a colour change over centuries. A lot of the “yellow peril” crap came from the late 18th to early 20th centuries. Bit too quick for evolution there.
Depends how you define “yellow”, I suppose, but bright yellow is not how I perceive Chinese (or Japanese) to be coloured.
I’m going to use that – I just need to be smart enough and quick enough.; that could be a problem.
That’s a whole heap of bs to dump on the place. Especially when the resident cleaning lady is away on holidays.
Do you think the reactions, for and against, would be different had he said something racist and derogatory about The Chosen People?
Foxtel is showing solidarity with their fascist comrades in the media ,well done fellow travellers !
Always remember Hitler was a socialist and a fascist so the left are socialist fascists .
What has your apparent Judaic “chosenness” enmity to do with Ross Cameron’s faux pas?
The problem with that argument is that it assumes that criticism of China’s actions (specifically the Chinese government’s) is motivated by racism and/or xenophobia. When have you ever heard Rowan Dean or anyone else in the media having a crack at those ordinary Chinese trying to get into Disneyland? But Ross casually assumed if you were critical or wary of the Chinese government, you were criticizing the entire Chinese population, which is a load of crap.
(I think he had the same issue with Russia, too. Didn’t he once offer an apology on PML to those Russian-Australians who must be heartsick at the shocking notion that their dear leader Putin may have … uh, ordered a hit?)
Anyway, I don’t think he deserved to be sacked, but as Rowan has warned many times, if you play identity politics, sooner or later you’re going to lose. Ross lost big time.
Unsurprisingly obtuse answer, old fellow. But ungrounded in fact.
So, you’re not prepared to answer the question.
And just to be clear, old fellow. My view is that if he did make deliberately racist and derogatory remarks about The Chosen People in the same way that he did about the Chinese, then he should in that instance also be sacked. And good riddance to him.
You raised the “Chosen People” issue, not Cameron and not myself. Your sensitivity is as obvious as your race baiting.
Teh Raebot trolls again.
No. I asked whether the reactions would be different, as follows:
You still haven’t answered.
I’m just happy to see her appear sprightly. May this continue to be so.
Cheers Rae.
Thank you, P.