(no subject)

I got teary over Peter Brock. I grew up with dad watching motor racing, and he was Peter Perfect. I hope the Bridgestone gecko pays a tribute.

Managed to go 4 years without any dickheads commenting anonymously (I'm just not interesting enough). Not sure whether to screen or disallow anonymous...

And this makes me sadder:

His death on Monday aged 44 raises questions over the future of his enterprises. John Stainton, who produces and directs his TV and film work, says the show will go on. "He's an icon and that will be a big void now that someone will have to fill," he said yesterday.

That someone would be Irwin's eight-year-old daughter, Bindi. Stainton has already made seven of a planned 26 episodes of a documentary featuring her and said she was likely to star in her first movie by the end of next year.

"She will probably in the next four or five years eclipse the fame of her father," he said. "I said that to him only a few weeks ago and he said, 'That would be my only wish' and I have no doubt about it, she is so talented. I would imagine she's going to be as big as the Olsen twins."

(no subject)

I got teary over Peter Brock. I grew up with dad watching motor racing, and he was Peter Perfect. I hope the Bridgestone gecko pays a tribute.

Managed to go 4 years without any dickheads commenting anonymously (I'm just not interesting enough). Not sure whether to screen or disallow anonymous...

And this makes me sadder:

His death on Monday aged 44 raises questions over the future of his enterprises. John Stainton, who produces and directs his TV and film work, says the show will go on. "He's an icon and that will be a big void now that someone will have to fill," he said yesterday.

That someone would be Irwin's eight-year-old daughter, Bindi. Stainton has already made seven of a planned 26 episodes of a documentary featuring her and said she was likely to star in her first movie by the end of next year.

"She will probably in the next four or five years eclipse the fame of her father," he said. "I said that to him only a few weeks ago and he said, 'That would be my only wish' and I have no doubt about it, she is so talented. I would imagine she's going to be as big as the Olsen twins."

*applauds*

From The Age:

I can't help thinking that if Clive James, a fellow traveller with Germaine Greer in the great exodus of Australian intellectuals to London in the 1950s and 60s, had made the same observations as Greer did this week about the outpouring of Australian grief over Steve Irwin's death it would have been viewed very differently.

To me, Greer's assertion - that Irwin was a cross between an old-time lion tamer, modern Peter Pan and dinky-di Aussie larrikin who had no place being canonised in life or in death - was right on the money. He'd lived as he'd died: a daredevil entrepreneur who had deftly ridden on the back of Paul Hogan's Dundee coat-tails all the way to the bank and good on him.

I've got no problem with how he made his money, his political persuasions or his fondness for shouting "crikey" loudly into the eardrums of unsuspecting creatures. His circus-like act entertained millions all over the world and there are surely worse things to do with a life's work. And I don't doubt for a moment that his motivation for buying huge tracts of land as habitat protection was in the best interests of the animals he shared a stage with.

The problem I have is the way this country has turned Irwin into some kind of wildlife saint in death when most of us seemed to have had scant regard for his antics in life and simultaneously turned with such vengeance on Greer for expressing a view that has been deemed to be out of step with those of ordinary Australians.

...

And the message has been heard loud and clear; if you're a woman of a certain age in this country - and a childless one at that - don't you dare step out of the shadows and shout out that the emperor might not be wearing any clothes. You will be shouted down and marginalised and your situation will be thrown back at you as a weapon.

In our increasingly family-focused Australia, the perspective of the lone childless woman is not only the least credible, but it seems it is also the least defensible of circumstances. It has become the most potent of dismissals and the most loaded and discriminatory of accusations that carries with it implicit allegations of heartlessness, selfishness and elite myopia.

...

Very little of the anti-intellectual hot air blown about this week has been about what Germaine Greer may or may not have thought about Steve Irwin. It had everything to do with a dominant male power-base telling women to be seen and not heard. Of marginalising a particular kind of woman and reducing us to condition and circumstance. Of reminding those of us who like to speak our mind to watch our step, to remember our place and to shut up and agree with the menfolk. We are all a lot poorer for the unsightly fallout.


ETA: Also a good article by Clive Hamilton.

*applauds*

From The Age:

I can't help thinking that if Clive James, a fellow traveller with Germaine Greer in the great exodus of Australian intellectuals to London in the 1950s and 60s, had made the same observations as Greer did this week about the outpouring of Australian grief over Steve Irwin's death it would have been viewed very differently.

To me, Greer's assertion - that Irwin was a cross between an old-time lion tamer, modern Peter Pan and dinky-di Aussie larrikin who had no place being canonised in life or in death - was right on the money. He'd lived as he'd died: a daredevil entrepreneur who had deftly ridden on the back of Paul Hogan's Dundee coat-tails all the way to the bank and good on him.

I've got no problem with how he made his money, his political persuasions or his fondness for shouting "crikey" loudly into the eardrums of unsuspecting creatures. His circus-like act entertained millions all over the world and there are surely worse things to do with a life's work. And I don't doubt for a moment that his motivation for buying huge tracts of land as habitat protection was in the best interests of the animals he shared a stage with.

The problem I have is the way this country has turned Irwin into some kind of wildlife saint in death when most of us seemed to have had scant regard for his antics in life and simultaneously turned with such vengeance on Greer for expressing a view that has been deemed to be out of step with those of ordinary Australians.

...

And the message has been heard loud and clear; if you're a woman of a certain age in this country - and a childless one at that - don't you dare step out of the shadows and shout out that the emperor might not be wearing any clothes. You will be shouted down and marginalised and your situation will be thrown back at you as a weapon.

In our increasingly family-focused Australia, the perspective of the lone childless woman is not only the least credible, but it seems it is also the least defensible of circumstances. It has become the most potent of dismissals and the most loaded and discriminatory of accusations that carries with it implicit allegations of heartlessness, selfishness and elite myopia.

...

Very little of the anti-intellectual hot air blown about this week has been about what Germaine Greer may or may not have thought about Steve Irwin. It had everything to do with a dominant male power-base telling women to be seen and not heard. Of marginalising a particular kind of woman and reducing us to condition and circumstance. Of reminding those of us who like to speak our mind to watch our step, to remember our place and to shut up and agree with the menfolk. We are all a lot poorer for the unsightly fallout.


ETA: Also a good article by Clive Hamilton.