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Accusations of racism and bombastic pig-ignorance about the reality of life outside the ‘majority’ (whatever that means) are the reflexive booing of the cultural elite. That lot is far too posh to get out there and actually boo. That’s for yobs and only for yobs, but they can’t say so in as many words. They hate those yobs more than the yobs hate Goodes.
So how clever of the smarties to upbraid and bamboozle the masses by accusing them of being the sleep-walking (or is that sleep-booing?) accomplices of their villainous ancestors who invaded, raped and pillaged the land of the First Australians. That’s the alleged ‘soft racism’ stock-in-trade of lickspittle conservatives, for those not in the know.
Do people boo Goodes because they don’t like black people? Don’t be ridiculous. What about uppity black people? Getting warmer. Uppity any-colour is a good chance for a boo or two. What about really, really talented game-winning uppity black people who get visibly upset at the booing and throw imaginary spears at their tormentors and do phony, uppity dances after scoring yet another goal? Bingo!
Would they boo Goodes at a BBQ at his place? Not likely. Would they like Goodes if they were to meet him socially or professionally? From all accounts that seems inevitable. Would they give him a contract with their club for lots and lots of money and ask to snap selfies with him? Sign here! Say ‘cheese’!
Why does the boo brigade get upset with Goodes and those elements of the commentariat that accuse them of being racist? Is it because the elite wafflers’ culturally penetrative gaze has seen the ugly truth in those dark, bogan hearts? Or is it because they think it’s a lot of nonsense. Many of the booers thought their sin was simple enough and would have been happy (only if caught-out of course) to plead guilty to the charge of not caring enough about someone’s feelings. Indeed, given Australian Rules spectators’ rich tradition of flinging abuse over the fence, some might even have been quite proud of their indifference.
Why is it that no-one can ‘call out’ this Adam Goodes booing thing for what it really is? It’s bad behaviour. The fans know it. It’s something they probably wouldn’t do at home, at work, in front of their mothers or, lets be frank, if they actually met nice Mr Goodes in person. If Mum caught a glimpse of you on the telly, lips puckered (like the proverbial ape at the zoo) and in mid-boo, do you think she’d say, “Stop it at once you naughty boy. I want you to acknowledge your soft-racism and mend your ways by respecting that nice Mr Goodes’s right to his self-esteem as a strong Aboriginal man. Now I know that’s hard because it’s deeply unconscious, but I still want you to try. That’s the Australian way”? No, I rather think she’d tell you to stop it because it’s rude, nasty and common. Calling it ‘soft racism’ or its nasty older brother, ‘hard racism’, is like seeing someone come through the hospital door with a broken arm and making tests for cancer the first diagnostic priority.
In a perfect world, no one would boo Goodes because he makes it obvious how much it upsets him. So why can’t we just admit and accept that some fans can be boorish, rude, cowardly and, at times, cruel? Ultimately, they don’t really care about Goodes’ feelings, and why would they? Since when did sports fans give two hoots about players’ emotional stability or, for that matter, their racial pride? Goodes did his spear-throwing thing to antagonize opposition supporters. That’s OK. But they don’t care about his racial pride. They don’t care about anyone’s racial pride. They don’t care about his childhood, his hopes and dreams, his love for children and ancestors or what car he drives. Personally, I hope Goodes has racial pride by the wheelbarrow load. That’s nice for him.
This spot-the-racist thing is largely driven by the commentariat class. They are more cowardly than the booing crowd. They prefer to pin the charge of racism on others because it reflects well on themselves. They are proud, educated people who have not a scintilla of racism running through their veins, as they are always so keen to demonstrate by spotting that character deficiency in others. They have better manners or better breeding than most footy fans but cannot note these distinctions out loud, as that might draw an unflattering contrast between their refined and enlightened selves. After all, those booing yobs might be ‘working Australians’ from ‘working families’ and your inner-city types still pay lip service to the notion that they hold the best interests of the proletariat close to their hearts.
What the hand-wringing ‘we’re all deeply racist’ set won’t do is ‘call out’ (certainly not boo) the fans for the thoughtless slobs they sometimes are, because they are terrified of being branded elitist snobs in return. They need grander themes, and crying ‘Racism!’ fits the bill. They want to lance the pustulent boil of extreme hideousness afflicting their knuckle-dragging countrymen. The need to find the dark skeins of racism in the fellow white supporters is a compulsion. They want to bare festering national wounds, frolic in the ashes from the fiery crucible of invasion and dispossession. They want the secret knowledge that Noel Pearson has only now intuited. “Many of us we don’t know our fellow Australians,” he lamented. This stuff must really be super-duper hidden to have eluded even Noel. Until now, that is.
Hidden, festering, psychological wounds, ugly truths, secret knowledge – it’s mouth-watering stuff that enlivens the senses of the educated (after a fashion) inner-city cultural critic. Riled-up yobs and slobs who couldn’t give a toss, not so much. Citing the former makes them seem clever. Addressing the ill-mannered latter, just snobs.
Murray Walters is a Brisbane psychiatrist
Excellent thinking beautifully written Mr Walters. Yet the hand wringers have also taught the children in our schools and Universities, the art of hand wringing and offence procedures clutter the suburban and regional courts (there was a gang of about three thousand p[repared to get violent at the Reclaim Australia Rally recently) – lumpenproles are being driven from their studies, their workplaces, and banished by their ‘communities’ – by a miriade of small laws – the hand wringers have created. Moral confusion festers through the lumpenproletariat.
Couldn’t agree more with article and subsequent comment. I asked my eldest (39y/o) what he thought the whole Adam Goodes thing was all about. He thought for a minute and said, “he’s a tool who treated the fans like mugs and thinks he can get away with it”!
Watch out for dangerous hand-wringers; they can easily move to the next, more dangerous, phase of neck-wringers!! I must say in my 60 plus years on this planet I’ve never seen such a storm in a teacup and it genuinely scares me how much we are being controlled by the Thought Police. Any precedents spring to mind?
This is particularly rich coming from the Sydney crowd, who are the most ungracious of all AFL team supporters if you are an unlucky opposition team supporter (or player). Many is the time I’ve been abused in Sydney for my temerity in barracking for the other side. But I’m white, so who cares.
Princess Goodes has become a study in preciousness, and that’s why he gets boo-ed. The fans have been onto him and his nonsense for quite a while now. I don’t boo at the footy as it’s not in my nature. But I do get a chuckle out of a boo-ing session – it’s part of the spectacle and always has been. How else can a crowd express (good mannered) approbation for what they see as unsportsman-like behaviour (because that’s what this is really about)? Surely it’s better than violence or verbal abuse?
Did they go too far in this case? I don’t know, I didn’t watch it and frankly don’t care if they did.
When I used to play footy I loved the rare occasions on which I was boo-ed or abused because it meant I was having an effect on the game and getting into the heads of the opposition. I can’t bear to watch the AFL anymore, the game I love. If it’s not Goodes it’s some other garbage theme or ideology being ‘celebrated’.
When did the footy stop being about footy?
I also take umbrage at the description of booing fans as ‘thoughtless slobs’. What insulting rot. Frankly I think that’s worse than being labeled a racist because at least the latter allows for some element of intelligence.
Remember how the Sydney crowd howled hate at the American Olympic team when they entered the Arena?
The hand wringers have to have a cause real or imaginary as long as it allows them to disguise opinion as fact. Why they haven’t bothered to highlight that the booing had been player specific rather than colour specific obviously doesn’t suit their agenda for one reason or another.
Perhaps if they look harder they may find cause for the jeering that will blow their ill considered and collective theory out of the water. But then it isn’t about being factual it’s all about being seen to be caring.
I have never metaphorically booed Goodes because of his ancestry or the colour of his skin, but because of his politics which appear to be very left wing to me. Too me he has politicised his role on the football field and there is no one to blame for the heckling but himself.
If Tony Abbott was on the footy field I’d be booing him every time he went near the ball even though he’s a member of the team I support. But he has been so inept lately that I’m pretty confidant he wouldn’t get close to the action. He’d be on the fringes waiting for someone to feed him a handball that he’d probably fumble and turn over to the opposition.
If Bill Shorten was on the field, I wouldn’t be able to speak for a week because of the hissing . I may even invade the field to remonstrate on behalf of myself and the others in the art world whose industry was so badly savaged under his ministerial watch. But he probably wouldn’t get a full game and be on the bench as a substitute (wearing a green vest) waiting for his chance to come on to the field because of an injury or a poor performance from another.
If Adam Goodes is as good at politics as he is at AFL then anyone that opposes him is in for a torrid time. He will be admired and the opposition will be in awe of his abilities. But the recent antics indicate to me that he would be out of his league in the real political game and players like Scott Morrison and Julie Bishop will shirt front him each time he gets the pill.
When and if Goodes joins the real game of politics only time will tell. But in the pre season he has been seen lacking and the handwringers are the cause – god bless them.
This was brilliant, wisernow!! Absolutely laser accurate.
This should be in the Poetry section.
A fine article, beautifully written.
I like the bit highlighting the leftist hypocrisy of looking down on most of the population as a bunch of unenlightened, sexist, racist, homophobic planet-haters, while still in name only clinging to the Marxist notion of the left representing the working class.
Spot-on.