Huh?
Howard - - Posted on September, 6 at 12:15 pm by Tim
Please explain:
Mr Howard, who knew him personally, told MPs in Canberra that people were shocked by his death “in bizarre, tragic and in some respects quintessentially Australian circumstances”.
Seriously, what did he mean?
Posted in Howard |
September 6th, 2006 at 12:21 pm
Crikey, you got me, mate!
Sorry, but someone had to do that.
September 6th, 2006 at 12:22 pm
WHAT he actually meant is not important… all that matters is what the emotionally shattered Battlers think he meant.
September 6th, 2006 at 1:10 pm
Swimming?
September 6th, 2006 at 1:36 pm
I think he means most profoundly, and truly, and characteristically …
…
… not unAustralian?
It seems as if there’s a standard phrasebook Aussie pollies use when describing a recently departed Aussie celebrity. See if you can cram the words “embody” in there somewhere. If it’s “embodied Australian values” even better.
What are some of the other cliches?
September 6th, 2006 at 1:49 pm
Blue-ringed octopus, funnel-web spiders, brown snakes, redback spiders, &c. We’re always hearing about Australia being home to so many poisonous and exotic creatures. Dying at the appendage of an exotic creature has to be quintessentially Australian.
September 6th, 2006 at 2:34 pm
Ah! But weren’t these the fates awaiting queue jumping “illegals”? We tried to warn them. I put it to you that poor Mr Irwin went out in a quintessentially Un-Australian way.
September 6th, 2006 at 2:55 pm
Beezer might be windy / verbose etc but at least he knows how to use a word correctly - he used the “q” word y’day in his ode to Steve Irwin in parliament. I can only imagine that the p miniature must have liked the sound of it even though he wasn’t really sure what it meant. I don’t know what that says about educational standards / teachers back when Johnny were a lad.
September 6th, 2006 at 3:10 pm
Jesus, get a grip, you lot. It so happens that exquisite precision of expression is not Howard’s strong suit (recall his “fulsome praise” statement a few years back). Who cares?
September 6th, 2006 at 3:47 pm
The cause of his cardiac arrest was unusual, therefore hardly quintessential, but it WAS a cardiac arrest from what I understand, so not too far off.
Hardly Howard’s worst example of a slip of the tongue or being, ahem, free with the truth.
September 6th, 2006 at 3:57 pm
I think the PM meant to say, “typically”, and, keeping in mind that “typically” is often used as a more positive way of saying “sterotypically”, then the PM’s statement is completly unremarkable, as eulogies go.
My favourite alternative theory is that the PM was saying that Steve Irwin was in - in some respects - the Australian version of circumstances that Bruce Willis found himself in in The Fifth Element, except that Bruce got a lucky break, (probably on account of the fact that Australian stingrays are more dangerous than world-destroying balls of pure evil).
Merriam-Webster sheds more light: http://www.m-w.com/dictionary/quintessential
September 6th, 2006 at 3:58 pm
Yea, ‘quintessentially Aussie circumstances’ if you think like Howard…making a movie to reap profits off the back of more animals…& promoting tourism on top of it all. Sad about his death but let’s face it, Irwin was a good Corporate lad…I don’t know many bona-fide ‘environmentalists’, as he’s been referred to continually in the mass media, who have made as much moolah as he did…he wasn’t averse to grabbin’ the green & gettin’ his face in every shot…animals came second to that kinda ego. Still, the masses loved him…he’s their latest Elvis…they cry pitifully for someone they didn’t know…whilst their own families, Colin Thiele & the victims of Corporate Wars fade into obscurity.
September 6th, 2006 at 4:07 pm
quintessentially Australian circumstances
Too right. I don’t know about you guys but in my daily routine I regularly traverse a hazardous path strewn with lethal marine life. Just this morning at the bus stop I had to fight off an outraged family of blue-ringed octopi.
Beezer might be windy/verbose etc but at least he knows how to use a word correctly
Yes, but correct use of the English language is just soooo elitist. This can only hurt Beazley in the mortgage belt.
September 6th, 2006 at 4:22 pm
Howard meant that it was essentially Australian, and wrongly felt this word could be made to sound more prime ministerial if he put “quint” in front of it. Big deal. For better or worse, I have a better idea what Howard means than any Labor leader of the past 30 years. So do the rest of you. Come to think of it, I have a clearer idea of Howard’s meaning on this occasion than Tim Dunlop’s. Is Tim merely poking fun at Howard for infelicitous phrasing? Or is this another of those racist-dog-whistling deals, where Howard presses a wrong button purely by identifying an “Australian” quality in something?
September 6th, 2006 at 4:39 pm
Ok Captain, what is “essentially Australian” about being killed by a stingray?
It’s just as dopey a statement as using quintessentially.
We all know what Howard stands for and believes - but that ain’t what comes out of his mouth.
Except when he is dog whistling - then his language gets easy too understand just so the target audience can get it.
The rest of the time he says essentially nothing.
September 6th, 2006 at 4:57 pm
Isn’t it more quintessentially touristian to get bitten, stung, disfigured, mauled or deadened by nature’s wonders? Surely any battler worth his or her battle knows that even the landscape around here can kill you?
September 6th, 2006 at 5:07 pm
“Howard meant that it was essentially Australian”
Nice try, but being stung by a ray is not essentially Australian. Neither is being bitten by a funnel web spider, eaten by a shark or poisoned by a death adder.
An essentially Australian way of death is - essentially - one of the usual suspects in the Western World: motor vehicle accidents, heart attack, one or another form of cancer. In other words, the same as everywhere else where we share something approximately related to our culture.
I think Howard may have meant that in the “Australia” Steve Irwin presented to the world, his death may have been quintessential. For a crocodile hunter and stingray wranger what could be a more quintessential way of shuffling-off, but to be eaten by a croc or stung by a ray?
Of course that “Australia” does not exist, but Irwin made out it did. And Howard did say, “in some respects”.
One thing I can declare for sure: Irwin’s death has turned me off crocodile hunting, sting ray wrangling and snake twirling for life. I owe him that at least (and I didn’t even watch his show).
September 6th, 2006 at 5:20 pm
“Jesus, get a grip, you lot… who cares”
Standard wingnut answer, no?
Prime miniature lies… see above
Prime miniature fluff lines… see above
Prime miniature demonises minority… see above
Prime miniature drops in polls… see above
Prime miniature avoids accountability… see above
Gosh Captain, when can we criticise the little grub?
September 6th, 2006 at 5:28 pm
it is a trivial matter in the scheme of things Captain Wanky but allow us a little fun in highlighting that the pm is not half as clever as he (and no doubt you) thinks he is.
September 6th, 2006 at 5:46 pm
Howard is full of shit, he knows it but gets away with it in this case because no-one is going to contradict him when the man is dead? “Oh no he’s not quintessentially Australian.”…?
The public face of Irwin developed in the US is a parody of an ” Australian”. In the same mould of Hogan before him and let’s face it, if you make it in the US you “make it”. The US version of who we are is the version we accept because that’s the version which the world likes. Everyone likes to be liked. Who likes leftie whiners who cry about killing muslims - Not sexy or quintissential.
September 6th, 2006 at 6:23 pm
Do you not know that he used most of the money, millions, to buy up large areas of land to preserve the natural habitat and was a large donor to conservation causes?
He may have made lots of “moolah” but wasn’t anywhere as rich as you believe.
September 6th, 2006 at 6:57 pm
Yada, yada, yada, Ian, but he doesn’t seem to have gotten through to Howard on Global Warming, does he? So let’s not get too carried away with how much of an environmental saint he was, or how influential he was.
He was showman, like his Dad, like the Snake Man out at la Perouse, only with modern marketing to help him.
His legacy is dubious, and I reckon the jury’s still out on whether he was a nett benefit to environment.
It’s easy to grab a croc by the tail (I’m speaking relatively here), but not so easy as, say, spending a year in the Andes, or the Skeleton Coast, or the jungle of New Guinea to grab 30 seconds of footage for a David Attenborough docco without the animals even knowing you were there, much less grabbing them by the tail and harassing them until they try to bite you, thus making yourself out to be a fearless “Crocodile Hunter”.
The species Irwin got himself involved with were not rare. They were crocs, snakes and (unfortunately for him) one stingray too many. These exist in plague proportions up North. OK, so maybe he knew he was full of it, and had a secret agenda to use his show for the purposes of good, solid environmentalism on the QT. And good luck to him.
But part of the show was to tell millions that it was alright to manhandle wild animals that would rather be left alone, and the question has to be whether the ends of “saving the environment” (if they were Irwin’s ends) justified the rather crass tormenting of animals he used to make his point.
September 6th, 2006 at 7:27 pm
Well said, AB.
And I reckon I will never,ever become quintessentially Australian, because I have no intention of ever being attacked and murdered by any marine creature.Mind you,I do tread carefully around the bloody big brown snakes that inhabit my locale.(Rather than grabbing them by the tail, yelling Crikey, and flinging them around the joint).
Suppose that makes me un-Australian.Or at the very least non-quintessential.
September 6th, 2006 at 7:46 pm
The prime miniature would have been better off just saying, “Aussie as”
September 6th, 2006 at 10:17 pm
Quintessential means whatever I want it to mean:
02 July 2004
Steve Irwin has been sprung dangling AWAs in front of young workers at his North Queensland zoo.
The Zoo, an official AWA ambassador, has signed up its 450 staff to the non-union agreements which pay all staff equally from reptile keepers to labourers and have abolished penalty rates for weekend and public holiday work.
Irwin caused a media storm last year by dangling his month old son in front of a hungry crocodile and, more recently, drew criticism for his behaviour in Antarctic wilderness areas.
“AWA’s are excellent in terms of keeping it simple. As a base document to build our policy on, I couldn’t ask for anything better,” his HR manager, SandyWhitehead, said.
The announcement that Irwin had been co-opted to the AWA campaign was the last official engagement of controversial Employment Advocate, Jonathan Hamberger.
The federal government has used AWAs to undermine collective agreements and attempt to write trade unions out of the employment relationship.
Hamberger has promoted their use, even when they cut workers’ earnings by thousands of dollars. Despite the support of Hamberger, and advocates like Irwin, less than three percent of Australian workers are covered by AWAs.
As employment advocate, Hamberger conducted a long-running campaign against the CFMEU and his 11-page report into the construction industry was responsible for the federal government establishing the Cole Royal Commission.
His office was castigated by Justice Marshall for putting up witnesses who had “artificially manufactured a confrontation” and told “untruths” in a court case against the CFMEU.
Hamberger, an ex-staffer of Industrial Relations Minister Peter Reith, will take up his appointment as a senior deputy president of the Australian Industrial Relations Commission.
The Howard Government was accused of “stacking” the bench in the lead-up to the last federal election.
So far, it has made 17 appointments to the IRC, the vast majority from employer backgrounds.
http://workers.labor.net.au/227/news3_AWAs.html
September 6th, 2006 at 10:22 pm
Do any of us know if it is true that Irwins co. Croc Hunter Inc. received funds from Tourism Australia under their grants for ecological endeavour? And that these grants enabled him to purchase large tracts of land for conservation purchases.
If this is true, and i am not saying it is, it would explain much about the mutual admiration society enjoyed by irwin and Howard.
And it would probably give the “battlers” who so admired him much misery, if their taxes were used in this manner.
September 7th, 2006 at 9:02 am
Don’t forget bindi’s.
Some Irish friends of my partners a while back were here on a working vacation. One of them remarked how bloody dangerous this country was, even the grass attacks you.
September 7th, 2006 at 9:43 am
Well at least he wasn’t scalded to death by an extra hot latte, or crushed to death by a book-a-lanche while reaching for a Chomsky tome at the uni. library.
Ah Steve! Perhaps it would have been better if you’d been stomped to death by a police horse at an anti-globalization rally, at least then your death would not have been in vain.
September 7th, 2006 at 12:32 pm
I agree with Allan above,a bite from a shark etc. - that sounds to me like what he meant.
I just want to say some more things about Irwin though.
I believe Greer was incredibly rude, tasteless and unrepresentative of Australia’s overall reaction which has been more polite and sad.
Since when do you bag the dead so promptly? where are nice kind words for his family if she must open her trap? She bags a man who was popular with millions of children - yeah good one Germy…
Positions reversed, Irwin would never have had the lack of gallantry as to make such thoughtless comments about her - She prefers to speak ill of the dead but of course Greer is no gentleman.
I’d also take a serve at those who are squeamish about his handling methods. He was not cruel (nor “humiliating” as Greer said - talk about anthropomorphising darling) With animals he had fun. And his audiences did too. And the animals looked well looked after, at least to me. I dont think anyone appreciated his one-off stunt dangling the baby.
Everyone agrees that from time to time he went over the top, got a bit close or too enthusiastic. But for god’s sake get real - the world would have more whales today if the Japanese followed his example only.
I want to be more substantive in my criticism here though: I lived in Asia as a child and culturally obviously the region varies greatly but we recognise images even today of monkeys trussed like handbags for carrying convenience, multi-storey hi-rise city buildings complete with lifts in HK built for racehorses, bears milked, dogs farmed and shark fins cut off for soup.
Here in Australia we have different values and practices for pets and other animals and as some recent research has pointed out, those of our children who mistreat animals in early life are also more likely to be violent and cruel towards people later .. in other words mistreatment of animals is an early sign in humans of anti-social behaviour (”as flies to wanton boys…” etc.)
An former flatmate of mine came from a particularly disadvantaged suburb in sydney and he said his school was chocka with boys tortured animals (sometimes only to show off)such as one young man in his school year who buried chooks up to their necks in his backyard and mowed them. Teaching people to play with and care for animals helps instill compassion. I believe Irwin had stacks and stacks of compassion to instill in others (neatly countering the void in compassion and humanity that Greer displays).
My point is, however, that the schoolboys mentioned above are not I suspect watching Sir David Attenborough on the ABC tiptoe thru the tulips, nor do they subscribe by credit card to Friends of the Earth or delivering run-over(mowed)birds to WIRES every 5 secs.
Get real.. they’d watch someone on free to air tv they can actually understand both in speech, in wild behaviour and in go-for-it attitude! His rough and ready tv was probably a bridge from one sub-culture (his form the bush) to another (theirs in the drab cement city)
Furthermore, those Asians who see animals as produce without feelings find it hard to accept or even interpret the concept of “national parks” or wilderness conservation would have watched astonished as he actually cared for the animals he showed to his audiences. He didn’t kill them or milk them and he was actively against the culling of crocs in FNQ and the NT.
So the message that utopian NGOs and marine scientists and Attenborough et al. convey doesnt penetrate such city folk divorced by nature (ie the bush) in language they can understand ie the normal speech of a normal guy and the wild happy expressions and cheerful exclamations of excitement, optimism and curiosity that are clearly cross-cultural…
Plus crocs are more cool and more exciting to some audiences than the silent slow motion spawning of a lesser spotted shrimp from south america (but a little harder to handle you have to be careful with crocodiles or they could humiliate you…
Thirdly, I read today that kids liked him “Cos he was nice to animals” in the newspaper. They can see what an ageing superseded feminist animal handler and funeral commentator like Greer can’t see.
To kill off Irwin as a nice but average and very popular Australian guy that was keen on animals kills off the little boy in us, one of whom wandered about and caught bugs and small creatures and then grew up one day to be Sir David Attenborough (his self-description).
As far as Greer goes finally, well I am a woman considerably younger than her and she is bloody irrelevant to people like me. We clearly don’t share one iota of the same values, I thought she was mildly offensive in Adelaide when I listened to her bag anyone daring to stand near her but this year I realised that she’s simply a huge snob at heart and that’s why she’s in the UK so she can join the poms to have a good whinge.
Zzzz..germy, you are too easily “embarrassed” these days - now you know how we feel when you are around.
September 7th, 2006 at 2:45 pm
“I’d also take a serve at those who are squeamish about his handling methods. He was not cruel (nor “humiliating” as Greer said - talk about anthropomorphising darling) With animals he had fun. And his audiences did too. And the animals looked well looked after, at least to me. I dont think anyone appreciated his one-off stunt dangling the baby.
Everyone agrees that from time to time he went over the top, got a bit close or too enthusiastic. But for god’s sake get real - the world would have more whales today if the Japanese followed his example only.”
Sure, and animlas don’t really mind being pushed, poked, dangled, wrestled, yelled at, and having things pushed in their faces. Give us a break. Irwin was a quintessentially Howard type of b******t artist. I agree Greer should have had the grace to wait until the funeral before her spray, both out of courtesy to his family, and because her remarks would have been noticed more if she had waited. Essentially I agreee with what she wrote.
Irwin’s care for animals was more about him and his desire to show off and make money, than it was about animals. I don’t mind his making money - unlike others I don’t think that a talent for making money thereby disqualifies a person from moral or ethical probity or the right ot claim same, but in Irwin’s case, his so called ‘care’ was behaviour that I was taught never to induge in with animals, for the following reasons:- Firstly, it is cruel and thoughtless to taunt creatures that can’t run away or otherwise resist treatment that you wouldn’t like yourself, and secondly, equally importantly, it is dangerous to yourself and others, because animals can bite scratch and sometime kill you, if you do not leave them alone, at least if you don’t know them well or they are wild.
A pity he and his admirers weren’t taight the same. Crocs are neither rare, nor are they endangered, but it seems basic common sense is, where there is a way to make money.
I am sick and tired of the constant refrain that because some activity makes money makes people happy, or both, it is thereby immune from any rational criticism or debate. It is not, and I have no intention of joining a cheer squad for a dopey man who made a good living teasing animlas that other people would normally be too afraid to approach. And if that is ‘quintissentially unastrayan, I couldn’t give a rats!
September 7th, 2006 at 4:59 pm
Well said Aussie Sheila.
Not related to Aussie Bob are you?
September 7th, 2006 at 10:09 pm
>>Here in Australia we have different values and practices for pets and other animals and as some recent research has pointed out…”
This is one of the saddest & ironically funny comments I’ve ever read. This Nation sends many of thousands of livestock across the ocean in brutal conditions to be maimed & slaughtered in the Middle East. It murders millions of animals every year so that shoppers can grab a convenient piece of meat from the supermarket, restaurant & fast food joint w/out having to do the dirty work themselves. Fish are more protected in order to allow fisherman access to their lives than for their Right to Live. Roos & other animals are hunted & mowed down by SUVs etc. across this land. Australia has economically benefited to a great extent due to the wholesale slaughter of animals…including caged chooks, that are exported in their millions to other countries. Cats & dogs are put down in their thousands every week. This Nation is soaked in the blood of other species…& yet Plain Old Boring Snob tries to justify the actions of Steve Irwin by stating we have superior values to Asians here. Certainly a xenophobic comment on top of it…highly naive & ignorant…& completely false!!!!!
Kudos to Germaine Greer for having the guts to tell it as it is. I know my comments will go down badly w/ many…but as a former meat eater who AWOKE to animal suffering some 15 years ago, I feel compelled to express my opinion on the matter. Tired of the BS.
September 7th, 2006 at 10:11 pm
That it was quirky?
September 7th, 2006 at 11:30 pm
Fair point about Ms Greer. I’ll probably offend quite a few people by saying that I don’t think she’s said anything much worthwhile for a couple of decades now.
As for Mr Irwin’s activities, I’ll quite happily admit that I didn’t have a great deal of time for the man or his show and, yes, I suspect that the animals appearing would rather have been left alone.
However, a couple of comments. Firstly, the point about reaching those who might otherwise be mindlessly cruel for the fun of it has some not insignificant merit.
Secondly on the subject of Irwin’s success allowing him to eg buy up habitat areas. If true, I’d say that it counts as a plus. Regardless of what it may be nice to believe, money and influence applied in the right way can do a whole lot more good in many cases than any amount of grass-roots campaigning.
This was brought home to me many years ago when I held a post with a grass-roots lobbying organisation in the UK. After one particularly galling defeat, partly due to lack of membership support, I, and a number of the more senior members were bemoaning our lot and punishing a couple of bottles.
The main point at issue was that, over the history of the organisation in question, it had always been difficult to motivate the membership to any action beyond paying their subs. A little basic arithmetic suggested that the subscription income would have been sufficient to finance a fairly serious business. Rail company franchises were looking pretty good at the time.
Eventually, after batting the idea back and forth for several hours, we all came to the conclusion that, instead of farting around as a democratic, bottom up organisation, relying on the membership to fight for their own interests, more success would have resulted had the members’ subs been invested in getting a company off the ground, making a shitload and damn well buying them some freedoms by way of employing professional lobbyists and the rest of the glitter and gloss that governments take notice of.
It could have worked. There was no shortage of talent and ability in that room. Some are now dead, at least as prematurely as Mr Irwin. Most of the rest are burned out from trying to motivate the motivationless. What a waste.
In retrospect, I still think the ethics would have stunk but, I cannot deny that, if successful, the results would have been massively more positive than they have been.
Sorry to ramble but I’m just trying to illustrate that, whilst the bloke in dreads and a daft hat living in a tree to impede the loggers may have stacks of motivation and all the ethical purity in the world, the rich and popular bod, tedious prat though he may be, who buys up a few hundred acres of wilderness using his ill-gotten income and leaves it largely alone, will inevitably make a greater individual contribution to halting habitat destruction.
Sorry, but it’s really really difficult to argue with the possible results from cold, hard cash, wherever it comes from.
All that said, good on the Irwins for turning down their role in the political/media circus that was shaping up around the funeral.
I’m still not going to get involved in any great national outpouring of rather affected grief though.
September 11th, 2006 at 7:10 pm
[...] You see, if only all of them Muslims would become more like Steve Irwin everything would be okay and you could throw your fridge magnet out. Steve Irwin was so Australian he even died like an Australian. Does anybody else find this populist and xenophobic attitude offensive that “if only they were more like us, instead of more like them” our Way Of Life™ wouldn’t be threatened? [...]
September 11th, 2006 at 8:46 pm
Does that mean that a Korean tourist killed is the same circumstances (sans camera man, of course) would be Aussie-as?