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LANGUAGE VALUED
Former ALP leader Mark Latham attempts to re-write history:
I value the language of academia, with its theories and lateral thinking, but I also love the language of the Australian larrikin, so down-to-earth and expressive. This reflects the two formative experiences in my life: the time I spent dedicating myself to the virtues of a university education while growing up in a wonderfully working-class suburb of Sydney. It’s not everyone’s cup of tea, but I treasure this mix: the value of book learning, combined with an earthy, knock-around approach.
One of the saddest things I have seen in my lifetime has been the decline in Australian male culture, the loss of our larrikin language and values. This has been squeezed out of society by a number of powerful influences: the crisis in male identity brought about by changes in the workplace and family unit; the rise of left-feminism in the 1970s and 1980s, with its sanitising impact on public culture; and, more recently, the prominence of neo-conservatism and its timid approach to social behaviour and language. Australian mates and good blokes have been replaced by nervous wrecks, metrosexual knobs and toss-bags. I saw so many of them in politics, from all states, parties and factions. It’s the revenge of the nerds, John Howard-style.
Ah, but who was it who allowed his own mother’s earthy language to be sanitised in 2004?
UPDATE. More on Mark from Andrew Bolt.
I dont know about y’all down there where the water spins backwards, but up here where G-d intended decent folk to live, it was a neo-con that told some wise-ass to “fuck yourself”.
Yeah, its the neo-cons that invented the PC Drone movement, the language of castratos and the rhetoric of the mealy mouthed.
Mark Latham, what a wanker!!!!
Let the bastard rot in peace, he is a bully who we should just forget about.Posted by artful-dodger on 2006 09 24 at 12:02 PM • permalinkIt’s not just the water that spins backwards.
Now, thanks to the ground-breaking work of Mark Latham and eminent colleagues in the Labor party too numerous to mention, we can safely predict that a conga line of suckholes in the Southern Hemisphere is the same as a conga line of anti-suckholes in the Northern Hemisphere.
Australian mates and good blokes have been replaced by nervous wrecks, metrosexual knobs and toss-bags. I saw so many of them in politics, from all states, parties and factions. It’s the revenge of the nerds, John Howard-style.
JoHo encourages metrosexuality. Mmmm. Interesting hypothesis, Mark. I shall write up a Arts grant application for an installation I have in mind. I’ll explore your idea through the medium of urine and macaroni cheese, I think.
Latham… maaaaaaaate… this has NOTHING to do with JoHo and everything to do with the grant-eating hairy-armpitted pinko Che-T-Shirt-wearing morons who infest your ex-party and the MSM.
Go King Hit yourself and have a nice big cup of STFU.
I love it when someone regards the people who believe that one should behave with dignity and decorum in public as “timid.” “Oooh, you scared of bad words!” No, we’re just tired of putting up with the behavior of obnoxious boors.
Posted by Andrea Harris, Administrator on 2006 09 24 at 12:31 PM • permalinkI suppose I should add, I say that as someone who is not against the judicious use of the f-bomb and its companions. But everything in its place.
Posted by Andrea Harris, Administrator on 2006 09 24 at 12:33 PM • permalinkCan’t disagree with Andrea that we could stand a bit more decorum in public—but WTF is up with blaming “neo-cons” for the language police? Also, I have no doubt most of the “metrosexuals” would shriek in horror if they knew they had been associated with “neo-cons”.
Posted by Rob Crawford on 2006 09 24 at 12:39 PM • permalinkThe man sounds so ... confused. Was he really a politician? One with a chance of becoming leader of your country? You poor Australians.
Posted by rick mcginnis on 2006 09 24 at 12:41 PM • permalinkOf course I had to look up the word larrikin…
But is he saying it is the rise of the neocon movement that is contributing to metrosexuals and tossbags (whatever a tossbag is)? Certainly this site, dominated by RWDB males are NOT nervous wreaks, or timid in behaviour or lanquage. Is it the lack of street theater in the RWDB camp, or what. THis guy is seriously projecting. The nancyboys are in his party.
Social engineering utopians have been attempting for decades to feminize men and culture, in general.
By classifying boyish rambunctiousness as a pathology to be mediated with thearay and Ritalin.
By depicting fathers and husbands as clueless dolt in need of rescue and guidance from wise and knowing women—that is, when men aren’t being depicted as womanizers, thieves and child molesters. Alan Alda and Mike Farrell—prototypical sensitive metrosexuals—get a pass.
By overvalidating grrll power, giving women a shallow sense of esteem comprised of little more than attitude, latitude that exists in few places outside the legal and cultural hothouse of the West. Sorry, but in the absence of the West’s fundamental civility, there aren’t enough GI Janes around to enforce ‘gender equity.’
So while the schoolmarms who’ve come, increasingly, to dominate our culture have been busy raising a generation of prey for the world’s predators, you can bet that the West’s enemies—and not just Islamist misogynists—haven’t bought into any of this nonsense.
Err that’s Latham and Co the antithesis of larrikins. I’m a larrikin. A no nonsense up front bloke with a dry sense of humour and a general ambivalence towards authority.
You stick by your mates and your dinkum values and everyone else can go whistle up a gum tree.
As for Latham I say again….Lefty poof!the prominence of neo-conservatism and its timid approach to social behaviour and language.
“Don’t shit in your own front yard” is something I’ve always practised when it comes to ‘social behaviour’. Latham seems to think lefties have all the fun, no, conservatives don’t just need to brag about it that’s all.
A no nonsense up front bloke with a dry sense of humour and a general ambivalence towards authority.
You stick by your mates and your dinkum values and everyone else can go whistle up a gum tree.Sounds like a good ol’ boy to me :D
Posted by Sharon_Ferguson on 2006 09 24 at 04:32 PM • permalinkCome on people (mojo), we had the definition of larrikin given a few threads back. Pay attention.
Speak engrish, huh?
You got a problem with us speaking strine, cobber?
Posted by Stop Continental Drift! on 2006 09 24 at 05:54 PM • permalink...as in: “Mark Latham is a wanker”
Posted by Stop Continental Drift! on 2006 09 24 at 05:55 PM • permalink...or better…
Mar Klathem swanker djegit?
Posted by Stop Continental Drift! on 2006 09 24 at 05:56 PM • permalinkI think Latham has issues with his masculinity. While I would concur with the concept of a “masculinity crisis in some ways, I think Latham is overly fond of donning the rose-coloured glasses when it comes to larrikin-like behaviour.
I waffled on about Latham and his love of larrikinism fify-million years ago.
Whatever the definition, Latham is not a larrikin.
Besides ‘wanker’, the word ‘thug’ does nicely and that one doesn’t need pan-Pacific translation.
Posted by Stop Continental Drift! on 2006 09 24 at 06:39 PM • permalinkHas anyone told Saddam that neo-conservatism has a “timid approach to social behaviour and language.”
No point in asking Uday and Qusay they can’t answer.
What’s timid about “shock and awe”? Should it have been called “F..k yeah!!” instead?Posted by the nailgun on 2006 09 24 at 08:33 PM • permalinkFair suck of the sauce bottle! He is pissing in our pockets if he thinks neo-cons are to blame for the poofterisation of Oz. Sounds like someone had his Australian colloquial dictionary out before he wrote that pile of Edgar Britt.
The man is a complete dead shit and a drongo to boot. The sort of man that would piss on your back and tell you it’s raing. Strewth, if he was anymore full of crap and they’d have to replace his head with a cistern.
Posted by Infidel Tiger on 2006 09 24 at 08:54 PM • permalinkThere is no doubt Latham is screwed up in a big way. I’m no expert in these things but it would seem he has a profound problem with his self image, likely sexual. You do not need to take any obvious cheap shots to see how unstable this makes him. The big grubby talk with the pervasive sexual edge is enough.
I spend a fair bit of time on construction sites. The blokes working there have no problem with the Australian language and I have never struck one who was lost for words when it came to what you call a spade. Or a shovel. PC prissiness is not a quality normally associated with these work places. But I cannot remember anyone who felt the need to talk like Latham. This has nothing to do with their “conversation ... dominated by weasel words and the pretence of politeness.” Or with “fear of offending the conservative status quo.” Nothing whatsoever.
The Australian public spotted this grave problem with Latham even if his colleagues and urgers did not. That is why there was never a risk of him becoming Prime Minister. Latham was never a show.
I hope he keeps on writing. My guess is he still has some interesting stuff to say. But as for leadership? I’d vote against him in the local surf club elections even if he was running against the remains of
Who was it who said “There is nothing more dangerous than a weak man trying to be strong”?
This may be OT back I’m sure there is a segue from nervous wrecks, metrosexual knobs and toss-bags to that Clinton interview on Fox yesterday. I caught a snippet on radio this morning and the man must have said ‘kill’ half a dozen times.
That was some bloodthirsty ex-President. If he was truly in this state of mind back then, no wonder Minica could not resist him.
#8 - A ‘chip butty’ is a hot chip sandwich, probably better described to our US correspondents as a ‘french fry sandwich’—lots of chips between two slices of fresh bread, thickly buttered, with extra salt. Yum.
I think ‘butty’ is Yorkshire for ‘sandwich’.
Posted by walterplinge on 2006 09 24 at 10:41 PM • permalinkThere is no joke quite as side-splittingly funny as the one that your boss tells you.
Latham has experienced this while opposition leader, but has been deluded into thinking it was because he was the new king of yuk-ville. Sad to say that he is nobody’s boss any more.
Mind you, I can see potential, if he could just get people to laugh with him.
Posted by Margos Maid on 2006 09 24 at 10:47 PM • permalink#21 triticale
As I understand it, in Australia, the “working class roots” whereas the elites “make love”.I say old chap, I rather suspect that you’ll find that the more ‘with it’ and adventurous elites, especially those of us fortunate enough to live in the northern part of the State of Queensland (Godzone portion of Oz) are more than a little partial to returning to working class roots on a regular basis ...
I love seeing Latham in print.
It brings back that warm and fuzzy feeling (aided by a healthy intake of Hunter Valley Red) of that wonderful Saturday evening in October 2004 when Howard the Conquerer stabbed the Lathamosaurus fair in the guts with the Sword of Election Victory.
Gloat, gloat, gloat.
Posted by Pedro the Ignorant on 2006 09 25 at 02:17 AM • permalink#36, Grimmy,
A larrikin is a mischevious person with an irreverent attitude towards authority and propriety. They will not take themseves too seriously.Regarded as a good thing if not taken too far. Authority should have the Mickey taken out of it every now and then.
Posted by Lloyd Flack on 2006 09 25 at 06:54 AM • permalink
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Someone I think the “male culture” he approves of doesn’t approve of his cold-cocking someone from behind (what’s the Australian term? “King hit”?).
What a shit.