Friday, November 10, 2006
DUCKMAN SIDES WITH CATMEAT
The Age’s Michael Leunig is obsessed:
At some stage well into the journey you may notice a deluge of advertisements for drugs that help men to get erections, and you may find the city adorned with photographs of naked and semi-naked young women on billboards and magazines, and on the television you may see music clips featuring a continuous throbbing smorgasbord of models and dancing girls thrusting their oiled breasts and wet lips and glistening bottoms at you and groaning and clawing and stroking frantically between their legs - the place where babies are born from - and all around you will notice images of attractive, willing, hot, horny, pre-orgasmic, aching-for-penetration women gasping into the camera for you ...
That paragraph runs for another 237 throbbing words (although never again reaching the lyrical heights of “the place where babies are born from”) leading to Michael’s conclusion that, hey, maybe Sheik Hilali got it right after all:
Sometimes a religious figure, such as a mufti, makes a sermon about human nature, rape and the general sexual madness - a bit like parents do to their children in private: “Look after yourself, take responsibility - there are some dark forces and crazy people out there who will destroy you if you’re not careful.” But the mufti uses ripe, rustic language, earthy metaphors and unpleasant ideas. He is set up and set upon by a national newspaper and told to shut up and resign. The Prime Minister chimes in. The mufti is denounced.
But while we may not agree with everything he says, we sort of understand something of what he’s trying to get at. In the great tradition that Australians are meant to admire, he’s at least having a go in difficult terrain where all sorts of silver-tongue-tied experts are refusing to travel and are remaining silent about.
Here’s a reminder of what Hilali was getting at:
• Adulterers should be whipped.
• Thieves should have their hands amputated.
• Disbelievers are “the most evil of God’s creation on the face of the earth” and will be consigned to Hell for all eternity.
• Behind every thief is a “woman like hell” (from Canada and Mexico, apparently) whose greed pushes him.
• Victims of rape should be jailed for life.
• Rapists should merely be disciplined and taught a lesson in morals.
• Women wouldn’t be raped if they remained isolated in their rooms and never went out.
• Women are Satan’s soldiers.
The sub-heading to Leunig’s piece says of all this: “A diversity of opinion is something to be celebrated, not shunned.”
(Via Rob B.)