It may seem tame now, but it was revolutionary in its day.

It does seem strange that this is all just coming out now.
Very good for ratings one imagines. Though I tend to feel a little sorry for Grimshaw, who obviously doesn't have the final say on which stories are presented. She had a look of distaste on her face during the Bingle/Clarke business, and an obvious sense of relief when it came to the final instalment.

Dirty Paki Khunt wrote on Mar 27^th, 2010 at 5:43pm:

That's what I like to read, you tongue-in-cheek bullsh!t artist!

Amadd wrote on Mar 28^th, 2010 at 3:48am:


That could be interpreted as a bit racist, Amadd.

If Betty, a character who defined the essence of Aboriginal sisterhood throughout the 1980s, wants to display her tribal totem, she should be perfectly entitled to do so.

Cathy Freeman draped herself in the Aboriginal flag at the Olympic games, Burnum Burnum drove a Rolls Royce painted with Aboriginal artwork, and Betty proudly wore her tribal insignia for all to see.

Jenny Kee, inspired by Betty's stance, probably knocked off a job lot of them.

To this day, many people fail to see the spiritual references in Hey Dad. They point to Acropolis Now or All in the Family as representing the defining spirit of the times.

This is pure nonsense. Hey Dad displayed perfectly what it meant to be Australian, highlighting the divide between our past and present, the need for reconciliation, and our sense of a proud nation in Asia, fighting for the rights of all its citizens. I happen to know, for example, it was one of the main influences on Paul Keating's famous Redfern speech.

Don Watson, after all, was an avid Hey Dad viewer.

Historians will not ignore Hey Dad's influence on our national tapestry. They will praise the contribution Hey Dad made to our sense of national sovereignty and pay homage to its resonance within our social and cultural makeup. One day, along with the Bulletin, people will look back on Hey Dad as being a defining mouthpiece of Australian national pride and cohesion.

It's a positive thing that there have been television shows about African Americans doing positive things that should at least in theory provide African Americans with suitable role-models that they can aspire to, but this trend has recently just degenerated into a ridiculous parody of itself. Current media depictions of blacks are so unrealistic that they are cringeworthy; a race seemingly consisting of super-geniuses, brilliant accountants, doctors, lawyers, 'by the book' police officers and robotic engineers. Hollywood seems to paint a very unfamiliar and pecuiliar reality none of us really know but many seem to still think is there.

By the same token, more and more are whites depicted as the bad guys. I remember watching some film where two criminals broke into a woman's house, one black and one white. The film clearly depicted the black one as a sympathetic figure and victim of circumstance, while the white was the evil manipulator with no concern for human life. I have long taken notice of this pattern but never really made any conclusions as to why it existed -- at least, until recently.

The Australian media seems to be a little more sane, but that might be because I stopped watching television with much frequency many years ago. There have only been a tiny handful of minority families in Ramsay street for instance. Many would decry this as racist, but really it's just realistic. The American media saturates the neighbourhoods and relationships on its programs with minorities, and every character always seems to possess some sort of improbable 'rainbow' circle of friends which he or she confides. The only time this does not hold true of course is with programs made specifically for black audiences made by black people; in this case, there's nary a white face to be found. Where's Whitey?

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That is true. Where are all these brilliant black and hispanic accountants, doctors and engineers? Have you watched much American television, Freediver?

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No. I only watch Home and Away, Rex and Bollywood movies.

And Hey Dad reruns.

What about Bollywood?