aquascoot wrote on Apr 1^st, 2024 at 1:38pm:


That's gotta be one of your more stupid arguments ever, and you make a lot of stupid arguments. 

Frank wrote on Apr 1^st, 2024 at 4:22pm:


I say, you must have missed the subcontinental media a few years back, old boy. It was full of stories like that.

I'd be peeking at somebody's Chennai Express or Deccan Herald and there'd be an Aussie Aussie Aussie story about the latest Curry-bashing or stern talking-to down in Oz.

I'd be in some diner with the cable news on in the corner and there we were, in headlines scrolling along the bottom of the screen: Aussies behaving badly; Bondi bahji bashing; Down Under: just not cricket, isn't it? and all the inevitable talking heads, ernestly discussing: are Australians naughty old racists?

The one thing talking heads can do on Indian TV is talk. Endlessly. They often fight. Six Brady Bunch heads on the screen having it out. A Sikh, a bearded yogi monk, a fat, moustachioed Bollywood actor, an old guy with thick glasses, a Nehru hat and knitted vest, a woman with long black hair, one streak of white she hadn't dyed black. All of them yelling at each other like the porters at Madras Central.

I'd watch the ones on Aussies behaving badly, not having a clue what they were talking about.

The first question you get asked when travelling, of course, is where are you from?

Australia, you'd say.

Oh. They'd say.

And that was that, but if you kept talking, you'd inevitably get asked: please don't think me rude, sir, but is it true that Aussies are naughty old racists?

Hmm, you'd say. That's a tough one.

I myself do not believe it to be true, they'd say, but some say this.

Oh, I know, you'd say. You'd try to explain that Aussie is not this white country full of white people in pith helmets and Bombay bloomers. We're not all like Steve Irwin and Shane Warne. In my multicultural ghetto, you'd say, and you'd see them switch off. They wanted a Down Under full of crocodile hunters and cricket ovals, full of white people with big smiles, ready to slap them on the back and buy them a beer.

They didn't understand that you get off the plane in Mascot and you're met by Asians, Lebs, Indians and Pacific Islanders. They wouldn't understand that in my multicultural ghetto in deepest, darkest Sydney, there's more Uttar Pradeshis than a quite few southern Indian cities.

So yes, dear boy. The subcontinent is rather sensitive and media hyperbolic when it comes to matters of racialism, as they call it. They should come here and see.

Aussie Aussie Aussie, no?

John Smith wrote on Apr 1^st, 2024 at 5:48pm:



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