The Angry Exile: I still call Australia ho... a bit touchy

The Hangman

Into our town the Hangman came,
Smelling of gold and blood and flame.
And he paced our bricks with a diffident air,
And built his frame in the courthouse square.
The scaffold stood by the courthouse side,
Only as wide as the door was wide;
A frame as tall, or little more,
Than the capping sill of the courthouse door.
And we wondered, whenever we had the time,
Who the criminal, what the crime
That the Hangman judged with the yellow twist
of knotted hemp in his busy fist.
And innocent though we were, with dread,
We passed those eyes of buckshot lead --
Till one cried: "Hangman, who is he
For whom you raised the gallows-tree?"
Then a twinkle grew in the buckshot eye,
And he gave us a riddle instead of reply:
"He who serves me best," said he,
"Shall earn the rope of the gallows-tree."
And he stepped down, and laid his hand
On a man who came from another land.
And we breathed again, for another's grief
At the Hangman's hand was our relief
And the gallows-frame on the courthouse lawn
By tomorrow's sun would be struck and gone.
So we gave him way, and no one spoke,
Out of respect for his Hangman's cloak.
The next day's sun looked mildly down
On roof and street in our quiet town,
And stark and black in the morning air
Was the gallows-tree in the courthouse square.
And the Hangman stood at his usual stand
With the yellow hemp in his busy hand;
With his buckshot eye and his jaw like a pike
And his air so knowing and business-like.
And we cried, "Hangman, have you not done
Yesterday, with the foreign one?"
Then we fell silent, and stood amazed,
"Oh, not for him was the gallows raised."
He laughed a laugh as he looked at us:
"Did you think I'd gone to all this fuss
To hang one man? That's a thing I do
To stretch a rope when the rope is new."
Then one cried "Murder!" and one cried "Shame!"
And into our midst the Hangman came
To that man's place. "Do you hold," said he,
"with him that was meant for the gallows-tree?"
And he laid his hand on that one's arm.
And we shrank back in quick alarm!
And we gave him way, and no one spoke
Out of fear of his Hangman's cloak.
That night we saw with dread surprise
The Hangman's scaffold had grown in size.
Fed by the blood beneath the chute,
The gallows-tree had taken root;
Now as wide, or a little more,
Than the steps that led to the courthouse door,
As tall as the writing, or nearly as tall,
Halfway up on the courthouse wall.
The third he took -- we had all heard tell --
Was a usurer, and an infidel.
"What," said the Hangman "have you to do
With the gallows-bound, and he a Jew?"
And we cried out, "Is this one he
Who has served you well and faithfully?"
The Hangman smiled: "It's a clever scheme
to try the strength of the gallows-beam."
The fourth man's dark, accusing song
Had scratched our comfort hard and long;
"And what concern," he gave us back.
"Have you for the doomed -- the doomed and Black?"
The fifth. The sixth. And we cried again,
"Hangman, Hangman, is this the man?"
"It's a trick," he said. "that we hangmen know
For easing the trap when the trap springs slow."
And so we ceased, and asked no more,
As the Hangman tallied his bloody score.
And sun by sun, and night by night,
The gallows grew to monstrous height.
The wings of the scaffold opened wide
Till they covered the square from side to side;
And the monster cross-beam, looking down,
Cast its shadow across the town.
Then through the town the Hangman came,
Through the empty streets, and called my name --
And I looked at the gallows soaring tall,
And thought, "There is no one left at all
For hanging, and so he calls to me
To help pull down the gallows-tree."
So I went out with right good hope
To the Hangman's tree and the Hangman's rope.
He smiled at me as I came down
To the courthouse square through the silent town.
And supple and stretched in his busy hand
Was the yellow twist of the hempen strand.
And he whistled his tune as he tried the trap,
And it sprang down with a ready snap --
And then with a smile of awful command
He laid his hand upon my hand.
"You tricked me. Hangman!," I shouted then,
"That your scaffold was built for other men...
And I no henchman of yours," I cried,
"You lied to me, Hangman. Foully lied!"
Then a twinkle grew in the buckshot eye,
"Lied to you? Tricked you?" he said. "Not I.
For I answered straight and I told you true --
The scaffold was raised for none but you.
For who has served me more faithfully
Then you with your coward's hope?" said he,
"And where are the others who might have stood
Side by your side in the common good?"
"Dead," I whispered. And amiably
"Murdered," the Hangman corrected me:
"First the foreigner, then the Jew...
I did no more than you let me do."
Beneath the beam that blocked the sky
None had stood so alone as I.
The Hangman noosed me, and no voice there
Cried "Stop!" for me in the empty square.

Maurice Ogden

Sunday, 4 September 2011

I still call Australia ho... a bit touchy

Qantas (the post title is from their advertising jingle, "I still call Australia home") has set the offence seekers a tweeting and a twatting recently. They're racists, you know, oh yes, really. Oh, they've apologised of course, but the secret's out now. Racists to the very core, every single one of them.

Qantas celebrating indigenous Australian culture with VH-EBU
"Nalanji Dreaming" - the intolerant racist pricks

And what have they done, you may ask? Well, they only went and ran a competition on Twatter for a couple of tickets to the annual Bledisloe Cup rugby match between Australia's Wallabies and the New Zealand All Blacks, and get this, they asked entrants how they'd support the Aussie team. Can you believe that? Raaaaaci... wait, what? Sorry about this. I must have missed something obviously racist somewhere. Let me just re-check.

To win, competitors had to tell Qantas via Twitter how they intended to show their support for the Wallabies at the match.

Ah, there, see? Raaaci... no, actually that isn't really, is it? Ah, it's the winners because they chose to dress as their favourite player.

Charles Butler, from his twitter account pek_anan, promised to ''dress as Radike Samo. Complete with Afro Wig, Aus rugby kit and facepaint''. For this, he won the free tickets.

Yes, it's the winners, the racist bastards, and so Qantas are racist bastards for picking them. Radike Samo must have been terribly wounded to find out that he's the favourite player of such appalling rednecks, and no doubt he'd have blanked the pair of them if he'd run into them. Except that actually he posed for a photo with them and was completely cool with the whole thing.

"I don't know what all the fuss is about. These guys were actually paying me a tribute. It was a bit of fun and I think it was great they regard me as their favourite Wallaby. I didn't have an issue with it at all. I was glad to be in a photo with them, so I don't know why anyone is getting worked up - that sort of reaction is just silly." - Radike Samo

And to be fair, if your favourite sporting hero is black with a big afro (actually he's from Fiji but I don't know if there's such a thing as a Fijfro) and you're white with just regular white guy hair it's pretty difficult to dress up as your idol without the face paint and the wig. I mean, rugby players don't really have permanent shirt numbers so if you don't make some kind of effort with the star's distinguishing marks nobody's going to know. "Who are you supposed to be, then, eh?"

Uh, don't laugh... Radike Samo? Hey, my eyes are up here.

Except you look like every other supporter wearing merchandising so probably nobody will even ask.

And anyway, how the hell's it racist to dress up and even get made up like someone you admire? Was Lenny Henry racist for whiting up and putting on a grey wig to impersonate Steve Martin (about 3:15 in) because he thought Steve Martin is a comedy legend? And if it's not about whether or not it's someone admirable then was it racist of Dave Chappelle to do the sketch about the white supremacist who didn't know he was black (content warning: do not drink coffee near keyboards approaching 1:15)? Or is this another one of those things where it's only racist if white people do it?

And above all what's it got to do with Qantas? All they did was run the comp and since Radike Samo himself was clearly not offended in any way, if anything a bit flattered by the sound of it, why shouldn't they choose these guys as the winners?

"Shame on @QantasAirways for backing such ignorance."

Oh, do shut your fucking face hole, whoever you are. Get it into your head: expression of admiration for a great player, okay? Said great player thinks it was awesome, okay? Said player plus the Australian Rugby Union support the two fans, right? Two-fifths of fuck all to do with everyone else, d'you see? Unless... unless these people crying racist think that Radike Samo is incapable of deciding for himself when he's being insulted. Yes, that must be it. It was an insult after all and Radike Samo needs it explained to him by these well meaning white people who... hey, wait. Isn't that a little paternalist, thinking Samo can't decide for himself if he should be offended by something? In fact isn't it really quite patronising? So if these people do think that the fans were insulting him and Samo just wasn't getting it, doesn't that make them...

RAAAACISTS!

Probably not, of course, and if they really did it'd be up to Radike Samo to decide if it was offensive to him and/or racist, albeit well meaning racism. No, what we have here is classic offence seeking, people desperate to be seen as right-on and PC and taking offence on behalf of other people. They must surely know it wasn't meant as anything other than a tribute to a player by a couple of admiring fans, and they certainly know that Samo took it in the spirit it was meant because he's told everybody. And since the two fans and Qantas know that they know it's a mite disappointing that they caved in, took down the photos and issued apologies. Good on the ARU and Radike Samo for being the ones to tell it like it is.

"... that sort of reaction is just silly."

This isn't about racism or prejudice. It's about self righteous pricks getting a hard on playing Disgusted of Tunbridge Wells, except the tweets are probably coming from places like Kirribilli and South Yarra. Someone must be running a course.