Wednesday, November 19, 2003
Nostalgia for the 1950a
[As we grind slowly toward the 2004 election, a variety of reactionary ideas are being floated through the social ether to make us all feel "relaxed and comfortable," Prime Minister John Howard's mantra for descibing his time in office.]
Spooks and spies trampling civil liberties in the name of ‘national security’? Singing the anthem and saluting the flag every morning at school? Gaol for burning the flag? Religious Instruction in schools? Prosecution for ‘using the F-word’ in the presence of police?
The earliest generation of baby-boomers, and their immediate predecessors, are trying to re-create ‘the 1950s’ for those who never lived through them — omitting, of course, the economic conditions that underpinned that era.
Did you miss the 1950s the first couple of times? Did you secretly yearn to be Annette, the ‘pretty’ Mouseketeer, or ‘Beaver’ Cleaver? Or maybe your generation wanted to be The Fonz or one of the Pink Ladies from ‘Grease’?
Do you miss the ‘six-o-clock swill’ [hotels closed at 6PM and the was always a rush to consume as much beer as possible before that time], when there was none of this namby-pamby rubbish about seat-belts or speed-limits, and when you could beat up the wife and kids, or your ‘mates’, with impunity? Do you long for the days when gays were ‘poofters’, all girls were virgins until they married and then popped out kids with clockwork regularity and there were no single mothers, let alone lesbian mothers?
Are you saddened by the passing of an era when Aboriginals were dismissed as ‘bloody boongs’ and any liberal thought could be stigmatized as ‘monolithic godless Communism’? Do you yearn for the simple times when all immigrants were ‘wogs’ or ‘dagoes’, but at least were Christians — oh, except for the ‘Chinks’ … and the Jews, who were kept around in order to demonstrate ‘the misery of those who killed Jesus’?
Are you disturbed, afraid, offended by the changes of the last fifty years?
Don’t despair — the ‘Guardians of The Dream’ (politicians, public officials and talkback radio hosts) are working hard to re-create that era for you, so that you, too, can see what ‘relaxed and comfortable’ docile and biddable philistine cretins we really were back then.
The earliest generation of baby-boomers, and their immediate predecessors, are trying to re-create ‘the 1950s’ for those who never lived through them — omitting, of course, the economic conditions that underpinned that era.
Did you miss the 1950s the first couple of times? Did you secretly yearn to be Annette, the ‘pretty’ Mouseketeer, or ‘Beaver’ Cleaver? Or maybe your generation wanted to be The Fonz or one of the Pink Ladies from ‘Grease’?
Do you miss the ‘six-o-clock swill’ [hotels closed at 6PM and the was always a rush to consume as much beer as possible before that time], when there was none of this namby-pamby rubbish about seat-belts or speed-limits, and when you could beat up the wife and kids, or your ‘mates’, with impunity? Do you long for the days when gays were ‘poofters’, all girls were virgins until they married and then popped out kids with clockwork regularity and there were no single mothers, let alone lesbian mothers?
Are you saddened by the passing of an era when Aboriginals were dismissed as ‘bloody boongs’ and any liberal thought could be stigmatized as ‘monolithic godless Communism’? Do you yearn for the simple times when all immigrants were ‘wogs’ or ‘dagoes’, but at least were Christians — oh, except for the ‘Chinks’ … and the Jews, who were kept around in order to demonstrate ‘the misery of those who killed Jesus’?
Are you disturbed, afraid, offended by the changes of the last fifty years?
Don’t despair — the ‘Guardians of The Dream’ (politicians, public officials and talkback radio hosts) are working hard to re-create that era for you, so that you, too, can see what ‘relaxed and comfortable’ docile and biddable philistine cretins we really were back then.
MORE Refugees?
Here’s a conspiracy theory.
Little Johnny [Prime Mister John Howard], sniffing the wind of ‘public opinion’ as reflected by the Howling Dogs of talk-back radio and the Hansonite [Pauline Hanson was leader of One Nation , a right wing, populist, anti-refugee political party] wannabes who call them, says ‘No Refugees’! Big Kim [Kim Beazley, quondam leader of the Labor Party and currently shadow Defence Minister], who is either an even more gutless populist, or terminally inexperienced and stupid, falls into lockstep behind his opposite number, because ‘there are no votes in being soft on refugees’.
Suddenly, Little Johnny does an about-face and says ‘We’ll let this lot in ... but the next lot will be machine-gunned on the beaches’. Bingo ... international opinion is mollified, the ‘snivel-libertarians’ are back on side, the Hansonite wannabes who seem to make up ninety percent of the Australian population are fobbed off with platitudes about ‘Aussie fair-play’ tempered with threats of ‘Next time...’ — and Big Kim is left out on a limb! All this in an election year! No wonder the little ferret [Howard] has survived thirty years in the dog-pit of Federal politics!
The only problem is how the Howling Dogs will burrow their way out ... but then chaps who bash the banks until they are paid not to, then return to bank-bashing when they are caught with their fingers in the cookie-jar [John Laws, a popular shock-jock, took 'inducements' from Australian banks], will no doubt come out smelling of roses!
Little Johnny [Prime Mister John Howard], sniffing the wind of ‘public opinion’ as reflected by the Howling Dogs of talk-back radio and the Hansonite [Pauline Hanson was leader of One Nation , a right wing, populist, anti-refugee political party] wannabes who call them, says ‘No Refugees’! Big Kim [Kim Beazley, quondam leader of the Labor Party and currently shadow Defence Minister], who is either an even more gutless populist, or terminally inexperienced and stupid, falls into lockstep behind his opposite number, because ‘there are no votes in being soft on refugees’.
Suddenly, Little Johnny does an about-face and says ‘We’ll let this lot in ... but the next lot will be machine-gunned on the beaches’. Bingo ... international opinion is mollified, the ‘snivel-libertarians’ are back on side, the Hansonite wannabes who seem to make up ninety percent of the Australian population are fobbed off with platitudes about ‘Aussie fair-play’ tempered with threats of ‘Next time...’ — and Big Kim is left out on a limb! All this in an election year! No wonder the little ferret [Howard] has survived thirty years in the dog-pit of Federal politics!
The only problem is how the Howling Dogs will burrow their way out ... but then chaps who bash the banks until they are paid not to, then return to bank-bashing when they are caught with their fingers in the cookie-jar [John Laws, a popular shock-jock, took 'inducements' from Australian banks], will no doubt come out smelling of roses!
