Most readers of XYZ, like most Australians, and we think pretty much everyone anywhere who has been exposed to the Adam Goodes booing saga, including any extraterrestrial life forms who may have been tuning in, just want the thing to be over. They want the booing to stop, they want the commentary to stop, and they want an end to the procession of cultural police slapping on the black arm band and looking down the camera with most earnest expression as they condemn their fellow citizens as racist bogans.
Even Adam himself wants it to stop and hopes to get on with just kicking a footy around the park this weekend. Everyone wants it to be over. Everyone that is, except the Sneering Morning Herald’s John Birmingham, who is seemingly sorry the opportunities to smear his fellow Australians as bigots may be diminishing. Can we really hope the Goodes saga is over? John asks in the SMH’s sister newspaper, the Brisbane Times.
I bloody well hope not, one can almost hear him answer, it’s been an epic source of guilt and self loathing for two weeks now! In desperation to prolong the thing, John searches deep into the thesaurus for multi-syllable words to occupy his column inches. Readers are invited to consider, as a sample, the excerpt below and reflect on (a) what the hell it might mean (if anything), and (b) is John okay. Are you John?
“That the dominant, invasive culture should feel so about the first Australians it displaced, subjugated and attempted to wipe out, speaks to the tangled ganglion of national neuroses surrounding that project.”
Let us know if you have any idea what dear John is banging on about.
XYZ.
