There are denizens
of this wide, brown land of ours, who do little to contribute to the term,
‘proud Aussie battler’. There are people
amongst us whose goal in life, it would seem, is to degrade, incite and
generally heap insult upon those they disagree with. And there are those who call Australia home,
who are downright cowardly, little more than gormless worms, hiding in their
digital holes, slinging insults from the safety of their personal computers
thinking themselves witty, urbane, insightful.
On Monday, via
social media site Facebook, Prime Minister Julia Gillard, in what was a first
for a high ranking politician, hosted a chat session, fielding questions about
the implementation of the Gonski Report into school funding reform, NAPLAN and
teaching quality, amongst other things.
An attempt to tap
into immediate feedback, the session lasted an hour with many questions
answered, and more “tabled for further discussion”. However, it was after the PM logged off, that
the aforementioned gormless worms reared their tiny heads, too cowardly, it
would seen, to sling their odious words whilst the object of their hatred was
still ‘in the building’, as it were.
“Get my dinner
ready”, “Lube up Julia”, “Are your pubes as radiant, shiny and glorious as
mine?” and even a Jones-esque, “How’s your dad?” were amongst the comments
posted in response to the Gillard chat, from a group of all male citizens who
really don’t warrant the kudos, as they would see it, of being named again.
What they do
deserve however, is the utter contempt of the rest of the population, the
sneers and disgusted half-chuckles we reserve for fecal matter found on shoe
soles. For despite the fact many of us
disagree with those in power, sometimes vehemently, when did it become an
accepted behaviour to so viciously attack, personally, the person or people we
disagree with?
To my mind, this
is a part of the trolling epidemic perhaps, and an offshoot of the rise and
popularity of social media – people are able to comment instantaneously, they
do so from the safety of their own homes, and even though the aforementioned didn’t
hide behind monikers, for the most part, it still shows that to say something
so dirty is no big deal anymore, there’s nothing anyone can really do, so cop
it.
No doubt there
will be many, far more insightful investigations into this sort of thing, but
in the meantime, this comes down to cowardice and a general lack of
respect. I can only surmise that the
mothers of these haters raised them like the barnyard vermin they are, and that
perhaps this misogynistic behaviour is a call for help from a group of little
boys who miss their mummy.
For little boys is
what they are. They think it’s cool to
hate on a person in power, particularly one who has copped more than her fair
share in the week just gone. They lack
the mental capacity to form coherent arguments and so resort to schoolyard
bullying in an attempt to gain themselves some attention on a wider scale
(ironic that I’m writing this, then). Further,
good and honest debate is paramount to the workings of government and public
life in general, regardless of how you feel about specific policy or policy
setters, and behaviour like this shunts that to the wayside, sabotaging
meaningful debate, diluting it and rendering it less powerful, the flow-on
effect being that we’re worse off because of it.
These people
shouldn’t call themselves Australians, they shouldn’t consider themselves
battlers, they shouldn’t consider themselves much at all. This sort of behaviour is abhorrent – perhaps
if someone wrote something about them being selfish bully boys, they’d think
twice about how this sort of thing impacts on people, society in general, and
the debates we should be having but
aren’t. Lube that up.
Samuel J. Fell
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