I’m angry with myself for the following reason - I forgot a golden rule I’ve always tried to subscribe to. Namely, if you don’t have anything kind to say about someone, don’t say anything at all.
In my defense, I’d like to point out that I made a point of expliciting stating that Cathy’s looks specifically AREN’T why I have disdain for her lack of intellectual capacity. Nor her ethnicity. It’s purely her lack of intellectual capacity in, and of itself, which earns my disdain, and nothing else.
So, in keeping with my preferred philosophy, consider the divine Shirley Strickland instead, shall we? After multiple gold medals in athletics in the 1950’s, ya know what she did after retiring from the sport? She specifically took up a job as a nuclear physicist at the Lucas Heights nuclear research facility in Sydney. And why? Because someone told her once that it was purely a man’s job, and she wanted to prove them wrong. Now THAT impresses me.
By the way, for my good friend Princhester who advised me rather wisely to pull my head in, I’d like to note that my coaching roles, like most people across the world who are involved in junior development coaching, is purely an amateur unpaid affair. It’s a case of wanting to try and give something back if you know what I mean.
I’m not seeing any signs of Cathy Freeman showing such altruism in the near future to be honest.
I think that Catherine Freeman is a ‘dumbfuck’ too…and that is what makes her so likeable. She has few pretensions and has endeared herself to the Aussie public by sheer virtue of her ordinariness.
So you don’t like because she’s dumb? Why? Is it just irritating that she’s being help up as a model Australian when all she can do is run fast? (not attacking, just honestly curious)
I also don’t get the disdain for Thorpe (like from Fire Engine and a friend of mine that is really irritated that he’s not coming out of the closet).
Both athletes seem as inoffensive as possible to me – granted I’ve never seen anything about either of them outside their chosen sports and I was forever getting Thorpe and Hackett mixed up until Hackett shaved his head.
My position is this - she’s milking her 15 minutes of fame. And she’s milking it for every last buck she can make. Nonetheless, as a consumer of commercial TV, it’s my right to boycott the “Seven Network” - which I’m happily doing. Especially when they can no longer find a place for the eminently more articulate and erudite Raelene Boyle - and the good oil I heard is simply that Raelene no longer has a gig because supposedly she’s now too old to be “relevant” anymore - regardless that she can commentate on athletics 1 billion per cent better than Cathy Freeman ever will.
Also, your arguement for liking Cathy Freeman is exactly the same reason Shane Warne is widely liked too. It’s an opinion thing, and on the internet, arguing about opinions is always a dead end I find.
Our Cathy was installed by the white media establishment as the Queen of Aboriginal Australia. This says to black kids throughout throughout the country here is the epitome of Koori culture and achievement. A moronic but pleasant and inoffensive blackfella who used to be able to run faster than any other woman in the world. She might make you cringe when she opens her mouth, but she’ll melt your heart when she shows the world how black and white can embrace in this wide, brown land.
Achieving the right to vote in the early sixties was a false dawn for Aboriginal Australia because the shameful quality of living gap between whites and blacks continues to grow while black kids are constantly shown running quickly or kicking a ball are the paths out of squalor. How about doing whatever the fuck it takes to find and train more black doctors and engineers? As much as I despise them, I’d love to see some more high profile aboriginal lawyers like O’Donoghue or even ad execs. It would be fantastic for black kids to look at black yuppie scum for a change and say, “Well fuck, I guess I can have that stuff and do it legally the way whitey does it.” Many Aboriginal kids have already discovered they can run fast the first time they got chased down the street by the pigs though. It’s not a skill they need reassurance about.
Of the administrators and activists, the really effective ones like Gary Foley are marginalised by the media and made out to be extremist cranks whilst all the oxygen is stolen by thugs and thieves like Geoff Clark, Sugar Ray Robinson or people who don’t rock the boat too much like Our Cathy. The message is clear for blacks; if you want to really get anywhere, you need to be good at sport, paint crap with dots and circles for yank tourists or be a white collar criminal (so long as you don’t compete with whites in the corporate or non-indigenous government spheres).
Both Warnie and Our Cathy are what they are. It’s not Warnie’s fault he’s a disgusting, fat, smoking, bogan cunt and Cathy can’t help her retardation. They were just gifted with extraordinary ability in a small niche that allowed them to be elevated by others far beyond where they’d go in a just and sane world.
Actually, this is what I wanted to say but the overnight backup phase kicked in while I was doing a preview… so I’ll try again…
Firstly, I don’t have a problem at all with ordinary people - that’s a silly proposition. My position is this - she’s milking her 15 minutes of fame. And she’s milking it for every last buck she can make. Nonetheless, as a consumer of commercial TV, it’s my right to boycott the “Seven Network” - which I’m happily doing. Especially when they can no longer find a place for the eminently more articulate and erudite Raelene Boyle - and the good oil I heard is that Raelene no longer has a gig because supposedly she’s now too old to be “relevant” anymore - regardless that she can commentate on athletics 1 billion per cent better than Cathy Freeman ever will. And THAT is my beef. Cathy Freeman represents everything which, in my opinion, is wrong with modern culture - namely, that populism is now more important than substance. Witness the explosion of reality TV to illustrate my point.
That Raelene Boyle is now redundant is a crime in Australian TV Sport in my opinion. And mark my words, 4 years from now, maybe 8, the same vicious cycle will bite Cathy Freeman on the arse too. But it doesn’t happen to you if you’ve got the capacity to reinvent yourself as something other than a sportsperson after your sporting career. And THAT is why I admire Shirley Strickland so much you see. She took control of her own destiny, and she did it with gusto. Conversely, Cathy Freeman’s only remaining asset now is her popularity, and popularity is a fickle beast people. A fickle beast indeed.
Also, your arguement for liking Cathy Freeman is exactly the same reason Shane Warne is widely liked too. By extension, it’s a waek arguement. But that’s an opinion thing, and on the internet, arguing about opinions is always a dead end I find.
And if you’re hoiking Gary Foley up there as the epitome of all that is right and just in the Koorie world, then YOU’VE got some major fucken problems dude.
Doesn’t the fact she is able to do this somewhat successfully fly in the face of your assessment of her as a “dumbfuck”, thought BBF ? (well successfully enough to get up your nose, it seems)
That banana flavour is an esther, it is, IIRC created by something reacting with an alcohol, hence it appearing in your heiny. We made it once in chemistry.
Not at all… the people who act as her agents would doubtless have advised her that she should make hay while the sun shines. To do so hardly requires a great intellect. The world is full of sportspeople these days who have regular commentating gigs who can barely string coherent sentences together. Witness the various incarnations of the nation’s “Footy Shows” to see what I mean. I have no less, nor more, respect for your typical jock ex-footballer who’s been given a microphone on the sideline. In these circumstances, articulate insight is the exception, not the rule.
In MY opinion, not yours obviously, Cathy Freeman is the female athletics equivalent of a dumbfuck ex footballer cum commentator. Her presence, in my opinion, diminishes the Olympic viewing experience - hence, I choose not to watch the Seven Network’s coverage - which is my right.
But I’m quite happy to concede that she’s popular - amazingly popular. Nonetheless, I maintain my position that “saying something of substance” isn’t her strong point and she should just plain disappear - but that’s just my personal position and we’re gonna have to agree to disagree it would seem.
kambuckta, dude, I’d never heard of him when I met him at Melbourne Uni after coming back to Australia a couple of years ago. He struck me as one of the most interesting scumbags (his word) I’d ever met. I later found out how much he’d achieved for the community in Redfern and yet on that day he mainly entertained us with his side of the story regarding some of the strife he’d been in with the media.
If you search for role models and focus on lack of blemish, you get bland. You’ll never get an epitome of right and justice and instead be left with Our Cathy. Heaps of stuff he says is trollish and I disagree with a lot of it but he’s an effective advocate for a lot of people and is what is needed. Likable, inoffensive figureheads like Freeman haven’t changed the contempt many people feel for blacks but ratbags and trouble makers will affect more change than she ever will. What’s your problem with him? Are you sure we’re talking about the same guy?
I wasn’t actually thinking that you would be in a paid position but rather that there would be funding involved somewhere, somehow, that would give some wanker politician the necessary leverage to do the nasty somehow.
I guess I shoudn’t be surprised that a thread that starts out about licking vegemite off someone’s ass would degenerate into a trainwreck about stupid athletes, but anyway…
Send your inoffensive dumbfucks over here, that’s the way we like athletes in the US. Charles Barkley, Terry Bradshaw, the list goes on. Its the offensive dumbfucks like Allen Iverson that we don’t care too much for. Send more jocks like that Aaron Baddeley guy. There is an inoffensive dumbfuck of the highest order.
Uhh, Marx would be referencing religion, not sport (the aphorism was no doubt later adapted.)
I don’t entirely understand the rancor towards Cathy Freeman. Unless I’m misreading, it stems from (i) her displacing less photogenic but capable sportspeople; and (ii) letting herself be used by the media to promote her interests. Regardless of your opinion of commercialism in professional sport, I can’t see the jump to expressing personal dislike for Freeman.
Thanks for the correction there regarding the Marx quote. Indeed, I was unsure if I’d got it right when I first wrote it to be honest.
Anyways, regarding the rest of your post? Some good points there. The best analogy I can think of is the disdain that some music lovers hold towards Britney Spears. Sure, she’s pretty, but she’s still worthy of disdain. You see, I’m of the opinion that just because you’ve excelled in the Olympics at one point in your life, by extension you DON’T all of a sudden get a “free pass to never have to work hard again” for the rest of your life. Accordingly, it’s my right to choose who I wish to admire, just as it’s my right to choose who earns my disdain.
A guy like Edwin Moses rocks my world. Fully qualified engineering degree who just happened to also be a great athlete. Or a close school friend of mine by the name of Bob Lindner - a guy who went on to the highest levels of professional Rugby League and played for Australia, and yet throughout his entire career never stopped practicising as a fully qualified Optometrist. Or, again, Shirley Strickland. These are all people who, like myself, realised that the sporting part of their lives was merely an era which wasn’t going to last forever, and that there were other, more rewarding challenges in life after their Olympic careers had finished.
Thus far I’ve used the words “contempt” and “disdain” to describe my feelings towards Cathy Freeman - but in truth, I hold such feelings more towards that which I like to call “the Cathy Freeman syndrome”. With hindsight, those words are both too strong and inaccurate actually. I think the best way to describe my position is “an utter lack of respect” for her “lack of talent” for anything other than that which she has already retired from. In every factor of her life away from the running track, she is average. A-V-E-R-A-G-E. As a consumer, I choose to avoid average if I can - hence, my comments.
P.S. Also, my heartfelt congratulations to Michael Phelps. Great Stuff. A terrific young man it would seem. Very magnanimous and insightful. Qualities I admire.
