Poirot,

You come up with the same old stuff all of the time. I will remind you of my earlier post,

<Poirot, "..your effort to invalidate the actual offence"

You sidestep once again. I am criticisng you for your dimissiveness of the child's rights and callous unconcern about her treatment; the MCG administration for its lack of training and policies for children and hamfisted management; and those who have made a meal out of the child and sensationalised it. You know those are the targets of my criticism and not Adam Goodes. But you duck by trying to make Goodes responsible for what you and others do to make your own mileage out of it.

Players on the field are hyped up. As Goode demonstrated, likely to interpret incidents and react according to their own perception and their own life experience. He took offence to what he heard and interpreted through his own mental filters and pointed. Others say he was close enough to the girl to notice her age and maybe he should have done differently. But he is a professional footballer and his prowess is in ball skills, not personal interaction and diplomacy.

On the other hand, one should be able to expect that others who are responsible for managing the ground and reporting on it or even commenting on it later in forums, such as you do Poirot, should have cooler heads and act reasonably, taking into account the very obvious considerations, the most evident being the age of the alleged offender.
Posted by onthebeach, Saturday, 1 June 2013 8:47:17 PM>

Further, exactly how was the child 'indoctrinated' when the record proves she was using the word in a common way, a muscular man, which had nothing to do with race? That has been covered many times on here.

Should a movie like "A Fish Called Wanda" be censored because in it a man was referred to as an ape? It is well proved that the child minor meant the word in that sense and no more than that.

Dear Lexi,

It is welcome news to learn that when one embarks on some niggle one is still capable of making valid points so thank you.

However your points were more so.

You might remember Bert Newton's famous gaffe at the Logies when he said of Muhammad Ali “I like the boy”.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xWKyDGGptA4

Ali was gracious enough to let it slide although not before making it quite plain he was doing so not because the comment wasn't an issue but because he could see Bert was making every attempt to be as inoffensive as possible.

Some posters are attempting to make the point that there is nothing wrong with calling someone an ape whatever the context but they would have to argue that there is nothing wrong with saying “I like the boy” because it is not offensive in Australia. Yet ask them if they would have been willing to say it to Ali's face and any truly genuine response would be no. There were no insinuations that Ali was being a 'sook' or 'pushing an agenda' or playing the 'victim' or 'feigning indignation' or a 'prima-donna girl'. We just accepted that the remark was offensive to Ali no matter how innocuous it may have been in most other settings.

Why are we prepared to extend that courtesy to an overseas visitor but not to our own fellow Australians? Is it because we have been fed a diet of American culture and as a result we are more in tune with issues surrounding African Americans than we are with our own indigenous folk?

Unlike Bert the lass at the football was not trying to be 'as inoffensive as possible' but rather the exact opposite. Yet in America shouting out racial taunts against African Americans at a sporting venue will usually elicit a negative reaction. Why? Because there will usually be other African Americans in the crowd.

I am firmly convinced that if one in five of those in our stands were indigenous Australians it would have a dramatic effect on crowd behaviour. Perhaps the answer lies in pretending there are.

Dear onthebeach,

These were from you earlier in the thread;

“A male black (negro with dark skin) that makes a fool of himself by exclusively chasing after white women. A male black that dates only white women as a status symbol. A male black that considers white women as superior to black women. A nigga that divorces his black wife to date a white woman.”

I don't think I'm the only one who sees a theme.

All of us have unresolved racial issues. I think deep down the 'black brute' notion has a hold on you that deserves attention.

That is your spin.

However, Bert apologised because in Ali's homeland, the words could be construed as having an alternative meaning to which some might take offence in some circumstances. The experience and interpretation existed in Ali's mind, not Bert's. In the strict sense it was not even a faux pas, because the event happened in Australia and the phrase did not have any possible rude meaning to take offence. We seek not to upset a visitor, but that does not mean we should change our language forever more. Unless Australia is to be one more State of the US, that is.

Similarly the 'N'-word-that-should-never-be-spoken had an offensive meaning and use in the US but not previously in Australia until it was defined that way.

The OP of this thread from a creative storyteller who hasn't been head of again, referred to 'Jiggaboo'?! Never heard before in Australia and hopefully never again. It is apparently the offensive slang a few fringe-dwelling US rappers use to insult one another, black on black. But he(?), the original poster, seemed determined to introduce it into Australian usage. Who could speculate on the motivation? It is not part of our language and it is hoped that the foolish few don't adopt it as part of their rapper culture.

Maybe that is an inevitable consequence of being a dumping ground for third rate US shows - that the gutter language and 'takes' on the world (as they say)come with it.

What is also possible is that because some spend so much time on social media they come to believe that what they experience on there, the language and so on, reflects normal life. They should get out more.

Australians have never have used ape to refer to indigenous. It has always meant a muscular jock and there is no doubt about that from the shocked surprise to the alternative US meaning.

Nonetheless I am happy that the BBC's Black and White Minstrels is off the air and that 'Hey Hey, It's Saturday" copped one amidships.

"....You now these are the targets of my criticism not Adam Goodes..."

Well, onthebeach, in that case why have you spent so much time "examining" Goodes status, motives and actions in pointing out abuse?

As in:

here http://forum.onlineopinion.com.au/thread.asp?discussion=5804&page=0#163179

here http://forum.onlineopinion.com.au/thread.asp?discussion=5804&page=0#163341

here http://forum.onlineopinion.com.au/thread.asp?article=15079&page=0#260849

and here http://forum.onlineopinion.com.au/thread.asp?discussion=5804&page=0#163756

You ask "...exactly how was the child indoctrinated..."?

The child was indoctrinated to hurl abuse at the football ground. She would know that that sort of behaviour is unacceptable in most spheres of life, but because her experience told her it was okay "at the footy" she went right ahead.

I haven't heard you give a view on teaching kids to abuse others if the target happens to be playing sport on a field. You seem to be quite outraged over this matter, but nary a word about those that think it's fine and dandy to teach their kids to do that.

Strange?