Sad week for Australia
Wow.
Movin up, you are the complete tossbag. And so say all of us
I say we should declare a jihad on you. And perhaps that noise bag in England too. Perhaps she just ran out of bras to burn.
For the rest of us:
I disagree. It was continually noted that Steve was anything but. He did not suddenly change into this showman when the cameras rolled, he was like that 24/7. What you saw on TV was what his kids and wife got at home. There was no "showman" element.
In fact, Steve Irwin was a great Australian. He bought hundreds of millions of dollars to both the Australian economy and to wildlife protection. He prodcued employment on a massive scale, put a smile on millions of faces and has created the largest privately owned conservation areas on the planet. He was a role model father and husband to a family whose pain must be unbearable. And he loved helicopters. What other criteria could we bring to the qulaification of "Great Australian"?
I think that many snobby Aussies looked down on Steve because of his vernacular and the tall poppy culture practiced as a national sport over here. But I would much sooner have my kids saying "crikey", "streuth mate" and "beaut bum" than "yo man", "that's sick dude", and "nice butt" as regurgitated from MTV.
RIP Cobber. Your family can be bloody proud of you.
Movin up, you are the complete tossbag. And so say all of us
I say we should declare a jihad on you. And perhaps that noise bag in England too. Perhaps she just ran out of bras to burn.
For the rest of us:
However, let's not make this man out to be anything more than a very good showman,
In fact, Steve Irwin was a great Australian. He bought hundreds of millions of dollars to both the Australian economy and to wildlife protection. He prodcued employment on a massive scale, put a smile on millions of faces and has created the largest privately owned conservation areas on the planet. He was a role model father and husband to a family whose pain must be unbearable. And he loved helicopters. What other criteria could we bring to the qulaification of "Great Australian"?
I think that many snobby Aussies looked down on Steve because of his vernacular and the tall poppy culture practiced as a national sport over here. But I would much sooner have my kids saying "crikey", "streuth mate" and "beaut bum" than "yo man", "that's sick dude", and "nice butt" as regurgitated from MTV.
RIP Cobber. Your family can be bloody proud of you.
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cl12pv2s - "He was an actor with a passion" - General consensus would agree that he was passionate but I don't believe he was acting. His display of enthusiasm was more than most of us would display but from accounts I have had it was definitely genuine. In saying that he knew how to use his enthusiasm to work a crowd.
HelmetFire - Similar to you as to Heliduck, concerning the word, 'showman'. It doesn't mean he was faking it just for tele. It means he was good at shows!
Flying Lawyer - This Greer person sounds like a nasty piece of work. However, I daresay that some of the animals that met Irwin were in distress because, let's face it, his shorts were too small! No seriously, some of the animals were in 'defensive' mode due to feeling threatened. I would have to agree.
Where my opinion differs from the 'Greer's' of this world, is that I don't believe that these animals were necessariliy, and long term detrimented. I would not say it was torment. You see, too many people (like Greer) try to liken animals to humans, giving them human responses and emotions. And this is where they are wrong and their arguement (in the name of animals) breaks down.
No, a crocodile doens't snap out of distress, it snaps due to prehistoric reflexes. It doens't then sulk for days on the verge of 'post-traumatic-stess' disorder! It probably doesn't even remember the incident! In short - distress is not an issue. A similar case is made for many animals.
In a rant in the Guardian (UK) she declares that "The animal world has finally taken its revenge on Irwin."
So being defensive, is not necessarily being in distress, when you're an animal.
Before dog-lovers get all up in arms, I concede that some animals show varying degrees of emotions. OK!
Before anyone grossly misinterprets this post, I am writing in the man's defense here!
cl12pv2s
Last edited by cl12pv2s; 6th Sep 2006 at 02:14.
Hi cl, I see your point. I was not concentrating so much on your use of the word "showman" as demonstrating why your assertion that he was not anything else other than a very good showman was, and is, manifestly unfair.
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HelmetFire - Understood.
While I'm sure that he was a good family man, conservationist, lover of animals, BBQ starter etc..etc.. he was simply a man. Just like the fireman who dies in a fire, the test pilot, the rescue swimmer etc..etc, his job had risks and he got stung. Unlike the fireman, test pilot and rescue swimmer, Irwin's job got him into the limelight.
My comment was in response to the allegations that this man was 'the most intelligent man in Oz', and to the other suggestions that this man was akin to a national hero...a God!
It always amazes me in situations like this when the recently deceased is suddenly revered as something more than he was, simply because he is now deceased. It always amazes me how just because he happened to be in the media, he is afforded 'more' sympathy in his death, than the fireman, test pilot or rescue swimmer.
I don't want to take anything away from the guy, but let's not go overboard just that he's dead - that's what I'm saying!
cl12pv2s
While I'm sure that he was a good family man, conservationist, lover of animals, BBQ starter etc..etc.. he was simply a man. Just like the fireman who dies in a fire, the test pilot, the rescue swimmer etc..etc, his job had risks and he got stung. Unlike the fireman, test pilot and rescue swimmer, Irwin's job got him into the limelight.
My comment was in response to the allegations that this man was 'the most intelligent man in Oz', and to the other suggestions that this man was akin to a national hero...a God!
It always amazes me in situations like this when the recently deceased is suddenly revered as something more than he was, simply because he is now deceased. It always amazes me how just because he happened to be in the media, he is afforded 'more' sympathy in his death, than the fireman, test pilot or rescue swimmer.
I don't want to take anything away from the guy, but let's not go overboard just that he's dead - that's what I'm saying!
cl12pv2s
Though I hold as much respect for those who have endured battle and sacrificed everything for war as anyone else, I have no respect for war itself. I have however a great deal of respect for conservationists and conservation so if being unfortunate enough to have to contribute to the blatant carnage and killing that comes with war is worthy of a state funeral than trying to preserve the country that these men fought for is just as much so.
I guess that it takes something like the Grauniad to allow her to publish her rantings, but that one is well beyond the pale
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She says she has 12 venomous snakes on her property in Queensland.
I think she fried her brain when she burnt her bra - what a creep
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Movin'up
Any fool can criticize, condemn, and complain - and most fools do.
Any fool can criticize, condemn, and complain - and most fools do.
Last edited by LOOPYGIRL; 6th Sep 2006 at 14:34. Reason: ive changed my z back.
Hovering AND talking
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Actually, criticize is a perfectly acceptable English spelling; it's not just the Americans who use it. The -ize suffix is perhaps more old-fashioned English than -ise but it's nothing that should be criticized.
If it's good enough for The Times, it's good enough for me.
If you're going to nit-pick about people's spelling, then there are plenty of more worthy targets on the internet!!
Cheers
Whirls
If it's good enough for The Times, it's good enough for me.
If you're going to nit-pick about people's spelling, then there are plenty of more worthy targets on the internet!!
Cheers
Whirls
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Actually, criticize is a perfectly acceptable English spelling; it's not just the Americans who use it. The -ize suffix is perhaps more old-fashioned English than -ise but it's nothing that should be criticized.
If it's good enough for The Times, it's good enough for me.
If you're going to nit-pick about people's spelling, then there are plenty of more worthy targets on the internet!!
Cheers
Whirls
If it's good enough for The Times, it's good enough for me.
If you're going to nit-pick about people's spelling, then there are plenty of more worthy targets on the internet!!
Cheers
Whirls
Avoid imitations
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"She says she has 12 venomous snakes on her property in Queensland.
Wouldn't it be a terrible shame if one of them bit her. "
Make that thirteen, when she's at home.....
She probably hates any bloke who gets in the limelight more than her sad self.
Wouldn't it be a terrible shame if one of them bit her. "
Make that thirteen, when she's at home.....
She probably hates any bloke who gets in the limelight more than her sad self.
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New York Times said it pretty well...
Appreciations
Crikey!
By LAWRENCE DOWNES
Published: New York Times September 6, 2006
When I heard that Steve Irwin, the Crocodile Hunter, had been killed by a stingray in Australia on Monday, my heart went out to a friend, a 6-year-old boy named Sean who considered Mr. Irwin’s the definitive example of a life well lived.
It was a life of strenuous exertion, of mud and blood and the tireless pursuit of muscular creatures with jaws, claws and the ability to eat you up. My young friend concocts his version with crayons, Legos and pointed sticks, and acts it out in the fevered jungle of his imagination. Mr. Irwin went after actual creatures, including crocodiles, vipers and, tragically, the ray that pierced his chest.
They weren’t that different. Mr. Irwin, with the thick Aussie accent and khaki outfit that mean “explorer” in any language, tromped around subduing dangerous animals and spouting exclamations like “She’s a beauty!” and “Crikey!” He was 44 going on 6, and lived, like Sean, in a world of fun and excitement that seems a lot richer than most people’s.
It was easy to parody Mr. Irwin’s boisterous shtick, and many people did. It is easy, too, to shake our heads at the relentless peddling of nature as TV entertainment, and to lament that the only animals people ever bother thinking about are either fuzzy-cute or man-eating. It is all too obvious that Mr. Irwin was no biologist, that exploring the world on cable TV is a lot different from actually plunging into it, that wild animals really are dangerous, and blah blah blah.
But there are far worse ways to view the natural world than through the eyes of a young child, and Mr. Irwin offered a far more temperate version of the classic 6-year-old-boy approach, which is to confront a wild animal, marvel at its strength and ferocity, and then try to hit it with a rock. For Mr. Irwin, wild nature was something to wonder at, and he did so with an enthusiasm indistinguishable from love. Animals — even deadly ones — are good, poachers are evil, and, crikey, that’s pretty much it.
Call that simple-minded, call it dumb, but it resonates. Future environmentalists and conservationists have to come from somewhere, and if the energetic wonderment of the Crocodile Hunter has seeped into the brains of significant numbers of children — as it did that of Sean, who went trick-or-treating as Mr. Irwin last year, who turned 6 with a crocodile cake, who wears khaki and boots and fills notebooks with meticulous drawings of reptiles — then Mr. Irwin used his 44 years remarkably well.
Crikey!
By LAWRENCE DOWNES
Published: New York Times September 6, 2006
When I heard that Steve Irwin, the Crocodile Hunter, had been killed by a stingray in Australia on Monday, my heart went out to a friend, a 6-year-old boy named Sean who considered Mr. Irwin’s the definitive example of a life well lived.
It was a life of strenuous exertion, of mud and blood and the tireless pursuit of muscular creatures with jaws, claws and the ability to eat you up. My young friend concocts his version with crayons, Legos and pointed sticks, and acts it out in the fevered jungle of his imagination. Mr. Irwin went after actual creatures, including crocodiles, vipers and, tragically, the ray that pierced his chest.
They weren’t that different. Mr. Irwin, with the thick Aussie accent and khaki outfit that mean “explorer” in any language, tromped around subduing dangerous animals and spouting exclamations like “She’s a beauty!” and “Crikey!” He was 44 going on 6, and lived, like Sean, in a world of fun and excitement that seems a lot richer than most people’s.
It was easy to parody Mr. Irwin’s boisterous shtick, and many people did. It is easy, too, to shake our heads at the relentless peddling of nature as TV entertainment, and to lament that the only animals people ever bother thinking about are either fuzzy-cute or man-eating. It is all too obvious that Mr. Irwin was no biologist, that exploring the world on cable TV is a lot different from actually plunging into it, that wild animals really are dangerous, and blah blah blah.
But there are far worse ways to view the natural world than through the eyes of a young child, and Mr. Irwin offered a far more temperate version of the classic 6-year-old-boy approach, which is to confront a wild animal, marvel at its strength and ferocity, and then try to hit it with a rock. For Mr. Irwin, wild nature was something to wonder at, and he did so with an enthusiasm indistinguishable from love. Animals — even deadly ones — are good, poachers are evil, and, crikey, that’s pretty much it.
Call that simple-minded, call it dumb, but it resonates. Future environmentalists and conservationists have to come from somewhere, and if the energetic wonderment of the Crocodile Hunter has seeped into the brains of significant numbers of children — as it did that of Sean, who went trick-or-treating as Mr. Irwin last year, who turned 6 with a crocodile cake, who wears khaki and boots and fills notebooks with meticulous drawings of reptiles — then Mr. Irwin used his 44 years remarkably well.