Your reporter has poor eyesight, a poor capacity for concentration and a great distrust of flying balls. As such, the pleasure of sport is one she shall never truly know. She does not play it, she does not watch it and yet, she does not feel entirely ripped off. Sure, it’d be great to have a team or a code or some sporting thread that wove me into other Australian lives. I do admire the way in which sport can build community. But, gee, I don’t admire the way in which network sporting commentators seem so keen to tear community down.
Sometimes, this aversion to sport has its upside.
To illustrate: I did not hear recent remarks broadcast during the Commonwealth Games comparing the athletes of Saint Kitts and Nevis to a chocolate dessert. In 2013, I did not hear an ABC rugby league commentator make another “joking” reference to black skin. I have never watched The Footy Show and so have been likely spared the false solidarity of Australian racists. I am aware that such obscene and sorry social connection exists between some whites. I don’t need the ugly reminder.
That it cannot be so widely agreed that past British theft of territories, resources, labour and life is much more a matter for mourning than it is for pole-vaulting seems odd to me.
Perhaps some sporting commentators do need their ugly reminder, though. Thus, I have a proposal that may not only save sports fans the bother of poor sporting commentary, but poor sporting commentators the bother of apologising for the ugliness so often produced by their mouths. Here it is: an ambitious tattoo project. Let’s raise the money to lower the volume on ridiculous speech by permanently inking the words “I apologise for any offence caused, some of my best friends are Muslim/Aboriginal” into every white sporting commentator’s face.
The remarks made by a white commentator of a Commonwealth Games volleyball match were ugly, peculiar and of a sort that turned me off cake for days. I mean. What sort of mind labours to divide not only human from human but human from Australian baked good? The lamington to which two athletes were so foolishly and clumsily compared is quite a nice treat. It has now been stripped of its role as dessert ambassador by a person whose talent for metaphor does not exceed mine as volleyballer. For reasons as serious as racism and as fluffy and as feather-light as sponge, we must crowdfund and relentlessly pursue a program of apologetic facial tattoo.
Of course, when this campaign succeeds, as it is bound to, I may feel a little left out of a sporting world now cleansed of open bigotry. But, I’ll still have those Commonwealth Games to remind me of the historic link between hatred and sport. This is not to say that balls, nets, bats or any item of sporting equipment are by nature evil. It is to say that “our” Commonwealth Games celebrate the relic of racist imperialism.
It is widely agreed that remarks made by the yet-to-be-tattooed white commentator were unacceptable. That it cannot be so widely agreed that past British theft of territories, resources, labour and life is much more a matter for mourning than it is for pole-vaulting seems odd to me.
You can’t have your lamington and eat it, too, Australia.
That those most dominant in the culture can brush the matter aside and say, “it’s time to get over ancient history!” while actively celebrating history makes about as much sense as a compulsory facial tattoo. Which I was joking about, clearly—joking, like our “larrikin” sporting commentators so often do, ha-ha. I am not, however, joking about the hypocritical “Australian” reflex that permits us to rewrite history to mythologise its victors and erase it when its victors look anything less than heroic.
You can’t have your lamington and eat it, too, Australia. Commemoration of the past is either commemoration of the past, or it’s just a self-serving fiction that blames everyone but its publishers for not trying hard enough to win.
If we sincerely wish to “win” the gold of a national identity that is lasting, our historical delusion must be finally lost.
