Yeah, Schubert had similar problems.
Why is it so hard for some people to understand that actors pretend to be someone else when they play a part that was written by an author? They usually get things that the actor isn’t really dead when they are “shot” on screen and things that. Not that hard to grasp, one would think.
But then I see the ratings “Reality TV” gets and start to despair.
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Sadly, in retrospect Australian comedy from the early to mid-seventies looked deeply racist, but to be fair, that’s only because it was deeply fucking racist. The scant highlights that were really funny drew on Spike Milligan’s Q series and Python (see Aunty Jack), but what sold was stand-up making fun of Greeks, Italians and whoever was the immigrant-of-laughter-de-jour.
And even when things were starting to change in the 1980’s and Aus comedy was getting a boost from the UK resurgence (thank you, Young Ones), we had “Crocodile Dundee” with Paul fucking Hogan shitting on pretty much everyone who wasn’t Anglo-Saxon, including some delightful transphobic shit, having made a name for himself on Aus TV doing some pretty dumb and racist comedy.
ETA - having found some Aunty Jack on YouTube, here is their “investigative reporter” Norman Gunston (the late Garry McDonald), here interviewing Frank Zappa.
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In all cultural, social, and political matters, what the majority of people really want is to be left alone. They figure they have enough crap to deal with just staying alive and getting through their day, and a lot of them are right about that. I applaud those who are willing to go to the front and go into the trenches to fight for something better. But trenches and front lines are dirty, smelly, exhausting, costly, and dangerous, and as long as they don’t try to peddle the idea that inaction is a position, I do not look down on anyone who does not feel like jumping into them.
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I think you’re right about that, but it’s important to recognize the privilege in it. For most minorities, not fighting is not an option. The system treats us like dirt every time we leave the house. You can’t leave your skin color or different ableness at home and hiding your sexual orientation and other traits is exhausting.
You say you don’t judge people for what amounts to coasting on that privilege, and while I am also guilty of doing so (we all have at least some privilege and I have certainly coasted on it) we should judge that behavior at least a little. Because, well, it’s kinda the problem.
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I find it interesting that the clergy wind up in the enemy list of the RIGHT, not the LEFT. Is this a British thing, or a 3 decades ago thing? I guess I should have expected more wedge issues to be convertible.
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Talking of British Jewish comedians: I only found out the other day that Sid James was not only South African, but Jewish South African, and that he once punched an antisemitic cab driver clean across the bonnet of his own taxi.
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The Anglican church as an organisation often leans to the centre-left on non-LGBTQ social issues. Their position on LGBTQ seems to be an indecisive “we don’t want a schism in our church”
It isn’t that long ago that there was a prominent Anglican bishop who didn’t believe in the virgin birth.
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Another bit of context for that animation is that the clergyman is holding a copy of this:
In the political environment of the 1980s, this mild christian critique of winner-takes-all thatcherism was denounced as Marxist propaganda. Another thing that probably fuelled this ire was that the Anglicans were traditionally seen as a quintessentially Tory, establishment force, so criticism from that quarter wasn’t taken well at all.
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I understand a lot of minority people feel they’ve been forced into doing something. But like you point out, they’re forced into it. They also want to be left alone, they just want to be left alone under better circumstances. Nobody in his right mind wants to take the danger inherent in having a faceoff with a bunch of heavily armed men who are scared and pissed off. The protestors are trying to push through this wall so they can reach a place where they will be left alone.
I don’t have a problem with people who stay out of my way and don’t cause me a problem. I don’t care what anyone else thinks on this point - staying on the sidelines is NOT the same as actively choosing to ally oneself with the bad guys. Saying that is only an emotional tactic by people who are trying to drum up numbers because they feel too badly outnumbered. It’s trying to lay a guilt trip on people over a perfectly normal built-in, natural, inherent behavior. Some people just don’t have the same mental propensity for action. Homosexuals say it’s wrong to try to guilt-trip them over what they claim is their normal behavior. Well, it’s also wrong to try to guilt-trip people who are naturally quiet and passive over following their natures. Expecting my aunt Gertrude to come out in a street protest risking tear gas and rubber bullets is about like expecting a gerbil to put on armor and charge a windmill.
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The way the Anglican church is portrayed on British radio and TV, it seems more like a network of publicly funded social service centers than what Americans would recognize as a religious institution
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I think they’re just a cover for the John Wyndham society but YMMV.
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doesn’t look good for “extremists” then
The inhabitants of post-apocalypse Labrador have vague knowledge of the “Old People”, a technologically advanced civilization they believe was destroyed when God sent “Tribulation” to the world to punish their forebears’ sins. The inhabitants practise a form of fundamentalist Christianity; they believe that to follow God’s word and prevent another Tribulation, they must preserve absolute normality among the surviving humans, plants and animals
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No catastrophe like a cozy catastrophe…
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Traditionally the English have found religious fervour in their clergy suspicious and troubling.
James Hacker: Humphrey, what’s a Modernist in the Church of England?
Sir Humphrey Appleby: Ah, well, the word “Modernist” is code for non-believer.
James Hacker: You mean an atheist?
Sir Humphrey Appleby: No, Prime Minister. An atheist clergyman couldn’t continue to draw his stipend. So, when they stop believing in God, they call themselves “Modernists”.
James Hacker: How could the Church of England suggest an atheist as Bishop of Bury St Edmunds?
Sir Humphrey Appleby: Well, very easily. The Church of England is primarily a social organization, not a religious one.
James Hacker: Is it?
Sir Humphrey Appleby: Oh yes. It’s part of the rich social fabric of this country. So bishops need to be the sorts of chaps who speak properly and know which knife and fork to use. The sort of people one can look up to.
— Yes, Prime Minister, series 1, episode 7: “The Bishop’s Gambit”
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