Jason Akermanis Of 2005 Racist 'Monkey' Fame Weighs In On Adam Goodes

I disagree chairmanmao. Although I worry for Adam Goodes, who many may have noticed hasn't  actually said anything all week, despite a lot of commentators telling him to stop spiking and making such a big fuss, it's the rest of us making a big fuss.

And rightly so. Out in the light, that's where this debate belongs.

I have 'inconvenient' memories of past 'cheap shots'.

it has NOTHING to do with racism and NOBODY is entitled to dictate what constitutes racism.

next year there will be even more Indiginous players but no racism because the issue will have retired in the natural course of things.

Journalists who DON'T tow the line will be ostracised and shamed - they should be reporting facts NOT pushing a barrow.

the AFL used Adam as a totem but they didn't use him to formally introduce us to a 'war dance' during the formal Indiginous round......why not?.

The media, however are 'on a roll' wallowing in their self righteousness....they are also the problem.

This story get's sadder by the day. In my humble opinion, it is not about Goodes or Akermanis. It's about equality, recognition, dignity, respect. One man had the guts to express those values, on and off the field.

Didn't Akermanis celebrate his goals with a handstand? It was self celebratory, incognisant of respect for his team or his culture (arguable, other than a petri dish), or his club.

I understand we cheer our team, or a favourite player. I understand there are fair players and unfair players. Why is it the skin colours make one a celebration, and the other a denigration.

Grateful, Mr Graham. Take care

Jason Akermanis, a legend?!  In his own mind maybe.

AKA as a could have been.

Heads up to Paul Sheehan over at Fairfax -there's your next "story," and one that you may not have to copy from your simpering and equally talentless mates, Miranda Divine and Andrew Bolt.

Let me see if I've got this right: Ackermanis and a number of other white dickheads get booed and that's non-racist booing. Goodes alone among 70-plus indigenous players gets booed and that's racist booing.

When the Barmy Army tried to unsettle Australia's cricketing stars with all sorts of slurs, most of them calculated to get the Anti-Discrimination Commission foaming at the mouth, we called that gamesmanship, and insisted our cricketing stars were unaffected. Well, Goodes has certainly been affected, he's taken a week off to sook. I'm guessing those supporters of opposing teams who booed him are feeling pretty pleased with themselves.

Once again, Political Correctness proves counter-productive, with one of the all-time greats of Aussie Rules considering retirement.

So you don't get out much aussiegreg? Remember Nicky Winmar, Michael Long, Maurice Rioli? Ever go to a game where they were playing? 

The point is that a bit of good natured barracking is part of game and can be fun. It can go too far though and, in the case of Adam Goodes, it has crossed the line. To suggest that there isn't a racist element in all of this is simply stupid.

@Nagaman  "NOBODY is entitled to dictate what constitutes racism".

I think the Federal anti-discrimination act has fairly beaten you to the punch there Nagaman by quite some years.

Spot on Chairman Mao!

The nearly identical group-think opinion(s) from all the rabid rightwing ratbag commentators at precisely the same time makes me think they all got the same 'talking points' memo entitled ;

"WE MUST  Must do all we can to get Bronwyn the LEANER  off the front pages....."

AND Phony Tony finally breaks his silence but manages to pretty much stay on the fence with some bland statement about deserving respect.  

He knows he can't upset his ignorant base!

Bodyline and now Booing.The  laws & treatment of our First Nation People  historically has caused a division that Sports people are now addressing. It  is time for this healing.Like  the controversy in our  cricket  ,this confict  or storm in AFL  mirrors or brings out  the different thinking  that exists in our  society  - still reinforced in schools and homes  that ignores Aboriginal culture, language and lore.

Few sporting events have caused such an international storm as the 1932-33 Ashes series which, at its nadir, not only threatened the tour itself but also political relations between the United Kingdom and Australia. In the end the series was completed, but not without incident, but the scars lingered on for generations. Australians were  not to be counted as second rate by the British.

Thankyou Adam. for making  this social  stand 

DICWGFNQ member  trying to reduce the incarcertion rate of First Nation people

I love the way the rednecks describe themselves in "patriotic" terms, Aussie this and that or "patriot" this or that.. Those who seek to divide our multicultural inclusive democracy on ethnic or religious grounds are traitors to this country. They delude themselves that they are "patriots" like the neo-nazis with swastika tattoos reclaiming Australia for the white supremacists. We lost many good people fighting the nazi filth last time  and we will certainly not let them rise again.

I have failed miserably many times in the past to justify my use of my venerable Internet handle "aussiegreg", but since refusal to learn from past mistakes is one of my defining character traits, I'll just quote one of those past attempts on these boards:

"I continue to use my aussiegreg handle in cyberspace with a mixture of irony and sentiment, the latter stemming from my having acquired it as a gift from the dirt-poor staff at a budget hotel in Kathmandu at the turn of the millennium who needed to distinguish me from an English Greg who was also in residence. Well, their version was "Mr Australian Greg", and while I persuaded them to contract "Australian" to "Aussie", they resolutely refused to drop the honorific (or to call Mr English Greg "Pommy Greg"). Koi baht naheen!

The ironic use reflects my habit of mocking jingoistic nationalism wherever I find it – now there is an Australian characteristic to be proud of!"

@Bilal

As I've also mentioned a few times on these boards, I am just about as dinky-di as a 60-something whitefella can get in this country, being a sixth-generation Australian through three of my four grandparents, but I've always considered patriotism to be the last refuge of the scoundrel.

As for Nazism, my father used his Communist Party contacts within the Commonwealth Public Service to get out of serving in the Armed Forces so he could continue to serve the Party, which in 1939, 1940 and 1941 meant effectively serving the Nazis, who had entered into a secret alliance with Stalin's Russia, agreeing to carve up Europe between them.

While working to frustrate Australia's war effort on Party orders, my father considered himself the ultimate Patriot, fighting for the real Australia, the proletarian Australia, and for a world ruled by a proletarian dictatorship until it could be transformed into a classless and communist society. 

I'm guessing most of the posters on these boards would happily work with Nazis again if they thought it could deliver their ideological utopia, which is much the same one my father dreamed of creating.

According to Beatle John Lennon (deceased due to gunfire at close range), "Woman is the nigger of the world."

I'm very sorry that Adam Goodes is feeling under-respected, I'm also still somewhat amazed that anyone should name and shame an unenfranchised girl (ie she doesn't get to vote because she's too young) on national television.

I read a few years back from WHO or Oxfam or some such org, that about two-thirds of the world's work was then done by women. And they didn't make proportionate wages by a long shot. In fact most of their work was done for free. I won't go into the layers of corruption, coercion and threats that accompanied the accumulation of wealth by those who did not earn it. I leave it to your imaginations, and there are enough hints in the media from time to time, of women sold into slavery, for body parts, and so on.

The point I am making is that being female is a great way to get exploited, tortured, trafficked, etc. Even those, and not only men, of one's own race, some are happy to treat others as property, goods, tradeable objects, and so on, with no respect to that person's personage.

To me, those are the symptoms of racism, and of sexism, and of discrimination generally. Yelling and booing and name calling is more in the symptom set of selfishness, thoughtlessness, ignorance and adolescent hormones, which, in men continue for much longer than they do in women.

I say keep the discourse on the topic going. Maybe one day then you might become a beautiful people who are part of a beautiful society worthy of the beautiful country you live in. Some of redknecks comments here reveal the ugly. Put the demons to the sword once and for all.

Imagine, crapmatilda, aussiegirl, aussiegreg and other bigots.....that since the day you were born, you were ridiculed, denigrated & criticised, as were your family and extended family. You were told you were lazy, stupid and were ALWAYS bludging off the government.

And even when you had worked hard and been successful, still the abuse continued. You go to work and you're referred to as an ape, a drunkard, were the butt of jokes.....and when you asked the perpetrators to stop, they laughed & booed and called you a sook.

An aboriginal man on Saturday morning's Today Show articulated the above and gave an example of when we he was about 18. He was already making good money as an elite player in his chosen sport. He bought a new car and drove it around to his mates' place. He and a few aboriginal friends were standing aound the car. Within about 10 minutes, police cars rolled up, lights flashing and without hesitation the men were placed on the ground, hand-cuffed and locked up for the night. Just because of that car, which was legally purchased with his own hard-earned money.

The man said he had numerous other examples of similar treatment that had demonstrated to him that there is a terrible scourge of racism in this country. It's something that non-aboriginals could not possibly understand because they have never lived it.

Imagine - because that's as close it gets for you and me.

I shed a tear listening to him.

By the way that man was Anthony Mundine. 

PS: Jason Akermanis was sacked by both AFL clubs he played for because he was an arsehole. His name is tainted in the AFL and he is unlikely to ever get another job in the AFL 'industry'. He can only dream of the esteem that Adam Goodes has within the sport.

@Youngy

As a bigot I am of course incapable of imagining what anyone else's life might be like, and one of the merits of my failing memory is that I am forgetting a lifetime of being ridiculed, denigrated and criticised. Sadly, I still remember most of the times I was physically beaten by bullies – in fact I was consulting an ENT specialist just last week about having my thrice-broken nose fixed so I can breathe properly through it again. Various other bones in my body, broken by the boots of bullies when I was a boy, still hurt like some war wound when the winter chill sets in.

And I still remember the extraordinarily painful tongue-lashing I copped from a fellow bigot who until then I had counted as a friend: the late Burnum Burnum.

He had allowed me to believe he was an initiated elder of his tribe (as we whitefellas called the Aboriginal Nations in those more ignorant days), and I was publicly humiliated by someone from Kempsey who knew better in a public meeting here in Canberra in the early 1980s. When I confronted Burnum Burnum about this, he laughed like the proverbial drain, and said I was just another typical middle-class whitefella, my brain addled by romantic delusions of aboriginal spirituality, especially the delusion that initiation mattered to one's spiritual experience.

We may have fallen out at that moment, and I deeply regret my stupid pride in allowing such an incident to spoil such a friendship, but I still hold Burnum Burnum up as a more skilful advocate for his people than you and your ilk (and indeed Adam Goodes) – he used the kind of humour that makes the point tellingly without simply antagonising those whose ignorance of these matters is not a crime. Nothing, IMHO, did more for promoting the cause of Aboriginal land rights than Burnum Burnum planting the Aboriginal flag on the White Cliffs of Dover in 1988 and claiming England for the Aboriginal Nations.

MattQ your funny ha ha . Believe what you like i respect your view so respect mine and move on thanks