There are those who contribute to the world in a positive way. No matter what you think of Steve Irwin's antics on camera, the man did a lot of good for conservation consciousness raising and teaching zoology to young and old alike.
Then there are those who do little but attack the former class, to assuage their own ego and get attention. Such a person is Germaine Greer, who never misses an opportunity to sneer at the broader culture and in particular the country of her own birth, Australia.
So Greer attacked Irwin as a "torturer" of animals, and claims that his death was somehow the "revenge of nature". What a wanker. Quite apart from the common decency of not speaking ill of the dead - which is not absolute, I grant you - Irwin did not torture animals. Greer on the other hand does torture the minds of her readers with stupid, nasty and useless attacks. She makes public intellectuals into a class of noxious weeds.
There has to be a better use for a university education, public discourse, and, let's face it, amino acids.
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Oh come on, she's entertaining at least.
Bob
I gave up on Greer after her absurdly intemperate attacks on Tolkien a couple of years back. She seems to have lost the plot entirely.
Are you advocating feeding her to Irwin's crocodiles? :o)
However:
"Nobody is useless -- they can still always serve as a bad example."
Although I am mildly surprised at the degree of Irwin adulation going on, Greer was just plain stupid, but then, she has been going downhill for some time.
The Author of "Storm Boy" Colin Thiele, died th same day as Irwin, but went almost unnoticed.
OTOH, Peter Brock died in a crash today (This is a bad week for Aussie icons), will Greer say something stupid about him too?
Greer's comments are tasteless at this time but that doesn't make them wrong. Perhaps when things calm down the Aussies can explain why Steve Irwin was so revered and so highly respected. It doesn't make much sense to me.
Irwin was respected (I wouldn't say revered - there was never a Croc Hunter Cult like Diana's) because he was a genuine person, with good intentions, and good achievements. In short, he was a folk hero because there was little bad about him, and he succeeded overseas. The reason I respect him is because he also did good zoology - he published a number of technical papers on crocodiles - and because his efforts at conserving the "non-sexy" large fauna were not only a great contribution, but he put a lot of his own money into it, buying and managing wildlife preserve for no profit.
I admire a guy like that. He never harmed any animals, and he did a lot of good for both our knowledge of them and conservation. And he tried to get children interested in zoology, and succeeded at that, too. Most of the mourners are under 10.
Would I be dating myself if I observed that in my day the phrase was "A waste of protoplasm"?
Yes... to about the 1920s at the latest.
I didn't know GG made "intemperate attacks on Tolkien!" Good for her - that helps offset her misguided attack on Steve Irwin (whose TV persona I have to confess I couldn't abide, mainly because of his accent, but I acknowledge he did make a major positive contribution to conservation.) We need more swipes at the author of the most over-rated work in the English language. Not only did he give us hobbits, but he reputedly converted CS Lewis to Christianity, thereby inflicting on an undeserving world numerous apologetics and the wretched Perelandra trilogy.
Tolkein's Christianity is far more nuanced and sophisticated than Lewis', and I rather doubt that he had very much to do with converting Lewis, who was, in line with my "creationists" thread, already predisposed to become a theist from his childhood upbringing and social context.
But Tolkein's fantasy world is more interesting in the ideas than in the execution, as I discovered when I read the whole set to my son at night...