Jezebel 
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New York, 7:39 AM
Thu Dec 3
63 posts in the last 24 hours
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10/09/09
10/09/09
"Set in the 1960s and based on a memoir by Lynn Barber, "An Education" tells the tale of a middle-class suburban London schoolgirl who gets seduced by a much older, jet-setting man (Peter Sarsgaard). It's about cool French songs, slender women in tight-fitting shifts, a teenager's first foray into illicit adult romance and the inevitable shattering of romantic illusions."
I mean, it sounds great and I quite like Nick Hornby and am glad he did a good job adapting the memoir into a screenplay, but give some credit to the source material.
10/08/09
Unfortunately, Australia, like the US, does have a sub-group of willfully ignorant rednecks, and these are the target audience of this dated and tacky show. I am so sorry that they think this sort of thing is defensible.
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10/08/09
I wonder where Jon Voight's social conscience went when he went off the rails and turned into a birther.
10/09/09
I get the feeling she may be somewhat of a Libertarian. There are just several snippets out there that make me think she may lean toward some of her Dad's ideas.
(And I agree with you on the Jon Voight's "social conscience". Dude is scary.)
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10/08/09
You are not welcome on Team Cake. In fact, your dessert privileges have been revoked for a full year. Kindly stay away from everything delicious and sweet.
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I'm guessing 3 months from now.
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Usually it's along the lines of: "I went to church, but I never really thought about my relationship with God, I was just going through the motions, ya know? And then our marriage went to shit, and I started doing things I never should have done, never even wanted to do. But then one night, I just looked at my drunk, bloated self in the mirror, and realized God had a different plan for me. And now I'm saved!"
Christians are never "really" Christians when they're being bad, and everyone loves a good redemption story. I give it a few months too.
10/08/09
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as for john cleese, thanks for reassuring me why i would prefer not to get married and if i did, have a iron-clad prenup ready.
10/08/09
10/08/09
i'm actually surprised i haven't read any reviews or coverage of "an education" on jezebel being that the film was directed by a woman. the same for "the hurt locker". these two films are infinitely better written and directed than "jennifer's body" which couldn't go a day without a post. weird.
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"an education" is coming out tomorrow and carey mulligan is the next big thing and all i read about here is jon gosselin. i mean, really?
10/08/09
10/08/09
/rant over
10/08/09
a) Australia has universities (plural), books, and even a history channel - we know what blackface is. Oh, we also have black people.
b) Don't fret, we've heard of all your famous cities. But have you heard of ours? You seem to think that all Aussies are stupid hicks, and not just the vocal minority that we're supposed to believe also doesn't represent Americans.
c) The irony here is this: We know so much, in fact, about American culture, and what America likes, and what America thinks, that some people, like the fools who actually watch the awful show in question, have a knee-jerk response to criticism from the almighty US. It may be flawed, but there it is.
Many of us were grateful when the embarrassing spectacle of Hey Hey It's Saturday finally died, and can't believe it was revived for this special.
But please, continue to be ignorant and imagine that our country is one of your colonies.
10/08/09
I've actually been to Australia. I know all Australians aren't hicks and racists. And I also know that many more were horrified by that ill-advised attempt at comedy than the producers of that show are letting on.
Loved your articulate response. Seriously. Even that bit at the end. :)
10/08/09
10/08/09
He's an upright guy from New Orleans and is basically an honorary soul brother to lots of us that witnessed him being one of the first to go down to the Lower 9th Ward to help out.
And yeah, I hearted ya. I like you!
10/08/09
Exactly.
"Australians probably haven't heard of NOLA either, since they pretend to be ignorant of anything that involves black people and racism" sounds like the worst kind of generalising and enforcing an old stereotype of 'backwards' Crocodile Dundee style Australians.
Australia is taking steps to rectify cases of racism against our own Aboriginal/'black' residents. Maybe America should start addressing their own racism, rather than fussing about an ill-formed skit on a tacky show that most of our population are already embarassed by.
10/08/09
10/09/09
Um, when is Australia ever going to have an Aboriginal president? I'm not trying to suggest that by electing Obama we've abdicated ourselves of our racist past, but it's a damn good start to "addressing [our] own racism."
What's been most interesting is the number of Australians commenting and insisting that they don't have *any" problems with racial strife. That's all America's problem, blah blah blah. Whatevs ...
Look, it's probably not a good idea to belittle people's feeling about this skit and then act like's it's all somehow America's fault. Also, while I'm generalizing, I (as a black woman) have never had a personal interaction with an Australian that wasn't terribly horrifying and offensive. But I'm sure that's more the exception than the rule.
10/09/09
I'm not saying we don't have any problems with racial strife - we do, but are trying to fix that.
While we have our problems, America seems to have them on a larger scale due to the obviously larger population and seperation in communities, between a more diverse number of cultural groups.
The skit was an embarassment, and has been treated as such in my country. But it was an re-enactment from the show a good 15 years ago, from a different era and obviously a mistake.
While we are bringing Indigenous groups into it, I'm glad to hear Native Americans seem to be getting a fair deal on their own soil. When will the US be electing a Native American as President?
Oh and it's unlikely we'll ever have a Aboriginal President as the position doesn't exist. Australia has a Prime Minister.
I've never met an American 'black' person, so can't comment on interactions, but hope they wouldn't sterotype my country in such a negative fashion.
10/09/09
Look, the situation of Aborigines is truly terrible, and something I have written about on here in the past at length. Any Australian who says we don't have an issue with racism is an idiot.
But our issues are very different to the US's. For starters, Aborigines make up about 3% of our population. You ask when we'll have an Aboriginal prime minister (well, you said president, but I'll give you a pass on that one), but from a population statistics perspective, that's not likely. Aborigines are actually well represented in local and state politics. It's just - perhaps - not as obvious because a lot of people who identify as Aboriginal have light skin and even fair hair.
Every nation should take steps to address their racism. But how racism presents itself is different in each country. We don't have a history of minstrel shows. The skit was dumb and racist but the participants (who, BTW, were Middle-Eastern and Indian) may not have known that blackface is imbued with a particularly nasty history and that it contains deeper nuance than the superficial idiocy.
I am sorry that you have found your interactions with Australians to be horrifying. If that's the case, I can only imagine that it may be because of basic cultural differences (or ignorance) that you mistook for racism. We don't have many people of African-descent in Australia (although we have recent migrants). Australians often don't know about the long history of politicised interaction between white people and black people in the US. Our racial issues are framed differently and occur in a different context.
But yes, this skit was horrifying and I wish Hey Hey It's Saturday would suffer a long and hideous death.
10/09/09
Also Harry Connick Jr is a honey. No hard feelings there, ever.
10/09/09
I was born and grew up in Oz, and for you to say that people there don't understand the implications of blackface is rubbish. Anyone who grew up there has been brought up on a staple diet of American and British TV shows, and whether we like it or not, the culture of those countries has infiltrated Australia's deeply. We know the N-word is extremely offensive, without necessarily understanding its roots. This is no different.
But these excuses are just part of a whole, tired routine. When people accuse Aussies of racism in situations like this, Aussies are quick to tell them that they've just misunderstood the culture. Like the use of the word "wog." Some white Aussies (not any of my friends, I hasten to add) love to tell people how the word "wog" is actually a term of affection in Australia, that "wogs" themselves use the term. Well, you know what? That's bullshit. I was called a wog growing up, and I certainly don't consider it an affectionate term, and if you meet me now and call me one, I will let you know pretty quickly that it's still effing offensive.
And just a small point on this:
...the participants (who, BTW, were Middle-Eastern and Indian)...
Actually, the participants were ALL Australian. Their backgrounds were Anglo-Celtic, Sri Lankan, Indian, Greek, Irish-Italian and Lebanese. Just so you know, Ireland, Italy, and Greece are NOT in the Middle East. And India and Sri Lanka are two different countries. The more you know, eh...
10/09/09
I agreed the skit was racist, and I said that Australians do have a problem with racism. My point is that the history that elevates blackface to be above and beyond other racist performances, is not existent here. It was still terrible - and it is beyond belief that the network broadcast it - but it is not worse that any other crude, demeaning portrayal of racial differences. In the States, it would be. That is the bit that I think a lot of Australians don't understand.
On a side note, I agree about the whole "wog" thing. It's one thing to make a joke about yourself, and another for others to adopt it too.
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