You may not have noticed it, but one of Cory Bernardi’s motions in the Senate the other day had to do with croissants.
Now, having written satire in the past, it’s often very hard to point out some of the things that the Liberals and ex-Liberals like Bernardi and Hanson have actually done. Many’s the time I’ve done just that, only to have someone comment: “Hilarious! You’ve outdone yourself.” So I feel I need to actually provide a link to the Australian Conservatives site where Bernardi has posted the following:
Mr President,
I give notice that on the next day of sitting, I shall move-
The the Senate notes:
(a) The auspicious date of 15 October 1529 on which the Ottoman Empire’s Siege of Vienna was broken;
(b) that despite the lifting of the Siege of Vienna, violence and oppression against liberal-democracy and other faiths by Islamists has continued into our own time;
(c) the creation of the croissant by the coffee houses of Vienna to celebrate the defeat of the Army of the Crescent; and
That the Senate calls on members and senators to enjoy a croissant with their coffee this week in solidarity with the defenders of liberalism and freedom.
According to some historians, the croissant was made crescent-shaped as an act of religious denigration in order to offend the defeated Turks. Because the crescent has a religious significance, it would be the equivalent of Muslims eating something with a cross on it in order to offend Christians…
Mm, have the shops started stocking hot cross buns yet?
Even with the obvious strangeness of putting a religious symbol on a bun, Bernardi’s motion does seem a little bizarre. We’ve been hearing about all these poor Christian bakers forced to make wedding cakes for same sex weddings, but no consideration has been given to all the poor Islamic bakers forced to make these crescent shape croissants. If that had been Cory’s point then it may have a logical consistency. But to remind everyone about the link between croissants and the Islam and to suggest that we all should devour them in the same week where Parliament is arguing about protecting religious freedoms does seem to risk confusing everyone. If there’s suddenly a petition demanding that croissants be straightened out because it’s offensive to a particular religion, will Cory be supportive?
Ok, I suspect that me even suggesting such a thing risks starting another one of those social media campaigns like the one about a group of Muslims banning Christmas lights in Cardwell. (Didn’t happen, complete fabrication) So let me be clear: as far as I’m aware there are no Muslim bakers refusing to make croissants. However, should such a thing happen, I wonder if the any laws protecting religious freedoms will suddenly be revised.
For the record, the motion attracted the support of Senators Hanson, Gichuhi, and Leyonhjelm, but failed to achieve sufficient backing to get up. Senators will be free to eat whatever snack they want with their coffee.
God, it’s great to live in a free country!
I was about to say, “It couldn’t get any more ridiculous”… but, we all know how well saying something like that turns out.
Of course there’s always the sex question to fall back upon..like what is the connection between sex and food we eat..I wrote this a while back after listening to a song by “Blondie” ..:
That song by Blondie : “In The Flesh”…threw me back many years…way before that song was written..back to my apprenticeship years as a young blade on the building site. In the smoko room of a multi-story building site…
Back in those days..mid-sixties or so, we had a loquat tree in our yard at home and this year it was most proficient with fruit, so I used to take a small bag of them with me to work to eat at smoko and lunch…but in those days, I, and anyone I knew , used to not peel the fruit, but just eat them skin and all..till one day on the site, at smoko..this big, broad in the shoulders Slavic chap at the table watched me eat the whole fruit and then addressed me so;
(I won’t try to do his accent)
“Why, my young friend, do you eat the loquat, skin and all?”
“I don’t know”..I shrugged” I just do..how else would you eat it?”…He put his apple down into his lunch-box and said..
“Here..give me one..I see you have many..that big fat one there..they are the best to show you…” I gave it to him “ Yes,,very juicy”..
He wiped the surface with his rough hand and then held it up in front of us both as in display.
“This fruit is not just a lump of food..(pause)..this is a sensuous delight..not just to chomp down like the glutton you are , my young friend!”..and he lay it clutched in one palm and proceeded to peel it with his other hand…a strip at a time ..all the while giving me..and those other bemused older men at the table, a running commentary…I have to admit that as a teen I felt a tad blushing in those innocent days..but we were amongst men..
His eyes concentrated and his voice softened..
“This fruit is like a woman..you have to be very gentle..for she will bruise so if you handle her roughly..you like this fruit?..so..you must never be rough with that you love..you must gently peel away the outer layers of “garment” (he paused in his action to give me a querying stare) you understand?” (several other men stifled a guffaw) and when you have it down to the flesh…you gently , with both thumbs..so..spread the flesh wide so you can see the seeds..which you ease out with the index-finger..” He performed the whole procedure with all the care and sensuality of a lover..”And there”..he displayed the bare fruit in his open hand..and after a suitable pause for me to absorb the result, he raised the now dripping delight to his lips and voluptuously pressed them down on the flesh so the juice oozed over his lips, which he dabbled with his napkin…His eyes rolled back in his head….he then spoke in a almost voiceless whisper..
“And then…my so young and innocent friend..when you bring your lips to touch on that forbidden flesh , you can feel both the fruit and your mouth yield to a higher pleasure than you will ever experience in your otherwise worthless life…” There was a long pause while he held his pointed to the ceiling hand for a moment of appreciation..
“Pitchken dim..” he sighed.
There was a sudden outburst of laughter in the smoko room from the other men and I felt more than a little uncomfortable.
But now..at the other end of my life, I can reflect back on the incident with a somewhat sentimental smile at the Slav’s performance….and I recollect a poem (I have it somewhere around here) of Penelope (of Ulysses myth) saying goodbye to her secret lover as it was rumoured Ulysses was returning to the island. Her lover, a rugged but handsome young fisherman who travelled with the seasonal schools of fish for his livelihood , and was then moored at the wharf in Ithaca, asked Penelope for a token to take with him when he sailed that day as a keep sake, and (if I clumsily recall.from memory ) she spoke from her balcony to him below..:
“There sir, by your hand..a white Athens rose,
Throw it to me that I may grant your desire.”
Tomas plucked the flower and did as she sought.
Penelope pressed the stem to her bared breast,
So a thorn pricked her milk-white flesh.
A noiseless cry shaped her red lips and,
A drop of her blood rose upon the place,
As she pressed the white blossom upon it,
So a single petal held her token there.
She cast her loving eyes to Tomas,
And returned the flower which he cupped
In his hand ..then raising it to his lips,
He plucked out that single petal upon his tongue,
And took it into his body as a sign
Of his endearing affection for Penelope..
“Addio..( he softly whispered)…addio my sweet lady..”
I have that whole poem around here somewhere..I’ll have to search it out one of these days..
Corgi stuffed up again the croissant was first made by the turks in the 16thcentuary to resemble the cresent in their flag, so go on and eat as many as you like, what a dickhead cherry picks crap off the internet and turns it into some sort of crusade for religous zealots.
Monty python would have a field day with this parcel of filth. Please let someone find out he is a dual citizen …………..
Well you know where Bernardi can stick his croissant… and from the look on his face it seems he has given it a go. But let’s talk about those poor, distraught bakers and florists. I think it’s safe to suppose some dislike Catholics, the Vatican, or maybe they just cannot tolerate paedophilia. Following Bernardi’s “logic”, should they not then be protected by law from baking croissants or arranging pansies for followers of the Roman Church? And what about Jews? Oops, there’s a turnaround! Imagine the brouhaha if bakers and florists refused to serve Jews? So much for the anti-SSM “rationale”!!!
Max Gross
Thinking things through is verboten among the RWNJ’s of this world. Of course refusing to serve LGBTIQ people is exactly the same as refusing to serve Jews or other “object” of discrimination.
And “object” is exactly how bigots see others for whom they fear or mistrust or hold whatever generalisation they believe about the “other”. Whatever it takes to stop from thinking about the “other” as human.
The timing is singular. What better time than now, really, to look back over the last four of five years and contemplate the myriad components and virulence of the generated to tangibility by some weird alchemy, Abbott-Turnbull democracy and demophile extinction process.
Here was a group pf people driven to overwhelming misanthropic animus by genetically and or culturally induced factors that precluded, within these people any sense of compassion or vision or notion of the desirability of vision and goal in meaningful terms, relative to actuality.
The Trump phenomena, far more overt, mirrors the process embarked on by Abbott and co, urged on by the selfish and greedy oligarch Murdoch and follows the same pattern, demonstrating that Abbott Turnbull, wittingly or unwittingly, serves informally as a blue print for global, not just local, reaction. Bodies like the IPA and the US Heritage Foundation are financed to ensure this crosspollination of malevolence materialised.
The mentality described is basically that of a lazy and disorganised eleven year old fiercely kicking over a younger sibling’s sandcastle, lovingly and painstakingly assembled, out of envy and spite driven by a sadistic impulse to revel in another’s grief and pain.
It is a pathological mindset, unaware or in denial of itself and painfully crippled to unconscious levels in the working, that in 1529 would have been seen as a manifestation of evil incarnate. The programming sees it set upon a course of self propagating and self perpetuating destructiveness and suffering for its imagined victims:
The racial “other”, here and abroad, women, gay people, blue-collar people and people on welfare, people of a different viewpoint to the straight jacketed conformist view people normal enough to feel and appreciate emotions, feelings, sense and sensibility that comprises the atual human in its more complete form.
It is so crass that it hates nature and expression through artistry and the beautiful processes of logic and reason that confound it.
Somehow, the system taught it to hate itself, for itself and from there all around it, whether this is described in terms of historical forces, patriarchy or capitalism or a combination of some or all will only become clear later, if the species survives.
The thing often goes by the descriptor neo liberalism, that is the all encompassing valourisation and implementation of greed and selfishness by those already infected, by which the person is best thwarted of her or his goal of realisation of personhood and the thwarting of earned satisfaction (which) is the fuel by which it reproduces and grows via a raging and never sated appetite inducing of hate, fear impatience and anxiety.
NOW I know that Corazzee Bonkersbarmy is well and truly demented.