Dear displaced Aborigines...

We, the undersigned bleeding hearts, sincerely hope that this plaque (which cost us almost $400 to have manufactured and installed) compensates you for the dispossession of your land and the travails of your people since white settlement. It certainly salves our guilt and makes us feel good about having 'done something' without actually having done anything at all.

Signed,

Whitey.

PS: Please stop hanging around our office, it gives us the creeps.

Robin Williams: Magical negro

I don't think it's a secret that I have something of an obsession with Robin Williams. He's been part of my cultural landscape since his bit on Happy Days where he was Gazoo to Richie Cunningham's Fred Flintstone. 

I recently described the manic dwarf in a letter to the editor of The Age as 'comedy's equivalent of Rod Stewart -- a raging fire sadly harnessed only to warm old turds.' But I have noticed another pattern to his career. I have noticed that he plays a lot of roles that would otherwise go to Morgan Freeman.

That's right. Robin Williams is the white Magical Negro.  In fact he's the Magical Negro you have when you don't want to cast a black guy in your film at all.

Don't believe me? Look at the trailer for August Rush and listen to the blithering nonsense that he's spouting in it. Put him in overalls and on death row and he could be played by Michael Clark Duncan. Look at Dead Poet's Society and tell me that isn't just To Sir, With Love, set in a rich kids school where you kill yourself because daddy didn't see your stirring rendition of 'Mister Tumnus as a young rump-stumper'. Also, with no black people. 

It's long been my opinion that Morgan Freeman must have business cards with 'Have gravitas, will peddle' on them. Well I hope Morgan has plenty of cash in the bank , because when central casting realises Williams can play God, Freeman is fucked.

Coda: I have been thinking about this a lot and have realised that in What Dreams May Come, he plays up against an ACTUAL Magical Negro in the form of Cuba Gooding Junior as God. I may have to rewatch this technicolor shitstorm just to get a handle on what happens when matter and antimatter collide.

I hate it when people I don't like get it right

So if you're Australian you've probably had a gutful of the whole Ben Cousins thing by now.
In my opinion, the guy is getting a hard time for doing what half the city tacitly acknowledges they do whenever they can afford it or they can get their hands on it.

Well, All Men Are Liars reckons that Cousins is getting a hard time because A: Journalists are jealous of him, and B: He's not contrite enough.

Kinda like the same way that Lindy Chamberlain got a hard time because A: All journalists secretly want to kill their kids, and B: She wasn't contrite.

Oh journalism! When will you get over your jealousy?