Mega Thread The Adam Goodes Megathread - Now with Added Poll!

[MC_9]

To people who think booing him is OK ... ignore the race issue. How do you feel about making someone feel like shit? Do you think it's acceptable to do this? Bullying is terrible and serious. Doesn't matter if you think someone should be able to handle it. If they are upset, then that's all that is relevant. You would think grown adults with any decency would cease their actions when they realise that it is genuinely causing someone distress.

As Brendan Goddard said, it is 'extreme bullying'.

 

[kneecapper]

It may be for some. For others it may have nothing to do with it. Certainly painting all booers with a broad stroke of being racist isn't the answer. I don't boo any player. Never have. Just don't get it. But sadly, I now find myself hoping that people keep booing Goodes only for the simple reason that I'd hate to see this propaganda campaign actually have an effect on people. This is the stuff of thought-police and I think it's far scarier than people booing a footy player.

Damn it, guys. He's on to us. I'll inform the brownshirts to shut down the re-education camps.

 

[Happy_Neale]

Contemplating immediate retirement apparently.

 

[Cleric]

What's your point? Your son had a bad experience with some aboriginals, ergo booing Goodes is okay?
I've had many positive experiences with aboriginal people. Because, you know, they are like other groups of people all over the world - there are good ones and not so good ones.

But hey, who am I to interrupt: you can justify your bias in whatever way you deem fit.

I have posted on BF awhile ago where I was attacked in a Bi-Lo shop while standing in line to buy some stuff by a drunk aboriginal guy who called me a "white c_nt". All brought on by the fact he was so drunk he couldnt get his keycard to work and decided all those people waiting in line after him deserved a piece of his mind. He tried to beat up a elderly couple in front of me first (would have been in their 70s) and then when they fell down screaming I was next in line. Things didnt go so well for him with me and had to be helped outside to some seats out the front.
So your can turn your bullshit up any way you like. There is massive hatred towards white people from within Aboriginal communities. My cousin who is an adopted Aboriginal girl went to build relationships with Aboriginal people after growing up in a white family in Victoria. She was shocked at how she was treated by alot of people. She thought she would find what she thought was missing in her life but the shit she coped because she didnt hate white people disturbed her.
Ask her which community has more hatred towards the other and without hesistation she will tell you. But people like you just have these so called principles and beliefs that cannot be wrong. But yours are.

 

[Mcveigh]

Look at the reasons and I believe the major one is his speech as Australian of the year when he basically accused everyone's grand parents/great grand parents of rape/murder of aboriginal people. A lot of people were offended and as he is a public figure speaking to a nation he is going to get backlash for offending people. And in a lot of people's eyes (not mine, I don't boo) the easiest way to show their displeasure is to boo him.

Speaks the truth. People get offended.

I wonder which side should be changing their views...

 

[Proper Gander]

This thread makes my brain hurt.

Goodes wasn't booed on a mass scale after he did something dirty or got suspended. Goodes wasn't booed after a run of dubious free kicks. Goodes wasn't booed after his brownlow win. Can we dispense with the ducking and weaving and at least agree that there are a few clear incidents that kicked the whole thing off?

Goodes was booed after being racially abused by a young girl, and subsequently, after years of work with the indigenous communities around Australia, winning the Australian of the Year award and opening up some very serious, yet uncomfortable conversations about race.

People have this moronic idea that racism is about wearing the Australian flag as a cape and screaming "**** the abos!" It's a lot more subtle than that, it's systemic, it's ingrained in our culture. No one, including Goodes, is saying that any individual or collective needs to feel 'guilt' or 'shame' for past atrocities perpetuated against aboriginal Australians. What Goodes and others are doing is trying to get people to recognise that most people living in this country indirectly benefit from the theft, rape and massacre of an entire group of people. This has lasting impacts and the wounds are still fresh. Aboriginals still weren't counted as people in the census less than 50 years ago. I still find it hard to wrap my head around that. Indigenous heads were sent back on ships to England. Tasmanian aboriginal people were wiped off the face of the planet.

None of this implies any sort of culpability for any one white Australian, including myself. It's not my fault that I benefit from the past slaughtering of indigenous people and I'm not going to apologise to anyone for it. But I DO. And that's the important thing. That's the conversation Goodes was trying to have. Realising that maybe young Travis being in jail or having too much drink isn't just a result of loose morals or poor character, but at least partly because of systemic injustices past and present that put him in a position that you couldn't possibly pretend to fully empathise with.

Unfortunately a large proportion of the Australian population wasn't mature or intelligent enough to have this conversation. They heard terms like 'genocide', 'theft', 'invasion' and 'race problems' and quickly jumped on the defensive. They couldn't spurt out 'but I don't hate aboriginals' quick enough. And unfortunately, this is how real racism is perpetuated. Not because your old fashioned uncle (believe me, I have several) openly said 'you can't trust them' but through the failure of everyday Australians to recognise and own the role they inadvertently play in systemic injustice. So then Goodes is a 'flog', a 'grandstander', 'divisive' and other such nonsense.

This is the reason Goodes was initially booed. Maybe a tiny percentage of Hawthorn supporters (and now seemingly every other club's supporters) that booed him are openly distrusting and resentful towards aboriginal Australians. But mainly because they couldn't handle or understand a conversation that while uncomfortable for them, is a tragic and real necessity for someone like Goodes. Then tribalism kicked in people started booing him because everyone else was and retrospectively performed mental gymnastics to come up with reasons why they did join in.

Like other people have said, the booing stemmed from racial elements, still has a dark racial undertone and is deeply upsetting for the indigenous AFL community as well as Goodes and his family. Initially I'm willing to give many a free pass for getting caught up in the tribalism. That's a lot of what footy is about. But at this point, if you join in, you're overtly racist, subtly racist, or just not very bright. The latter contingent probably constitutes the majority, but why would you even want to be associated with it at this point?

I'm posting this again because the thread is moving so quickly, there may be some who didn't see it.

Sensational post.

 

[Monkey King]

Damn it, guys. He's on to us. I'll inform the brownshirts to shut down the re-education camps.

Not sure how anyone could deny that there's a campaign being run to control the actions of others here, but okay.

 

[Kummerspeck]

He should be fairly sure he wouldn't get booed this week - if he doesn't play then I think thats quite weak

Go through seventeen weeks of intense, targeted taunting in your workplace and see how you handle it.

 

[JohnnyFontane90]

To people who think booing him is OK ... ignore the race issue. How do you feel about making someone feel like shit? Do you think it's acceptable to do this? Bullying is terrible and serious. Doesn't matter if you think someone should be able to handle it. If they are upset, then that's all that is relevant. You would think grown adults with any decency would cease their actions when they realise that it is genuinely causing someone distress.

no tall poppy syndrome. famous people have a perceived superior status in society so they're fair game. actors, singers, politicians all get terrible things said about them everyday. they're sort of expected to just brush it off because everybody having an opinion of you is baggage to your million dollar paycheck and enviable lifestyle. if goodes didn't like publicity he shouldn't have jumped into the spotlight.

 

[Blues_Man]

Watched fat slobbo and fawning whately on AFL 360 and they called everyone booing Goodes a racist . They either simply have no idea or just a pair of tossers who love the sound of their own voice .
I dislike Goodes because of his attitude..it has nothing to do with his skin colour.
It's rather amusing that you can dislike any person you want ...unless they are a minority ..then you are either a bigot or a racist.

 

[Cannon82]

Contemplating immediate retirement apparently.

At only 35? You couldn't write about it!

 

[Mr Magic]

No, it's now vitriol, hatred, nastiness and pure spite.

And that's what people here are both defending and also defending the right to do personally.

What makes it worse is now those people know it actually affecting the player concerned, they have dug their heels in even more.

So they really want to rub his nose in the dirt and they want to make him suffer and hurt as much as possible.

What nasty, compassionless people. Anyone with a shred of decency would back off.

It's all becoming very sad.

Actual Goodes, Jetta, Oloughlin and Rebecca Wilson and the Swans boss is very swans related is it not?

 

[The Swert]

There's a difference between racism and bigotry.

Racism is the intolerance of an entire race.
Bigotry is the intolerance of those with a different opinion.

I believe most people booing Goodes are not racists but bigots. They do not have anything against aboriginal people in general, but they do have something against the opinions of Goodes and the way he expresses his opinions. There is a big difference.

You can argue all you like about whether bigotry is right. Similar intolerances were shown towards Julia Gillard for her feminism, Martin Luther King for his civil rights movement and Pauline Hanson for her nativism. However it is distinctly different from racism.



Furthermore, he incited the crowd through the war dance this year.

Some may liken it to the All Blacks' Haka, but the Haka is used before the match to intimidate their opponents. It is aimed at the opponent! Which makes perfect sense in a sporting match and is acceptable to both the crowd and sporting body. Some teams have taken exception to it and reacted but it is now accepted and seen as traditional.

Adam's war dance however was targeted at the crowd, not the opposition. Trying to intimidate a crowd is not a great idea, remember when Ben Cousins gave the bird to the TV camera? War dances incite a response, often fear, and the crowd's response to this is the only form they have, booing. Add to that the aptly named 'crowd mentality' which ensures that successive crowds sympathize with each other, and he has effectively incited the whole footballing public.

He performed a war dance and then wonders why it started a war.

 

[Happy_Neale]

At only 35? You couldn't write about it!

Yeah nothing weird about retiring in the back end of the season when your team is in the top 4.

 

[Blues_Man]

Go through seventeen weeks of intense, targeted taunting in your workplace and see how you handle it.

Yeah it would be tough ...but it would also be tough being nationally bullied and shamed if you were a 13 year old kid .

 

[The_Wookie]

That's my pleasure.

The bottom line is that you know something you are doing is causing grief to someone else, so you continue to do it.

I'm not surprised you don't like having it pointed out.

The bottom line is this. Every action has a consequence, and they arent always pleasant ones. Sometimes your actions draw negative attention. If you act in a way that displeases your target audience you're going to get negative attention. Its the way things always have been.

 

[MC_9]

Contemplating immediate retirement apparently.

Jeeze I hope he doesn't retire because of this. It would be such an awful way to leave the game.

I think it would be great that in his next game, that any person that is against the booing of Adam Goodes cheers for him as loud as they can as anytime he touches the ball (regardless of who they support), just to show that the majority of people are against what is happening.

 

[Smoky]

Goodes says the booing gets under his skin... Any player says that the opposition supporter will boo him to get under his skin and therefore help their team.

 

[4thebloods]

If Goodes perceives something as racist, why then can not a fan perceive having a spear thrown at them as threatening?

An IMAGINARY spear..

 

[ManWithNoName]

As I said, I've never been one to boo any player, so I'm hardly an advocate for Goodes being booed by anyone. However the booing for me now is just a byline; it could be wearing scarves with beanies for all I care at this point. I'd just hate to see this scare campaign that's being waged actually succeed. Some of the comments driving the campaign are nothing more than manipulative propaganda.

As for how Goodes and Jetta perceive being booed, I say the idea that you have the right to bend others to the will of your own perceptions is not something I support.

I don't have the right. But they do. Their right to go about their life without being racially abused supercedes your (not you) right to abuse people at the football.

 

[Cannon82]

Yeah nothing weird about retiring in the back end of the season when your team is in the top 4.

For a bloke who dropped himself earlier this year? Probably not. But there may be a few other things going on...

 

[ManWithNoName]

I think the " war dance" exacerbated the situation
And I think the flip flopping on the " traditional" and " cultural" descriptions of it didn't help either and the fact that it was directed at the crowd when other things - like Cornes flipping the bird - get fined

If Goodes perceives something as racist, why then can not a fan perceive having a spear thrown at them as threatening?

When was a spear thrown at a fan?

 

[the_interloper]

Lucky for him he's not a cricketer, imagine the sledging he'd cop?

 

[Brad Goodman]

Jeeze I hope he doesn't retire because of this. It would be such an awful way to leave the game.

Agreed. It would make a lot of small, petty people happy though.

 

[Cannon82]

An IMAGINARY spear..

Compared to a PHYSICAL boo?