Saturday, November 19, 2016

My Problem with Stan Grant

"As a reporter I have seen the human debris from this clash of cultures, religions, civilisations and identities: think Hutu and Tutsi in Rwanda; Sunni and Shia throughout the Middle East; Hindu and Muslim in India and Pakistan; and Israeli versus Palestinian." (The identity trap, Stan Grant, Sydney Morning Herald, 19/11/16)

This show pony has no idea if he thinks Palestine/Israel is all about identity politics.

Frankly, 'reporters' who swan around the planet, scribbling away, without first taking the trouble to read a few reputable histories of the people and places they're reporting on, are bad enough, but those who haven't got the wit to recognise a colonial dynamic when it's raging all around them really get me down.

5 comments:

Vacy said...

"but those who haven't got the wit to recognise a colonial dynamic " particularly when he claims to be a victim of colonialism... a couple of months back on a documentary featuring Bolt and Linda Burney, Grant expressed his admiration for Israeli multiculturalism.. Grant belongs to the Warren Mundine camp of ambition climbing up the government ( any government) party line ladder.

MERC said...

Cringe...

Grappler said...

Vacy: "Grant expressed his admiration for Israeli multiculturalism."

Does Grant include the recent statement by Sephardi Chief Rabbi Shlomo Amar that homosexuality should be punishable by death.

Even the crowd in power in Israel recognized that that would not fly well in the Western media and criticized it. If they had said that being Palestinian should be punishable by death no-one would have cared.

Mannie De Saxe said...

There are other problems relating to Stan Grant going back a number of years, and because I have the sort of mind that remembers these sorts of things it is something worth mentioning.
It has nothing to do with Israel/Palestine as far as I know but has everything to do with misogyny in the workplace which made life impossible for his co-worker on SBS news because the SBS board backed him against Mary Kostakidis. She was no longer able to accept the intolerable conditions in her workplace and she was forced out.
Suddenly he is in the public eye and everyone thinks he is so marvellous.
Well, not all of us think that way!

Anonymous said...

Thank you Mannie for reminding me.