The Australian Open
See, I got a neighbour, we don’t always agree
He’s a bit of a redneck, according to a hippy like me
But if you’re in the ditch, he’ll pull you out, I know he will
And that’s more than I can say for all those dickheads on the hill
In New York Harbour there’s a lady with a flame
Still calling in the huddled masses in Liberty’s name
But there’s fear on the airwaves and hatred wrapped in the flag
Turning strangers into enemies and our riches into rags
And a revolution to break the grip of greed
Don’t need a strongman or a saviour, but I believe we’re gonna need
Whatever magic this old world’s got left to start
And all the ammunition in the chambers of our hearts
Now Margaret Court may also be a redneck, but she would pull you out of the ditch. Alcoholics, drug addicts, gays, are all welcome in her church. She doesn’t go around banning people.
Court is tolerant of all people however much she may disagree with their views. And surely that is how we want to live.
Rowen D’Souza is the organiser of the ‘Glam Slam’, an LGBT-inclusive tournament, said, ‘‘In person, Mrs Court is a delightful person and it was really nice to have a chat and she listened attentively. And it’s true, when she says she doesn’t hate us – I believe that as well.’’
But it seems there is a lot of hate for Court and where will it end, I ask. Do we ban Wagner’s music, as Israel has done (that’s the country, not Folau), and abolish the Bayreuth Festival, because Wagner was an antiSemite and many other unpleasant things.
Do we stop reading TS Eliot for his Jewish slurs, and cast out VS Naipaul because he was an alleged fascist; Mark Twain used the ‘n’ word; Rudyard Kipling is branded a racist imperialist despite much contrary evidence in his work; George Orwell called Auden and Spender ‘‘gutless pansies’’ and Hemingway wrote in a letter; ‘‘the Royal Road to quick Literary success is through the entrance to the colon. Gaw it disgusts a male.’’
Let’s throw their books and musical scores onto the Australian bushfires. Let’s side with the Royal Mint’s Advisory Committee who rejected an Enid Blyton commemorative coin on the 50th anniversary of her death because she was ‘‘racist, sexist, homophobic and not a very-well regarded writer.’’
Ooh, that last bit gives it away. Not well-regarded by whom? Not well regarded by the millions of children she has enchanted and helped along the road of reading, of whom I am one.
Blyton is the fourth most translated writer after Shakespeare, Agatha Christie, who also used the ‘n’ word in the title of a book, and Jules Verne. Oh, the ghastly snobbery of these Woke witches and warlocks.
We could say that George, in Blyton’s the Famous Five, is the first trans literary character, ha, ha. But humour is never OK in these situations. We must walk with pursed lips and pinched eyes down the highway of political correctness and strike out at free speech whenever it tries to stick its ugly head out of the hedgerows.
Well not me. My vision is to see Serena Williams and Margaret Court and Martina Navratilova embrace in a supreme triumvirate of mutual tolerance and love.
My vision is that the only bullets they shoot at each other is from the chambers of their hearts. It may be daft, hippy nonsense, but is it really that impossible?