Boys Will Be Boys

Prime Minister John Howard has warned against an overreaction to a video showing Australian soldiers binge drinking and one person dressed in a Ku Klux Klan (KKK) outfit.

Mr Howard says it should be left to the military to deal with the issue.

"I just think we can overreact a bit with these things and people get into a lather of sweat and so on," he said.

"Let's be sensible and understand that people will let off a bit of steam."

The video was posted by a former soldier on YouTube and has been condemned by the Australian Defence Force (ADF) and Attorney General Philip Ruddock.

Defence Minister Brendan Nelson says people should not pass judgement until the results of an inquiry are known.

He says although some of their actions may be inappropriate, a lot of it could be blowing off steam.

"There's always been a kind of irreverence, I suppose, which has underwritten the core values of our three services," he said.

[...]

From ABC News Online


Are they serious? The nation's troops, people who you and I pay an absolute packet to maintain, dress up like the KKK and behave like complete arseholes on video and that's just fine with the Prime Minister.

This kind of "irreverent" behaviour is a major reason I absented myself from the ADF after serving only about a third of my contract. You see, your tax dollar — and make no mistake, they take a huge slice of that dollar — funds that kind of behaviour every day. I laugh rather bitterly when these "Ooh, ah!" stories make the news because that brand of antics can be found on any military base on any weekend you'd care to look. I become incredibly frustrated when I hear stories of further funding going to the defence force. Put bluntly, the entire institution is corrupt, wasteful, nasty.

This sounds like the bitter rantings of an ex-sailor, and I suppose in some ways that's true. Certainly, I met many people working very hard at their jobs while there, many good people. But in my admittedly limited experience the lazy, the bigoted, the ignorant, the bullying, and the cheating were not a quiet minority by any stretch.

But I digress. There seems to be few other statements John Howard needs to make now to confirm beyond doubt that he is ignorant, racist and someone we really, really don't need in the driver's seat. How can you "overreact" to members of the military imitating white supremacists?

Scrabble

I've been enjoying a bit of Scrabble online recently, which has been bringing my mother to mind.

Mum died of breast cancer last October. Scrabble was our thing; we played together as far back as I remember, which must mean she suffered coaching a young child through the game. We had a difficult relationship at times, but when things became a bit awkward the Scrabble board would make it all rosy again. At times it seemed to be one of the few things we had in common.

She was a good player. We were fairly evenly matched — even enough to keep it interesting — but she won more often than not. When we packed up her modest belongings I pulled out the note pad tucked into the Scrabble box, and found records of our more recent games. I'll probably never have another person to sit and play with in the same way.

She knew the most obscure words imaginable. When I'd ask her how on earth she knew such a word, she'd always reply, "Oh, I don't know. Must have read it somewhere." And she was a prodigious reader. She instilled a love of words, books and reading in both my sister and I, and it's utterly central to both our lives. It's something I really have to thank Mum for. I never did of course. She died so swiftly.

I wrote a eulogy for her funeral, and people seemed to think it was a good one. My sister said that she wished I could write one for her now, so that she could have the chance to read it while she was still alive. We never do thank people for what they give us, do we? Perhaps I should get cracking and write eulogies for the important people in my life before they die, so I don't miss out again.