The Adventures of QueerPenguin

Poor Pauline

It's not Pauline herself I'm concerned about. She's had her day, she'll never win a Reps or Senate spot again and she can keep popping up at elections all she wants, but the old chook's gotta face facts: Howard has succesfully soothed most One Nation voters back into his fold and is currently offering them no incentive to leave. They're getting most of what they want out of him.

The reason I find her '07 bid of any interest is its indication of how some things have changed so much since 1996 - and yet, concurrently, some things have remained the same.

What's stayed the same, according to Pauline, is that Australia is still in danger of being 'swamped' by an undesirable foreign element. What's changed is that now it's the towelheads, not the gooks, who will comprise the undesired swampers.

Given that history has shown how wrong she was about the Asian Invasion in 1996, what's to say it won't again show her up as wrong about the Muslims now? That come 2017, we won't be looking back thinking, 'gawd, remember when that Hanson chick and all the other righties were banging on about the Muslim threat? Pfft, what a joke! Now I'm going to install some iBotox*.'

By then, who knows who'll be the racial whipping boy du jour? The Asians and the Middle Easterners will have been covered - maybe Anglo racism will take a novel turn on the flood of white South Africans desperately emigrating to Australia in droves, and they'll be the new black by then? Canadians? Greenlanders? Still a few nations left.

To her credit, Pauline's trying a different marketing campaign this time, no doubt free of the Oldfields, Pasquarellis and other Muppeteers pulling her strings. Rocking up in an interview with SSO mag in April this year was certainly novel, as were the revelations therein of attending a gay bar with Oldfield in Cairns (though given the rumours about Oldfield, maybe not so novel). The interview reveals her typical ignorance and complete lack of understanding of the issues around civil unions and same-sex parenting, but also possibly a genuine desire on her part to establish goodwill with the queer community. Perhaps after Pauline Pantsdown and Dancing With the Stars, Pauline's become aware of, and tried to capitalise upon, her supposed camp value.

Shame about the quip re the AIDS-riddled South Africans...'of no benefit to this country whatsover' (although, again, she's only articulating in a coarser, more explicit manner the PM's own views). Probably not going to win too many mincer friends with that one. And lord knows how queer Muslims - yes, they do exist - would fit into her masterplan.

Still, if nothing else Pauline has got one thing right: From her you get 'truth and honesty. You know where you stand with me, not like the other bastards who tell you one thing and do another.' I mean, the same thing's true of Fred Nile and it doesn't mean I'm about to start voting for him, but she simply doesn't have the intelligence to conceal her agenda the way Howard or Fundies First can.

Maybe she should be seen as a prohet: What she's articulating now, poorly, incoherently and in that pained, close-to-tears shaking voice, is merely an indication of the future of Howard government policy. In that regard, she may be of some use.

(*random speculation about future developments)

Labels: Pauline Hanson

posted by Sam @ Friday, August 17, 2007