Word: greer
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...Egypt.'" (Spamalot echoes this in the historian's opening narration: "...In Mercia and the two Anglias: Plague. With a 50% chance of pestilence coming out of the Northeast at 12 miles per hour.") Eventually, Idle recalls, "I became the Grand President and changed the laws and admitted women" - Germaine Greer was one of his first recruits - "and I've been admitting women ever since...
...find no record of what Greer has done to preserve habitat, but Irwin bought many thousands of acres of wilderness in Australia and the US, in Fiji and Vanuatu. He made a lot of money from his business and used millions of dollars to purchase land and keep it wild. "Whenever we get enough cash," he told the ABC, "and a chunk of land we're passionate about, bang, we buy it." If only Greer had paused long enough after his death to research Irwin's life as thoroughly as she did her Latin classifications...
...course for the Greers of this world Irwin's real sin was his lack of sophistication, his puppy-like boisterousness, his artlessness, his showmanship. Good Lord, the man was little better than a common entertainer. People with joyless lives circumscribed by cynicism could never comprehend his mad enthusiasm, and needed to mock it to justify its absence in themselves. Greer's in a hurry to mock it too, but she'd really like an Irwin quote to make fun of, and we know she's used up her research budget on the Dasyatidae. The Guardian deadline looms. What...
...Greer is not an intellectual for nothing. In one of the great feats of opinion writing she will channel the dead man and berate him for the words she puts in his mouth. "You can just imagine Irwin yelling: 'Just look at those beauties! Crikey! With those barbs a stingray can kill a horse!'" Greer bravely sets her imaginary Irwin straight: "Yes Steve, but a stingray doesn't want to kill a horse. It eats crustaceans, for God's sake." I had previously assumed British editors consult Greer because they mistake her tedious prejudices for some special insight into Australia...
...Greer is disgusted by a vulgar fellow like Irwin, just as she has previously been disgusted by Australia's vulgar choice of prime minister, its lack of culture, its shameful history and so much else Australian that doesn't meet the standards of her refined intellect (how she must have agonized before accepting the invitation to appear on Celebrity Big Brother). Let's pay tribute to that intellect by employing her rhetorical device of invented quote and response. I imagine her yelling: "I am a loathsome creature who lacks human feeling and has so completely lost touch with Australia that...