Word: greers
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...there were an international prize for mean-spiritedness, controversial author Germaine Greer would be on the podium this week delivering her acceptance speech. Steve Irwin's body was barely out of the water before the U.K.'s Guardian newspaper published the expatriate Australian's opinion that the animal world "has finally taken its revenge" on the Crocodile Hunter...
...Greer made her point with a sustained, supercilious sneer that gracelessly combined ignorance with exhibitionist pseudo-erudition. "The film-makers maintain that the ray that took Irwin out" - nice touch, that, took him out, like a hit man hired by vengeful Mother Nature - "was a 'bull ray,' or Dasyatis brevicaudata," she writes, "but this is not usually found as far north as Port Douglas." Sniff. Is that a whiff of Google in the air? Biology lesson over, Greer flicks her tail and begins sticking her own barbs into the man. She relives the incident when he fed a crocodile...
...thing no one doubted was Irwin's passion to protect the world's wildlife from the threat of dwindling habitat. Sorry, did I say no one? Greer again: "What Irwin never seemed to understand was that animals need space. The one lesson any conservationist must labour to drive home is that habitat loss is the principal cause of species loss." Yet here's Irwin, interviewed on Australia's ABC TV network in 2003: "Easily the greatest threat to wildlife globally is the destruction and annihilation of habitat...
...find no record of what Greer has done to preserve habitat, but Irwin bought many thousands of acres of wilderness in Australia and the U.S., 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 is 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...