Word: irwin
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...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...
...there were an international prize for mean-spiritedness, 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 UK's Guardian newspaper published the expatriate Australian's opinion that the animal world "has finally taken its revenge" on the Crocodile Hunter...
...Greer makes her point with a sustained, supercilious sneer that gracelessly combines 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...
...There may be substantive points to be made about Irwin's approach to conservation and the communication of his passions, although common decency suggests discussions of his legacy might hold until his wife and two small children have buried him. He was, after all, a television personality, not a president. It is true that he was sometimes criticized by conservationists and wildlife experts. Some claimed his handling of animals caused them stress, though the reptiles seemed content to slither off afterward into the bush, perhaps for counseling. Others questioned the wisdom of his campaigns against the culling of crocodiles...
...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...