Judith Durham rewrites the national anthem with Chief Seattle

UPDATE: a friend emails "… But if you sing this to “Puff the Magic Dragon”, its actually quite good. Try it."

Run away, oh for the love of God, RUN!

 

"Sweet Jesu, yet more torments?"

 

Indeed, it is as bad and as stomach churning as you'd expect.

 

But it isn't just Judith's fault. It's basically been written by a committee and we all know that's a sure fire guarantee for dullness and banality. Well, with the exception of the Authorised Version of the Bible.

 

But that was a very good committee.

 

Poor hapless Judith's committee is the collection of the politically correct cultural left you'd expect to produce this:

 

Australia, celebrate as one, with peace and harmony.
Our precious water, soil and sun, grant life for you and me.
Our land abounds in nature’s gifts to love, respect and share,
And honouring the Dreaming, advance Australia fair.
With joyful hearts then let us sing, advance Australia fair.
2. Australia, let us stand as one, upon this sacred land.
A new day dawns, we’re moving on to trust and understand.
Combine our ancient history and cultures everywhere,
To bond together for all time, advance Australia fair.
With joyful hearts then let us sing, advance Australia fair.

 

Of course there is a "senior woman elder," the must have accessory for "aware" members of the white middle classes.

 

But in amongst the list of those credited with giving "perspective" during the revision process there is none other than Chief Seattle.

 

Why am I not surprised? Green lefties love him because of the speech he gave in 1854 to the "Great White Chief" in Washington full of suspiciously modern eco babble, stuff like "the earth is our mother" and bemoaning the slaughter of buffalo from trains blah, blah, blah.

 

And suspicious it is, because it is completely fake.

 

Chief Seattle did make a speech in 1854, though the text of this speech was put together from notes and memory by a Dr Smith some thirty years afterwards in 1887.

 

But that's not the speech that environmentalists drone on about and put up on their walls. Their speech is the fake one written by screenwriter Ted Perry for the 1972 film about ecology called Home, where a pious modern ecological sermon is put into the mouth of the good chief.

 

Seattle could not have seen buffalo being shot from trains for the simple reason he'd never seen a buffalo.

 

He was from the Pacific North-West, where there are no buffalo (an animal of the open plains).

 

But why let inconvenient facts get in the way of books such as Brother Eagle, Sister Sky: A Message From Chief Seattle, that send the "right" message? Does it matter on that basis that a native American is being used by a bunch of well-meaning white tossers to be their sock puppet? (And to make money.)

 

Or The Education of Little Tree, the "purported autobiography of the late Forrest Carter, who claimed he was raised by two wise Cherokee grandparents. Even when it came out that Forrest Carter was in fact Asa Carter, a notorious white supremacist, the book continued to sell well-it's now sold almost 700,000 copies."

 

As this indicates, there is certainly a large market for the naive and the stupid out there. What was that ridiculous book a few years back written by some American woman claiming that she had lived with the aborigines of central Australia and decided to share with the world their secret wisdom?

 

How many people around the world bought that book? How many realise that they had been conned by yet another white shyster who used aboriginal people to make money by falsely claiming to have lived with them and learnt from them?

 

How many would still insist that there are "valuable" lessons in the book, (because it is crafted to say exactly the kinds of things they'd want "spiritual" primitive people to say)?

 

The "fake, but accurate" defence so often deployed by these people.

 

There are days, there are days....

 

Posted via email from Garth's posterous