50 SHADES OF GRANT.

By Paul Zannetti

Fake S(tan) Grant is at it again, feeling sorry for himself with his ‘Poor Fella Me’ roadshow.

This time around, with Queen Elizabeth II barely cold, Grant chose to ‘voice’ another complaint about the Brits, ‘colonisation’ and to use the solemn event to leverage a push for the racist Indigenous ‘voice’ and a republic.

I’ll write more about those divisive topics in a future post.

Seven years ago, when fake S(tan) falsely and opportunistically accused The Australia Dream of being “rooted in racism”, I felt compelled to respond to Grant by reminding him and others that Australia is not a racist country, we are the most welcoming country in the world. My family and millions of others are proof of that. The only racism I see is deeply embedded in community dividers like Stan Grant, who actively pursue an agenda of ‘us and them’, pushing for racism in our parliament and in our constitution.

A few days ago Grant wrote another appalling piece of self-pity in which he finished:

“At times like these I wonder what it would be to not know apocalypse. To not know what it is to come from a people who face an existential threat. Who have clung on to their very place on this earth. I wonder what it would be like for me to be like my colleagues for whom this is one of the defining stories of their lifetimes. Sometimes, I wonder what it must be like to be white. But then I would not be my mother’s son.” (end)

Well, here’s some breaking news, S(tan). You are white. You are a majority white man who has benefited and been enriched by the British system and white man’s culture. Only in more recent years, as it has become fashionable and financially rewarding to identify as ‘indigenous’, you and others opportunistically jumped on the woke band wagon.

1970s

I wrote this piece 7 years ago in 2016. It went viral. I was contacted by people who have known S(tan) from the early days, which only confirmed what I’d observed and wrote. The piece was titled…"So did I".

As have millions of others Australians, Stan faced racism as a white man with aboriginal background. I faced it as a wog dago. My surname was a curse, in that it made me a target in the 1970s. I wasn’t ashamed of my surname, but was called all sort of names I can’t repeat here. My way of handling it was to laugh it off. I picked up a pen and taught myself how to draw cartoons. Before long there were cartoons of the ‘racists’ pinned up on the school notice boards. It wasn’t long before they became my mates. I figured that’s how you did it in Australia. We wogs learned how to fit in, to integrate. These ‘racists’, well, they were only kids teasing as kids do – ribbing each other in the bus line, but watching each other’s backs on the footy field.

I’ve loved integrating ever since.

Newspaper editors around the country also seemed to like the way I integrated. In fact it wasn’t an editor who first took notice of the cartoons of this wog kid with a funny last name. It was a 'racist' Australian bloke called Larry Pickering who in 1976, as a then 34-year-old national superstar cartoonist on The Australian told this 15 year old wog kid from Wollongong who he’d just met, to “Keep at it, chief. I reckon you’ve got what it takes.” A couple of years or so later, that 'racist' Pickering bloke introduced me to an editor and a news organisation boss – and by 18 I was sitting in my own little office drawing daily cartoons at The Tele.

Funny how that 'racist' famous bloke took no notice of my name. He looked at my work and judged me on what I did, not my ethnic background. I became accepted into many 'racist' Australian homes as the daily cartoonist in the country’s largest circulating racist daily paper. What a country where a wog kid could be accepted not on his background but what he produced.

But (S)tan Grant says the, “The Australian dream is rooted in racism, it is the very foundation of the dream. It is there at the birth of the nation. It is there in terra nullius.”

I say bullshit, Stan.

I say you’re a divider, a segregator and an opportunistic antagonist promoting the ‘Guilt Industry’ that separates Australians into tribes.

You’ve been given every opportunity, Stan, without any barriers of racism – the same opportunities offered to every Australian of every race, if they’re prepared to study and work hard. As have I, as have millions of other Australians and fellow wogs, from every culture, race and religion. In that respect you and I are no different to millions of minority individuals who collectively come together as one, around this wonderful country. Where you and I are different, Stan, I was a target as soon as someone heard or read my name. You never had that problem. Your name is as white Anglo as it comes – Stan Grant. You enjoyed all the opportunities and benefits of the ‘white man’s’ system. As did I.

According to your online bio after you left Griffith, you went to uni, first in NSW then the ANU, where I’m assuming you weren’t held back by any racism, because you don’t mention it, and you’d be the first to scream about it if it happened. You got a job as a copyboy at the racist Canberra Times, spent a few years as a news presenter on racist Macquarie radio, then the racist Seven network and the racist ABC. You then moved onto stints with CNN International in Hong Kong and Beijing, where you were responsible for the network’s coverage of China. No racism there either. In 1994 you were given the prized gig as host of the Seven network’s racist current affairs program ‘Real Life’ for which you won the racist Logie Award for Most Popular Current Affairs Program (voted by the racist Australian viewing public).

Have you even noticed you’re living the racist Australian dream, Stan?

In 2007, alongside Mary Kostakidis you became co-presenter of the one-hour 6.30pm SBS World News Australia bulletin funded by racist Australian taxpayers. Your former wife, Karla Grant – another successful part aboriginal – is also employed on the SBS program ‘Living Black’. In September 2007 you were announced presenter and producer of ABC Local radio’s Indigenous program, ’Speaking Out’, funded again by racist Australians. In 2008 you joined the racist World Bank as Senior Communications Officer based in Sydney. In 2009 you were appointed UAE correspondent for CNN based in CNN’s new Abu Dhabi news gathering production centre. This racism thing isn’t exactly disrupting your lifestyle so far, is it, Stan?

In 2013 you returned to racist Australia and hosted the nightly late night racist news program, Newsnight for Sky News Australia. From 2014 you started hosting racist Sky News Australia’s ‘Reporting Live with Stan Grant’ at 6pm. In April you hosted ‘Crimes that Shook Australia’ a six-part drama series on the racist FOXTEL. In 2016 you’ll be hosting a nightly news bulletin ‘The Point with Stan Grant’ on the NITV (National Indigenous Television). Guess which racists are funding that racist indulgence? Yep, the racist Australian taxpayer – again.

Could that be the real reason you’ve suddenly found currency with racism?

A month ago, the day before Australia Day, columnist Rita Panahi, an immigrant from Iran wrote a piece titled:

"Most Australians reject the black armband view of history."

Panahi referenced a poll that showed 90 per cent say they are proud to be Australian and almost 80 per cent agree the country has a history we can be proud of. She says that ‘Racist Australia’ was a construct by the ‘self-loathing social justice warriors who populate the media and twitterverse – and wasn’t a concern for the ’silent majority’. Panahi goes on to say, “Sitting in Sydney’s City Recital Hall last October it occurred to me that I was among people suffering from an advanced case of “country dysmorphia disorder”. The crowd that had come to see The Ethics Centre debate on whether “racism is destroying the Australian dream” was predictably populated by those heavily invested in the false notion that we live in a deeply racist and discordant country.’

Not for Stan Grant.  He’s living the dream, while pointing the finger at the rest of us.

The only hiccup to the dream was self-inflicted when the moralist had an extra marital office affair with fellow reporter Tracey Holmes, was subsequently sacked from Channel 7 which necessitated leaving the country to find work after the scandal hit the tabloids. Not so much racism, as sexism.

2000

Recently, Stan Grant spoke at the racist Press Club to launch a book, transforming Stan from media pariah to media darling. During the launch, Grant shut down Alan Jones who spoke out on the sexual and other abuse of aboriginal children by their own communities – abuse which is endemic in the Aboriginal and Torres Island community. Children from Indigenous communities are 7 times more likely than non-Indigenous children to be the subject of substantiated reports of harm or risk of harm.

Abused not by us – but by their own people.

Jones suggested we ’need another stolen generation’. Crudely put, but the sentiment was in the interest of the children. Social media fired up the same (yawn) predictable fury, from the same repeat offenders who argue for a borderless country that results in kids drowning at sea, or scalded with boiling water as a means of entry to Australia. Stan Grant’s slap down of Jones referred to his own great aunt Eunice Grant, who was taken from her home and given the number 658. “Taken from her family” he said, “losing her name, leaving my aunty to still unpack the grief of that today. You do not steal children. This word ‘stolen’, ‘stealing’ – we need another stolen generation?” Grant said removing children hollowed out communities and affected people for their entire lives.

What hollows out indigenous communities is damaged kids, sexually abused by alcoholic family members who should be caring for them, a pattern repeated generation after generation, while Grant points and looks the other way. The politically correct blame game peddled by Stan Grant and his enabling cheer squad is contributing to the destruction of innocent kids. On a final note, Stan Grant, you may not have noticed – take a look around you next time you walk the streets of Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane, the Gold Coast or any number of our regional towns and cities. What do you see?

Chinese, Somalians, Thais, Iraqis, Italians, Yugoslavs, Cook Islanders, Pakistanis, Samoans, Syrians, Greeks, Maltese, Czechoslovakians, Germans, Sri Lankans, Egyptians, Afghans, Dutch, Irish, Japanese, Poms, Malaysians, Indonesians, Russians, Hungarians, Iranians, Maoris, Syrians, Indians, Yugoslavs, Scots, French…..

Many of these people come from backgrounds of conflict.

They migrated to Australia for a better life or to escape persecution, war or conflict. My father certainly did. His Northern Italian village home was searched by the Nazis who storm-trooped through his house where his mother hid my 14 year old dad under the floor boards. Some of his ‘amici’ were not so lucky. Homes were torched, families destroyed forever. My father never complained. He got on a boat after the war and came to Australia as a young single man. He arrived on his own, in a foreign land, knowing nobody, unable to speak the language.He was sent to the North Queensland cane fields as a labourer to work in the blazing sun while he educated himself at night learning engineering. He eventually made his way to Sydney where he met my mum, also an Italian migrant. He got a job welding with the fledgling engineering company Transfield. We didn’t see much of our dad. He left for work before we woke up, returning home after 8pm, before we went to bed.

He raised six boys, sent them all to good schools, the fees paid from the sweat of his brow.

There was no whinging, no whining, no handouts, quite the opposite. He was happy, proud and contributed to his community, his church, raising money to build a retirement home. This country is filled with Giovanni Zanettis, who suffered in silence, quietly contributing to the fabric of the nation without pointing the finger at others.

By contrast, Stan Grant you are a privileged mostly white grandstanding, posturing, squeaky wheel, capitalising on the misfortunes of the poorest most needy in your community, to leverage your own career.

I, my father, and millions of other Australians refuse to be and cannot be responsible for what may have happened 100 or more years ago by people we don’t know to people we don’t know. Australians in the millions have had enough of you and your cheer squad enablers. The faux-guilt trip may have washed 60 years ago with a majority Pommy Australia, but that one trick pony has long bolted outta town.

And can I ask what’s with the reverse Michael Jackson skin transformation, Stan? Do the recent appointments at the tanning salon make your accusations against light skinned Australians more legitimate?”