Thank You To Some, F*ck You To Others

What I did today:  crawled out of bed at 5.25am, dragged on some clothes, made some coffee and walked over (still drinking the coffee) to the local cenotaph, accompanied by my sixteen-year-old son, where we attended the Anzac Day Dawn Service.  It was sad.  It was humbling.  This year, as I have noticed in prior years, there has been a diverse cross-section of the community attending from oldies to youngsters, and especially twenty-somethings whom one would not imagine attending of their own volition.  This is gratifying, and gives me hope for the future.

What else I did today: travelled with my husband and thirteen-year-old to a nearby town where my husband proudly pinned the service medals earned by his late grandfather (a WW2 vet) to the right side of his jacket before marching in the parade as a representation of his grandfather.  Beside him was a younger cousin, wearing his own father's medals for service in Malaysia (my husband's uncle is no longer with us).  Yeah, I teared up a little as they marched by.

Something else I did today: received the news of the passing of a much loved uncle - my mother's older brother.  On the basis that his children haven't been very active about it on social media, I will save my lamentation and eulogising for a future post, suffice to say: be at peace, Uncle.

What I did NOT do today: post nasty, snide, deliberate pot-stirring comments on my social media mocking the Anzacs and current servicemen and -women.  I'm referring to tweets like this one:

This particular tweet isn't necessarily 'nasty', but it is designed to provoke, and I daresay Ms Deveny knows this. They are 'serving'.  And their job does have the potential to be more dangerous than many other jobs. I know police officers and paramedics face potential dangers, too.  But this flippancy was designed to get a reaction, and makes me wondering if Ms Deveny is suffering RDS (Relevance Deprivation Syndrome).  However, a subsequent tweet in which she declared Anzac Day to be 'Halloween for bogans' is clearly designed to get a reaction, and it is clearly designed to be downright offensive.  The tweeter has blocked a friend who replied to her (my friend's reply being polite, well-written, and articulate), but she does not block the abusers whose ire she is trying to invoke. She obviously wants the negative attention so she can go on a 'poor me, everyone abuses me because I'm a woman or because they're bogans' type of diatribe.  

 

This is a cliché, but if without the actions of the Anzacs, people like Ms Deveny might not have the freedom to spout their stupidity with impunity.  I actually support her right to tweet her crap, but I do think she's a total arse-clown with no class to speak of.  Cast your minds back, folks, and you might recall she was live-tweeting from a red carpet event where she said she hoped Bindi Irwin, aged eleven at the salient time, would 'get laid'.  Yeah.  Class act, right? That tweet made my flesh crawl back then, and it still has the power to nauseate today.  

I shouldn't buy into what is obvious baiting on the part of someone desperate for attention, but I just want to say: Fuck you, lady.  Or whatever female lifeform you're meant to represent.  Would you have to courage to sit down and say this putrescent rubbish to people who have, or who are currently serving?  Or else to the families left behind?   You set about to generate controversy. Congratulations, I'm sure you achieved it.  But that you have to act in such an odious manner to get attention says more about  you than it does servicemen and -women, or the 'bogans' whom  you decry for acknowledging 25 April. 

I have a great-uncle lying at the Somme (coincidentally the namesake of my uncle who died last night), and another great-uncle and great-aunt who served.  My husband's grandfather and uncle served.  To those people, I say: Thank you. To all those past and present service, I say: Thank you.  To anybody who wants to be viciously disrespectful, I say: Fuck you.