Ali vs Anning

I’m not a violent person. I gave that crap up years ago. There isn’t much good that has ever been achieved by one person punching another. Just ask Andrew Gaff or Andrew Brayshaw. A season ending suspension and injury respectively. Even Ben Stokes, after somehow managing to be acquitted for clearly kicking the living shit through two blokes last year had to miss The Ashes tour and England lost.

If any one person can be singled out for making a difference by knocking people out, he didn’t let his fists do the talking, he had a mouth that was well exercised in that art. Probably the most quoted pugilist in history, it was being good at his chosen sport that gave Muhammad Ali a platform to be heard. Even people who don’t follow sport will probably be able to recognise his quote regarding his affinity with the insect world. My personal favourite is slightly more obscure.

After being arrested for refusing to swear himself into the United States Armed Services under his slave name and was asked why he would rather go to jail than Viet Nam, his reply was pure political gold. ‘I ain’t got no problem with the Viet Cong. No Cong ever called me nigger’. I’m curious as to how the great man would have reacted to Senator Fraser Anning’s first speech in The Australian Senate on the fourteenth of August twenty-eighteen when his religion was attacked and vilified for no better reason than to garner votes from the racist lunatic fringe in Queensland.

Anning knows that he only got to where he is because his predecessor couldn’t be bothered investing any time or effort into renouncing his British citizenship and hopes there are more racists than climate change deniers at the next election, so Malcolm Roberts won’t get his seat back. This is bad for two reasons. First, we’ll have this bullshit racist vitriol for at least another term, if not two. Second, it’s moments like this you miss the little Hobbit. At least his idiocy was hilarious. Anyone who saw the footage of Brian Cox throwing the ‘Empirical Evidence’ that Roberts so desperately desires across the Q&A studio was priceless and forever etched into their memory.

While Roberts is also a racist, it was never his focus during his brief but entertaining stint in The Senate. He was much more focused on making a fool of himself rather than pursuing his bigoted social point of view. Anning is however, in a class of his own. When you see conservative members of The Government covering their eyes and massaging their temples in consternation and confusion when the vibrations of Anning’s voice reached the inner ear and were translated into signals theirs brains could recognise you know he’s stepped in pile which is going to be hard to get out of.

But when Pauline Hanson speaks out against your racist nonsensical and insulting speech, you have to know you’re in trouble. The Queen of Racism (Australia) herself came out this morning and told us that she has never believed that you had to be white to be Australian. If One Nation is scrambling for the middle ground over this one, we are certainly living in interesting times. Personally, I love this shit, being a lifelong Student of Conflict, this is cream for me.

It was funny when Turnbull forgot where he lived during his admonishment speech and thought he was from Melbourne, but it was nowhere near as hilarious as anything Roberts ever said in The Senate. Setting narrative tangents and reminiscences aside, this is a serious topic that needs serious high-level discussions between The Commonwealth of Australia and The Nation of Islam.

Ali was, along with Malcolm X, the most influential African-American Muslim of his generation. So, if we had some sort of space/time screw up and The Champ was alive and in his prime how would he have reacted to Anning’s comments prior to an upcoming promotional tour of OZ? I’m almost considering going and getting myself Christened just so I can believe in Satan and harness The Dark Powers to see if we can perform some sort of twisted ceremony to bring The Greatest back for chat with Senator Anning.

There is no way I would attempt to represent what Ali would say to Anning, but it would be brilliant. I’m more curious to know if Fraser would have a problem with a Muslim who is clearly a deadly weapon in his own right getting a visa to enter The Land of Sweeping Plains. That is a dialogue I would pay money to witness but I’ve got none. I’d be forced to rob Anning’s house to afford the entrance fee, he does live in Queensland somewhere... Still need to reach level eight necromancer before even considering the reincarnation. Strong spirits take a much greater mastery of The Evil Arts to raise. Especially when you have to raise them in their physical form from sixty-odd years ago.

Which is why some things are best left to the experts.

A raft of politicians from all political persuasions that spoke out in condemnation at doorstops and in the corridors of Parliament before the real fun started. Senator Wong was pretty good – best bit was when she pointed out the contradictions in the rhetoric that Senators like Anning hold, e.g. ‘Migrants are uneducated. But they are taking all of the university places from Australians’. Fuckin’ Gold. Even Matthias remembered he had a Kenyan on his back bench. What I found most interesting however was Senator Anning started the sitting session in the chamber but left when he realised both the Libs and Labor were out for blood. Bernardi hadn’t bothered to turn up and Pauline only decided to show her face after Hinch referred to Anning’s speech as ‘Pauline Hanson on steroids’.

Di Natale provided the standard Greens spiel but the best section (and it was a section because the bloody ABC cut the broadcast) was coming from Doug Cameron. Usually I put him in the degenerate Union branch of The Labor Party, but I was surprised at his eloquence and conviction when calling out The Government Senators for what could be perceived as racist behaviour from The Coalition. Cameron has allegedly been told to ‘speak Australian’ while debating in The Senate.

I decided to take a break from the news cycle for an hour or two while I attempted to catch up on some sleep, having only managed three hours last night. Curled up on the couch I heard my housemate rouse himself at some point but what got me to push The Sandman away was the distinctive voice of Bob Katter. I’ve always had a bit of time for Katter, even though he is a lunatic. He’s nearly as funny as Roberts but this afternoon, conveniently in Cairns as if he no idea what his boy was going to be saying in his maiden speech on the first sitting week after the long winter break. The absolute bullshit rhetoric he spouted in support of Anning was something that Monty Python couldn’t script. I haven’t bothered to ask Bryan Dawe if he and John Clarke would have been able to predict it, but I do know they would have given the issue the beating it deserves if we were still blessed to have the duo shining light on the inadequacies of our elected representatives.

 Having mentioned political gold on more than one occasion in this article, Katter gave me the first nugget to take personal offence to. In the process of backing up his Senator, Old Bob made some brilliant and non-sensical fuck ups in his attempts to justify the words of his soldier. Aside from his semi-regular claims to be a ‘blackfella’ but couldn’t be bothered to do any research to confirm or disprove the claim, my personal favourite was something along the lines of ‘We’re an Australian Party, I’m Australian and if that makes me a racist, well…’. That was it, couldn’t finish the sentence and I felt the collective groan from around the country.

I’m Australian. I was born here from immigrant stock. There is no evidence of First Nations blood in my veins but it’s not like I can be sent back to Denmark, France, Scotland or any of the others that make up my mongrel DNA because generations ago we rocked up as predominately free settlers. The only country I could potentially be turfed off to is across the ditch because my mother was unfortunate enough to be born there but I was birthed in Cairns. My father was birthed in Mt. Isa which is just down the road from Cloncurry where Bob reckons he’s part of ‘The Curry Mob’. He made some spurious claims that it didn’t matter if you weren’t indigenous you could still be ‘a blackfella’ which I am forced to call bullshit on.

I’m from Northern Australia. I am Australian. I’m Salt Water People. I’m not a fucking racist and no Muslim has ever suggested I am.

If Anning forces me to delve into The Dark Arts, the words that will be ringing in his ears as he sent dispatched to the hell that he believes exists will be –

I AM THE GREATEST!