Give us a break

I admit that when I first heard that Steven Irwin had died, I was rather sad. He was basically a good man with good intentions and it is always sad when good people die. To be honest though, I thought they guy was generally annoying; portrayed the worst kind of Australian stereotype to the rest of the world; and was as thick as two short planks. While his death certainly brings me no joy, I'm not reaching for the kleenex.

Seriously though, what did people expect was going to happen to him? The guy spent most of his days teasing deadly animals, so surely one of them was eventually going to get him. Ok so when it came it wasn't how you would have imagined; mauled by a croc or bitten by a king brown snake would have been a greater possibility. Being killed by a sting ray is a rather unlikely event but when you keep putting yourself in harms way, no matter how good you might be at avoiding it, eventually you're going to get hurt; it's simple laws of probability.

The following is a quote from US talk show host Jay Leno, whose show Irwin had appeared on 11 times.

"I think for many Americans he's become the face of Australia and he was a great ambassador. He represented all that was good about the country."

That's the whole reason so many Australians were indifferent to him, because we didn't want him to be the face of our country. He does not in any way represent all that is good about Australia. There are endless reasons why Australia is great, and nearly all of them do not look, smell, sound, taste or feel like Steve Irwin did. What he did do was absolutely personify the ridiculous stereotype that Americans have about Australians. Even the Australian media have jumped on the band wagon now and are saying he was all that was to be Australian. Rubbish! I've lived in Australia for most of my life and I've never met an Australian like him before.

The media have latched onto all this drama and it's starting to make me sick. The guy was a simpleton, and an annoying one at that. The media are making him out to be Gandhi, give us a break! This is no national tragedy; it is not like JFK and it is not like Princess Di. Germaine Greer has had the balls to say what she thinks. She makes a fair point, and has been duly slated by the media. "How dare you say that about our Steve, he was a legend, a hero, how could you be so un-Austrlalian?"

Bollocks

Any shred of sorrow I had for the guy has been washed away by the endless flood of bullshit excreted by the media. He lived his life like it was a big circus and now that's exactly what his death is too.

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