Aussie beach culture. Sun, surf. Blokes, beer, burn-outs at Bondi, rape and murder… The Boys. Leigh Leigh. The Bra Boys.

But, hey, it’s much easier to talk about racism and blame John Howard than explore what boys-will-be-boys really means.

Everyone’s
talking about race and what the police, councils and the community can
do. It’s much easier than thinking about why young men hang out in
gangs, drink too much and turn on easy victims.

Beach culture is
misogynistic, violent, and pumped up on the p*ss. Bronwyn Winter,
senior lecturer in the school of languages and cultures at Sydney
University, seems to be about the only person who’s saying this.
Violence in Sydney and Paris exposes the ugly machismo that drives
society, she says in the SMH today:

A month ago Paris was burning, as riots broke out following
the accidental death of two Arab youths. They were fleeing police at
the time. Now it’s Sydney’s turn, as a demonstration over the mugging
of two lifesavers in Cronulla by Middle Eastern youths spawns violence
in beach suburbs.

Different place, different scenario, different
magnitude of events, but both have been dubbed “race riots,” with the
focus on Muslim youths. In Sydney, however, the white boys are behaving
badly, too.

Cronulla has been notorious for the bad behaviour of
its male residents for at least three decades, as Kathy Lette and
Gabrielle Carey, calling themselves the “Salami Sisters,” wrote in Puberty Blues, a book of their experience of the macho beach culture of Sydney’s south in the 1970s.

Funny. Puberty Blues. That’s just what I was thinking, too. A repulsive book. As repulsive as the behaviour in Cronulla and Brighton-le-Sands.

But what do we see? The Age
seems to really have plumbed the depths today. Cartoonist Ron Tandberg
trots out his usual old left agit prop. Thank God Leunig is absent
today. And then there’s Ewin Hannan and Richard Baker’s effort, “Nationalists boast of their role on the beach.” Brilliant publicity for the lunar right:

White nationalist groups involved in the Cronulla riots
have predicted further racial violence, naming the Melbourne suburbs of
Heidelberg, Preston, Reservoir and Springvale as potential “hot spots.”

The
Patriotic Youth League, whose members handed out “Aussies Fighting
Back” pamphlets at Cronulla, said it had been inundated with callers
wanting to riot in Melbourne…

A whole pack of fruit loops get a run. Lucky them. Brilliant mainstream media exposure without having to do a Jack van Tongeren. Could our self-flagellating, limp left media make it any easier for nutty racist cowards?