Unspun

One never knows if such developments are positive or negative where the machoness of Ozzie males are concerned. This story caught the eye of reader Reuben and I think its worth sharing with the rest of you. The OZ’s choice of words have naver failed to amuse me in a sometimes engaging way.

CANBERRA, Australia (AP) – Movie hero Crocodile Dundee and real-life “Crocodile Hunter” Steve Irwin epitomized Australia’s image as a land full of rugged “blokes” who thumb their nose at authority and can only pity latte-drinking, suit-wearing office drones. But that image is coming under attack, says former prime ministerial aspirant Mark Latham, who declares in a book to be published Tuesday that Australia’s male culture is in crisis.

“One of the saddest things I have seen in my lifetime has been the decline in Australian male culture,” the former Labor leader wrote.

“Australian mates and good blokes have been replaced by nervous wrecks, metrosexual knobs and tossbags,” he added. Metrosexuals are urban men — gay or straight — who spend a great amount of time and money on their appearance.

Latham, who quit politics after leading Labor to defeat at Australia’s last general elections in 2004, blamed changes in the Australian workplace and family unit, a rise in left-wing feminism and neo-conservatism for “a crisis in male identity” and “debilitating” Australia’s language.

“Instead of calling a spade a spade, our national conversation is now dominated by weasel words and the pretense of politeness,” Latham wrote in his book, “A Conga Line of Suckholes” — a phrase he used to deride Prime Minister John Howard’s government in its support of the U.S. invasion of Iraq.

“Few people have anything meaningful to say for fear of offending the conservative status quo,” he said in excerpts published in newspapers Monday.

He laments the Australian language’s loss of the “larrikin” — a word used to describe a fun-loving trouble maker who bucks authority and conventions, which is a cherished aspect of the Australian character.

A Latrobe University expert on gender issues and masculinity, Michael Flood, agreed that the larrikin was playing a lesser role in Australian life — for both good and bad reasons.

“There is a larrikin masculinity in Australia that has been celebrated, but it’s also been questioned and certainly feminists and others have drawn attention to some of the more anti-social and sexist aspects of that way of being a man,” Flood said.

Flood attributed part of the decline of the larrikin to Australia’s increasing focus on material success.

“We have an increasingly work-focused, materialism-focused culture where everyone is under pressure to strive to succeed … and that means the laid-back way of life and of mucking about is less possible,” Flood said.

Latham, who some political opponents say is the most verbally abusive lawmaker to ever speak in Parliament, partly blamed the decline in male culture on Howard, an owlish social conservative who commentators say has turned his own blandness into a political strength.

“It’s the revenge of the nerds, John Howard-style,” Latham wrote, referring to the 1984 Hollywood comedy in which a gang of unpopular and ungainly college students turn the tables on their oppressors.

Howard, who will run for a fifth three-year term as the nation’s leader at elections next year, declined Monday to comment on the book.

Latham notoriously broke a Sydney taxi driver’s arm in a beer-fueled fare dispute in 2001, and once described U.S. President George W. Bush as “the most incompetent and dangerous president in living memory.”