by SU DHARMAPALA
Tony Abbott could learn something from my funny little four-year old. You see, four year old children are disarmingly honest and forthright.
My son only really started speaking properly recently. It was like he held everything in for a long time and he is now letting it all out. So while I am terribly proud of this suddenly articulate little man who uses words like “terribly spectacular”, I am also desperately trying to teach him tact.
Case in point: last week at Woolworths we were at the checkout when a lady who was morbidly obese queued behind us.
Now, we had been reading a great deal about the body and good nutrition lately so it didn’t surprise me much when my son mumbled something about fat cells. Having a background in biochemistry, I had explained to him that excess sugar gets stored as fat. But I wanted the earth to open up and swallow me whole when he pointed to the fizzy drinks in her cart and said in a loud voice, “My mummy says fizzy drinks gives you fat cells and you are already have loads of fat cells. Why do you want to collect more?”
I was genuinely trapped. I could not back out and leave – I had unloaded half my cart already – so I took refuge in apologising profusely and admonishing my child for rudeness. I was mortified. At which point my son took umbrage and called me on it.
“But you tell me to always tell the truth! And I was telling the truth. This lady has loads of fat cells. Why does she want more?”
Top Comments
This really was a terrible article, that pretty much was wide of the mark from start to finish.
Alarm bells always go off for me when I see an author trying to use overly simplistic arguments to mount a case.
A Freedom of Speech debate is never enhanced by unrelated tales of what children say at inappropriate times and those idiots throwing apple cores at you are breaking the law of assault and are a Red Herring to this debate.
If a Government rewards members of particular Identity Groups, then questioning how one gets into these particular Identity Groups is clearly a legitimate topic of conversation.
Section 18c of the RDA is an abomination to a free society and it really says something about its defenders.
So, if they'd just stuck to the racial epithets, you'd be fine with then?
My comment isn't here? :-( Is it considered spam (am confident it wasn't deleted for inappropriateness) even without a link to another page?