I was never a fan of Steve Irwin. He seemed to be more a caricature rather than a real person. Not really flesh and blood but an invention of the media that verged on self-parody at times (and ripe for parody). But he was a real person and as mortal as everyone else, killed by a stingray whilst filming in North Queensland.
For someone who willingly tackled dangerous animals such as crocodiles, his death is absurdly unlucky given how rare it is to die from being attacked by a stingray. That is the thing about celebrities. For some reason we assume them immune from the slings and arrows of the mundane.
But Irwin was a real person. His mad-cap TV adventures and over the top personality tended to over shadow a lot of good work he did for wildlife conservation. And as a real person, there is the heartbreak that his wife Terri and his two children, Bindi and Robert, must now deal with. He was only 44.
I was never a fan but there is real sense that Australia has lost one of the good ones, never be replaced.
Update: Polemica and Club Troppo also have tributes to Irwin. As does Catallaxy and Suburban Gothic.
Irwin must have been doing something to really, really extreme to piss off that stingray. In my extensive and considerable experience with stingrays, they are retiring, rather shy animals who would not lash out unless they were severly provoked. My guess is that Irwin was trying to do his usual hairy chested routine with an animal he probably knew not much about, and probably, in his ever more desperate attempts to make good television (look at the Croc Hunter dealing with this dangerous lethal animal) got basically what he deserved… Except that no-one deserves that in the bigger scheme of things – he just shouldn’t have gone around provoking lethal animals just to try and get a few action pictures that showed everyone how gutsy he was. All Irwin has done is confirm what an idiot with animals he really was… right to the end…
Anyway…
I was staggered at work today by the way the story just spread like wildfire. Whispers started, and next thing I knew, people were complaining that The Age, The ABC, ninemsn and various News Ltd sites were down because of the demand. I heard at least 4 people compare it to Princess Di….
trackback
Naomi, I was never a fan of Steve Irwin, but I do regret his passing. However, you say:
Don’t be surprised, if it continues apace. His wife has a brilliant business brain.
I wrote some thoughts in my blog this afternoon.
We had my sons pet die as well.
Hell of a day to be an 8 year old boy.
have to agree that Steve may have done something wild and wacky to piss off a stringray but what a way to go – Jimmy Dean and the car wreck is about as good, even choking on your own vomit or shitting yourself to death like elvis pale into burlesque compared to a barb in the heart.
Ah, here’s the anstey who wished death upon Evil Pundit.
I’m not in the mood to see battles from other blogs restarted in the comments. Any such comments will be moderated. This is the only warning.
Sorry, Shaun.
I am informed (or perhaps it is just legend/rumour) that Steve Irwin did not have a manufactured screen persona.
That is, in his private life Steve Irwin was EXACTLY the same persona as he was on the screen. Not a touch of showbiz fakery about him. The seemingly manufactuered ocker intensity seen on screen was how he actually spoke & acted at barbeques, when shopping, at business meetings, and on TV.
What a man!
Good to see you’ve changed your tune after your “Good Riddance” post on my blog Steve.
And yes, there was nothing invented about Steve Irwin. He was like that all the time.
I wasn’t really a fan of his style but I’ll miss him too.
Steve Irwin was a far better ambassador for Australia than any of a whole gaggle of DFAT employees.
Steve Irwin and gardener Peter Cundall were both terrific role models for young Australian blokes in showing that you could be very very passionate indeed about something in which you were interested and not look like a sissy in the least …. and not a handgun or a supercharged car with deflated tyres in sight. They both showed that rough-and-tough blokes can be fired up with enthusiasm …. and that’s good.
Steve Irwin will be very hard to forget … thank goodness.
Did Peter Cundall die?
Choke … gag … cough … gasp!
Sublime Cowgirl, Wikipedia has Peter Cundall very much alive, and Google News doesn’t have anything. I think that particular old Mancunian bastard’s still alive, kicking, and espousing the wonders of good compost.
ON Steve Irwin, I have to agree with Cronin. I wasn’t a fan of his work, for several reasons, amongst them that he perpetuated the stereotype of Australians as unsophisticated bush larrikins around the world again. But I he got a lot of kids to see how amazing wildlife could be, kids who probably would have completely ignored a sober David Attenborough-narrated documentary, and spent a lot of money that he made along the way preserving it.
So, vale Steve Irwin.
Yeah i searched too..it was just that Graham referred to them both in past tense…i was just wondering. Graham do you know something that we should?
Robert Merkel. Steve Irwin was an unsophisticated larrikin. I am happy with that stereotype being applied to Ozzies, despite so few fitting it, & so few being fit for it.
Yobbo: My tune is not changed. However apologies for any implication that it is “good riddance”.
A horrid fate is wished by me upon many.
But NEVER upon one who has made it financially by creating something from nothing, whose customers (& repeat customers) come to him of their own free will, everybody leaves happy & nobody loses. (unlike, say, someone in a non-productive, adversarial sector such as law)
Amazingly to some, he sounds just like quite a chunck of Australian males, right down to the speech pattern.
Sorry, sorry. Apologies all round. I failed to correct my own sloppy grammar before hitting the “submit” button.
No. Peter Cundall is, so far as I know, still in good health ….. and may he long enjoy good health.
Mea culpa!
I heard it on the radio this afternoon from Richard Fidler. I was stunned and still don’t know what to say.
I’ve just watched Denton and I agree with Steve. There was no fakery. He had the courage to be who and what he was. He came across as a person who had considerable self awareness. And he knew that he appealed to a broader demographic than Attenborough.
Richard Fidler as it happened by coincidence had a guest who had come on to talk about dealing with unexpected tragedies. After 3pm they threw the whole Drive program over to Steve Irwin and had a guest who explained how to handle such news with small children who have seen and loved him.
A complete tragedy for his father, his wife and his children.
Sloppy grammar, eh Graham ? Well given i take the cake for the worst spelling and grammar on this board i think i could find it in me to forgive you.
(btw, i even spelt grammar with an ‘e’ on here last week!)
Brian i was listening to the same show – thats how i heard myself. Jinx.
Wouldn’t it be a nice guesture if Steve Irwin – who did so much for both tourism and the environment – was given a state funeral …..
Whats the criteria for a state funeral – official service to state only?
No one really knows, tanja. I remember that from Kerry Packer’s state funeral. I think that there are some people who are entitled to them (all it formally means is that the state pays – so they don’t have to be full on) – ie former Ministers and Speakers of Parliament, etc, but I think for non pollies it’s up to the Government to determine based on discretion.
Thanks Mark – i did think they seemed a bit arbitrary in allocation. Well why not , i say.
We have already planted a Black Bean tree in He and Fluffies honour .
(Had to get the shovel out for gravedigging tonite anyway). Peter Cundall would be so proud.
Interestingly, Id never heard of the bloke until 2000, when my (then, & briefly) American girlfriend starting telling me all about him. Huge in the states, she said.
I gather he was the only Australian many Yanks would know.
I kinda liked his style, to be honest – you could tell it was authentic.
He had a big fanbase in the States. The story of his passing was all over the American media – and not just the MSM:
http://suicidegirls.com/news/celeb/18011/
And check out Technorati:
http://www.technorati.com/search/irwin
A terrible tragedy. The bloke never hurt a fly. Well OK he did piss off a lot of crocs though.
And yet he got taken out by a stingray!!! I grew up in the tropics, spent an awful lot of time on, in and underneath the water and I have never ever seen or heard from others about a stingray actually living up to its name. They’re just shy and sluggish flaps of protein browsing aroud the sea floor for scraps.
Maybe Steve tried to put his tail in its mouth or vice versa.
OK, smartarse comments aside, I’m damn sorry he’s dead. I was never a fan of his show but I’m always a big fan of the concept of whacky wildlife enthusianists who have the energy and nous to turn their obession into a thriving business that also makes another generation of smart kids think it cool to get into biostewardship.
There’s a line running from Jacques Costeau, Willard Price, David Attenborough et al through to the Discovery Channel and beyond. Steve Irwin was a whacka but also a worthy part of that heritage that makes us care for the planet’s heritage.
Not to mention this kinda thing just encourages more cute chicks to take up marine biology as a major and so end up on research trips to tropical islands, squeezed and powdered into tight tight wetsuits.
Hey I had to cut the treacle somehow.
Anyway vale Steve Irwin. He was a happy man who made lotsa other people feel happy too. Often on purpose.
Okay, this just confirms how un-Australian I am – I don’t care. Yes, it is sad when anyone is cut down before their prime etc. etc. but I just don’t see why this is getting the press coverage it is. Would we be saying he made such contributions to environmentalism if he wasn’t such a huge hit in the US and UK?
Though I must admit that the fact he bought up land to be made into National Parks, which I heard on ABC Radio, if true, is a nice thing.
Unexpected deaths (young, healthy and famous) always shock – perhaps because we think a bit more about it and how it affects their family – unless your callous and able to not think that much. What I don’t get are the “he must have bought it on himself by fiddling with the ray” lines – I just don’t see what the hell difference that makes, or why people feel the need to speculate given they have no idea what happened.
The reason there are so many of these comments is that stingrays are really placid animals that spend most of their time on the bottom. There are places in the world where stingrays will swim up to people and take food from their hand. They simply will not stick a barb into someone without being good reason to do so. Given Irwin’s track record – well documented on film – of messing with dangerous animals – provoking them into unnatural behaviours for a bit of spectacular TV, there is a natural feeling on the part of many that Irwin probably got himself into a situation that was entirely avoidable. Given further that he was making a doco about dangerous marine animals, he was probably making the stingray out to be some type of dangerous animal, and, thus, himself to be a hairy chested man of action capable of handling these dangerous beasts. The mere fact that he went out of his way to show the unnatural side of the animals he worked with illustrates the extent to which he was a show pony rather than a serious biologist, ecologist, conservationist, whatever. The real tragedy is that Irwin has gotten himself killed entirely unneccessarily for a bit of action packed TV that doesn’t even show what the animal is truly like…
Cheers…
But you don’t actually know for sure do you, Mick? Speculation upon assumption upon assertion. My rule is generally if all you know about a situation is what you’ve seen in the media you simply do not know enough to have an opinion about it. Blogging and blog commenting would completely grind to a halt of course if everyone adopted that approach. Confident pronouncements on everything by instant experts in everything make the blogosphere go round.
There is an autopsy, coroners report, footage, whatever. Nobody knows anything at this stage.
He put on a grand show and appeared to live his life just as he wanted to. Good for him.
Well, I reckon I know more than just what is in the media. I ain’t trying to put myself forward as an instant expert, either. I make this claim based on what I would say is extensive experience with stingrays gathered on the course of some thousands of excursions underwater and into their habitat. This, surely, should give me some capacity to comment over and above people who have never seen a stingray, let alone interacted with it in the wild. If it doesn’t give me that capacity, what will?
Cheers…
From what I can make out what Mick says is partly true but perhaps a bit OTT. Irwin’s style was to be right in there with the animals. In his Denton show he said he thought he had this insinctive thing that let him get up close without being hurt. Not that he underestimated the dangers, but he said his scariest moments came from humans when he was in the field. For a life-long snake wrangler who grew up with snakes all over the house, to be never once bitten is pretty impressive, I would have thought.
From what I can make out they were swimming in about 2 metres of water, with Irwin swimming above the stingray. So they would have been close. They were swimming towards the camera, so the stingray’s path was blocked, it felt threarened, propped and lashed out. This is what I heard from Ben Cropp, who has had a near miss himself with a stingray, and the cameraman.
That amounts to an error of judgement in how the shoot was set up, I suspect, but they have the film and we need to wait for the inquest.
This, surely, should give me some capacity to comment over and above people who have never seen a stingray, let alone interacted with it in the wild. If it doesn’t give me that capacity, what will?
Fair enough but it doesn’t give you any special expertise in what happened in this case, which occured less than 24 hours ago and has yet to be investigated. Anyway, you’re probably the wrong person to single out here but this constant pointless opinion busywork irks me. Being a curmudgeon about the blogosphere is going round, maybe its catching.
Going diving doesn’t make you Jacques Cousteau, Mick.
You have absolutely no basis on which to base your claim except for the fact that you don’t like Steve Irwin.
The police have a video showing that he didn’t provoke the ray, it was just spooked by the camera.
Never mind I’m sure you’ll be one of the first downloading the death porn on Emule when it comes out, so you’ll eventually discover just how much of a fuckwit you are being right now.
Ain’t claiming to be Jacques Cousteau. Just myself. And no, I didn’t think much of Steve as a wildlife presenter. But that’s by the by.
What I can’t understand is why are we suddenly turning this guy into a sort of secular saint, a kind of Ghandi of the wilds, a Nobel of the animal kingdom. Its getting to the point where we are all choosing to overlook the very basic fact that if you go swimming right close to the top of a seriously big stingray, accompanied by a cameraman who gets in front of the animal, you are quite likely to get seriously hurt or killed. We would think Irwin was an idiot if he stood in front of a moving vehicle, he was also an idiot, maybe an unlucky one, to get so close to a big ray and panic it. Truth is that he shouldn’t have been that close in the first place. End of story. And if he had been sensible, then he would still be alive, his wife and kids would have their husband and father, and we wouldn’t be reading this sycophantic hagiographic coverage….
Cheers…
PS. And a state funeral?
When someone dies it is customary to focus on their good points for at least a period rather than immediately start a list of their missteps. Maybe we do choose to “overlook basic facts” (as you see them) in order to observe this basic. This is a social custom you disapprove of? If not, what’s the big deal? What skin off your nose is it if people choose to say nice things about a bloke they liked who is now dead.
I have no investment here, never seen his show and only know of him from the quarantine ads and by virtue of the fact he was Very Famous overseas. I have no idea if he contributed to the event, and if so how. But I find the rush to self righteously demand an “honest” accounting of a person immediately after their death extremely disingenuous to say the least. As if this faux-honesty is some kind of moral virtue whereas grieving for a someone unconditionally is a vice.
Hey Amanda.
Agree wholeheartedly with your idea of not condemning, speaking ill of or idly speculating on anyone’s death. Famous or not.
Speaks more about who’s doing it.
I think that the point that Mick is making is that it’s fine to emphasise a person’s good points immediately following their death, but the reaction to Irwin’s tragic demise is completely OTT.
As he points out, the man is being sanctified, turned into that dreaded word, an icon.
Might it not be heretic to ask why?
Seems to me that in Australia we’re becoming increasingly intolerant of any dissent from the accepted groupthink, usually aggresively promoted by the meeja.
What skin is it off your nose if I choose to say something different? And I ain’t trying to run the guy down – just point out one or two fairly obvious home truths in the middle of the all this Steve worshipping.
But I find this rush to eulogise the guy as though he were some kind of Christ like figure extremely disingenuous to say the least. Especially as most of it is coming from people who have never met the guy, don’t know him personally, and now appear to be grieving as though they have lost their best friend. As if this faux type of grief is some sort of moral virtue, when a bit of realism and perspective is a vice. Let’s be frank. It ain’t like the world’s catholics have lost (yet another) the pontiff. OK. Irwin’s death came out of the blue as a shock to everyone. But again, given his form, it should have been on the cards. I’d stick in a link to this article by Simon Mann in the Herald, but not having mastered that technical function yet, I’ll just quote it. “When you fashion a lifestyle out of dicing with death, there should be little surprise that when your number actually comes up it is as swift as it is final, and you are middle-aged and at the peak of prosperity.” To which I would add that it should also come as little surprise when your own questionable actions contribute to this swift untimely death. And it shouldn’t wrong to be able to say so.
Cheers….
The meeja’s reaction to most events is OTT (except for those events they don’t give a stuff about). This is hardly front page news. It comes, it goes. They will be OTT about an entirely different event next week, possibly even tomorrow. The answer to “why” is that newspapers have to fill pages, TV channels air time etc and there is genuine global interest in the story to make its dimensions bigger than normal. It is no great conspiracy, just the blind and dumb logic of the industry. The meeja may be OTT and predictably so but the anti-meeja reaction is just as OTT and just as predictable. When Don Bradman died, for example, just replace a few key words in the foregoing and the conversation back and forth was exactly the same. Next celebrity death, exactly the same.
Questions about the institutional priorities of the meeja etc etc etc are all perfectly legitimate but I find it weird people get hung up on daily ebbs and flows like this. If you think there are more important things, then, uh, why get hung up on something so unimportant?
I love the idea.
this rush to eulogise the guy as though he were some kind of Christ like figure .
Examples?
I ain’t the only one who appears hung up on it. You’ve put in more than few posts yourself Amanda.
There seems to be this thing that
a) I shouldn’t have these thoughts
b) Even if this is what I think, then I shouldn’t be expressing these thoughts.
Thought this was a blog where this type of activity was supposed to be going on…
Cheers…
I ain’t the only one who appears hung up on it. You’ve put in more than few posts yourself Amanda.
Eh, slow day at work.
You can do and say anything you like. So can I. Great world, ain’t it?
No, Amanda, what the meeja chooses to be OTT about tells us a lot about our society and its values, and the lemming like way in which we are supposed to fall into line. No one is saying its a conspiracy but of course it’s not as value free as you try to pretend either.
To say that the meeja’s reaction to most events is OTT, except those they don’t care about completely misses the point, which is why they care about some events and not others.
And if you think that it’s not important, well perhaps I should ask you where you get your information from, or better still where 90% of the population gets their information from.
As one TV critic said recently, if most viewers get their news from Channel 9, god help our society.
Most people die of being themselves, in my experience. Steve Irwin just followed the trend.
Yes he can and yes you can and yes it is, sometimes. So I wouldn’t censor for the world — but, being likewise free to say anything I like, I would like to point out that trashing people after they’re dead and before they’ve even been buried is really, really, really bad form, chaps.
Cheers.
I should add that when the media becomes little more than a propaganda arm of the government, as is currently the case, you can kiss goodbye to whatever remnants of genuine democracy we have.
(That is, I’m with Amanda on this one.)
what the meeja chooses to be OTT about tells us a lot about our society and its values, and the lemming like way in which we are supposed to fall into line … To say that the meeja’s reaction to most events is OTT, except those they don’t care about completely misses the point, which is why they care about some events and not others.
I do not miss the point. In fact that’s the point I made. I agree with all the above, but sniping about Steve Irwin contributes not at all to our understanding this because next week it will be something else completely different. “We always did feel the same, we just saw it from a different point of view.” It might be a cheap and quick way to show how counter cultural and savvy we all are but is as superficial a response as the worst of what you’re criticising.
Why the media care about some events and not others is a secondary issue to why do human beings in general care more about some events and not others.
Anyway, we are getting way off track of the thread.
The reason this man’s death is and will continue to resonating with the masses for a while, is that insomauch as Diana the person gave way to Diana the concept and the object of a projection of the princess fantasy archetype, Steve Irwin the man is being overtaken by Steve Irwin the concept – a projection of the collective ‘everyman’, the working class yobbo made good.
This is somewhat similar to the narrative projected upon the miners in Beaconsfield; however i would argue that in his actual case, he, unlike Diana et al, actually was transparent enough for us to see that the overlap between what we thought and what we knew was great.
And while i have argued before that the stereotypical larrikin aussie bloke (an obsession that once was put forth as characterising much of our National Identity) is almost redundant in 2006, perhaps a small part of Steve’s actual death is a collective unconscious grief for the loss of that archetype?
Furthermore, you will note that working class white aussie males, are showing an unpreceedented respect and sadness over Steves passing. I find this really significant, because, by all reports, he wasn’t some misogynist bastard, but a fully testostorone driven hetro bloke who made treating your wife and children with adoration (not abuse) and caring passionaltely for conservation and the environment (the antithesis of bush bashing, croc shooting red-neck-ery) a decent and admirable thing for this demographic of men.
Look i’m sure he was a tosser about some things, (who isn’t) but his legacy is worth remembering and i think its ok for the nation to grieve a bit.
That’s an excellent point about the archetype, S. Cowgirl. And I think you’re right.
Pavlov with exquisite, feline manners…
Not sure if that phrase is original to you but how exquisite it is!
“Most people die of being themselves.”
No better way to go.
“PS. And a state funeral?”
It’s so rare to have a Queenslander of note pass onto a high-rise in the sky that the Qld govt is sure to have a state funeral with the slightest provocation. And, I have heard a rumour of a state election looming.
He was a great character, but he did make his name pissing off dangerous creatures.
As I’ve heard it, in this case he was making a doco trying to debunk the idea that stingrays are agressive and dangerous.
Superb irony and a genuinely fatal flaw – hubris – makes this a true Greek tragedy.
BTW – I wonder if South Park will do a followup to their “lovely animal, isn’t he? Now I’ll just shove me thumb up its arse” episode…
Who can’t admire hubris?
And how does anyone reading imagine their very own epitaph?
I saw someone posted at a blog “He was the Queen of Sharks, the people’s Crocodile Hunter”. Made me laugh, but I still can feel the tragedy of what happened, and that’s not from being media manipulated, nor is it qualified by whether or not he provoked the stingray. Nor does it make his death more or less tragic than someone killed in a car crash, but most of those are anonymous to me.
tanja/sublime cowgirl — very good points.
This man was an ambassador of good will, good humor and good spirit from your country to all the rest of us. If he was archetypal of something important or elemental in your national character, then for christ’s sakes start bottling the stuff, and whatever you do, don’t lose it.
In my experience, Australians are loved automatically, on sight, just for being Australians, wherever they go in America. Nobody else, to my knowledge, gets that kind of a free pass. So if Steve Irwin represented some part of that ocker ‘je ne sais quoi’, then I say build a great big solid-gold statue of him, put it up someplace nice, and keep the pigeons from shitting on it. God rest his soul.
and besides, De mortuis nihil nisi bonum, and what-not.
adrian: “…when the media becomes little more than a propaganda arm of the government, as is currently the case, you can kiss goodbye to whatever remnants of genuine democracy we have.”
Not at all, bud. Don’t lose heart. F’rinstance, aren’t you proud to be a part of the groundswell of revolutionary new media/blog forms that are challenging the corrupt hierarchy of the media establishment, and so on and so forth? Who the hell do you think Tom Paine wrote for — the London Times?
This is a very interesting era to be concerned with media issues of communication and representation.
“They cannot represent themselves; they must be represented.”
Bah humbug. Get stuffed, Charlie. We can and are representing ourselves, in increasing orders of magnitude and sophistamacation.
I think that’s the whole point, isn’t it? No media conspiracy, no Christ-like comparisons, just a huge number of people expressing shock and sadness, because – unlike the many others who are killed daily – a huge number of people had heard of him. I really don’t see what’s so bad about them saying they think it’s sad.
I agree with Ms Amanda and Miss Manners (who should get herself a column), and I think that perhaps some people are seeing only what they want to see. Read Shaun’s post again, guys. The actual words, not the strawman words you just expect to see every time a celebrity dies.
Quoted for no other reason than that I thought everyone should read it again
un autre Kim:
“And how does anyone reading imagine their very own epitaph?”
Not being much good at Liam-esque dry Aussie pithy remarks, I’d go with my closest ever effort:
“It’s a poor tool who blames his workman”
j-p-z Re the archetype thing -I was thinking that perhaps there are some parrallels between Steve’s persona and who or what an Australian is, and Johnny Cash or a John Wayne and who/what and American is. (obvious differences aside)
They may not accurately reflect the reality of the modern eclectic multi-dimentional populis, but they encapsulate part of the dominent and historical myths.
And I’m not saying that those myths/archetypes are necessarily good, (in fact i am quite fascinated with the whole repression of the anima /feminine in the portrayal of the ‘Australian National Identity’) I’m just saying they are powerful, and need to be understood in the context of collective and public grief.
FDB, unless you are Liam why would anyone want you to sound like Liam?
I am considering great epitaphs at the moment.
Yours, FDB, works well on a number of levels.
That’s fair enough sc, but the process of santification is distorting the grieving, because what’ll end up happening is we’ll grieve for what were told Irwin represents rather than the man himself. I think the whole process diminishes the essential humanity of the grieving process.
Anyway, maybe I’m reading too much into it, maybe my bullshit radar is overdeveloped
I don’t know why anybody woudn’t want my unique banally sarcastic word-stylin’s, Una Otra Kim. Oh, and FDB: I’m impressed, flattery and innuendo at the same time. With their powers combined, they summon Captain Repartée, etc. etc.
Now, as for auto-obituarism (a vice, I’m told, indulged in to great wordlength by John Marsden QC), I’d want, nay, demand, instead of ephemeral words and the fleeting phrases of the insincere, to be embalmed, in the style of Lenin, and put on display in a gigantic mausoleum somewhere prominent.
I don’t think that’s too much to ask.
AK, I invoked the Jaunty Beret merely because I was still spluttering at the Steve-Irwin-as-Jeebus quote above.
Liam, I’ll see your mausoleum and raise you a pyramid. Or a stratospheric statue a la Bender.
Saying that Steve Irwin was a great Australian who did a lot for Australia’s overseas reputation, Australia’s tourism industry and Australia’s native wildlife is not sanctification, it is simply the undeniable truth.
Liam, I have lots of wax around the house.
Have someone notify me.
(though… if i keep going long enough, maybe just maybe, i’ll learn to type and proof read too). LOL
Sublime Cowgirl [at 12:54pm]
actually, this made him closer to the fair dinkum Aussie bloke out there in the real world of 2006 rather than the nasty boozy destructive stereotype of literature such as in “Wake In Fright”.
Amanda and AnotherKim [at noon]:
No. I’m a surly, grumpy old mongrel and if somebody bad, evil, crooked or nasty dies – I celebrate …. “Another one bites the dust”…… In the case of Steve Irwin I am sad and probably will be for some time. I wasn’t keen on his style of presentation (even though it was highly successful and a lot of people liked it) but that is the worst thing I can ever say about him. The whole world has lost a good bloke.
j-p-z:
Yea verily!!!
Graham, I like you. You surly old mongrel.
In an increasingly pretentious world, where the basic goal of life for many is to attain as much power and status as possible, by whatever means (even unethical ones as long as one doesn’t get caught), Steve Irwin was a breath of fresh air.
Brave enough to be himself, not at all egotistical, connected to the environment. Passionate with a basic joy for living.
I believe that most of us can learn a great deal from this mean. Especially unethical tosspots like Vizard.
You do know..when the first shock wears off and folks do things.
His wife will be sitting up some late night and google his name all over.
It will hurt when she reads nasty ass shit. It was a social commentary for you but it means something else when she reads. And she will.
And he has little kids.
A friend of mine is the son of a old school TV crocodile hunter, and that’s enough to be dealing with in itself.
From a comment on Anonymous Lefty’s blog:
Best thing I’ve read all day.
AnotherKim [at 4:14pm}:
Ta
Ron:
AnonymousLefty called Steve Irwin a Global TV and Marketing Phenomenon whereas ScepticLawyer and a few others who knew him off-camera said that he was a fair dinkum bloke. I’ll go along with those who knew Steve Irwin personally …. and no crocodile tears are needed at all; real tears will do just fine, thanks.
Could Steve Irwin be Australia’s Princess Di? i.e. mountains of fake sentimentality from people acting as though they knew him personally but then rapidly fading away to nothing?
Graham,
There is something a little sick, even cultish, at the amount of space devoted to Irwin today: there are wars and other little diversions going on too.
ScepticLawyer? You mean she’s traded her peasant clothes for crocodile skin shoes? The hand having written has moved on?
I think you’re right, Cred.
I just watched television news coverage showing all these crying people outside Irwin’s zoo’s fences. Tomorrow millions of flowers will die to make wreaths to replace those grieving humans who will be at home having moved onto to a different version of Australian Idol.
AnonymousLefty called Steve Irwin a Global TV and Marketing Phenomenon whereas ScepticLawyer and a few others who knew him off-camera said that he was a fair dinkum bloke. I’ll go along with those who knew Steve Irwin personally …. and no crocodile tears are needed at all; real tears will do just fine, thanks.
GB, actually I was just quoting The Age. That was their description in the linked-to article.
And any mockery from me is of the media coverage, not of the deceased person – who I only knew from his media persona; and I refuse to condemn him based solely on that. (He must have had some redeeming features; it’s just his public image wasn’t one of them.)
Um, that was me. (MrLeftt doesn’t really exist.)
Over at the Sydney Morning Herald site they have attracted 2670 comments since 2.24 yesterday. This is 2670 comments in 28 hours. Nearly 100 comments per hour. If nothing else this does at least demonstrate the considerable affection in which he was held by the great bulk of the people. & not just here, they are flooding in from around the world. Just goes to show…
Cheers…
No it doesn’t show anything of the sort. How many have started ‘I was never a fan of Steve Irwin but …’. Who was gushing about him while he was alive? It shows that everyone these days loves a good communal grief session (brings nation together blah blah).
Hey Naomi – who was the third?….
“His wife will be sitting up some late night and google his name all over.
It will hurt when she reads nasty ass shit. It was a social commentary for you but it means something else when she reads. And she will. ”
So true. Thanks for that observation, Another Kim. I must admit to a feeling of dismay when I read the hatred and vitriol vented on this man from sections of the blogosphere today. Other than the sour notes from Mike Strummer, who seems more motivated to demonstrate his superior knowledge of stingrays than any antipathy towards Irwin I’ve been pleasantly surprised to read the comments on this thread. They are in marked contrast to those on The Road to Surfdom, where comments on their Vale thread was disgusting.
Ron and Cred:
I’ve ignored the media feeding-frenzy – such shenanegans turn my stomach – and instead listened to people around me …. a far more reliable indicator.
Mick Strummer:
Betcha it’s Don Chipp …. and his threat to “Keep the bastards honest” (now that’s the way to run a democracy!)
Mr Leftt:
Sorry. My misunderstanding.
It’s gotta be Don Chipp. How different they are but all very Australian.
Generally I think if we can’t speak well of the newly dead it is better not to speak at all. That having been said, I’d defend Mick insofar as he was analysing what might have gone wrong with the stingray to lead to such a tragic outcome. I think that part is important.
It has occurred to me that Irwin was at the same time ordinary and extraordinary. There is much learned comment above, with which I can agree, but perhaps that was part of the secret as to why he seemed so close to his audience (of whom I wasn’t one for the most part). My wife teaches preschoolers and attests to his exceptional ability to communicate with and motivate young children.
Someone said the media was making him into an icon. It’s an overused and somewhat devalued word, but I was under the impression that he was one.
Graeme Bell – the reference escapes me.
BTW. I guess I would have to say that I found it shocking that someone so experienced with animals as Irwin claimed to be put himself in a position that was so patently, obviously, a risky position to be in. And he died for his mistake. So many of you people seem to think that I wished he was dead or something. Far from it, I just think that this death was a stupid tragic senseless death. And that the world public are falling over themselves to regret a guy that they never – especially in Australia – acknowledged when he was alive. Or, if they did, they thought – as I did, many many people did (and have conventiently forgotten) – that he was a bit, a lot of a clown, a khaki clad buffoon. But what makes it especially tragic and stupid was the degree to which it was unneccessary. Unless you are trying to get a bit of spectacular totally unrealistic TV footage.
What do they say is the first rule of public life? Never believe your own publicity? Can’t help the feeling that Steve Irwin never learnt that old adage…
Sorry if I offended anyone. Just thought that this was all so – so – unneccessary…
Cheers….
Apologies – Graeme Bell. Of course….
Cheers…
Mick Strummer:
No. I myself never imagined for a moment that you wished Steve Irwin ill or anything like that. From what I have heard on the news, I guess he might have taken a normal calulated risk based on long experience and this time something went terribly wrong ….. a bit like what you read in the “crash comics” when a well-maintained aicraft – in near-perfect weather – with a thousand-plus-hours pilot in command still flies straight into terrain.
The quintessentially Australian way to die? Howard thinks so
People around me yesterday heard the news at about 2.30pm on their mobiles. We checked the internet to verify it. As did very many others apparently, with Yahoo7 and other websites crashing. There were over 2000 feedback comments on the SMH site by 10pm last night (8 hrs later)(4th Sept). This speaks of the fact that many people were affected by the news. I’ve heard tonight that the state funeral is a goer.
Testimony to the trivial state of Australian public life.
I am a parent of 2 beautiful foster children. My 2 children (6 &
was so devestated by this tragic event. They watched Animal Plant daily and never missed a Croc Hunter’s show. They looked up to Steve as a hero and has made them love animals with a passion that other wise I dont think they would have had. I just want his family to know that although he may have saved animals he saved children as well. As a foster parent’s veiw he gave these children hope that there is good people in the world who truly cares about family, friends and nature. That means more to these children than anything.Although never meeting Steve and his family it was the whole families dream to go and see him. So THANK YOU Terri, Bindi and Bob for sharing Steve with us, he has done so many things he never even knew he did.
I was neer an avid fan of Steve Irwin either, simply because his shows were dominated by the reptiles, amphibians and invertebrates. My personal preference is in the wild felines, canines and elasmobranchs (sharks). However, I could totally relate to his spirit, passion and drive for the animal kingdom in general. He was an interesting man, standing out from the majority and daring to go where few would. It will not be surprising that his life will be continued by everlasting legends, because certain people’s lives are worthy of immortal memory.
Jennifer Kellough, your comment and Brian’s about his wife’s experience with children’s reaction to Irwin is at the heart of the larger reaction, I think. He was amazingly popular with children, especially the preschoolers and young primary age kids, so when the kids are upset at his death the whole family gets upset.
Generating a passion for wildlife amongst so many kids is certainly a major achievement, and will probably end up being what he’s most remembered for.
I woke this morning to find i’m generating Death Porn traffic from search engines when people type in Graphic Images Steve Irwin’s Death.
Charming.
Irwin’s politics were far-right. He admired John Howard and told him to his face he was the greatest leader Australia ever had. He hated Bob Brown. When Bob Brown interrupted Bush’s speech in Parliament, Irwin said Brown should have been taken out the back and given a good belting. When Peter Beattie was considering crocodile meat for the menu at CHOGM in 2002, with Steve Irwin as a special guest, Irwin told a newspaper: “I think Peter Beattie is a total dickhead to ask Steve Irwin, the Crocodile Hunter, to come and eat crocodile.” Charming.
Steve Irwin reckoned Bob Brown should have been taken out the back & given a flogging? Because of the turn Brown bunged on when George Bush was visiting?
Didn’t know that.
What a man! What a Mighty Queenslander!
Oh come on, Silky, your ‘logic’ is ridiculous. You give one mouthing-off example each, from a well-known eccentric and motor-mouth, to ‘prove’ that (a) his politics were far right (yep, most of them conservationists is fascists, all right) and (b) that he ‘hated’ Bob Brown (some of the rest of us think that intervention was counterproductive, too, and could have been incredibly dangerous given that Canberra was swarming with Bush’s armed droogs). Do you really think the world is that simple?
Get off your hobby horse for two seconds, willya? The poor bloke’s dead. You won.
Sheesh.
Bob Brown doesn’t seem too bothered by Steve Irwin’s comments.
Where’s the ‘logic’ in the gratuitous, media generated mass grief for someone none of us knows that we have been subject to for the last 48 hours? Of course it was a tragedy for his family and you’d have to be a heartless bastard not to feel for them.
But this sickening outpouring of confected grief is another matter entirely, not to mention the outrage from some RWDB that others don’t share their ‘feelings’. I seem to recall that their principles regarding speaking ill of the dead were not so finely tuned when it came to the death of say, John Marsden.
All in all most of the posters need to get a grip, and get some perspective on the matter.
Otherwise I’ll link to the thread on The Spin Starts Here on Steve Irwin.
What, so that makes it all right to do the same about Steve Irwin? I would have thought it was an excellent reason to behave as differently as possible.
No, of course it doesn’t make it right, and I don’t think that anyone has done ‘the same about Steve Irwin’. So I don’t know why you mention it.
I was simply highlighting the hypocrisy of some commentators, which I thought was fairly obvious.
We are already seeing the comments that Steve was somehow doing nothing. The police after viewing the footage, are apparently OK with the way that Steve Irwin conducted himself. The coppers said (I’m paraphrasing here) “Mr Irwin did not appear to be taunting or harassing the ray – he was just observing it.” And now on ABC news this morning I heard words to the effect that “Mr Irwin died in a stingray attack.”
Attack? Come on. Again, the mere fact that the ray had a lash shows, ipso facto, that the ray felt threatened, harassed, trapped and unable to escape. I reckon that Germaine Greer put it best in her comment in the Guardian here.
I can’t help wonder how long it will be until some guy like Vic Hislop calls for the removal of stingrays from anywhere near beaches that people swim at…
Anyway…
Cheers…
“Irwin’s politics were far-right. He admired John Howard and told him to his face he was the greatest leader Australia ever had. He hated Bob Brown.”
Crikey. Give the bloke a break – how on earth can you attribute these points of view? His issue with Brown may well have been based on manners, not politics. And I agree that Bob was ill-mannered – but I don’t hate him one bit. What Irwin did was make a very funny comment. Am I missing a public utterance that suggests he hated Brown?
And the situation you are paraphrasing from also saw Irwin credit Simon Crean’s speech which bemoaned Australia following US into Iraq war as one of the best he’d heard. So where is the far right view there? Might be best to let Irwin’s words do their own talking. Reckon he’d appreciate that,
Maybe the Guardian site has crashed. There is also an edited extract in the Sydney Morning Herald. Try this.
Cheers…
Try the Sydney Morning Herald if the Guardian site is down.
Maybe I went too far saying he was far-right, but how does anyone explain his over-the-top love of Howard? Was he just politically naive?
Why should anyone have to “explain” it? He supported Howard. Get over it. It wasn’t as over-the-top as the obsessions displayed by some here.
How do you explain it?
“his over-the-top love of Howard?”
There’s nothing to explain. You have created a position and now you are attacking it. It’s not Irwin’s position at all unless you can prove it. And even then, who cares?
As Yobbo wisely said on RTS, he probably would have said the same of any PM handy.
Strewth. Chill pills to the poop deck. Stat.
John Marsden!!!!!! Crikey!!!
Anyway I first heard about Steve Irwin from an Irish mate living in US who watched The Crocodile Hunter with his young toddlers. He was gobsmacked I’d never heard of Steve. This was a good few years ago now.
So I heard on the interent of Steve’s death and my first thought was to email Fergus. The reply came back along the lines of “news starting to break here now, I’m going to have to tell the boys when they wake up and theyre going to be upset”
The best summation of this whole sad phenomenon:
http://blogs.smh.com.au/thedailytruth/archives/2006/09/crocodile_tears.html
Sorry, a v.long post in response to Mick’s many postings:
Quoting creepy Aunty Germs â a women who you literally couldnât ask to look after your 12 or 13 year old sonsâ¦.a woman whose post menopausal repulsion for adult males is so thorough, that she outed herself as a âboy perveâ and is happy to have her predilections filmed and discussed. Steve Irwin was a paint-by-numbers archetype of everything Greer finds viscerally offensive. No surprise that she is horrified at the thought of young boys in khaki running around catching snakes, rather than nude, passive limp boys with cherry red lips, thin torsos and wan complexions, the ones Greer prefers to fantasise aboutâ¦â¦
As for her Rousseauian wildlife paradise â if only the wildebeest could tell those hyenas and lions that theyâd really appreciate some âspace’ pleeze! In Greerâs and Mickâs world, wildlife should only be filmed by BBCâs Science Crews. Working class yobs are not allowed in to disturb this pristine natural paradise, ok?
Mick, your view that all wildlife docoâs should follow BBC ‘best science’ principles is probably correct in some alternative PC universe â but you seem happy to ignore reality, that a v. strong conservation message was carried for the first time, into the gun-toting heart of middle America â the land of the great white hunter â aimed straight into the consciousness of their children, that they should be protecting and treasuring wildlife, including snakes, crocodiles and reptiles. The fact that Irwin was also incredibly popular with children in many developing countries, where conservation hasnât been on anyoneâs agenda, is also conveniently ignored.
As youâve also helpfully pointed out Mick, Irwin was not a sci-en-tist (in case any of us were actually confused on that point), he was in fact, a lowly animal âhandlerâ â an inherently dangerous working class job, another point which you have laboured on and on.
But what is really worrying, is the ugly triumphialism in your and Greerâs comments in respect of the manner of his death. Using the logic of Greerâs ârevenge of natureâ barb (!), her own much grieved barren womb is just nature taking its rational course…..
As for Greer’s millionaire reference – “no working class yob shall ever be allowed to make a quid”, – the man was an ape, darling!
Itâs funny how other conservationists and Greenies like Bob Brown saw the overall value of Steve Irwin in promoting conservation and wildlife protection to the teeming human masses. David Suzuki was on radio yesterday, saying how they were going to meet up in a months time, for the 1st time at Suzukiâs initiationâ¦.but letâs not quote what leading conservationists think of him, lets quote Creepy Aunty Germs, who has a huge issue with all males over the age of 17.
As to liking John Howard, for Godsakes, he was an uneducated savant, (wasnât this obvious??) and half the population of this country votes Howard â are half the people in this country going to âre-educatedâ? when the revolution comes, Comrade Silkworm?
RIP Steve Irwin. Unfortunately, you’ll never get to stick your finger up the arse of any more defenceless animals. Our loss.
i was at school when i first found out and two boys told me and my 3 friends we thought they were lying because they didnt seem to care.
i was so shocked when i discovered it was the truth.
he will be greatly missed and i do hope his family pulls through and the zoo keeps on going strong.
I’m quite impressed that the family has decided to refuse the offer of a State funeral. It seems an unexpected decision for people that have lived their lives so much in the public view, but I respect them for not wanting to be drawn into what inevitably would be a political circus given the election this weekend.
I think its telling that a father who has just lost a son has shown in his refusal of a state funeral that he has more sense of dignity, proportiion and of what is appropriate than the Premier of Queensland and the others who have jumped on this tawdry emotional bandwagon over the last few days.
“I guess I would have to say that I found it shocking that someone so experienced with animals as Irwin claimed to be put himself in a position that was so patently, obviously, a risky position to be in.”
Well no. Snorkling on reefs is less dangerous than driving a car. And stingrays, as many have pointed out, are not aggressive animals with a track record of going after people. Unlike say crocodiles. By accounts so far it was a freak circumstance.
I’d suggest that the tidal wave of public grieving is not dissimilar in cause to the one that followed Di’s demise. An atomised and media-saturated society feeling strongly about the death of a cultural archetype.
In Steve’s case, the archetype was a cheerful larrikin who made it big by scaring yanks with nonchalant downunder aplomb about our dangerous wildlife. There’d be an awful people in Aus who’d identify with that, the way so many in the UK and worldwide also found resonance in Di’s fairytale “I will survive” princess story.
As to reintepreting his politics after his death for ideological pointscoring, well that’s an old and bloody boring game. I’d just point out he was as a committed conservationist as Bob Brown and a much more personally successful capitalist than John Howard.
And anyone who gets uptight about him “interfering” with animals should probably save their spleen for the millions of other ways in which human beings constantly screw around with animals every day, and with far worse consquences than a croc tramautised over having a thumb jammed up its bum on camera.
“And since then, he’s never called or even SMSed me. I feel so used.”
“You’re crying now I see. Would you like a hanky?”
My bottom line here is wow! amazing freak death, well he had a great time entertaining and informing others, and if he helped turn a new generation onto exploring and stewarding the wonders of nature, then good on him.
And re the personal epitaph riff above, I’m leaning towards:
“Contents were packaged by weight, not volume.”
Here we go. This is my last contribution to this thread. Promise. (Tried to get the quotes right using the HTML code, but you’ll get the gist of it. Besides, Jo’s original post is up there not too far way)
Hey jo….. (wasn’t that a Hendrix song somewhere?)
I didn’t quote Ms Greer. You find me one post of mine that does. I just thought she expressed a few things nicely. It don’t mean that I agree with everything she said, says, has ever said. And as whatever she might think about boys, so what. What does that have to do with the validity of what she said about this topic? Her attitudes to boys, whatever, have no, zilch, zero impact on the force of her argument or the eloquence of her words about this. Your opening paragraph is the worst sort of ad-hominem argument that it is possible to come across.
If you are really seriously trying to educate people about nature, then you should make an effort to show it how it really is. Irwin had an overwhelming compulsion to put himself at the very centre of the action. His programs were not about showing nature to the viewers, they were about showing himself to viewers. The show was not about the animals, it was about him. The animals were the unfortunate unpaid extras in his thrill a minute, bring ‘em back alive extravaganza, without even an actors equity to protect their interests.
Irwin was not doing wildlife documentaries. Ain’t it telling how his ventures into fiction were exactly the same as his ‘documentaries’? That is because he was making entertainment. I’d be interested to find out what anyone actually learnt from a Steve Irwin show. I’d bet good money that it would be nothing like what you could learn from Attenborough…. This don’t mean that Steve Irwin don’t have his place, or that his shows are totally without merit. It just means that we shouldn’t go around now, and somehow pretend that he was something he actually wasn’t. And, I suspect, if all the PR about him is true, that he would be the first person to make sure that he was not ever presented as something that he wasn’t.
What alternative PC universe. We – you, me, all of us, but, Steve Irwin no longer – live in this universe. The only one we got. Maybe it should be more PC, but whatever it might be, it was what it is what it is. Where in any of my comments do you find me calling for the PC universe?
Evidence? Who is to say whom Steve Irwin was popular with in America? Who watched? And what effect did it have? I didn’t speculate about such matters, in the absence of anything that resembles real live evidence, neither should you.
Please point out to me where I made any comment about his qualifications. Or lack of them. I made no comment at all about whether he was a scientist or not. I did make reference to him doing his ‘hairy chested great white hunter routine’. So what? I ain’t the only one who has referred to this aspect of his presentation. But to imply, as you do, that it stems from some sort of intellectual snobbery on my part is the worst form of argument of all. I couldn’t care if they guy has a Nobel prize for biology. And it made no difference to my argument. Since you didn’t understand it, let me repeat. Irwin put himself – stupidly, ignorantly, over a large stingray. I don’t understand why he even did this if he was the expert on animals that he claimed to be, or had that mystical magical bond with them that he also claimed. He stupidly, selfishly, and probably all for a bit of footage with a ‘crikey look at that barb’ soundtrack to be laid over the top, deprived his wide of her husband and his children of their father.
I said that his death was stupid, unnecessary, tragic, unavoidable, idiotic, and probably a lot of other things as well. And yes, I endorsed that article by Germaine Greer. But what the fuck does that have to do with her ‘barren womb’? And I referred many times to the regret that there was with this, and the tragedy of it, and the stupidity of this. How does that make me triumphant? I have tried very hard to avoid saying – ‘cos I don’t think it for even a minute, that he somehow got what he deserved.
What does this have to do with anything?
See previous comment. I didn’t quote Germaine Greer. Or is putting in a link and endorsing the thrust of her argument the same thing in your book?
I never made any, repeat any comment about his political beliefs. If you are going to argue with me in this forum, please, please, at least do me the courtesy of reading what I actually said, and getting your facts right.
My sentiments exactly…
Cheers…
Boy oh boy has Germaine stirred the pot on this one. But i’m still puzzled as to why in god’s name Howard described it as a “quintessentially Australian way to die”. Is this the begining of a new mythology of the blonde god and the ray? Or are thousands of Australians struck down annually by rampaging stringrays marauding in our streets? Please explain.
He’s discouraging the asylum seekers, Bernice.
Oh, Tigtog, well spotted! It’s the ‘You’ll get poisoned to death by a blue-ringed octopus unless you make it ashore, in which case you’ll get poisoned to death by a rampaging taipan’ line all over again.
I knew someone would have the answer.
Silkworm:
I just ignored Steve Irwin’s political views – he was just as entitled as anyone else to have his own political views. I focused instead on his publicizing the wonders of Nature (and if he made money out of it, good luck to him) and I focused on him as a robust and healthy role model in a time when, as somebody put it, the only male role model some young blokes have is their local drug dealer. Regardless of what his particular political standpoint was, if by speaking out as he did, he encouraged even one young Aussie to become engaged with politics then that can be only good.
Bernice Balcony:
Me too.
The PM was thinking of Harold Holt.
Peter Brock is dead too.
Does Greer want to take a swipe at him as well? How about : God know racing car driving is un neccessary, noisy and generates pollution. And who seriously would drive at those speeds and not expect to be killed?
Vale Brockie.
This thread is getting a bit long and taking too long to load anyway, so I’ve started a new thread for discussion of our dismal trifecta this week: Irwin, Thiele and Brock.
[link]