Last week The Sunday Age published a horribly tabloid front page story employing the worst parochial and xenophobic techniques possible. 10 reasons why Brazil must fall to the Socceroos had a wild stab at inane populism with crap such as this (edited for brevity):
1. They are better than us. It’s time they shared the glory around.
2. They are bigger than us. Everything about Brazil is big, its foreign debt, its wealth divide, its crime rate and its size.
3. They harboured Nazis and Ronald Biggs. Financially comfortable but morally bankrupt families harboured Auschwitz’s Angel of Death, Dr Josef Mengele, for years until he drowned in 1979 without ever facing justice.
Then Ronnie Biggs turned up. Biggs was doing time for his part in the 2.6 million pound Great Train Robbery of 1963 when he escaped in 1965.
4. They are destroying the planet. The Amazon rainforest is known as the lungs of the world, but between May 2000 and August 2005 it is estimated that Brazil lost more than 132,000 square kilometres of it.
5. They don’t like each other. So why should we like them? Neo-Nazis regularly roam the streets of Sao Paulo looking for street children, punks, homosexuals and Nordestinos (impoverished natives from Brazil’s north-east) to rough up and kill. Brazil reportedly has the highest rate of homosexual murders in the world: 1830 homosexuals and transvestites were killed between 1980 and 1999.
6. They’ve got rhythm. At least we’ve got Moomba.
7. They don’t need us. Brazil is one of the few countries in the world that could get by without the rest of us. It could be an economic powerhouse, if it were ever able to overcome its internal problems. It has enough mineral, energy resources and food to produce all it needs and enough people (184 million) to consume the final product.
Unfortunately, corruption, uncontrolled criminal violence, hyper-inflation and frequent economic upheavals mean they must rely a little longer on the benevolence of the IMF and World Bank.
8. They’re a bad investment. But that hasn’t stopped foreign investors who thought they were getting a bargain by snapping up beachfront apartments in Rio for between $US25,000 to $50,000, only to see their property values fall even lower.
9. Nuts and bikini wax. The country is named after the nut. The bikini wax was created by four Brazilian sisters who opened a beauty salon in New York.
10. They are the Collingwood of South America.
And boy did Sunday Age readers hit back today. The first eight letters in this morning’s edition were highly critical of the article with no supportive letters published. Some highlights:
The article, 10 Reasons Why Brazil Must Fall To The Socceroos (18/6), could not have been in poorer taste.
It raised indignation in the Brazilian community in Australia, and was followed up by one of Brazil’s daily newspapers, fortunately in a more ethical manner.
Surely, there are more constructive and interesting stories for the front page of such an important communication vehicle in Melbourne.
It would be easy for me to come up with many negative examples of life in Australia. Best left unsaid.
Claudio Monken, Roxby Downs, South Australia
It was a vitriolic caricature that pretended to be funny, but was unfair, simplistic and jingoistic.
It refers to Nazis who came and lived in disguise among us as if it were the fault of the Brazilian Government or people. Brazilian borders were also open to thousands fleeing the horrors of the Holocaust.
Ronald Biggs found a haven in Brazil simply because Brazil and Britain only signed an Extradition Treaty in the early 1990s.
The Brazilian Government, having banned the export of endangered mahogany, has been striving to prevent illegal trade within the Indian Reserves between smugglers and Indian chiefs.
A most unfortunate episode of killing poor street children occurred not in Sao Paulo, but in Candelária, Rio de Janeiro, in 1993. Authorities brought the perpetrators to justice.
As for the country’s name: the word “brazil” derives from the red-dyeing wood produced from a tree valued in the European market during the Renaissance. It was only by 1530 that the name Brazil started to be used, not in 1494, since the Portuguese landed on the Brazilian coast only in 1500.
Frederico Cezar de Araujo, Brazilian Ambassador
It was with a great sense of shame that I read your front page article about Brazil. Is sport so important to us that we would need to denigrate our opponents? And in such a malicious manner? What image of us, as Australians, does this give the international community? And what does it tell us about ourselves?
Michelle Hamburg, Maryknoll
The spirit of friendly rivalry appears to have been lost in 10 Reasons Why Brazil Must Fall To The Socceroos. (18/6) In a nation that prides itself on good sportsmanship the humourless cultural attack on Brazil was below the belt and did little to foster the sentiments of friendship and goodwill promoted by an international tournament such as the World Cup. The Socceroos merit recognition with their undeniable talent, not with personal attacks on the nations of other teams.
Vivian Green, Northcote
I know the article on Brazil (18/6) was supposed to be funny, but it wasn’t.
Ricardo Bernal, Werribee
It is indeed a shame that the front-page article on Brazil (18/6) was published. The defence proffered is that it was “tongue in cheek” and a bit of black humour. But it was done in very poor taste. I am a proud and loud supporter of the Socceroos and have been for some time. Consequently, no-one could ever accuse me of not understanding black humour. There is a time and place for everything and this time, you got it horribly wrong.
Christopher Paul, Elwood
The Brazil article (18/6) failed abysmally in its attempt at wit. Instead, it presented as fact misguided and biased information about a country and culture the author obviously knows very little about. Unfortunately, such misrepresentation of another’s culture by a leading Australian newspaper only helps to advance Australia’s image overseas as a xenophobic and insular society.
Elizabeth Cabral Collerson, Chapel Hill, Queensland
Perhaps Jim Schembri, who wrote a biting piece on the quality of blogging a few weeks back, should take a long and hard look at the quality of “journalism” being spewed out of his own paper before again taking aim at other information outlets.
