A totally non-knitting post about the news

So for the last day or so, the media have been talking about nothing but the death of Steve "Crocodile Hunter" Irwin. (War? What war?) Amid the accolades and proposed honors for Irwin was this piece by feminist scholar Germaine Greer. (I'm not familiar with her work, even though I've slogged through stuff by other prominent poststructuralist feminist scholars, including Judith Butler and Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak. Did I understand them? Nope. Did I fake my way through seminar discussions and essays about them? Yup. I suspect Greer's work is equally incomprehensible.)

In this article, Greer clearly wants to ruffle some feathers. This quote in particular really stands out:

There was no habitat, no matter how fragile or finely balanced, that Irwin hesitated to barge into, trumpeting his wonder and amazement to the skies. There was not an animal he was not prepared to manhandle. Every creature he brandished at the camera was in distress.

Her tone throughout the article is a bit harsh--partly, I think, to épater les bourgeois--and I don't agree with everything she wrote. But this quote...well...

After The Crocodile Hunter became a runaway hit, I tuned in a few times just to see what all the fuss was about. I like most animals (not too keen on the crawly-gooey types), so I figured I'd learn something. Instead, I was rather astonished (I almost wrote appalled, but that's far too strong a word here) to see scene after scene in which Irwin harassed some animal. Sometimes his antics struck me as profoundly disturbing. I wondered how someone who claimed to be an animal-loving conservationist could be so mean to the animals. (At the same time, I wonder how anyone who claims to love animals can still eat them, but that's another topic...) Think about it: for many of these animals, being surprised or startled is often a precursor to impending death--theirs or another animal's. Compound that anxiety with someone yelling in your face while cameras and lights are pointed at you, and I suspect you wouldn't be happy about it, either.