Anglo bashing, courtesy of your ABC
The ABC, in its relativistic way, generally avoids cultural criticism. Except of course, if the culture happens to be American, British or Australian.ABC Radio National’s former Correspondents Report presenter Hamish Robertson used his taxpayer-funded soapbox to sink the boot into Australian and British culture.
In the 12 November edition, Robertson claimed, “”¦ one of the most obvious cultural differences between Latin countries and English-speaking ones can be seen in the use of alcohol.”
Roberston asserted, “If it’s uncool to get drunk in Italy, Spain or Argentina, it’s almost an obligatory confirmation of adulthood in the United Kingdom and Australia.”
Roberston, in full Latinophile mode, was commenting on life on the streets after dark in Paris and Madrid.
“If you walk through the streets of Paris or Madrid on a Friday night, you’re unlikely to run into gangs of teenagers swaggering along the footpath paralytically drunk,” Roberston said.
Of course, not, Hamish, they’d be too busy burning cars.”¨Robertson ought to get out more often.
It was recently reported that some regional officials in France have banned public drinking in order to counter the excessive noise and tell-tale garbage left behind after Saturday nights of youngster excess in city centers.
And in Spain, the government intends to prevent the drinking of alcohol in the street and ban the sale of alcoholic drinks to the under 18s. Over recent years a fashion, known in Spanish as el bottelón, has developed among teenagers which consists of spending Friday and Saturday nights drinking in the streets and plazas. The government’s hope is to reduce alcohol misuse among Spanish young people and to stamp out el botellón.
Alas, poor Robbo, who has nor retired, only saw, it seems, what Robbo wanted to see. And what the Australia-haters that tune in to the ABC want to hear.
