Many years ago, there was a fellow in Australia widely dubbed “the serial pest”. Peter Hore grabbed headlines with a series of stunts that had no clear agenda aside from grabbing headlines. Hore’s successful headline grabs included everything from running onto the field of the Melbourne Cup to gatecrashing Michael Hutchence’s funeral.
Well, Peter Hore might just have some stiff competition in the “serial pest” stakes.
“Indigenous activist” Stephen Hagan might at least have one up on Hore in that he has a clear objective: sniffing out and loudly complaining about imaginary “racism” in everything from local football stands to supermarket milk. But Hagan is a serial pest whose incessant whining is royally pissing off Australians in a way that Hore could only dream of.
Despite the privilege of attending the same elite private school as such luminaries as Kevin Rudd, Stephen Hagan has made a career out of complaining about Australia.
His latest campaign is to force the rebranding of iconic Australian cheese brand, Coon.
The Coon brand name has and has never had any racial connotations whatsoever. It’s simply the surname of its inventor, Edward William Coon.
Australians have happily consumed Coon cheese for nearly a century without racist intent. But, as Theodore Dalrymple said of such people, Hagan seems “obsessed by race…He looks at the world through race-tinted spectacles, interprets every event or social phenomenon as a manifestation of racism either implicit or explicit, and in general has the soul of a born inquisitor”.
So, pest that he is, Hagan has held his little bweaf and stamped his little feet until he got his way.
After 85 years on Australia’s shelves and amid concern over the racist connotations of its name, Coon Cheese will be renamed Cheer Cheese.
The new brand, set to appear on supermarket shelves from July this year, comes after a campaign against the Coon branding.
Australian indigenous activist Stephen Hagan has campaigned for almost 20 years to see the name of the cheese changed.
“Cheer”? I suspect that this will go down about as well as the ridiculous and deservedly short-lived “iSnack2.0”.
Of course, the gutless corporation behind this latest eructation of corporate wokery cloaks their cowardliness with the standard fug of boiler-plate woke-waffle.
The dairy said the new name came after “Saputo’s careful and diligent review to honour the brand-affinity felt by our consumers while aligning with current attitudes and perspectives”.
Saputo chair and CEO Lino Saputo said the decision reflected the businesses “commitment to build a culture of acceptance, inclusion and respect where everyone feels a sense of belonging”.
“Treating people with respect and without discrimination is one of our basic principles and it is imperative that we continue to uphold this in everything we do,” he said.
Reading this robotic garbage is like snoozing through the verbose gibbering of a Marxist activist. Oh, wait – that’s because that’s exactly what it is.
The crowning joke of this tragicomedy of corporate gutlessness and race-baiting inquisitory is the following hilariously optimistic statement:
Saputo Dairy Australia commercial director Cam Bruce said Cheer cheese would be embraced by consumers.
The Australian
Meanwhile, someone needs to explain to millions of Dutch and their descendants that surprisingly their name is, according to a minor Australian academic, indelibly racist.
And Stephen Hagan’s got his work cut out for him: the National Gallery of Victoria is currently featuring a special exhibition of the work of American artist Jeff Koons.
A race-baiter’s work is never done.
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