Chook

So according to you no black person can be compared to a monkey, but white people can? How is that a healthy attitude? We have a situation where people are so worried about being racist that they draw undue attention to the entire concept of race. In my opinion, that is far more damaging to society than a thirteen year-old's silly remarks. You might call me naive, but I'm only addressing the fundamental problem of racism - and it's not that people insult one another, it's that that people even care about a person's race at all. In a good world, Adam Goodes would not have been called an ape. In a perfect world, neither he nor anyone else would have drawn an inference to race at all. We should all be free to insult each other on a one-to-one basis, without fear that our remarks will be commandeered by entire groups of people we didn't intend to offend. How do we reach this perfect world? Can it be done, or will we always be so race-conscious?

The question is "Can anyone be called an ape?" If the answer is "no", then I don't think it's a racist remark. I know I've called George Bush a monkey because I legitimately thought he looked like a chimpanzee (which ironically aren't monkeys). But I guess that's not racist because we're both white.

Wins of any kind will make a massive difference.

John So is my bro.

Just FYI, humans belong to the Great Ape family.

Sorry pal, but a year from now we will only be marginally better than we are now - no matter who is coach.

Come on. I've looked like that after a long run. What you saw was exhaustion after 2 hours of physical activity, compounded by the disappointment of losing. To compare it to PTSS is probably overkill.

But Neeld says effort is not the issue.

In his presser, Neeld spoke about "when we come back," guys like Terlich and Matt Jones will be better able to cope with the pressure of being an AFL footballer. But he didn't mean next week; he meant next year. This is a long long road, and regardless of whether or not Neeld is there to see it, there are no shortcuts along the road. Don't get your hopes up for any kind of miraculous changes any time soon.

This either reflects very well or very poorly on the club. Either they're doing what needs to be done and not letting media commitments get in the way, or they're so incompetent that they can't even figure out how to run a press conference.

We figure out what we would normally do . . . then just do the opposite.

You misunderstand me. I don't think Neeld could EVER get this club playing good footy. I'm just saying that we should not expect anything better than 3 years from whoever replaces him

There is a famous episode of Seinfeld in which the perennially unfortunate George Costanza realizes that every decision he's made in his life has been wrong. Having come to that conclusion, he does the only sensible thing; he figures out what his instincts have been telling him, and simply does the opposite. I submit that the Melbourne Football Club is such a blueprint for failure that the George Costanza Plan must now be considered. From this day forward, we must resolve to do . . . the opposite. What famous Melbourne stuff-ups from years past would have been avoided if we had followed this mantra? James McDonald would have been retained as captain for another year. Dean Bailey would have been kept and Cameron Schwab axed Pedersen, Rodan and Byrnes would all be finding kicks in the local leagues. The Great and Powerful Tom Gillies would be replaced with promising Freo ruckman by the name of Hannath Brad Sewell would be here instead of the long-delisted Ryan Ferguson The list goes on, but I won't spoil it by taking them all.

Chip's been doing that all year. Perhaps he's right, but it's not a good look that every time he is beaten he starts cussing out a team-mate.

There is no coach in Australia who would be able to get this team playing good footy inside the next three years. It's a personnel problem, but draft picks won't solve it because there is no-one to show the way.

How is it a negative?

I don't care that it's the third quarter and the sting's gone out of the game. We won the term. That;s got to be a positive.

There was a time when Fremantle, Geelong and Melbourne were all cut from the same cloth. All three were flakey, brilliant at times but ultimately too amateurish to win anything. The first two have now moved on, leaving us all alone and out in the cold.

Barring no further 148 / 186 type losses, I'd say a victory over Fremantle would pretty much put Neeld right back in the driver's seat of the reality bus for the foreseeable future - unless we somehow managed to pick up one of the Big Three coaches everyone's talking about (Roos/Clarkson/Williams).

I can guarantee you I have more perspective of what it's like to be an Indigenous Australian than you do. I was born in an Aboriginal community, have an Aboriginal name and family (which in their culture does not require blood ties - quite an enlightened idea if you ask me), and my father speaks fluent Youlgu. Suggesting that white folks shouldn't be entitled to talk about the issue of racism is not going to fix the issue. We need to get to the point that whenever a person says racist things or discriminates against others, it reflects poorly on them. Impinging upon a person's right to make an arse out of themselves is not the answer. As to your point about subsidies for Indigenous Australians, I'm absolutely in favour of that - but only if it is applied correctly. Just throwing money at disadvantaged segments of the population is not going to ensure that those disadvantages are going to go away. Of course Indigenous Australians should get subsidies when applying for Uni - not because they're Indigenous, but because they've been disadvantaged by events they cannot control. I could go on about this forever, but suffice it to say I think I have a sufficiently broad perspective to talk in a balanced way about the issue - regardless of the colour of my skin.

Do you even comprehend how bizarre that sentence is? You want to combat prejudice and to do so you want to limit people's freedom of expression.

So you are saying that complementing someone's language skills is MORE racist than calling them names? Of course the real issue is the inequality between races. We all know that. But your first paragraph looks at the issue backwards; the problem is not that white people are treated well, but that minorities are treated poorly. You were treated poorly in Japan, but it wasn't because you were white - it was because you weren't Japanese. That's why I was confused about the point of what your wrote.

What on Earth was the point of that enormous post?

Sure there is. My point is not that racism is good, but that hate is bad. Perhaps prejudice against the content of a person's character is less objectionable than prejudice against the colour of a person's skin, but there's no denying that they're both cut from the same emotional cloth; they both come from the same place and are born of the same primitive "us vs them" mindset that an earlier poster alluded to.

Actually I think it's you who doesn't know what prejudice means. To be prejudiced is to form a negative opinion of someone or something based on some characteristic he, she or it possesses. You can even see that by the word itself (pre-judge). You don't have to hate anyone (not even "met-pigs," whatever they are). In fact, a person incapable of hating anyone for any reason would be completely without prejudice. We've all got things we don't like; it's just that most of us have picked things lots of other people don't like too, so everyone seems to think it's okay.