Andrew Bolt: Blaming Queen Elizabeth for things she didn’t do a pointless, dreary game

Queen Elizabeth’s death has flushed out the haters but why should we try so hard not to offend a tiny minority that seems not to care how they offend millions?

Queen Elizabeth’s death has done us one big favour. It’s sure flushed out the haters, and taught us whatever they’re selling is something we’d be nuts to buy.

Take the race hustlers. The identity warriors.

Just listen to them now.

Don’t they appal you with their agendas and bore you with their games?

You’d think Channel 10 host Narelda Jacobs, for example, would give the Queen some credit for personally bestowing an OBE on Jacobs’ Aboriginal father.

But no, Jacobs, whose mother was of Irish and English background, said she wouldn’t mourn her late monarch: “While the world has united in grief over the Queen’s passing, colonised people have also united over their trauma.”

And off she went, with her list of grievances: “We know that in British museums are stolen artefacts. Stolen gems, diamonds.”

Narelda, get over yourself.

Channel 10 host Narelda Jacobs says she won’t mourn the Queen.

What a pointless and dreary game, demanding apologies for what people long dead allegedly did to people long dead, and holding the Queen responsible for things she herself never did and could never fix, the past being unfixable.

And how can we take Jacobs seriously as a traumatised victim of colonialism, as she sits in her TV studio, dressed impeccably and beautifully coiffed – and enjoying all the rights, protections and freedoms of the democracy safeguarded by the very monarch she’s lashing.

Then there’s Greens senator Lidia Thorpe, the daughter of a white man, yet again abusing the Queen as a coloniser and “oppressor”.

What ignorance. In fact, the British Empire under Elizabeth decolonised, and any country not wanting her as head of state was free to remove her. Australia, among many, chose not to, considering her not an oppressor but protector.

Or take activist Belinda Duarte, who successfully helped push the AFL’s women’s league into scrapping a minute’s silence for the Queen, claiming as a director of the Western Bulldogs that “the AFL-mandated minute of silence imposed a reflection on the impact of her life and reign”, which “unearths deep wounds for us”.

“Us”, for Duarte, being Aborigines.

Belinda Duarte successfully helped push the AFL’s women’s league into scrapping a minute’s silence for the Queen. Picture: Getty Images

But what did the Queen actually do that caused Aborigines “deep wounds”? Besides, Duarte and her “wounds” puzzle me.

Duarte describes herself as a descendant of two Aboriginal tribes – the Wotjobaluk and Dja Dja Wurrung – but says she also has “Polish and Celtic heritage”, which isn’t hard to see.

Naturally, she’s entitled to identify as Aboriginal, if that is how she feels. But why should her choice matter to the rest of us, any more than if she’d decided instead to identify as Polish or Celtic? Or simply Australian?

To repeat: How she identifies is her business, as are her sensitivities. But why are they our business, too?

Why should other Australians, who all have their own hurts, tiptoe around hers and cancel a minute’s silence of respect for the monarch of us all?

Why should we try so hard not to offend a tiny minority that too often seems not to mind how they themselves offend millions of others by, for instance, cancelling a simple act of respect to a woman who for 70 years devoted her life to serving the people of the commonwealth?

Caitlin Moran has not apologised for being crude and cruel. Picture: Lachie Millard

In fact, some haters seem determined to offend. On Friday, Caitlin Moran, an NRL women’s league player and former Jillaroo, tweeted: “Todays a good f--king day, uncle Luke (country singer Luke Coombs) announces his tour, and this dumb dog (Queen Elizabeth) dies. Happy f--king Friday.”

The NRL has banned her for just one game; Moran has not apologised for being so cruel and crude.

And, no surprise, race warriors tend to overlook such savagery, putting their tribe above the basic courtesies we should expect from any fellow human.

Nareen Young, Professor for Indigenous Policy at the University of Technology, Sydney, pulled out the race card to defend Moran, who she claimed was the victim of the NRL’s “overt race and sex discrimination”.

Dear God, enough of this yammer over race, this frantic waving of alleged wounds, this manic hunt for offence, this hypocrisy and this recasting of our past. And enough of this conceit that such activists speak for all Aborigines.

If that were true, then why are two people identifying as Aboriginal happy and honoured to be invited by our Prime Minister to go to London for the funeral service for the late Queen?

No, these haters are unrepresentative even of Aborigines, and in their spite and race-mongering stand as a warning – is an Australia remade to their demands really a country worth having?