There’s no putting on a good face when it comes to racism

The past week has seen matters of race and face grab sections of the media’s rapt attention.

Red Symons judging Red Faces on Hey Hey It's Saturday.

I wanna hold ’em like they do in Texas plays

Fold ’em, let ’em, hit me, raise it baby stay with me (I love it)

Love Game intuition play the cards with spades to start

And after he’s been hooked I’ll play the one that’s on his heart

Have you ever noticed that some weeks seem to have themes? (I suppose it stands to reason when one considers that some days are diamonds and some days are stones.) Take last week — please. It was a week filled with more face than a Cambodian temple and more race than an episode of The Drum.

I first sensed this nascent leitmotiv when, making my debut at the Toxteth Hotel’s quiz night in darkest Glebe, I failed to recognise the above-quoted stanza, which anyone who hasn’t spent the past decade under a rock would know is the opening of Lady Gaga’s Poker Face, her complex and nuanced take on probability, statistics and the comparative disadvantages of an inability to read microexpressions in interpersonal relationships.

Like most other inhabitants of Earth, I had only heard the song, conservatively, three billion times. As it turned out, this was merely the overture to the full-blown symphony of facial and racial insensitivity unleashed by ABC radio host Red Symons in his tortured interview with fellow Auntie peon Beverley Wang on her new podcast on identity, culture and difference,It’s Not A Race.

The washed-up Skyhook, arguably most famous for his schtick as Hey Hey It’s Saturday’s gong-wielding deadpan straight man, played the face and race cards with all the finesse of drunken frat boys at a strip poker session.

“What’s the deal with Asians?” Symons inquired. “Are you yellow?”

It was Red who ended up in redface when the clever Wang changed tack, asking Symons about Hey Hey’s infamous Red Faces episode in which contestants performed as the Jackson Five in black make-up and afro wigs. Symons dug a deeper hole, describing it as “alleged blackface”.

While listeners were scraping their jaws off the floor, the maxillofacial infection had spread all the way to Thailand, where apparently “poorface” is the new blackface. Now it should be noted that the Land of Smiles has not set the bar terribly high when it comes to racial and cultural sensitivity. A popular whitening cream ran a campaign on the trains proclaiming selected seats were only for the fair-skinned. Dunkin’ Donuts decided to go nuts with a model in full blackface plugging the “charcoal donut”. Universities are periodically host to Hitler-inspired fashion crazes. And incumbent military junta leader Prayut Chan-o-cha recently suggested Western women wearing bikinis were all but asking to be raped, before grabbing headlines with his outrage at a Thai “luk thung” singer’s mastery of twerking (she subsequently agreed to limit the number of twerks per song to no more than three).

The “poorface” furore erupted after former winner of Thai modelling show The Face Thailand, Natthaya “Grace” Boonchompaisarn, 22, posted an image from her fashion shoot for international brand Jil Sander that shows her slouched on a street corner in hobo chic, clutching a greasy fast food bag, hand outstretched with a sign explaining “Homeless just trying to get through the day, help appreciated, thank you”.

Amazing, Grace. Amazing that a global brand like Jil Sander could green light a concept that sounds more Adam Sandler and brings to mind the “Derelicte” campaign run by evil fashion genius Mugatu (Will Ferrell) in Zoolander, amazing that anyone would publish it, and amazing that it has been liked by 22,000 people out of the half a million fans who follow the model on Instagram.

Amazing, face. Amazing, race. It was the late, great David Bowie who urged us to turn and face the strange, and though he may not have wanted to be a richer man, I don’t think he would have dug taking the piss out of the poor.

As for janus-faced Symons, who has come over all contrite since his Wang slapdown, I’d suggest he heed the advice of Bowie’s China Girl, who when he got excited would say, ooh baby, just you shut your mouth. She says, shhhh.