"The Northern Rivers Echo": Rudi Maxwell editorial that speaks to the female experience

The Northern Rivers Echo latest editorial giving a good example of why North Coast women don't admire the monosyllabic. Congratulations to its author.

Poetic justice for colourful language

Poets are brave.
To bare your emotions and stories in a poem is to take a real risk.
I went to the Live Poets at the Rous Hotel last week, headlined by Echo reviewer Geraldine Bigelow and former Echo reviewer Christine Strelan.
What brave and amazing women.
Performing your poetry in front of an audience of your peers takes guts. Telling a personal story in verse takes creativity, imagination, precise timing, thought and hard work.
And these women do it with humour too.
Poetry can inspire and, at its best, it makes you think.
I’m a great admirer of language and its many different forms of expression. And I’m totally in awe of anyone fearless enough to put their personal stories up for discussion and criticism.
In stark contrast to the poetry readings of the night, prior to entering I was standing outside the pub with a female colleague when a ute full of young men drove past.
One of them leaned out the window and yelled “sl*t”, to which my response obviously should have been, “why thank you, young man, that’s the most flattering comment I’ve ever heard, would you please pull your car over to the side of the road so my associate and I can jump in the back of your charming vehicle and take it in turns to have s*x with all of you?”
Why do young men, particularly in groups, think it is acceptable to behave aggressively to strangers?
Apart from the basic rudeness, it’s the lack of imagination that’s so extraordinary. Don’t these children watch South Park or read Paul Keating’s opinion pieces in The Sydney Morning Herald? Haven’t they been following Stuart Littlemore QC’s defence of Mercedes Corby and attack on Jodie Power?
Even ridiculous radio shock jocks manage to be originally insulting occasionally (mainly when they mix up their cliches and mangle their metaphors into clumsy combinations that not only insult their intended subject but are also an affront to language itself) so it can’t be beyond even the most ill-informed, bundy-and-coke-in-a-can swilling, roo-r**ting misogynist. What these boys need is to hear some original language. They should go and listen to some poets and find some inspiration.
And the next time I hear a voice yelling out of a car window I hope it has more to express than a single word denigrating women.
Ignorant, small-appendaged, loud-mouthed, pack-minded, devolved, prisoner-or-alcohol-abuse-problem-in-waiting bores who wouldn’t know how to hold up their end of a conversation with a Shakespearian monologue. D**kheads. [edited to placate the filters]