Germany honours ‘gay Jewish kangaroo’
NewsGermany’s Minister of State for Culture Claudia Roth today bestowed the Federal Cross of Merit on the Australian theatre director Barrie Kosky, former head of the Komische Oper Berlin.
Kosky, 57, was described as an ‘important role model for the people in our country’.
His self-description is contained in the headline.
Coincidence that this SD headline appears the same day that SD slams Donald Trump for ‘ugliest ‘attention-grabbing behavior?
Awarded for services in disrupting Ring Cycles in foreign countries?
It speaks for itself.
A tripplet of identities, oh my.
I’m most offended by ‘kangaroo’. One of my aunts is Australian.
Sally
Spare a thought for myself: I’ve lived in Australia for over sixty years, although unlike yourself, my aunts, not to mention my sisters and my cousins, reside elsewhere.
Both Melbourne and Sydney are generally lacking in kangaroos, but both make up for this by having large and influential Jewish communities, hence the popularity of that Double Bay klezma classic, “Buy me a bistro, Shane … “.
Thinking about this again, none of the three Mr Kosky’s identities are his achievements, like a PhD in science, or a world record in sports, or an award in music. These were just accidents of birth. Yet he is presented as a “role model”.
So, apparently, this is the new cultural aristocracy of the Western liberal world. Though some of them earned titles in sevice (like baron von Stauben, for example), the majority of earls, dukes, counts, barons and princes were simply born into their high social class.
He is known in some circles as Barrieness.
Where does it say that people describe him as a role model because he’s a “gay Jewish kangaroo”. Nowhere. He’s a role model because he’s an international opera director who’s performed everywhere and won various awards, including the International Opera Awards. Your logic (or the lack thereof) is akin to saying that if we present ourselves with our age/gender/nationality, then it automatically means that we support “aristocracy”.
My question is: MUST you bend reality in order to fit what you want to see? Just relax and try to take the attitude that we’re on this world to learn and discover. You don’t need to conform the entire world to your small mind. It’s never too late for openness and critical thinking.
A journalist once asked me how I’d describe myself, and I said, very flippantly, “I suppose I’m a gay Jewish kangaroo.” It just came out. The fatal mistake is you say something in an interview and of course it’s used all the time.
(from an interview in Sydney Morning Herald)
How right he was!
Barrie Kosky is an extremely talented and creative genius who transformed Australian productions into World Class status, so much so that he was poached by Germany. Barrie has the gift of taking a great piece that has been performed hundreds of times and reshape it into something new. He is of the same ilk as Baz Lehrman of Moulin Rouge fame and George Miller of the Mad Max, Babe and Happy Feet movies. He deserves this award.
A selfish “me, myself and I” director, whose favorite line is “This is my show!”. No respect for the music. A wannabe Neuenfels without his genius.
What have marsupials and Mr Kosky in common?