Get over it!

I am more convinced now than ever, that as a country we are a bunch of apologists trying to appease anyone – at anytime – who may take offence to anything we may say or do - even if it is done in jest.
The latest case of our self-induced, grief-stricken, collective offence comes following news that a group of Auckland Grammar School schoolboys who recently posted photos of themselves on Facebook being foolish in front of Nazi regalia. The images showed the boys, in school uniform, kissing a swastika, making a Nazi salute, and kneeling in homage before a Nazi flag at the Auckland War Memorial Museum’s exhibition.
The boys have now made a tearful apology and will lecture museum visitors about the horrors of the Nazi regime. After the five students and three school staff went back to the museum, where each student apologised to war veterans and museum staff for their childish actions.
This latest schoolboy mea culpa, follows on from a similar one made earlier by Lincoln University students. The 15 students were fined $200 each, made to write an essay on the Holocaust and visit the Holocaust Centre and the German embassy, both in Wellington, at their own expense. And what was their sin? They had attended a student party dressed as Nazis and concentration camp victims.
Now while the actions of both the Lincoln students and the Auckland schoolboys were stupid, in bad taste and juvenile – are people not just being a little precious about their antics? Have we not blown things out of proportion a little here? Have we forgotten how to put things in perspective anymore?
Now, before I am accused of being a holocaust denier or a neo Nazi sympathiser, let me clarify that I think the antics of both lots of students were stupid and silly – but hardly the crime of the century. I suggest a kick up the arse and behind the scenes bollocking would suffice. But do we really need to have the public flagellations to make us all feel better?
In the Auckland Grammar case, if you put five 16 year boys together on a school trip, unsupervised and give them a camera – you are asking for trouble. I think the general public of New Zealand can be grateful we were only subjected to photos the boys goose stepping and clowning around in front of swastikas and not confronted with numerous shots of teenage genitalia!
As for the Lincoln students antics – as a former attendee of that illustrious educational institution – I can honestly say if that is the most bad taste, politically incorrect behaviour they get up to at Lincoln piss ups nowadays, then the place is a kindergarten compared to 20 years ago! I would suggest both the University Council and do-gooders who complained about the students drunken behaviour – take a quick flick through a copy of Lincoln’s capping magazine over the past decade – and they will need to take a wee lie down. If they want to see sexism, racism, anti-Semitism or any other kind of ‘ism’ these serial whingers seem to worry incessantly about – then it will be all in front of them in black and white!
Meanwhile, speaking of do-gooders and serial whingers; race relations Commissioner [now there is a job that screams: ‘I am a professional apologist’] Joris de Bres is quoted that he was ashamed to be an old boy of Auckland Grammar after the actions of the schoolboys. What a tosser! If I had anything to do with the Auckland Grammar Old Boys Association; I would be encouraging the entire student roll to change the school outfit to a Gestapo uniform just to piss off do-gooding Joris!
I would say to Joris – just as John Cleese’s Basil Fawlty (another infamous Nazi impersonator, but I don’t see calls for bans of Fawlty Towers re-runs) famously said; “Go away, you are a waste of space!”
Not so long ago, the University of Otago were running a national advertising campaign extolling the virtues of both the university and people’s reluctance to moved to the city of Dunedin with the tag line – ‘get over it’!
I think that is excellent advice in these two cases. Surely there are more serious and important things we as a country should be worrying about, than what a bunch of silly schoolboys or drunken uni students do for entertainment – silly as it may be!