Sarah Palin isn’t the breath of fresh air her followers portray her to be. In fact, her entire political story has been done before, by a redheaded fish & chips shop owner in 1996 who tired of her Australian government conducting ‘business as usual’ and decided to take on the ‘big boys’, single-handedly. She may not have faked a pregnancy or paraded her children in front of news cameras, but she did drape herself in the flag, complain about her government in a loud, screechy voice and bilk a lot of donations from fellow countrymen.
The following excerpt is from a dynamic summary of Pauline Hanson’s rise to fame. It reads just like a page out of Sarah Palin’s playbook. I encourage every American to read it before deciding whether to politically support Sarah Palin or not.
[Click here to read the entire post ]
The Perils of Pauline: Pauline Hanson’s One Nation Delivers A Dangerous Wake Up Call To Australia’s Left
ANDREW HAMMER & JERI STANTON
The story of Pauline Hanson’s One Nation
In 1996, Pauline Hanson, the operator of a small fish and chip shop, decided to run for the Australian parliament. She made this decision after becoming fed up with politics-as-usual, and feeling that the existing parties just didn’t represent the interests of Australia’s hard working masses. At least that’s the story as she tells it.
The real story is a bit more revealing…
Photos and links to Pauline Hanson and One Nation:
One Nation (the voice of the people) is a trademarked brand name. Considering Sarah Palin has applied for a trademark on her own name claiming it as a brand name, I find it odd that she would impinge the rights of someone else’s trademark. Oh wait. No I don’t. This is Sarah.
Pauline Hanson draped herself in the Australian flag a good ten years before Palin. And felt just as entitled.
Australian Gays treated Pauline with the same irreverance as American Gays treat Sarah. Coincidence?
Simon Hunt is a media critic and faculty member at the University of New South Wales, Australia. He’s also a gay man and a music producer. When Pauline Hanson and her One Nation party launched a racist campaign for parliament devoted to stopping Asian immigration, denying rights to aboriginals, subsidizing medical care for whites and ceasing foreign aid, Hunt was inflamed. He did what he knew best– used some a PC to cut together a satirical song called “I’m a Backdoor Man.” The highly danceable track was a cut-up of samples of Pauline Hanson’s voice, and put back together in a way that mocked her agenda. Hunt released it under a drag pseudonym, Pauline Pantsdown.
In 2007 Hanson shifts her focus from Aboriginals to Muslims, re-energizing her base with warnings of Islamic immigrants taking over and smothering out the Christian Right whom she claims naturally belongs here – while the immigrants do not – and begins chastizing the government for not adopting stricter immigration laws. Sound familiar?
Herald Sun 17 March 2007
PAULINE Hanson will urge major political parties to stop the flow of Muslim immigrants into Australia when she launches her bid to become a senator this year.
She didn’t get to be Senator in 2007 however as that’s the election that landed Ms. Hanson in jail for voter fraud. It seems more people voted than actually lived in certain communities – a fascinating story in and of itself complete with intrigue and backstabbing. About a year into her jail time however, certain evidence came to light which showed Ms. Hanson was innocent of the charges and she was subsequently released, all charges dropped. A trusted benefactor was to blame. Ms. Hanson faded into the background and reappeared last year to make a final, failed bid for re-election but the public just really isn’t into her that much any more. First because a lot of people feel while proven innocent, she should have been more aware of what was going on inside her own party. Second because some people feel that when you are the captain of a team and the team screws up – you belong in the penalty box with your mates.
And third – and perhaps more importantly, Pauline Hanson wasn’t re-elected this time because there just aren’t as many bigots around these days as there once were. The world is growing up. Thank goodness.
I found this 1999 political cartoon in an old Australian government archive:
It’s a cartoon of Pauline Hanson staring down an Aboriginal woman, making her stand on who does and who does not belong in her-defined Australia, absolutely clear. Scarey, no? I have the feeling, though, if and when Ms. Hanson realizes Sarah has hijacked her “One Nation” campaign a second cartoon will emerge looking more like this:
My sincere apologies to both artists – Alan Charles and Brent Noel for the merging of their cartoons. but it was for a good cause, right?
Please, please, please take a few minutes to read the first link in this post. This one. The opening paragraphs are critically important because while we may spend a lot of time laughing at these insane women – we can’t afford to ignore them.
May 27, 2011 at 2:16 pm
Yes Oz, I also noticed the similarity between
Parlin and Hanson, many a time I have posted about it.Even Hanson connection with Murdoch
and his paper The Australian. Now that One Nation bus tour. How all the old men in Aussie were in love with her.
A least Sarah sent her daughter to Dancing with Stars. Pauline performed herself.
If you want to read more about Hanson and Murdoch just Google both their names together it will tell the full story.
Hope you are not to cold at the Gold Coast.
The day are lovely here but nights are cold and I am north of you Gladstone.
.
May 27, 2011 at 6:07 pm
But at least Pauline was able to run a fish and chip bar – and stuck to it.
May 27, 2011 at 6:20 pm
rofl @ Doubting Thomas – agreed!
And actually, in reading her past speeches – had Pauline just stuck to advocating for Australian jobs not to be sent overseas and left the bigotry out of it, she might still be electable. She wasn’t uneducated, she spoke clearly and in complete sentences and actually had ‘ideas’ to share.
I often wonder when I encounter someone as absolutely xenophobic as Pauline – how did they get there? What awful personal experience or race-bashing were they exposed to growing up that led them to that place where people not with your same skin colour are such a threat?
@moseyon – I’ve always wanted to travel up your way! Maybe someday hubs and I can take some road trips and we’ll lob onto your doorstep
Oh and I didn’t think Pauline did too bad on A-DWTS – did you?
May 27, 2011 at 10:25 pm
I’m gobsmacked! This is almost too much for me to absorb. How many more of these evil twins are running around our planet?
May 27, 2011 at 11:04 pm
I hope God throws away that mold! It’s broken.
May 27, 2011 at 11:25 pm
ROFL! Wow Oz like you my first thought when I saw Palin’s bus tour name was LOL Pauline Hanson! Phrases like ‘One Nation’ are to me discreet appeals to fascism and nationalism, so no wonder Palin liked it and chose it!
And what a flashback; I’d forgotten about Pantsdown and that song! I used to love it but was just a kid when it was out so I’d long forgotten. He’s actually a dead ringer for Pauline!
Oh and Americans, you HAVE to watch video of Pauline and hear her voice. Yes, Palin has a red headed Australian twin but thankfully she was always a laughingstock with 90% of the population and please don’t judge us by that horrible woman!
I had a recent encounter with a Hanson fan (very similar to the uber afraid Tea Partiers) when my car was out of commission and I was forced to use public transport in an unsavory part of Adelaide. An old man sat down next to me at the stop and started what I thought was a pleasant conversation, which quickly turned into a rant against the government and how fat Vanstone was/is. I smiled politely and the man began to work into a fury about how Hanson was the only hope and how stupid the country was to throw her under the bus. By this point I was growing a little frightened, and seeing a train approaching across the interchange, made a quick excuse and tore off to jump onto it to escape despite actually needing a bus. I imagine it went down similar to how meeting a Palinbot in the US might go down..
May 27, 2011 at 11:32 pm
I’ve said it time and again, Sarah Palin is as Ugly Alaskan as she is an Ugly American.
She holds her marriage to an 1/8th blood quantum Yup’ik man up as her record on diversity without actually having done anything for The Last Frontier’s First People. She told a lone black man on the 2008 campaign trail asking her what she’d do to improve the Republican Party’s appeal to minorities – in a bizarre non-sequitor word salad way, that Todd lived with discrimination every day in Alaska and they (Alaska) needed to do better. WTF? I’d like to know how blue-eyed Todd ever suffered discrimination, except for jokes at his heritages expense in the Wasilla High School locker room that he probably engaged in himself?
At a press conference, an Associated Press reporter caught her saying “They didn’t support me, so why should I fight for them?” when asked about Subsistence Rights for Natives over All Alaskans and Sport Hunters.
Her editor told her that under so uncertain terms, she was not to print that quote. This reporter told me that the Alaska Media wanted this woman to be Governor.
She is from the Valley, which is Alaska’s Bible Belt of white supremacy/exceptional mentality. Sarah couldn’t stand Eskimo and Indian people and pretended to not see them so as not to have to shake their hands or make small talk with them. Unless a camera was around. She’s even been known to say that Eskimo’s are the Arabs of the North (read, A-Rabs.)
Early on as Governor, she went out to New Stuyokok in Todd’s region to see why they suffered 8 preventable deaths in a matter of months. She said that villages (rural) areas would not be forgotten under her watch (as Governor.) It was a nice show, but her solution was to task the only Native Commissioner – Alaska’s top cop Walt Monegan, to draw up an aggressive public safety plans. They even went back to New Stu to present the plan. Before he could even get the funding for it, Sarah decided that he wasn’t doing enough to kiss her ass and fire her ex-brother-in-Law who was under his command – and unceremoniously fired him.
The Villages were left behind. But she used her post-resignation speech junkets to travel the State to remote, Native lands to create footage and stills to sell her narrative for what became Sarah Palin’s Alaska on The Learning Channel.
Everything she’s ever done has never been altruistic. It was cunning, conniving, devious and self-serving. Don’t believe a word that comes out of her mouth, unless it’s nasty and part of her trade-mark throwing of elbows.
May 27, 2011 at 11:33 pm
This is very interesting, but then again, we all now Sarah Palin does not have an original bone in her body and is just a one-trick hack.
May 27, 2011 at 11:51 pm
Sarah keeps reminding me of the 1970s beauty queen named Anita Bryant, a former Miss Oklahoma, who became a voice against homosexuality after leading a campaign to repeal a Miami-area gay rights ordinance.
She was famously quoted as saying, “If gays are granted rights, next we’ll have to give rights to prostitutes and to people who sleep with St. Bernards and to nail-biters.”
Maybe in her first run for city council, she had good intentions, but once she got a taste of power – her self-serving nature reared its ugly head and she exploited conservative peoples base fears to elevate her stature as a non-threatening political figure to working white folk.
Her opposition to homosexuality, immigration, welfare, Christianity, abortion, all these hot-button social issues were her only credentials over seasoned and reasoned qualified opponents.
May 28, 2011 at 12:40 am
From a fellow Aussie living in the States – thanks Oz Mudflats for the trip down memory lane!!!
Let’s hope our American friends will treat Palin with the same disdain as we did with Pauline “Please explain?” Hanson.
May 28, 2011 at 12:46 am
As a teenager way back in umm… well, the olden days, I thought about a career as a singer. I even went agent shopping but after the third one told me I had a voice for country western (but I could never wrap my head around the whole “Drop-kick me Jesus Thru the Goal-Post of Life” thing)I took a pass.
It has given me pause to think however on many occasions when I listen to folks like Anita Bryant (omg yes I remember the OJ queen of Florida!)- do they really mean what they preach? Or did someone just give them the nod that if they win over the conservative base with certain expected rhetoric it’s an easy avenue to big-paying careers?
I’m from the ‘forget college, find a need and fill it’ generation where we were sold the bill of goods that if we just found the right gimmick we’d be set for life. And a lot of today’s politician’s – to me – sound like they read the same irresponsible ‘how-to’ books.
May 28, 2011 at 8:02 am
I’ve always thought Sarah was the evil twin to Pauline.
My grandson was about 4 when Pauline was sproting her vile hate, his father is aboringnal and his Mum white the hateful things that were said to my daughter were shameful and to this day I think anyone who supported Pauline should hang there heads in shame.
June 1, 2011 at 4:15 pm
Any American would not be so ignorant as to think Sarah Palin hijacked Pauline Hanson’s party name. It’s obvious to us that Palin was inspired by the American Pledge of Allegiance, which every kid recites, hand on their heart, at school: “I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America, and to the republic for which it stands, ONE NATION under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.”
June 1, 2011 at 9:58 pm
@Simon
“One Nation” is the registered trademarked name of a currently active political party belonging to the party and its founder, Pauline Hanson.
However it is you’d like to cut the cake, the name “One Nation” is already owned and the people responsible for putting this ad campaign together for Sarah should have done a better job of vetting their proposed project titles so as not to infringe upon someone elses’s trademark.
In truth, I don’t even know if trademarks are recognized internationally or not – but I do know advertising – and I’m reasonably sure that if I were to run an ad campaign for a soft drink and call it Seven-Up there would be a corporation all over my ass with cease and desist orders backed by a lawsuit.
I also happen to know that – in advertising and public promotions – using a name that is already tainted by and associated with racism and bigotry is really bad for your client’s image and whoever is running Palin’s ‘tour’ did not bother doing his homework before plastering a name associated by at least two other western countries to mean ‘racist bigot’ above the US constitution and flag.
“One Nation Under God” would have eliminated the gaffe altogether – although historically ‘under God’ wasn’t added to the pledge of allegiance until the 1940′s/50′s.
June 2, 2011 at 1:22 pm
@ozmud
This is really just a cultural misunderstanding. One saying to remember is “context is everything”. To Australians it may be associated with right-wing beliefs and racism, but it doesn’t mean that in America or even to the rest of the world.
“One Nation” is not an internationally registered trademark. Political parties are nothing like international companies with trademarked products. A political party only needs to register with the electoral authority of their own country, and are not recognized by other nations.
Americans (or even Europeans or Africans) don’t know or care, or need to care about Australian political language.
To expect anyone in the US, who has not specifically studied Australian politics to know who the hell Pauline Hanson is, or her One Nation party, is totally unrealistic. You overestimate Australia’s importance and impact in the world. Some intelligent people in Asia may vaguely recall Hanson from the news back in the 90s, but I dare you to travel the world and ask any common person who or what Hanson or One Nation is.
Do you seriously think that American (or even British, Polish, Portuguese or whatever) politicians should research the politics of other countries before writing a slogan for a domestic political campaign? Are they really expected to track down the names of obscure foreign minority parties?
And which foreign usage of the phrase “one nation” should have most concerned Palin? The Israeli left-wing One Nation party (dissolved 2005), or perhaps the music album “One Nation” by the Dutch pop group Dance Nation?
Names and phrases will mean different things in other countries. Just look at the difference between the Canadian Liberal Party and the Australian Liberal Party.
What we have here is a case of the internet and globalization causing an inflated sense of Australia’s standing and importance in the world.
Australia is a small nation of 22 million people. Most people around the world wouldn’t be able to even name the two main parties in Australian politics, let alone a minority party with no members in the federal parliament. Travel around and you’ll find even well educated people from Europe or Asia only able to think about kangaroos, koalas, and beaches, when they think about Australia.
The phrase “one nation” doesn’t conjure up right-wing politics to people outside Australia. In America it is undeniably a reference to the pledge of allegiance, and brings to mind bipartisan patriotism, unity, and belief in American values, such as democracy and freedom of speech.
What is clear from this whole misunderstanding is that you shouldn’t go around imposing your own nation’s political terminology on the world.