Every year the Australian Open seems to coincide with a new Margaret Court controversy.
Even in 2021, with players being bundled out with COVID-19 weeks before the tournament begins and many stuck in hotel quarantine, the headlines are all about Margaret Court and her Australia Day AC gong.
What can we expect to be fighting about during future Australian Opens? We took a sneak peek at the inevitable upcoming Court-roversies.
2022: We debate whether Margaret Court should be Australia’s next ambassador to the United States.
Get Crikey FREE to your inbox every weekday morning with the Crikey Worm.
2023: A furore over whether she should be governor-general (for her tennis achievements, of course).
2024: Vegemite releases MargieMite 2.0. Should it really be named after her?
2025: Growing calls to cancel Night Court, her sports show on Sky News After Dark.
2026: Controversy erupts over her planned Botany Bay landing reenactment.
2027: Controversy erupts over her planned ANZAC landing reenactment.
2028: She releases a new book. Just a new book launch? Really. But you just wait until you read the lengthy sections that have nothing to do with her tennis achievements…
2029: Her second tilt for the governor-general job.
2030: MargieMite 3.0.
2031: Some comments she made on her weekly Sunrise slot go viral (for the wrong reasons).
2032: Should her 90th birthday celebrations take place at the Australian Open?
2033: It’s been eight years, but has the Night Court writers room finally run out of ideas for edgy comedy skits?
2034: Should stop talking about Margaret Court?
2035: Some shocking revelations from her tell-all interview with JetPackTennisDaily.
2036: AI has worked out a way to get her in the news this time. We have a 0.000187% chance of predicting what it comes up with.
2037: 54% of respondents to a state-run survey say that they haven’t quite had enough of Margaret Court so we go another year.
2038: MargieMite 4.0. It’s an even saltier version of MargieMite 3.0. Some people complain that it leaves a bitter aftertaste.
2039: Court announces that she will take back everything she said about LGBTIQ+ people. The PM introduces her to the packed, newly renovated Rod Laver Arena. Hush. 78,900 people sit in an eerie silence. She ambles onstage and doubles down on everything she’s said about LGBTIQ+ people.
2040: Nobody is quite sure how it will come to everyone talking about Margaret Court during the Australian Open. But it just happens.
2041: How should the Australian Open celebrate Margaret Court’s 100th birthday next year?
2042: It’s a right royal brouhaha about what the king should write in Margaret Court’s 100th birthday letter. (Yes, we’re still not a republic!)
2043 onwards: We find that Margaret Court is immortal and this will go on forever.
Leave a comment
Let me make it clear that I am the first to endorse humour, satire, and ridicule in respect of public figures; less so for private citizens. But, equally, there is to be a sense of tolerance.
To some, to take one example, there are about 120 injunctions directed against the abomination in the sight of god. That we have legislation to the contrary is indicative of tolerance and recognition of difference but it does not legitimate practices that are deemed abhorrent to some.
There is no prima facie argument that someone returning an Honour has a civic tolerance greater than another party has been nominated to join a given Honour. On the contrary it would seem.
The alternative, for such persons who decide such matters would be to revise the criteria so that Honors might be awarded for A, B, C etc but will not be awarded if the person has exhibited attitudes of the form X, Y & Z. etc.
Yeah. I am sure that some would regard such criteria as a display of tolerance; similar to the treatment of those belonging to specific religions being denied specific Office or occupations not that many decades ago.
We are here looking not at a grant of an honour but a promotion; Scomo has found a way to copy one of his predecessors who promoted a Duke to the giddy heights of and Australian knighthood… Worth a laugh.
THAT act of Abbott’s was the straw that did it for the camel SH. Not the same at all.
One has to have the “right” attitude in addition to a significant public service to be accepted for an award nowadays it seems. The latter no longer serves in itself.
Silly me. Here I was wondering what other public service Court had done since hanging up her racquet… or indeed since her last gong. I didn’t realise brainwashing the religously inclined was a public service.
I haven’t a clue as to her being ‘deserving’ or otherwise. Yet the country is standing on thin ice if political correctness or anything like it is to be taken into account as to an Award.
What people do on Sundays is up to them. I don’t understand the motivation but but it doesn’t faze me either.
*less so for private citizens*. I guess here doesn’t count.
I am still waiting for information about what tennis tournaments Margaret Court has won since the initial award. I can understand an upgrade when an awardee’s contribution is enhanced, but short of services in the culture wars, what has Court done? Or have I answered my own question?
Court has done the COALition the enormous service of consolidating its vote amongst one of its key constituencies; the bigoted and ignorant.
Covered it nicely curmudgeon, and our own resident curmudgeon continues to defend the indefensible. Must have been an otherwise quiet day for Erasmus. Won’t somebody please invite him out for afternoon tea so he has less time time to harangue the bootless and unhorsed.
Props to anyone who gets that literary reference.
Bootless could also refer to crime for Saxon law as in bootable and non bootable offences. In drips and drabs the practice was still about to the end of the Tudors. Few owned horses even in the latish 19th century. One had to be a man of means.
I suspect that I have a few supporters here but the majority have yet to defeat what I have stated. The “standard” : you’re wrong won’t suffice. Do take what I have posted as a whole but I’m not losing sleep.
She just uses her cult (church she started??) to condemn people who are not like her. We don’t all believe in fairies at the bottom of the garden or believe stories written by blokes for benefit of blokes. That is why she started her own because blokes wouldn’t let her be a pastor.
There is something amiss here, god has not been at all kind to Margaret in her old age. An old piece of jerky comes to mind.
That does kind of come across as the garbage women have been putting up with from blokes since forever.
Have a go, by all means, but her delusions and bigotry are enough.
Look deeper, she is the Dorian Gray picture.
Margaret Court has done nothing other than preach to her flock. She decries the lifestyle of a few in the community at her sermons and without being answerable.
She has sone nothing in the community other than create a storm of riducule, disgust .
She is not deserving of the highest order in Australia, is akin to ABBOT promoting Prince Philipp to a order.
Whomever is on and how they come to the end result of who is deserving and who is not, it shoild be and they should be made accountabl e and explain how and why they come to the conclusion.
Out in the rwal world there are morw people whom have more claims to the honors bestowed,also in passing “how did” Muckracker Murdoch get a gong.
500,000 + people would discount that!
As to how the fit are selected is one thing (and, frankly, I have no idea what the criterion(a) might be). For whatever, reason Court was nominated. Now, given current form, she is deemed as not deserving. Odd governance indeed.
She is an ex tennis player for gods sake how does that entitle her to anything in particular ,it is just a sport which she enjoyed.End of story.
My post did not endorse Court ((if you read it carefully)
The nonsense retrospective argument that it was all about sexual equality just dug them six foot deeper.
Remember also, the wise elder directing this farce is David Hurley (AC DSC), who along with the Queen’s Edward Young (KCVO PC), is lending “continuity and stability” to our democracy. Reassured I’m not.
Scientists, philanthropists, social workers, community leaders, these are the people we should honour not sports personalities no matter how much they contribute to our vicarious sense of superiority, they did it for their own reasons not the greater good.
As for her views on whatever, provided they were just that without active promotion surly we have freedom of thought in this country. The article was total fiction based on pure guesswork and to my mind in bad taste, humour needs to be much cleverer than that.
Sport …… please …….. our country deserves better ( I hope).
The guys that risk there lives every year in the interest of protecting others. These are the ones that should be rewarded and not so .uch as individuals as a group.
Each should be meritoriously awarded as individual groupings aka: CFA 2020 for saving and protecting property during the bushfires.
Not some archaic, throw back nor some Right Wing Muck raker whom have done nothing but divide the community.
Yeppp PJ there are more out there whom deserve recognition, whomever puts these names forward is creating division along distespecting those more worthy!