Been There Done That

3 Nov 2017

Would you want to change history, your life, or your body?

Activism, Health, History, Icons, Pop Culture, Visual Art, War

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Would you want to change history, your life, or your body?

In this program, we celebrate the birthdays of gay icons – including our own Phil; Canadian singer-songwriter k.d.lang; Australian politician Penny Wong; and controversial US photographer Robert Mapplethorpe; and note the passing in 2016 of UK pop singer Pete “You spin me round” Burns – from the 1980’s band ‘Dead or Alive’.

We despair at our politicians who choose to ignore the deliberations of our indigenous Australians and thereby deny them a collective indigenous voice through a representative council to advise our parliamentarians. Nevertheless, we celebrate the anniversary of the 1985 decision to ‘return’ ‘ownership’ of Uluru to the local Aboriginal ‘owners’.

We note the British intention (in the 1917 Balfour Declaration) to support establishment a Jewish State within Palestine (a British-mandated territory 1920 – 1948), which was itself carved out of Ottoman Southern Syria after World War 1. It could be argued that a series of wrong decisions were made in those circumstances and has led to dissatisfaction ever since.

Also at this time is the centenary of the 4^th Australian Light Horse Cavalry – remembered as the last great cavalry charge on 31 Oct 1917 at Beersheba, leading to a successful battle against Turkish Ottoman troops. Beersheba is now incorporated into Israel.

We talk about the life-story of Pete Burns, who, like Michael Jackson, searched for physical beauty with the use of plastic surgery, and this theme leads to Robert Mapplethorpe and his graphic photos of physically beautiful men; and this in turn takes us to the influence porn exerts on the expectations both gay and straight men and how they regard body image.

Sleep is also required for inner beauty and mental re-creation. How are we doing, we ask ourselves?

These topics and some humor every week with Chris, Gordon and Phil.