Australian ad-man sparks race row with "dago" comment
We read:
"Outspoken advertising guru John Singleton has been labelled "obsolete" after he hit out at "dago camps" on live radio today, triggering a new race row. Singleton was discussing the demise of Australian tennis on sports station SEN when he remarked: “when we do pick out the good players we send them all to these dago camps and yankee camps and they are never heard of again".
Hosts Tim Watson and Andy Maher quickly apologised to listeners, describing the comments as out of line and a throw back to the 1940s. “Let's be honest ... that was poor form. I don't even know where a comment like that has come from,'' Maher said. “That's trapped in an era long, long gone in this country.''
Singleton appears to have been referring to the Florida training camp of famed American coach Nick Bollettieri, where some of the world's best young tennis talent have cut their teeth. Aussie young gun Bernard Tomic and Mark Philippoussis are among the Australian players to have trained at the camp.
Source
The comment was just part of Singleton's usual shtick, in which he poses as an old-fashioned working class guy. And the usage of "dago" (from Diego) to refer to someone of Italian or Spanish origin is indeed old-fashioned in Australia -- not out of any political correctness but simply because Australia's large number of Italian immigrants have fitted in so well that just about nobody now thinks any ill of them. And for that reason, the local Italian community simply dismissed the remarks.
2 comments:
One would expect speech from an idiot to be idiotic. Besides, if he think he can do a better job training them, why doesn't he keep them at home?
While my grandfather was still alive, he once talked about how "wop" was a term that you would use only if you wanted to have Italians as enemies. Apparently the term originated in the early 20th century when large numbers of them came to the U.S., not all of them carrying papers identifying who they were. So when immigration officials came across one "without papers", they would say, "Here's another wop." I suspect the connotations of the term have similarly died down, along with its use. I don't think anyone in the U.S. thinks ill of Italians, either.
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