Racism is bad - so is self-delusion

Gotcha. White youths egged on by white supremacists. You can't make a racist omelette without egged whites. Cate Blanchett also subscribes to the Squires line and, no disrespect to our man down under, she does it rather more fetchingly. I'm goo-goo for Miss Blanchett in just about every movie she's made and I'd cut her an awful lot of slack.

But on Friday she toddled along to Dolphin Point on Coogee Beach wearing a white T-shirt showing the outline of Australia with the single word "THINK" inside and stood in front of a banner calling for "a wave of tolerance" to sweep the country (which sounds more like a tsunami of tolerance). And, even as I was still drooling like a schoolboy, I could feel myself starting to roll my eyes. At that point, Miss Blanchett unburdened herself of this great insight: "It's actually very clear and simple. Violence and racism are bad."

Thank God somebody had the courage to say it, eh? But isn't the problem, in Australia and elsewhere, that it's not quite that "clear and simple"?

Mark Steyn