Michael McCormack is a product of his upbringing. When I lived in Wagga, I came across some of the most entitled, blinkered white bigotry I have ever seen. Much worse than in western Sydney because it was from people who were generationally well off.

McCormack has only ever known Wagga life. He became the editor of the local paper in his 20s. So, now people are *just* discovering who he is, they need to look into Wagga and why views like his develop.

When I taught in Wagga, the Sydney Olympics had just happened and Midnight Oil came out with their Sorry shirts. The principal of the school at which I taught visited my Year 11 class the next day and unprompted, declared that they should have been “sorry” for their performance.

This was a class with the most closed minded senior students I had ever taught. We were doing a book about the republic vote in 1999, and none of them saw the point of having a republic. Nor had an issue with what the principal had said in class.

The Waggans I knew had a massive chip on their shoulder about Sydney. Massive. The teachers didn’t much like me because I was from Sydney (if only they knew i didn’t think much of it either). The students were mostly privileged snots.

Wagga didn’t have a big expensive private school, unlike Orange or Armidale, so lots of the kids at the school at which I taught were mostly angry that they didn’t get sent to Sydney or, more likely for the wealthy kids, Scotch in Melbourne.

The thing is that there’s a lot of great people who live in Wagga. And do now. There are, however, a lot of blinkered people who think that Wagga is the centre of the universe. And these people are suspicious of Indigenous people. Actually, more than suspicious. Openly racist.

When that Elvis loving clown McCormack talks about “All Lives Matter”, he is recalling the attitude so many Waggans have about the Indigenous population of Wagga, who were most reviled by white gammon like Mick, because they were seen to be spoiling the City of Good Sports.

I also read that Gammon Elvis was deriding unemployed people. Waggans like him - the manager class, who edit newspapers or run businesses that make money from farmers - continually talk about “hard work”, as if what they do is actually hard.

So when Gammon Elvis derides the unemployed, he thinks of them in the same way as Indigenous people - a blight on the landscape, not His Kind of People, gathering at Romano’s and watching the rugby. (Union, not league). Or, maybe, drinking with one of the local Aussie Rules teams

None of this would be a surprise to people in Wagga who have grown up seeing his kind of man rule the town. Or even less of a surprise to outsiders, who are shocked to see what kind of place it is. Students at Charles Sturt Uni would know. But anyway, there he is.

Some people really are a product of their area, and McCormack really shows that in spades. Lots of people leave Wagga to gain life experience and return, changed by learning. Gammon Elvis is incapable of learning anything.

All of the comments about Michael McCormack were relating to the old Wagga - the one I knew 20 years ago. Yes, there is a heap of evidence that things are changing there - even when he is never going to. https://twitter.com/joshcpinn/status/1349156123257946112

And this is highly symbolic of the swiftly modernising Wagga, as compared to Gammon Elvis. https://twitter.com/gmpinn/status/1349128925939597315