Appreciations and commentaries on the death of Australian Steve Irwin range from syrup to sour.
Lawrence Downes in The New York Times enthuses over Irwin’s inspiration for children to appreciate nature. “But there are far worse ways to view the natural world than through the eyes of a young child,” he writes, “and Mr. Irwin offered a far more temperate version of the classic 6-year-old-boy approach, which is to confront a wild animal, marvel at its strength and ferocity, and then try to hit it with a rock.” In The Guardian Australian-born feminist Germaine Greer writes critically about Irwin. She’s correct to say that “animals need space.” Irwin couldn’t find an animal he didn’t want to wrestle with.
The Grumpy Vegan found Irwin to be an obnoxious bore, a bully, oblivious to the needs of animals who had to put up with his beady eyes and grating voice in their faces. Compare his persona to that of Jane Goodall’s. It’s hard to imagine Goodall rolling about the Gombe forest floor wrestling a chimpanzee. I’d rather children grew up inspired by Goodall’s wonder of nature than Irwin’s macho, blustering manufactured naive stupidity.
