Crying foul of crying fowl

Sorry, but it’s time for another rant.

The “menu” of Menugate, from theconversation.com

Another day, another sexist jibe at Julia Gillard with the usual defence of “I didn’t mean it like that” and “It’s been taken out of context”, and with the usual non-apology of “If I’ve caused any offence I’m sorry”. Well, how is someone supposed to take the insult of “Julia Gillard Kentucky Fried Quail, with small breasts, huge thighs and a big red box”? I’ve never known any male politician to receive insults based on his gender and appearance on the same level. And to all those who cry foul – and in this case crying fowl if not wolf – over Tony Abbott’s bathers getting branded “budgie smugglers” – are you not abusers enabling abusers? I’ve only ever heard two cracks based on gender and appearance at a male politician, to wit:

1. My then stepmother after a few glasses of wine greeted the news of former Deputy PM John Anderson resigning due to a prostate condition as, “Yeah, he’s got a small dick!”
2. My aunt didn’t vote for Labor led by Mark Latham because Latham “had man-boobs”.

Not exactly in the same league as a constant barrage of references to gender, sexuality and appearance is it?

This week started off with Prime Minister Gillard making a speech at a fundraising event where she stated that if Tony Abbott was to become PM, then abortion would be used as a “political plaything” and denouncing the Liberals as “blue ties”. For some reason everyone took umbrage to that remark and thought it flippant. The next day “Menugate” was revealed where at a dinner for more Liberal losers a menu was supplied with the aforementioned Quail remark. There was also some pith about eating your greens “before the Greens take over everything”. Hardly in the same league as Dorothy Parker, Oscar Wilde or the writers of Frasier.

Then come Friday the Prime Minister was against insulted by Perth’s 6PR’s Howard Sattler, who asked the PM if her partner Tim Mathieson was “gay” because he used to work as a hairdresser, and trying to accuse the PM of being Mr Mathieson’s “beard”. Thankfully Sattler was sacked, but is now doing the usual Liberal thing of crying wolf or fowl by claiming he was dismissed from his job because he has Parkinson’s disease. Don’t start getting the shakes now, Howard. To top it all off and make this a week of rubbish, Daily Telegraph columnist Piers Akerman (has there ever been a high-profile columnist in a News Limited publication that isn’t right-wing? Bloody Rupert) appeared on ABC1’s Insiders to say he’d heard plenty of rumours about the PM and her partner’s private lives and was basically trying to repeat Sattler’s theory, only to again offer the usual non-apology when called out on it.

Do I again need to share the link to Dr Anne Summers’ lecture on the barrage of misogynistic abuse, not that it doesn’t already bear endless re-reading to hopefully educate people to make a stand when sexism occurs?

So where does all this misogyny come from? Stupidity is the obvious answer, but how is it allowed to be ingrained and grow in the first place? Why are the criticisms of the current government based on gender and sexuality instead of policies? There’s one lesbian in parliament, the awesome Senator Penny Wong, Minister for Finance; but why do deadshits have as an insult that all women in the cabinet are lesbian? Are these not the same homophobic idiots who repel from the sight of a single gay man yet love to get their rocks off watching lesbian porn? And why is that? Really, I’d like to know as I’ve never been able to fathom that old chestnut of idiocy.

The whole thing is fucked up, and it’s time to end it now as there’s less than 100 days until the next election. For if Tony Abbott and his band of bullying thugs form the next government, then misogyny and abuse will become legislation; even though I’m just a single white male (UGH!), that scares the shit out of me.

Bread and bullshit circuses

What a hard time Julia Gillard has of doing her job. Running the country, trying to get policies legislated and out there and instead the media’s focus is – again – on a sandwich being thrown.

Granted it is out of the ordinary to have food as a weapon (apart from all those old Hitchcock-esque murder mysteries where a wife who’s had enough belts her husband with a leg of lamb and then cooks and eats the joint so there’s no evidence), but how will the PM be able to go to Aussie’s café in Parliament House without riot gear? Bring out the shields, lads – there’s sangers about!

Today whilst on a meet and greet at a high school in Canberra to spruik the Gonski education reforms, the Prime Minister had a salami sandwich thrown in her direction; I could say thrown at her but it was so widely off the mark that even non-athletic and bone-idle moi could have aimed better. In a gale. With my eyes closed. Listening to Elvis Costello’s “My Aim is True”.

Only last month whilst visiting a school in Brisbane, Ms Gillard had a sandwich thrown at her in a school playground for the first time. Again, the sliced-bread assailant missed, and the alleged offender was suspended from school – not before getting his mug all over the evening news – what more could a teenager want? Instant fame (or infamy) and the beginnings of what Max Markson would surely call a “media profile”. Add that one to your show-reel, kid.

And hasn’t the humble sandwich come a long way from it’s unsure and indefinable beginnings? There’s the whole Earl of Sandwich lark where either his good lady wife or his valet stuck a chunk of meat between some bread and gave it to the Earl so he could gamble whilst eating. That’s nothing – try filling out your trifecta slips at the pub while eating chips and gravy without a fork.

Other sources say it was Hillel the Elder, ancient Jewish religious leader (Philosemite that I am – my heart has swooned and my stomach is rumbling) who “invented” what we’d call a wrap now, by putting some leftover Paschal lamb on a bit of matzah. Next time you want to stir up a radical lefty, look them in the eye and with the most deadpan look you can muster, ask them: would you be eating that (no doubt wholemeal) sandwich now if it wasn’t for the Jews? I dare you!

I’ve never considered food let alone a sarnie as a weapon. Drinks, yes – the number of times I walked past then-Lord Mayor and now Queensland Premier Campbell Newman in King George Square with a coffee in my hand hot enough to cause GBH. Instead I behaved and laughed my head off instead when nearly he fell off a bicycle outside City Hall. Unfortunately (to me) despite not wearing a helmet, if he did fall Mr Newman would have no doubt been unharmed by just bouncing off his ego instead. And does drowning in your favourite cocktail count as “death by misadventure”? I’m off to enquire about a swimming pool of gin and a dash of tonic.

So why do the mishaps and unfortunate events overshadow the Prime Minister’s actions? Is it because she’s a woman? Yes – I’ve known of no other political leader in my 20-odd years be abused and insulted for their gender; from being considered “unfit” to be Prime Minister because they’re “deliberately barren” to having Opposition Leader Tony Abbott continue the insult from shock-jock (more like joke) Alan Jones that Ms Gillard’s father “died of shame” and that the “government had died from shame”. The Prime Minister’s response to this in Question Time was the best 15 minutes of 2012.

Yes, I’ve voted for and support Julia Gillard as Prime Minister – sometimes I must be the only young white guy (ugh!) around who does. For more on the abuse the PM cops just because she is a woman, read this lecture by writer and journalist Anne Summers: Her Rights at Work – it is powerful in it’s truth and shows just how much bullshit the Prime Minister gets thrown her way – and, in Dr Summers’ words: “a conspiracy of silence” by the media.

With all that happening, who gives a rat’s about a sandwich?