Ok, that was an ad that popped up.
I’m not sure why… It’s not like I’ve been on Tinder or looking at porn sites where glasses are a thing… Although I suspect that even if I was turned on by the idea of women wearing glasses during sex, I’d be a little bit disturbed in real life if a woman kept her glasses on for reasons that have to do with the whole myth of size being important… (In a typo of epic irony, spellcheck changed important to impotent…)
I guess that the reason that I felt compelled to share: “Mature Educated Singles Nearby” wasn’t simply for the lack of a comma between “mature” and “educated”, but was in fact for my great relief that somewhere nearby were people who were not only mature but also educated, even if their status as single was of no interest to me.
After all, I still remember when Tony Abbott announced that the adults were back in charge and I could help but hear that as: “I’m more mature than you are, so there!” and when someone like that is leader of a country it does make one despair about the level of maturity and education around.
Still give Tony Abbott his due: He is responsible for one of the greatest speeches ever made in the Australian Parliament.
I refer, of course, to the misogyny speech that Julia Gillard gave.
Now, a lot has been written about this speech on its tenth anniversary.
Some like to say that they didn’t get it at the time and they thought it was just her way of justifying the whole Peter Slipper thing…
But I thought at the time it was a bit like the original “mad as hell”, which is from a film called “Network” and is certainly worth a watch if you’ve never seen it. The line: “We’re mad as hell and we’re not going to take it anymore…” was pretty much what Julia was saying. Or to put it another way with the benefit of hindsight: “How dare this man – who will one day appoint himself as Minister for Women – lecture me on sexism? It’s like Hitler lecturing someone on anti-Semitism!”
Ah, Godwin’s Law… a big hi to Barnaby here and his suggestion that the Indigenous Voice to Parliament was reminiscent of the racism of Nazi Germany… Somehow I can’t really see the Voice leading to a massive genocide, so we’ll just have to agree to disagree on that one.
Anyway, Julia Gillard’s speech was dismissed by the Canberra Press Gallery as hypocritical and an attempt to distract from the fact that they needed Peter Slipper’s vote. Of course, none of those insightful insiders thought to mention that Peter Slipper had been a Liberal and there was something just a wee bit hypocritical about the Liberals suggesting that he had no right to be doing anything because of his sexist texts when he’d been a member of their party for years. There are only two conclusions one can draw here: Either they never noticed his attitudes when he was on their side (quite possible, given the lack of attention to detail the Abbott/Turnbull/Morrison government demonstrated), or they didn’t mind when he was voting with them.
Julia’s speech resonated with a lot of women because it probably reminded them of something in their own lives. I say, probably, because I’m a man and I shouldn’t be speaking on behalf of all those women. How the press gallery didn’t actually notice that she was genuinely angry after Abbott echoed Alan Jones disgusting suggestion that Gillard’s father “died of shame” is an indictment on how they view everything through a political lens and don’t understand that sometimes people will mean exactly what they’re saying. When politicians speak their mind, it’s impressive because it’s so rarely done. (Yes, I know someone’s going to bring Pauline Hanson into this but note that I said “speak their mind” and I think that disqualifies her!)
Over the past couple of weeks, we’ve had another great example of the inability of the press gallery to apply Occam’s Razor and accept that what’s being said is actually what the politician means. When Labor were questioned about the Stage 3 Tax Cuts, the answer was always that there was no change to the policy, even though there was one suggestion that circumstances had changed since they were legislated. This was followed by a lot of speculation about how Labor were floating the idea of modifying them to test the reaction. Labor repeated that there was no change to the policy. Various groups from economists to welfare groups said that the country couldn’t afford them; very few people argued that they should be kept. Labor repeated that they had no plan to change them. Now the press is telling us that Labor backed off because of the poor reaction to the suggestion.
Interestingly, there doesn’t seem to be any thought to the idea that Labor may have briefly discussed whether they could do it before rejecting it straight away. There certainly hasn’t been a lot of negative reaction to the idea, apart from the Liberals and their propaganda merchants in some media outlets.
I don’t assume that the policy won’t change, but at the moment it seems like it’s another case of: “Let’s assume that we were right with what we predicted and the only reason it didn’t happen is because something different happened.”
Whatever, I’m waiting for the day that some of these “mature, educated” people are part of the press gallery, single or otherwise!
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