It’s relentless, from the first bar of the cliched piano intro. As the first episode opens, Tim is followed by a bunch of subteen boys who taunt him about his lack of manliness as he puts the bins out. That sets the monotonous pattern from then on as Tim fails again and again to live up to masculine standards. He even visits JG’s workplace with a sandwich. Emasculating! His day continues as a mounting litany of humiliations. Gillard calls him “my little T-pot”. And while the Tim Mathieson character bears most of the weight of the superannuated tropes, as he becomes ever more irritated and frustrated (and as oblique jokes about his manhood are made by the minute) we’re given to understand that JG’s relationship is doomed to failure. A woman simply shouldn’t be under work pressure. Everyone knows it’s the woman who makes the damned sandwich, amirite? Even in the first episode we feel the relationship is so strained it must eventually crack, and then she’ll be all alone with only Bill Shorten the terrier and Bob Katter for company, won’t she? And serve her right for being an emasculating prime minister and destroying her man.

Clearly – still – the idea that men taking the role of partner to a successful woman are pathetic, and they’re pathetic because they are then comparable to a woman, which is terrible, still has great traction. I’m just about to watch Rush: a woman running about in a flak suit with a gun might be frowned on by some conservatives, but no-one sees her as pathetic and laughable. Women taking on mens’ roles might meet with resistance, but it’s because they’re a subordinate moving up. A man taking on (what’s still defined as) a woman’s role is looked on as moving down.

I can’t help but wonder what this meanspirited and patriarchy-fellating little show will do to the real-life relationship. No matter how Mathieson presents himself in his everyday life, he now has the “man emasculated by successful woman” lesson rammed down his throat weekly, and it can’t help but affect how he’s treated by the public when he goes out. I imagine it can’t help but affect the dynamic between the two of them. And if anything happens to their relationship, then the world will be all, “See, there you go, ball buster.”

And I can’t help but wonder how many teenage girls are abandoning plans for a bigger role in the wide world, because you know, it just makes you unloveable and makes your partner miserable.

Thanks, ABC.
 
 
 
Crossposted at Larvatus Prodeo

For those who do not reside in Australia and therefore aren’t exposed to this excrescence day in and day out, Tony Abbott is a man who (1) can’t resist a photo opportunity and (2) has a pretty florid Action Man complex. Every day he’s in a hard hat, fluoro vest, or some other macho uniform pretending to take part in some salt-of-the-earth toil – I haven’t seen him in a flight suit yet, but give him time. So it was that when he was out on the range in Rockhampton with some horsey dudes, of course nothing would do but he must get on a horse too and have a Bonanza photo opportunity. Tones’ Action Man shots are always embarrassing, but this plumbed new depths of toe-curling awfulness. I’m not sure if this low-res Youtube vid does justice to just how bad it was.

You can get on a bike and kind of pootle off and give the impression you know what you’re doing. Sitting on a fast trotting horse – I’ll say it again (yes, I’m repeating myself, I said this about Ian Campbell’s equestrian heroics) is an action which thousands of ten year old girls perform faultlessly every Saturday at pony club, but you need to have put in the requisite hours to learn how to do it without looking like a panicking rag doll. Action Man, having failed to do this, looks a right doofus. You’ll know next time, Tones: horse: bicycle: Not the same thing!

A day or two later, you could hear exasperated noises coming from our kitchen as I was doing pre-work sandwich making and listening to Abbott deploy his unique, circular logic on AM. “Well, it’s very important that this matter be resolved and that this boil for the Government be lanced, [Erk! Do you mind? I'm buttering bread here!] because while the Government is completely distracted by the Craig Thomson matter it’s not able to properly attend to the pressing problems that our country faces…[False - The minority Gillard government is actually getting on with the job of passing legislation and, well, governing, despite the constant Dog and Pony show distractions thrown up by the Coalition.] …Now the reason why the Prime Minister has to deal with this matter and resolve it is because that there are more important things that the Government should be focused on. [Absolutely! So why aren't you talking about these very important things? ...Oh.] But the Prime Minister’s incapacity to deal with the matter of the Member for Dobell means that these other problems just get worse…Blah blah Integrity… Let the sun shine in blah.” He thinks we’re so stupid we won’t even notice that if people are distracted – not completely distracted as he puts it – he’s the one doing his best to do the distracting with his energiser-bunny childish ping-ponging all over the place, both physically and verbally. So disingenuous, and so lacking in the dignity and intelligence we’d want in a leading politician, but of course it’s Gillard who’s always copping the scrutiny and being found wanting.

It was nice to see, the next day, that someone else noticed. “Yesterday, opposition leader Tony Abbott veered close to over-reach…He told the ABC in the morning that ”while the government is completely distracted by the Craig Thomson matter it’s not properly able to attend to the pressing problems the country faces”. He made the same claim later in the day while arguing that normal parliamentary business cease in order for Gillard to make a statement about the matter. The ”distraction” has been generated all along by Abbott.”

Yeah.

Who is going to defend the public system? Not the Federal government.

Oh, we got $24m for maths and science specialists in Primary – that’s less than half the amount the Vic government spent this year running the frigging Grand Prix.

The rest of this post was cancelled due to excessive swearing.

More here and here.



To quote James Bradley of City of Tongues on Twitter, “The level of casual misogyny directed at the PM is truly appalling, and says a lot about those who endorse it.”

There is a well-defined legal process for such projects, developments or activities in a place of national significance, under section 68 of the Environment Protection, Biodiversity and Conservation (EPBC) Act. In early January, before they sent the cattle in, the DSE was supposed to notify the Federal environment minister, Tony Burke. After that, the Minister is required to publish the notice on the internet and invite public comment. After “consultations with the public and relevant ministers”, the Minister is required to decide whether the activity is a Controlled Action under the EPBC Act.

The impacts must then be assessed (and there are already reams of information on the damaging impact of hooved grazing animals on the Alpine environment, such as the 2005 Alpine Grazing Taskforce report and the 2006 CSIRO study into the Alpine ecology, grazing and fire.) Following assessment, the Minister then may determine whether or not to allow the Controlled Action under the EPBC Act.

It is an offence to carry out activities which may be Controlled Actions without the consent of the Federal Minister for the Environment.

According to news reports on January 12, the (Victorian) DSE claimed to have sent a letter to the Minister, but this letter appeared to have mysteriously disappeared en route.

The Victorian Department of Sustainability and Environment has written to Mr Burke’s office advising it of the trial and has offered a full briefing, but it has received no reply.
But the federal Department of Sustainability, Environment, Water, Population and Communities has not received the letter.
”Under national environment law, the onus to refer an activity falls on the person carrying out the activity,” a spokesman said.

The cattle are already in the park, so they were in breach of the law already by mid January. I haven’t seen any calls for public comment by Tony Burke for assessment of a Controlled Action under the EPBC act – anyone else seen it? At any rate, the legal process has hardly got to square one.

It’s wrong. And don’t fall for the argument that as a city dweller, you have no right to oppose it. For one thing, this is a Heritage area which belongs to all Australians, not just a handful of families. For another, it’s your taxes at work.

The $5.50 per head fee paid by the graziers when the practice was stopped in 2005 (calves born while up in the high country travelled free) represented a massive subsidy by the taxpayer to a privileged few families, since the tiny fee went nowhere near to covering the damage caused by the cattle. If the Baillieu government is hell bent on allowing these people to do their damage, will the new agistment fee be set at a more realistic level?

Also, when Alpine grazing was ended by the Bracks government, an ex gratia payment was made by the Victorian government to the tune of $100 per head of cattle for the three years after that, up to $100,000 per license holder. (H/T Wilful.) So we were still paying for them.

Now that Alpine grazing has been brought back, will they be required to pay back that money?

You or I would be sent to the wall if we attempted to do something like this, but for the macho men of the Liberal and Country parties, the law is for the little people. We saw the damage that favours for “Labor mates” did to Victorian governance under Bracks and Brumby. Stand by for government by Liberal / Country Party mates. Plus ca change.

(Transcript)
…As a single woman taking on the role, do you, are you concerned perhaps you’re giving up the potential to have a family? Is it compatible?

I like to think there’s a split second where Giddings gives the journo a death-ray glance before she breaks into her, apparently signature, charming smile. But that’s probably wishful thinking. Like most of our politicians, she knows she has to roll over and play nice for the press gallery, however shit her immediate questioner may be. They have the power to make her look bad. And she knew she was wedged. So instead of saying “what an appalling question, and beside being not relevant to the topic and none of your bloody business, you wouldn’t be asking a single man that if he was in my shoes today”, (Headline that day: Tasmanian PM proves Feminists Have No Sense Of Yumour!1!”) she said

If I had the choices, then, uh, it might be an issue for me, but I’m yet to find that man.

Which broke my heart. No, not because she hasn’t found a man! Because a woman who’s being interviewed on a rather important achievement and should be in a position of authority still has to submit to insults like this and laugh along.

I don’t know who the “female reporter” was, although I have my suspicions, based on level of reporting fail, proximity to Hobart and obsession with femininity performance.

Although Giddings tried to have a red-hot go at talking about her actual policies and qualifications for the job, this was what the Australian put on its front page today – “Leftist Lara still looking for Mr Right”. FFS.

To those of you who are going to say this is trivial and not political and build a bridge, this stuff matters. Sure, little girls are watching and learning that they can become Premier. They’re also learning that if they do, people will quiz them in public about their marital status and sex life and that for a woman, not being partnered or having children is a terrible loss of face. And they will get the message, still, that if you’re a woman and you want to aspire to the top jobs, you risk having to give up the family thing, but men don’t. (And, no, reporting family matters about Tony Abbott or Kevin Rudd isn’t the same thing.)

Journos, I know you’re having a difficult time of it, but is wilfully choosing braindead stupid questions really necessary? And does advancing the male-as-default-woman-as-curiosity narrative really have to be part of your job description?
 
 
 
Crossposted at Hoyden About Town

Hurrah for Ted!

DON’T let political correctness ruin Christmas, Ted Baillieu has warned schools and other community groups.
The Premier said Victorians should embrace the festive season.
He said schools should not back down from running Christmas pageants, concerts and nativity scenes for fear of offending minority groups.
“A Baillieu government expects school principals to take a reasonable and commonsense approach so all Victorian children have the opportunity to enjoy the simple pleasures of Christmas,” he said.
The warning comes after some schools and community groups imposed Christmas bans in recent years.

Ah, “some schools and community groups”. Could some journo – I suppose it’s too much to hope for a Hun journo, but could someone with journalistic credentials please do an in-depth investigation to find out just how many schools and community groups are actively forbidding expressions of Christmas cheer? I suspect the answer might be “very few”, or “hardly any” or “really could not find any examples of Christmas festivities being forbidden as such, just an overwhelming meh-ness about the whole rampant sentimentality and consumerism thing”, but that might crimp the annual Festival of “Let’s Whine about Political Correctness”, or Boltmastide. In short, we have no way of knowing how much of this urban myth is true and how much is invented out of whole cloth, but Baillieu is getting unlimited traction by fixing this non-problem. So important, we’re told, is the Attack on Christmas that the editorial was written about it. “Premier’s Xmas gift to children!” “…Nativity scenes and children singing carols and exchanging cards could once again be part of Christmas celebrations at Victorian schools.” Funny, that, because carols and cards and all that malarkey have never ceased at this end of town.

Anyway, I am guessing our cube jockey, like the Hun commenters, swallowed this annual Boltmas legend whole and had the article displayed so that the exceedingly diverse collection of people who had to visit her office would have their unchristian noses jolly well rubbed in this happy news.

Can we please examine this earth-shattering rescue of Australian culture for a moment, because like most sweeping statements made by Liberals, it contains a pretty illiberal undercurrent. If the new Premier now says that organisations will no longer be allowed to ban tinsel and Santas and Bethlehem dioramas, does it follow – as it surely must – that such displays are now compulsory? Will legislation brought in, and how does that reconcile with the separation of Church and State (if the Federal government’s obsession with funding chaplains and Religious Ed and faith-based private schools hasn’t destroyed it already?) Or will dissenters simply be subtly monstered, like the one example they did find – some Public service wretch who has now been “counselled”?

I have, really, as a person whose mother was a staunch Anglican for many decades, tried my best to think how I might feel if I was a practicing Christian faced with the cancellation of my kid’s school’s nativity play in favour of some other kind of end of year celebration. As church and community groups regularly put on Carols by Candlelight and other celebrations, I hardly think I could claim that had destroyed my ability to celebrate my religious holiday in the way I see fit; just not in that particular place. I might even feel that religious belief and religious festivals are part of the private sphere. Sure, I could imagine I might be a bit pissed off if I was really keen on the whole thing, but I don’t think they would be nearly as pissed off as I am at having my taxes spent on chaplains, RE, and faith-based private schools. You gunna do something about that, Ted? Thought not.

I’ve never been a swinging voter. From the time I was old enough to vote I was a rusted-on Labor voter. Rusted on. Here are just a few of the reasons I won’t be voting for them in the next State election and why I haven’t been able to do so for some time.

Because they won’t commit to a properly funded and resourced public education system and instead, they tinker around the edges instead of fixing the structural problems that our public system faces. This seems to be because they aren’t in their own system’s corner. Instead, they allocate an extra 40% of funding to private and Church schools – a huge slap in the face to the parents who are sending their kids to public schools. And while developers and real estate agents and “consultants” buy new BMWs, they treat our teachers like shit.

Because they have set city against country people by building a pipeline from the already overstressed Murray Darling Basin to Melbourne, which many city people don’t want and which is an environmental disaster from start to finish. Because they are building a huge white elephant in the form of a desalination plant which will be run at least in part on fossil fuels such as coal and gas. Because when the rains came recently, instead of keeping water restrictions, they eased them and then published a photo of John Brumby happily washing a car. Way to make country people hate us.

Because they have signed a memorandum of agreement allowing their police force to pass confidential details of protesters to the consortium building the desalination plant.

Because their “planning” minister, Justin Madden, gives a tick to any project which the consortiums and developers want, over the objections to any informed protest, destroying priceless environmental and architectural treasures as he goes. They plan for sham consultations and then add insult to injury by trying to paper over this by starting a “department of respect”, headed by…? Justin Madden!

Because they are so much in bed with the Roads lobby that they can’t see beyond the construction for roads, roads and more roads, especially freeways. Oh, god are they in love with freeways. As well as the social and environmental damage caused by poorly planned developments there’s the opportunity cost of all the money that isn’t spent on public transport.

Because, speaking of public transport, they spent $775-850 million on the MYKI project, which still isn’t working properly. Rolling stock and infrastructure, meanwhile, is run down and neglected and many Melbourne suburbs limp along with only unreliable and infrequent buses. Those of us lucky enough to live near public transport are still packed in like sardines and subject to train cancellations and random system malfunctions. Meanwhile, our taxes are pissed up against a wall with nearly $50 million spent on a car race.

Because all these bloated projects are carried out through Public Private Partnerships (PPPs) which represent an orgy of profit for developers and unions with sufficient muscle to extract a fair share of that profit. Because they accept donations from the people who profit. Because this is a symptom of how your “party of the workers” has adopted neoliberal, corporatist, managerialist values. As the title of the linked article says, they’ve become a Labor party in name only. Because these are steps down the disastrous road of privatising our most basic needs, like tap water.

Because they encourage urban sprawl, ignoring boundaries set out by wiser governments and destroying the Green Wedges, urban boundaries and city parklands that made Melbourne livable.

Because they broke their 2006 election promise to protect the last remaining significant stands of old-growth forest in Victoria, gazetting acres of low-value vegetation for “protection” while continuing to chainsaw Victoria’s old-growth forest, like the cool temperate forest of Brown Mountain. They mouth platitudes about “sustainable” forestry while leaving areas a smoking ruin which a Supreme Court judge, Jack Forrest (heh) compared to the battlefield of the Somme.

Because although they got rid of Stephen Newnham, they have kept their dirt unit under the new guy, Nick Reece, doing stupid stuff like this. “Super Attack”? How old are their staffers, twelve?

Because “don’t criticise Labor because the Liberals might get in, and they’re worse,” doesn’t really inspire me, and that’s pretty much the best their supporters can come up with.

Now I’ve run out of time, but not out of reasons.

See you at the polling booth tomorrow.

So Stephen.

Your original remark was criticised in the media, and you want to get out of it by claiming you’re just a naive retiring type set up by the wicked interviewer? No. Without minimising the tendency of the media to beat things up, you’re a highly paid media megastar, if you hadn’t noticed. Here’s part of the quotation so everyone knows what we’re talking about:

“I feel sorry for straight men. The only reason women will have sex with them is that sex is the price they are willing to pay for a relationship with a man, which is what they want,”

a lot of your female and/or feminist fans, who love you loved you and see you saw you in many ways as an ally, won’t just point out the wrongness of it – they’ll be hurt and sad. But of course, only your hurt matters. (Oh, and comparing people’s responses to rape? Bonus arsehat points.)

The gist of your latest post – all four pages of it – seems to be that of course you didn’t really think that. In which case, the appropriate response would seem to be “I’m really sorry I made that arseholish remark, I was being flippant and a bit sarcastic and I don’t really hold that view. I can quite understand why being described as cold, calculating manipulators is insulting to women, as well as inaccurate.” What you have said – “there are people out there who actually swallow the notion that I am so stupid as to believe that women don’t enjoy sex. That I not only believe it but that I am dense, dotty and suicidally deluded enough to make a public declaration of such a crazed belief…” doesn’t really cut it as an apology. Because you did kinda, sorta say it, didn’t you? And not only on that occasion.

You’ve simply been asked to own your words. Because just saying you were “taking a thought for a walk”, while presenting yourself as an innocent shut-in who could never have imagined his words would have an impact, is just disingenuous. I’ll spell it out for you. You are a media p-r-o-f-e-s-s-i-o-n-a-l. Your protestations are as convincing as Michael Schuacher whining “Who would have thought that a tyre blowout could make a car spin off course!” You know damn well that when you’re in a media interview and you want to take a thought for a walk, you get your brain to walk with it on a leash.

Now, you want to know why some people are still angry? When you did your silly Twitter flounce, you were responsible for this piece of deliberate bastardry:

[BoganetteNZ: Now after reading this I sent Mr Fry a tweet asking him if he’d been misquoted. Surely he had been – surely someone as intelligent as he is wouldn’t say something so incredibly stupid.
He tweeted to his nearly two million followers the link I’d sent and my name. He said nothing more.
My Twitter almost crashed with the @ comments I got following this.

Just to demonstrate exactly how Boganette “attacked” you, here’s a copy of the offending tweet:

BoganetteNZ: @stephenfry PLEASE tell me you were misquoted and you don’t actually believe this http://bit.ly/aNjbuT

Oh, that’s right, not an attack at all. Just a request for clarification from someone obviously presenting themselves as a fan who’s confused because you’ve unexpectedly retailed a cliche from Misogyny Central.

And for that, Stephen Fry, Boganette got hateful tweets and personal emails for about two straight days from your followers, “FUCK YOU WHORE STEPHEN FRY IS RIGHT”…”"Hysterical Bitch”, ..You get the idea. (I’d imagined your followers as fairly erudite types, but I was wrong.) Forgive me if I take your moaning about how persecuted you feel with a pinch of salt.

You flounced, retweeted one person’s comment to everyone to offer her up as some kind of scapegoat although her tweet was perfectly civil, and you didn’t expect such a pile-on? I’m going to take a thought for a walk here, and I agree to own it fully (feed, de-worm and throw bones to it) if I’m wrong. Perhaps you flounce to elicit a storm of praise from your blog commenters and pile-ons on your opponents. This makes you feel loved. It’s a pattern of behaviour not unknown in the blogosphere, and not one I admire.

You should put your big man-pants on and own your own words – and apologise to Boganette.

No, no Disney damsel in distress narrative here at all.

With a side serve of We Knew a Sheila wouldn’t be Up to the Job. Move outa the way, Gillard, and let the men do this properly.

HULK SMASH!!

Tools getting you down? I know the feeling.

This from Michelle Grattan, who I once respected so much:

“Knifed one day, needed the next…
…Move over Julia. Kevin’s here to help.
…Rudd looked positively prime ministerial when he spoke yesterday.

And the next day:

It’s the ultimate girl-meets boy encounter…His place or hers?

HURL!

…the woman who grabbed his job from him.
(John Faulkner was) a prime matchmaker for this bizarre marriage of convenience …

There’s more, but I’d really like to keep this nice Sunday dinner down.

So, Gillard can’t win. If Labor wins the election it’ll be “she couldn’t do it without Kevin10!1!”. If she loses, well, a chick just wasn’t up to it.

Headzup to the Oz media. You’ve already been called repeatedly on your crap (non) reporting. And I’m not Robinson Crusoe with my disillusionment and anger.

Shape up, please, before we end up with this.