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Crying ‘misogyny’ is the first resort of third-rate female politicians and their yapping chorus of media camp-followers. Julia Gillard weaponised feminist whining with her ‘misogyny’ speech – which everyone conveniently ignored was made solely to distract from her defence of her indefensible pet speaker. The same media who guffawed at images of John Howard in a noose screeched like banshees at a cartoon of Gillard as a witch. Then went right back to hooting like a chorus of brain-dead seals when Cathy Griffin posed with severed head of Donald Trump.
They’re still at it: Anthony Albanese, who said that his sole moral compass is ‘fighting Tories’, now whines about ‘maintaining civility’. And the same media-political echo chamber who hooted and jeered and smashed John Howard pinatas are back to fainting like so many Victorian maiden aunts... all over a billboard.
The ad campaign, which reportedly cost more than $100,000, featured a huge picture of said witch – Victorian Premier Jacinta Allan.
She had a black witch’s hat photoshopped on her head, and for reasons unknown, the witch’s hat had a dollar sign superimposed on it (to be fair, dollar signs are probably a preoccupation of any brothel owner).
Franco Puleo, the brothel owner in question, is just one of a group of Victorian businesses who funded the billboard. So, why are the same feminists who staunchly defend ‘sex work is real work’, and relentlessly went to bat for a former prostitute turned politician, suddenly deciding to get all moralistic about the sex industry? Because, of course, they’re left-wing feminists, for whom rampaging hypocrisy is like breathing.
The confected outrage from the uniparty and their media camp-followers isn’t about protecting women in public life. It’s about protecting their own side from the same treatment they’ve dished out for years.
How many little girls would have seen “ditch the witch” while being driven to soccer training or to grandma’s house, or while hopping on the tram to meet their friends for bubble tea in town?
How many would have observed and absorbed it, and along with it, the silent message that women can always be denigrated for their looks.
Oh, spare me, you absolute hypocrite. Jacqueline Maley didn’t bat an eye when a Labor staffer trailed Tony Abbott in nothing but red speedos. Instead, she smirked, “At least he made some schoolgirls giggle,” while making derisive comments about the male staffer’s physique. She also found time to crack wise about Abbott’s “pseudo-sexual puns” and his “hairy chest”.
It’s not just one journalist, though. The same media outlets now clutching their pearls over Allan were utterly silent when ABC journalist Quentin Dempster called Pauline Hanson a “dog” and the national broadcaster ran hours of a loop of a drag queen performing as “Pauline Pantsdown”. None of them upbraided their (female, of course) colleague who wrote an entire column about how she walked up and down the room like a gorilla, “to get into Tony Abbott’s mindset”.
Nor did they say anything when leftists danced in the streets to “Ding Dong! The Witch Is Dead” after Margaret Thatcher’s passing. They promoted a statue of a naked Donald Trump with a comically tiny penis. They led the charge when Brittany Higgins and her husband defamed Linda Reynolds and Fiona Brown, offering zero defence for the two women being smeared. And when left-wing activists stalked former Liberal MP Nicolle Flint, the media’s response was a collective shrug.
Yet, Maley has the utter front to pontificate:
Perhaps it indicates that Australia is becoming like other places in the world, where political disagreement is cause to show disrespect.
And where demonising your political opponent is seen as the best way to win an argument, no matter how stupid.
The pattern is so consistent it’s almost impressive. Mocking, sexualising or threatening right-wing women and men is ‘robust debate’ or ‘satire’. The same treatment aimed at a Labor politician is a five-alarm crisis for democracy and a mortal threat to little girls everywhere. One Nation’s Pauline Hanson told Allan to “suck it up, sweetheart”.
The billboard is not the problem. The selective standard is. When the left and its media auxiliaries spent years reducing conservative women to dogs, witches and punchlines, they trained the public that this is acceptable political discourse. Now they’re shocked – shocked – that the tactic has been turned on one of their own.
The media’s sudden discovery of civility would carry more weight if they had applied it evenly for the last 15 years. Until then, the billboard is just another symptom of a discourse they helped degrade. The witch hunt only bothers them when the broom is pointed their way.
