|
Verge
|
THE first thing to be said about Tony Abbott's critics this week is that they are liars.
Take Deputy Prime Minister Julia Gillard.
Gillard's eager ears pricked up when she learnt that Women's Weekly, in a long profile this week on Abbott, asked the Opposition Leader what he thought of sex before marriage.
Hello, hello, hello.
You see, the Rudd Government has been desperate to exploit anti-Catholic bigotry in this country and paint Abbott as a papist who'd ban abortions if he could and force children to study Bibles.
Yes, really - that's how dishonest and vile its attacks have been.
But Gillard must have been disappointed by what Abbott actually told Women's Weekly, because I doubt there's a good father who'd have said much different to his own daughters.
Check for yourself. Here is every last word that Abbott, himself the father of three girls, said: "It (sex before marriage) happens ... I think I would say to my daughters if they were to ask me this question ... it is the greatest gift that you can give someone, the ultimate gift of giving, and don't give it to someone lightly, that is what I would say."
Full stop. Read anything to object to?
No. And that's precisely why Gillard had to lie. (I am of course presuming she actually checked what Abbott said.)
Here now is what Gillard said: "These comments will confirm the worst fears of Australian women about Tony Abbott. Australian women don't want to be told what to do by Tony Abbott.
"Australian women want to make their own choices and they don't want to be lectured to by Mr Abbott."
You see immediately Gillard's big lie - albeit one of deliberate inference, rather than bald statement.
Abbott had not lectured Australian women generally. As he'd made clear, his was advice he would give only to his own daughters, and only if they asked.
Nor was he telling anyone "what to do" - not even his daughters.
He was only suggesting what they might consider when making their own decision. Not even to his girls did he preach against sex before marriage.
So Gillard lied. And she wasn't alone.
Predictably, the media repeated this untruth that Abbott had told all single women to keep their virginity.
Once again, many journalists preferred to reinforce their stereotype of Abbott as the "Mad Monk" rather than to tell the sober facts.
Even The Australian announced: "Tony Abbott urges women to save their virginity for marriage."
No, he didn't.
Age writer Gabriella Coslovich even fumed that Abbott's "nauseating" advice showed this "religious fanatic" was again trying to "lord it over" things, "be it land or a woman's body".
"Comedian" Fiona Scott-Norman, also in The Age, abused Abbott as a "one-time drug-taking, Vatican roulette playing, shagabout, white, middle-aged male" and a "pompous tosspot" who was "telling young women not to do what he did when he was their age".
And the ABC's Jon Faine gleefully played a clip of yet another Age banshee screeching at Abbott: "Get your rosaries off my ovaries."
SUCH orchestrated lying about what Abbott said is the real issue, and at least Gillard did not make things worse by also lampooning the advice Abbott actually offered his daughters.
Indeed, how could she? What should he have said to his teenage girls instead? To sleep with the first drunk who asked, for all he cared?
You'd really have to be especially ideological, malevolent or clueless about parenting - and probably all three - to think Abbott's words so silly.
Alas, we have many commentators who tick just those boxes.
Academic Catharine Lumby, the gender-politics expert who for years taught National Rugby League players how best to ask women for sex, actually claimed Abbott's advice belonged to the days when women were "shamed and blamed for having a normal sexual appetite and behaviour".
(I think she means the days before NRL players had group sex with girls who then cried their eyes out on TV.)
Feminist Eva Cox meanwhile claimed he was "commodifying women by saying their sexuality was something to trade".
But no one was more vicious than our resident feminist ideologue, Jill Singer, who on this page likened Abbott to a terrorist ... and a paedophile.
His "tender appreciation of female chastity", she said, "would sit happily alongside that of ... Osama bin Laden".
What's more, Abbott's views were "icky" and "pervy", since "even metaphorically, it's kind of creepy for a prominent male politician to be rummaging around inside the underwear of young girls in search of political inspiration".
If I ran this paper I'd sack Singer for so foul and dishonest a piece of vilification. But when even the Deputy Prime Minister can so lie about a loving father's sane advice to a daughter, who can be surprised by a shoal of savage Singers swimming in that cesspool, too?
|
Forum
Pages: 
