A drawing a day: Redhead strikes
- Share
The image: Tony Abbott’s face, at 20 seconds, and at 9 mins and 30 seconds, into the speech.
Instructive to see how the domestic MSM have mis- or under-read the meaning of the Gillard speech, now a wild success around the world. And Australians do love a winner.
The Age, Tony Wright: “She stuck the knife into Tony Abbott for being an Alan Jones lickspittle and a misogynist. .. And so it went.” The SMH, Peter Hartcher: “All she achieved was a serious loss of credibility.” The Oz, Dennis Shanahan: “Gillard’s … presentation was brilliantly ferocious … [but] risked only alienating more voters disenchanted with the grubby, hypocritical and personal abuse from both sides of parliament.”
Meanwhile, os — The Guardian: “The rousing speech by Julia Gillard … has gone viral. Her anger is raw … Gillard has been called a witch, a bitch and told that her father died of shame for her politics.”
The New Yorker: “So why is this among the most-shared videos by my American friends today? Purely as political theatre, it’s great fun … Or perhaps it’s that we are right now in one of the rare periods every four years where the American political process provides actual face-to-face debate between the leaders of the two parties. After his performance last week, supporters of President Obama, watching Gillard cut through the disingenuousness and feigned moral outrage of her opponent to call him out for his own personal prejudice, hypocrisy, and aversion to facts, might be wishing their man would take a lesson from Australia.”
The Australian media contextualised Gillard’s fifteen minutes of aim and shame into the muck of an ongoing political wrestle; this particular episode involving the repellent speech of various political/politicised figures. (Which is to say, I think they missed the non-political point of the speech.) The overseas press, through their distanced lenses, immediately zeroed in on the universal sense of moral and female outrage: the “double standards” and “hypocrisy” so nakedly named by the PM. As the New Yorker put it: “Gillard, of course, has her own strategic interests here as well—to keep Slipper on her party’s side—but in the process she got everyone talking about something much more important.” And what they saw as well as a female rhetorician in white heat was also the face of a man crumpling, from smirking to appalled (not quite right: disbelieving? discomfited? — befuddled), in the relentless assault of mirror and quotes.
But what set off this conflagration? It’s like that moment in Ghostbusters when they do the thing they’ve been told never to do, “cross the streams.” When the lines of power cross — “try to imagine…every molecule in your body exploding at the speed of light.” With Gillard it was the conjuction of Politician, Woman and Daughter: the sheer political necessity of defending the indefensible Slipper; her personal feminist-female fury at a long period of public sexist abuse; and finally, the until now unexpressed rage over the maligning of her beloved, recently deceased father’s feelings for her. If you strike the Redhead, expect fire.
Please login below to comment, OR simply register here :
Thank you for registering, we have just sent you a confirmation email, which includes your new password to be entered below.
I don’t know what the woman was at the dispatch box, flinging The Weathervanes own words back at him, but I want her to be Our PM.
I think the Australian reporting is also a symptom of the need for the media to appear ‘fair and balanced’. Therefore, if the PM guts stuck into the LOO for hypocrisy, then we a re duty bound to also report on all of the times that the PM has been hypocritical herself.
Of course, what no one has ever pointed out before the PM had to do so herself is the frankly vile name-calling directed at her, which vastly exceeds anything ever thrown at the LNP (no-one has yet found an instance where a Labour person or affiliated person has made political mileage out of the death of a family member).
She has struck a blow for Australia’s economic prosperity, since if women are psychologically hobbled by right-wing values and ideas, or made to stay at home, ironing, Australia cannot grow.
“Instructive to see how the domestic MSM have mis- or under-read the meaning of the Gillard speech”
I don’t see how they have mis- or under-read it. Gillard’s problem is still very much her own hypocrisy. It goes right back to that first commitment that there’d be no salad for dinner under a Government she lead. It was compounded with the commitment that Asylum Seekers would under no circumstances, be sent to a country that was NOT a signatory to the UNHCR – which was used to rule out Nauru but seemingly forgotten when they decided on Malaysia. And it was compounded with her absolute commitment to pokies reform… which lasted for about a week until they got Slipper into the Speaker’s job.
Then two weeks ago, Alan Jones made a comment. Offensive comments – but comments which weren’t sexist, or misogynist (they had no bearing on the sex of the persons involved). It resulted in a full assault on Abbott. The whole front bench were out in full force for two weeks creating the link between Jones and Abbott. Jones got a full rebuke from the Labor party, including boycotts (indefinitely!) of his program because there was no way they were going to be associated with, or in any way support this horribly offensive individual. “Alan Jones should be given no oxygen”, “2GB should consider taking Jones off air”.
And now, Slipper made similarly offensive remarks. Again, they’re not really sexist or misogynist (see Tory Shepherd’s article on The Punch today) but they certainly are offensive. And from Labor we get… Silence. So much so that you can hear the crickets chirping. There’s no chorus of outrage and full-frontal assault. No standing up and refusing to be associated with the individual. No declaration of outrage. Instead, Albanese was sent out to say “there’s a court case, we can’t comment”… about a court case which the Government has had no problem commenting on for the past 6 months (there’s that hypocrisy again).
And then Gillard gives her speech. The problem with her speech is she stood up as the moral compass on what is and what isn’t offensive. She, somehow or another, has become The Defender of Australian Women and Arbiter of all that is Offensive. And yet, here she is attacking Abbott – who didn’t make the comments!! And instead of then taking action against Slipper, she votes /against/ the motion so that he can keep his job. Were’s the consistency? Are Slippers comments offensive or not? And if they’re offensive, why should they be ignored so that Slipper can keep his job – while Jones’ should be join the unemploymnent queue?
We then compound it even further with the round of interviews from Labor over the passed day saying that “Slipper resigning was the right thing to do”. Aye? The right thing to do, after you voted saying there wasn’t a problem with him holding his job? How /on Earth/ does that make any sense??
The problem is the entire speech reinforces Gillard’s hypocrisy and willingness to conveniently ignore anything which might threaten her hold on power. It reinforces the perception that she is a power hungry animal, seeking only to hold on to it, at whatever cost. No principle, no moral compass, no guidelines of decency or respect will stand in her way. Despite her using those apparent principles she alleges to hold against Abbott at every opportunity.
I’m not surprised that foreign media has a different perception – they haven’t been following the Australian political narrative for the last two years. Contenting themselves only to look at the economy and go “well, it’s better than ours”.
OK, so John’s watched a different speech. Just talk amongst yourselves while John goes off and watches the right one. We await with breathless anticipation your updated comments, John.
John64 – excellent post – hypocrisy and Gillard go hand in hand.
Of course this is not entirely unheard of in politics. However, to assume her ‘white-hot’ speech was anything other than a political tactic insults everyone, particularly women.
Only the very gullible, or those already conscripted to that point of view ( Labor politicians) are buying this load of tripe.
This is the way I see it.
Gillard,Roxon,Albernese,Wong and others are boring it up to Abbott.
They hope he will crack because he can not communicate like they can.
Also only Pyne is sort of defending Abbott.
Labour knows it’s under the pump,they just hope that they can cause enough damage and confusion to the liberals and suck Abbott into a slanging match and make him look sexist,etc.It’s a trap.
Worst thing he did is letting his wife defend him on TV.
“Look what a sweet man my husband is”
It’s weak.
Nobody cares if he runs marathons with a blind man,the man does not appeal to anybody.
Turnbull is the only one.
Labor is misogynist too?
Sorry, Abbott has the misogynist vote all wrapped up.
The misogynists will see right through Labor’s attempt to jump on th misogynist bandwaggon.
Abbott’s monopol-y on misogyny will deliver him government very soon.
Isn’t that what the MSM are saying?
Parliamentary Process for you John64. Your Abbott, the man who took delivery of a second sphincter in another parliamentary process recently, your Abbott would need to have Slipper resign too, situation reversed. Though you just keep making your own rules as you go, you’re right, don’t you worry about a little thing like Procedure, Logic or Rationality, you’re vastly more entitled to your own elevated outlook
It wasn’t Slipper per se who was being defended by Julia Gillard’s seminal 15 minutes – rather it was not allowing the parliament to become a quasi court dispensing its own form of justice.
The by-product was an amazing tongue-lashing that’s been a long time coming…
It was a clearly constructed speech which developed an irrefutable argument which was masterfully supported by excellent quotes and examples……..and it was powerfully delivered by a woman who was (rightfully) very angry. I wish I’d had her on one of my debating teams when I was a secondary school english teacher!!
another story about nothing…looking at the photos, at 20 he’s thinking oh here we go this could be fun, then at 9 mins and 30 seconds he’s realized the PM has lost her shit and we are now in crazy town
W H CHONG, what’s with the photo, strike a pose, vogue
Julia Gillard is a brave woman and has been an effective negotiator in difficult circumstances. Her speech was splendididly delivered and absolutely on message. The Australian press didn’t get it, but I certainly did.
akosmand mind the buses whilst wearing blinkers. or not.
Please login below to comment, OR simply register here :
Thank you for registering, we have just sent you a confirmation email, which includes your new password to be entered below.