Greg Sheridan’s fantasy night out with Tony Abbott
Whilst The Australian‘s Greg Sheridan was enjoying dinner with Tony Abbott in Lygon St the other night, secure in the knowledge that the government wasn’t busy making judgments about their private lives and declaring them some kind of second-rate arrangement, a terrible thing occurred.
Some young gay people and their friends – the very people that Greg, Tony and other senior politicians were in fact determined for no readily-identifiable reason to insist that the government treat as second-class citizens – appeared in their restaurant and called Tony a bigot! In his own private time! Imposing their political views on Tony’s private life! It makes you as angry as when you first learned that French peasants had rudely interrupted Marie Antoinette with their entirely justified grievances as she sat down to some delicious cake – which she’d even been kind enough to offer them first.
The equality activists claimed they had been tipped off by another diner in the restaurant (the traitorous swine), and when they arrived passers-by joined in the protest. Worse, “restaurant staff members made a makeshift petition supporting gay marriage and presented it to the Opposition Leader”.
No, wait – that can’t have happened. If it had, that would make Greg Sheridan’s piece today amusingly myopic fantasy:
DINING in the heart of Greens MP Adam Bandt’s seat, Tony Abbott might not have expected the support he got from Lygon Street customers last Sunday night.
If Labor and the Greens are losing in Melbourne’s Carlton, the government really may be in for an electoral Armageddon. That strikes me as the only long-term political point to take out of an unpleasant little kerfuffle in Melbourne last Sunday night, when I had dinner with the Opposition Leader…
Labor and the Greens losing in Melbourne’s Carlton! And all because some young equality activists interrupted Tony’s dinner and “banged on the windows” so hard that “one of the staff worried the windows would be broken”. (You can see the footage of the activists touching the windows here, showing just how accurate Greg’s version is.)
Naturally, the outraged citizens of Carlton rose up in defence of their new favourite politician.
One dear, white-haired old lady put herself at some risk by trying to get the demonstrators to leave. But they planned to stay…
A number of diners at the tables on the pavement told the demonstrators to get lost. Not only were the demonstrators spoiling their dinner, these folks thought it unfair that Abbott could not even go to a restaurant without sectarian left-wing haters harassing him.
There you are. “Sectarian left-wing haters” versus everyone else involved supporting Tony. Nothing in Greg’s piece about any diners criticising Abbott. Nothing about the gay activists finding out Tony was there precisely because another diner thought it appropriate for him to hear from ordinary voters he can usually filter out. SO IT DID NOT HAPPEN. There was no support amongst ordinary Carlton residents for Tony being reminded that denying people equality actually affects their private lives, too. The gay activists must have located Tony using gaydar, or some equivalent magical system for locating far-right politicians.
In fact, it so didn’t happen, the support for Tony so overwhelming, that Sheridan suggests “Labor and Greens are losing in Melbourne’s Carlton”.
Greg is a seasoned journalist, so if he declares that “a white-haired old lady” and “a number of diners” tried to save Tony’s dinner (and possibly dessert – maybe he enjoys some cake too?) and that that means that “Labor and Greens are losing in Melbourne’s Carlton” contrary to all published polls and recent electoral results, then, well, that is indeed “the only long-term political point” to take out of the incident.
That’s why Greg and Tony were carried from the restaurant in triumph and cheered up and down Lygon St by adoring Liberal-voting Carlton residents. Young men honked their horns approvingly and young lady university students blushed. Three cheers for Tony and Greg, the crowd shouted. We will never vote lefty again!
Imagine how much Greg’s going to gloat in 2013 when the Liberals get up in Melbourne. Keep an eye on him on the night.
It just shows they were right all along. Why can’t gay people sit quietly in the corner and leave the rest of us in peace while we discriminate against them in the law for no rational reason whatsoever? I know we would if it were us.
One of the more common sorts of comments about this incident is “this sort of thing doesn’t help your cause”. I actually doubt it (directly) does much either way, but it does keep the issue in the first few pages of the newspapers (where I think it probably needs to stay until somebody changes the law)
But it’s an odd thing to say because it’s kind of disingenuous. I wonder what the people who say that think WOULD help the cause. Just going away and not bothering people? Maybe bringing it up every few years in a letter to the editor? Are these people REALLY suggesting that there’s a better or worse sort of argument? Because that implies that they’re open to be convinced, and my impression is that this isn’t the case. I think what really happens is that people just get used to the idea of change over a period of time. The resistance to marriage equality is pretty much irrational.
And I’d still like somebody to actually ask tony abbott what his argument is.
The Lygon St riots?
My defenses are low today, the commentary on this event is really upsetting me.
At the risk of interrupting the flow with some pedantry … the “Let them eat cake” remarks attributed posthumously to Marie Antoinette are almost certainly wrong on several grounds. This hoary old myth isn’t germane to the piece above, and for the sake of the flow, I’ll leave it there.
Why were Tony and Greg meeting in a restaurant? Were they on a {EDIT}
MoC:
From memory, it’s actually a pretty water tight case — something like “marriage should be restricted to a man and a woman because his belief is that marriage is between a man and a woman”. Another equally convincing argument I’ve heard him offer is that “it’s Liberal party policy”.
oh dear the gays are now oppressing them.
The far right wing denialism argument just wont go away. Right wingers argue the gays are intolerant of them, denying the fact it is the right wingers who are being intolerant of gay marriage. They argue black people are the true racists, denying racism comes from mainstream Australia. Right wingers falsely claim all Muslims are intolerant and want sharia law, denying mainstream Australia is intolerant of immigrants.
I am starting to feel a right winger is no longer a political position but more of a mental condition: “upper middle class paranoia”.
Hey Sammy you also left out Hockey’s claim that kiddies have a fundamental right to a mummy and a daddy of the opposite sex. Hockey may need to revisit s#x-ed. ….
Ban marriage for everyone, problem solved. Put that to Abbott, Bolt, Pell et al next time they drag out the ‘Gay marriage will mean people will next want to marry their dogs!’ marlarkey.
Also not wanting to derail: But I always understood “cake” to be a rock-hard dough ‘blank’ which sat under the bread as it was baked. It was an inedible waste product of bread-making and that’s why (even if a myth) it was offensive as a retort to the suggestion that the peasants were angry and hungry because they couldn’t have bread.
Back on topic: Most Australians really don’t care if gay people want to get married. A divorce lawyer might think it’s a great idea to include gays in the formal Family Law system.
I think it’s more accurate to chracterise it as upper class stakeholder interest trading on lower middle class and plebeian existential angst and Stockholm Syndrome-style adaptive behaviour, Dunning-Kruger with an overlay of factitious or somatoform pathology. This is especially evident in the behaviour of their flying monkeys, but every now and then, one gets the sense that even the spruikers may have self-impaired as a consequence of their constant abuse of reality in the service of their patrons.
re Marie Antoinette, in France her remark (whether she made it or not) is remembered as ‘et bien, qu’ils mangent de la brioche.’ Recommending brioche is funnier than recommending cake, but no less cruel (and politically unwise).
re Greg Sheridan’s dining habits, in the late 90s I sometimes saw him in a restaurant in Canberra dining with Alexander Downer (this was through the window, the place was and is outside my price range). I often used to wonder how much money the place lost when those two were ensconced there.
PkD@3, quite right. The “Lygon St riots” will soon be the daily meme on talk-back, just like the “Australia Day riots” already are.
I have listened to Christopher Pyne regularly mentioning the “Australia Day riots” as part of his oft-repeated List of the Crimes of Juliar when being interviewed on any unrelated subject, without once being hauled back by the pea-brained press gallery. It goes through to the keeper every time.
If you repeat a lie often enough, it gathers truthiness.
On the question of the brioche … according to John Wexler …
Mark Israel at alt.usage.english (an old haunt of mine in usenet) remarks:
Note also the following:
That would make the timeline all wrong, though admittedly she might have repeated it. That seems unlikely. Records of the time suggest that she was involved at soem level in famine relief.
I disagree with the stockholm syndrome but I think the hypochondriac angle is good. The body politic has detected a symptom in the lack of marriage equality but like a hypochondriac the right diagnose the disease as men marrying animals and the destruction of society.
Inner-city latte sipping, huh? I bet they both have good superannuation. (sorry, channelling Gerard H) One dressed twenty years too young, the other with a beard, escaped priests, both?
By rights they should been holding up the protest signs.
Pkd – quite.
“banged on the windows” so hard that “one of the staff worried the windows would be broken”. sounds just like another interrupted Abbott meal except….
where are the outraged white media denouncing this riot??
Just replace the word ‘gay’ with ‘black’ in the story and you can see the real cut of these two gentlemen diners…
Reader, I married him.
I’m surprised we don’t have the usual suspects trying to whip this up into the ‘Carlton Riots’ or similar, like the reader who posted over 100 times on Crikey’s story about the events at the Lobby Restaurant on Australia Day. Maybe they’re doing it in the Murdoch tabloids or talkback radio.
That being said, I think that politicians should be left in peace when at home, at a private event with family and friends, etc. Apart from fairness to the politicians as people, disorderly protests when a politician if ‘off duty’ gives him or her the chance to bury discussion of the topic of the protest – gay rights in this case – in exaggerated and often confected outrage about the alleged behaviour of the protesters.
Wow, and the bigot in chief condemns the protestors.
Fuck me, that woman is a lunatic.
Nothing is quite so well designed to trigger a long, rambling, Jeremy tirade against his enemies than an article which brings together The Greens, the gays, the Bolt, the Abbott, the righteous protesters doing good works, and chuck in the Sheridan.
What a fortuitous confluence! Now we know where Jeremy’s sympathies lie with each of these groups and that he is especially green. But is he gay? I’m starting to wonder.
Fran @15 inadvertently stumbles on the dangers of over-regulated markets in her piece on brioche.
Sorta like the carbon market, doncha think? Beware the future.
Was it unfair to crazy rightwingers for me to approve Col’s comment at 23?
Well Jeremy, I suppose if it doesn’t actually breach Crikey’s moderation guidelines, then it should be allowed. Although it’s dangerously close. However I’m sure there are plenty of people here who can bring him to book.
Maybe he’s drunk?
Too much Midori maybe? That is especially green.
Careful, it might require you to start using a brain…
yes we do think…you’re not there yet.
As Col doesn’t think, I won’t ask him to compare and contrast the carbon market with the regulation of breadmaking in 18th century France, interesting as that might be.
The Greg shorley just whipped out the ole card index for those stand-by phrases, re windows breraking and other diners expressing support. None of yer akshal thought involved, just hit CTRL-F7.
… and lygon street’s normally such a staid, sensible sort of place.
I want to know who paid for their “business dinner”; Tony and/or Greg, Rupert Murdoch, or all of us – the long-suffering Australian taxpayer.
My money is on us, given Abbott’s propensity for profligacy at others’ expense.
Literal expense, in this case.
Maybe it SEEMS fair, Jeremy, but did you EDIT HIS COMMENT?
How do we know? How do we KNOW?! HOW DO WE KNOW?!?!11?
Danny such a cheap shot, ( I wish I had made it) but it helps to explain how Tony Abbott ran up travel expenses of $590,000 for the first six months of 2011.
Any photos of the aggrieved white haired old lady defending Tony’s honour by shaking a fist in his face or Kathy Jackson of HSU dining at the next table?
What these silly protestors don’t understand is that the only legitimate way to provide feedback to polticians is through the letters section of the newspaper or behind closed doors with a registered lobbyist present.
Unless it’s the Carbon Tax, then you can do whatever you want.
What difference does that make? It would only concern a bigot!
The brain that a zombie wouldn’t eat
Bingo!
Hmm…and yet AB seems to devour these ermm…’intellects’.
Maybe, ‘profiteer from’ would be a better description..
Captain Col or is it Captain Colon?
Captain Col: “But is he gay? I’m starting to wonder.”
Wonder what? Jeremy’s waaaay out of your league, honey.
Always been astounded that politicians and journalists pal around together like this. You’re meant to be reporting on the people you go out to dinner with?
Politicians of all parties are liars and scumbags. More journalists should take the Taibbi approach and regard them as the enemy no matter what, yet we’ve got the Anabell Crabb approach where we’re meant to let them cook us a meal and try and humanise them.