Tony Abbott: The Finer Points of Idiocy in Public

With the approach of yet another Australian Federal election it becomes the right and privilege of bloggers around the country to bag out the candidates. In accordance, here is the sordid little history of Tony Abbott, and some of the highlights of the two decades he has spent ritualistically assassinating his own public credibility - seemingly without political repercussions bar being nominated as the Coalition candidate for (gulp) our next Prime Minister.

You're laughing already, aren't you, bitch?

Here is a collection of some of Tony's most memorable public statements, foibles, and episodes of apparently total public idiocy.

Back to your Ironing, Woman! (2010)

Tony was having a good old chin-wag with a country local dry-cleaner earlier this year about the proposed Emissions Trading Scheme. Being the sort of guy that he is, Tony thought he'd put in the terms of an ordinary person. This comment was taped:

What the housewives of Australia need to understand, when they're doing the ironing is if they get it done commercially it's going to go up in price, and their own power bills when they switch the iron on are going to go up.

When his comments were criticised for being old-fashioned and sexist, Tony did little to reassure angry women, standing by his comment and claiming that his wife did all the ironing in house. When the predictable backlash occurred, Tony organised a film crew to follow him to a laundromat, where he learned to use an iron for the first time in his life, at the tender age of 52.

The Dying Man is Pulling a Stunt (2007)

Specifically, this guy:

His name was Bernie Banton, and he was dying from advanced asbestosis and mesothelioma. Here's a visual aid to put that into perspective:

Banton was a social justice campaigner representing thousands of workers who had been exposed to asbestos and other dangerous building materials in previous decades. During the lead-up to the 2007 Federal Election, Banton had been compiling an enormous community petition to try to have a new mesothelioma medication added to the Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme - in other words, so that those who needed the drug could afford to get it.

Understanding the delicacy of the situation, Tony accepted to meet Banton at his electoral office and receive the petition - and then basically blew the meeting off cause he was interstate. Rather than apologise, Tony labelled the event as a stunt, and stated;

I know Bernie is very sick, but just because a person is sick doesn't mean that he is necessarily pure of heart in all things.

For the record, Bernie died three days after the election.

Gay People Are Threatening (2010)

Tony has never made it a secret that he feels this way, repeatedly opposing gay marriage, access to IVF for gay couples, and generally any extension of social recognition to homosexual relationships. To this day he remains unashamed of his standpoint, as recently evidenced by the failure of his tongue to communicate with his brain in a 60 Minutes interview. Upon being asked how he felt about homosexuality, Tony replied;

I probably feel a bit threatened... as so many people do.

He "clarified" this comment the following day, stating that:

There is no doubt that (homosexuality) challenges, if you like, orthodox notions of the right order of things.

I suppose the one thing that the guy has going for him here is that he can actually admit he's a bigot. Unfortunately, he seems to think that everyone else is, too.

And it's a shame, cause he would fit in perfectly at Mardi Gras.

Tony Wins! (2002-present)

The Ernie Awards are to a political honour what the Razzies are to the Oscars. M0re specifically, the Ernies are annual awards for Australian men who make the most sexist, misogynistic, or otherwise unhelpful remarks about women. They've even compiled a book of this crap.

Tony, who seems to have a peculiar dislike for women's policy issues, was "honoured" with the 2002 Silver Ernie for Politics, for stating that a paid maternity leave scheme would happen "over this government's dead body!". He has been awarded four "Repeat Offender" Ernies in 2002 and 2005-7, and was also nominated for the Gold Ernie for his 2004 comment that "abortion in Australia has been reduced to a question of the mother's convenience."

There's a hot tip out there that he might well be re-nominated this year. If not for the ironing board remark, then for his bafflingly hypocritical statement to the Australian Women's Weekly that young women should consider their virginity to be a "precious gift" they should not give away lightly. Hypocritical? Well, yes, in light of...

The Phantom Love-Child (2004)

In 2004, a young man who had been adopted as a baby went in search of his biological parents. He found his mother, who directed him to the man she thought was the father - Tony Abbott, who it seemed had fathered a baby boy at the age of 19. Tony found himself in a peculiar and delicate situation - a son he had never met, a media pack swarming around his every door, and the need to reconcile the current scandal with his heavily self-promoted image as a Christian family man.

He ended up using his reconciliation with his son to promote his anti-abortion, pro-adoption stance - conveniently, in the run-up to the parliamentary vote on RU486. He published several mushy interviews expressing his delight in finally meeting his "long-lost son", and condemning how "callow" he was to put the child up for adoption in the first place.

In all the excitement, nobody bothered to wait for the results of the DNA test. By early 2005 it had become apparent that Tony bore no biological relationship to his widely publicised "son". Tony was left with a soiled reputation and no long-lost family members to show for it.

Don't Believe Me (2010)

As though in an attempt not to merely piss all over his credibility but actually stomp it into the ground and bulldoze it into submission, Tony came out with this purler on the ABC's 7:30 Report. Inexplicable failures of grammar and thought processing do little to mask the brilliance of this half-hearted admission to lying during interviews;

Politicians are going to be judged on everything they say, but sometimes, in the heat of discussion, you do go a bit further than you would if it was an absolutely, ah, calm, considered, prepared, scripted remark.

Which is one of the reasons why the, the the statements that need to be taken absolutely as, as gospel truth is those carefully prepared, scripted remarks.

You have it from the horse's mouth.

Horton vs. Roe vs. Wade

Anyone who's ever spent time with a kid should worship Dr Seuss. I do. No other children's author has every quite matched Seuss for style; the guy has a back catalogue of over 60 books, and the 222 million copies sold are jam-packed with some of the most original and bizarre characters and stories every created, which not only entertain children, but teach them to read, act as a diction trainer and impart gentle moral lessons - and all without ever sounding preachy or boring. Seuss (actually born Theodor Seuss Geisel) gave up the twin worlds of Preachy and Boring when he decided to throw in the towel as a political cartoonist, and start writing and drawing for an audience who might actually, well... learn something.

Some of the lessons sink in early, such as; try new things, you might like them (Green Eggs and Ham); and sometimes the best thing to be is yourself (I Wish That I Had Duck Feet).

Others come quietly in their wake. Protect the trees (The Lorax); and don't judge people who look different from you (The Sneetches). Seuss didn't stop at environmentalism and race-relations. He railed against materialism in How The Grinch Stole Christmas, against fascism in Yertle the Turtle*, and provided some fairly unclear advice to young boys in Oh! The Places You'll Go! with regards to staying focused despite getting "mixed up with many strange birds".

And then, there's Horton Hears A Who! ** Purportedly, it's about internationalism, and the importance of reaching out to other cultures (OK fine, it's about a giant sky-elephant and a talking kangaroo). And then, you have your factions who've managed to pull Dr Seuss into the abortion debate.

There are so many things wrong with that sentence. For one, the debate's basically been over for a couple decades***. And, oh yeah, for two: Some jerk actually got Dr Seuss involved in this shite. On what basis, you may ask? Two little lines;

... although you can't see them or hear them at all,

A person's a person, no matter how small.

Let's get this straight; when Horton the Elephant uttered those words, he was referring to tiny little people living on a speck on a flower. Seuss was generally pretty clear about the messages in his works. In comparison to the Lorax, who came straight out and said; I speak for the trees, for the trees have no tongues, there's a notable absence of fetal advocacy here. Even Seuss, the great envelope-pusher, can't be accused of sufficent bad taste as to use children's books as a medium for brainwashing kids about the evils of abortion.

Seuss actually disapproved thorougly of his work being co-opted in this manner, and his widow has in recent years threatened to sue several anti-choice protest groups for having the audacity to reprint the phrases on their stationery****. Undeterred by this very clear message, the protesters used the L.A. premiere of the film version of Horton as a picketing ground.

Without dwelling upon the seeming lack of logic in picketing what they believe to be a pro-life film, or the total lack of style involved in raising abortion at the premiere of a children's movie, there's a beautiful irony here. If you had have asked me, I'd have said that Horton is all about waking up to the world around you - something these guys seem not to have done for a long, long time.

* As Lisa Simpson put it, "possibly the finest book ever written on the subject of turtle-stacking". For more on turtle-stacking, see: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turtles_all_the_way_down

** Seriously, what is with this guy and ending his book titles with an exclamation point? Paging Elaine Benes!

*** Yes, it fucking well is. Anti-choice protesters are just kidding themselves.

**** Oddly enough, she didn't try to sue the Australian organisation Doctors for Forest for their use of The Lorax in promoting environmental awareness. Maybe that's because the book is... um... actually about saving trees?

Should men get a say in abortion law?

The Australian Federal Government has reversed its stance on allocation of foreign-aid dollars, in that funding can now be directed towards family-planning services, including education, contraception, and in cases where it is required, abortion. A key factor in this decision was the protection of vulnerable women, who may be forced to resort to dangerous, unhygienic and life-threatening backyard abortions. And, worse yet, attempts to self-abort using such refined tools as baling wire, cooking implements, or poisonous abortifacients.

Cue the flood of letters to the Sydney Morning Herald. Most were supportive of the leglislation change, but then we have the predictable response from one Kevin Hogan, who opined that it was: "a betrayal of all women... (the government is) forcing these poor people into Western-funded abortion clinics rather than addressing the real issues."

My immediate reaction to this statement was one of annoyance at a man who considered himself a commentator on the needs of women. Ignoring the fact that nobody is forcing abortions on these women (there has been a long-standing need and desire for family planning services in the regions in question), and that the "real issues" are overpopulation, poverty, lack of effective contraception and lack of female autonomy over reproduction, I wondered how appropriate it is for a man to weigh into this debate at all.

A close male friend of mine consistently refuses to participate in these arguments. He once told me that he didn't think men should. "It's not up to us," he said. "No man will ever have to have an abortion, so they shouldn't be making the laws for women who will. It's up to women to decide." Unknowingly, he echoed the words of a Planned Parenthood advertisement, which reads that "Seventy-seven percent of anti-abortion leaders are male. One hundred percent of them will never be pregnant."

It's a fraught issue. Yes, men won't have to undergo it personally, but as abortion is a public health matter, it can be argued that men shouldn't be excluded from the public debate where standards are set. And, there's no indication that women are more likely than men to bring reasoned debate to the table when it comes to abortion - some of the most vociferous emotional blackmail thrown around actually comes from women, vis a vis Nancy Reagan's public statement that "if you have an abortion, you are committing murder". However, there is something inherently and undeniably distasteful about men attempting to morally dictate to women who are walking in shoes that the men will never wear.

I have to admit, however, that there's an element here of hypocrisy. I am only too happy to hear male politicians and commentators expouse their pro-choice views. It's only when they take the anti-abortion stance that I get angry at men weighing into a domain that does not concern them. Perhaps it comes down to the element of judgment present. Men who support legal abortion are not condemning women for their reproductive choices, whereas the so-called "pro-life" lobby are doing just that.

To what extent should men have a say in abortion law?
Is it fair for men to condemn women who undergo abortions?