A couple of months ago, our deputy editor @thetowncrier learnt that Hilary Clinton was coming to Australia instead of Obama. When @leighsales made a comment on twitter, he added a line and retweeted. It looked like this:

snap01

Oh dear. A number of us were quite shocked because I mean, ewwww. We even looked it up on the urban dictionary to make sure it meant what we thought it did and IT DID, AND ACTUALLY WORSE. EWWWWWW.

What was he thinking? What an utterly appallingly mysoginist and not even particuarly funny thing to do. And to @leighsales who is like one of Twitter’s Powerpuff girls. What was he thinking? A number of non-Crikey commenters had a go at him (and rightly so, we did too). You know that when journos from the Australian are having a crack at you, and they are actually right (there’s a first time for everything) you really are in trouble.

The thing was, it was entirely out of character. This wasn’t some Punch gag about Japs. Don’t get me wrong, we all do our fair share of swearing and making the occasional hilarious bottom joke at Crikey but you know, we’re nice! Jason is nice! And this wasn’t nice at all.

He received a very public please explain in front of the whole office.

And we simply couldn’t believe what he said. Which was: “I didn’t know that was what it meant.”

WTF? Really, he said that he didn’t know.

How does someone get to be deputy editor at the leading online news and analysis ezineblog in the world and not know what THAT means?

He said that as a kid, if he was having a second helping at dinner, his mum would serve it , hand it to him and say ‘here you go, sloppy seconds’. It took us a while to come to terms with this because you are KIDDING ME! WHAT SORT OF MUM DOES THAT?! But as I did helpfully point out, he is from Queensland.

He swears he didn’t know what it meant.

And I believe him. Thousands wouldn’t.

Why do I believe him? Because I have worked with him for ages, I know him to be a person of integrity, and honour and CONSIDERABLE NAIVETY and also he is adorable. He can be dreadfully beastly at times, he can be mean, but he is never nasty. Not that kind of nasty.

Speaking of nasty.

Sometimes people say things when they don’t know better, sometimes they say them when they should know better…

No Means No

It’s really quite simple. When Tony said No Means No FOUR TIMES IN A ROW today it meant one of three things:

  1. He did not know what it meant. He did not know that it is a reference to rape and to use it in to refer to Julia Gillard was not just in extremely poor taste but highly offensive to anyone who has any experience or understanding of sexual assault. He just didn’t know. Perhaps he had heard it in passing but he didn’t know. A simple error due to ignorance. Okay.
  2. He did know but he thought it didn’t matter, it was just a throw away line. He thought he could joke about it and use it to score a political point over his opponent without anything coming back to him because it wasn’t particularly meaningful, it was a well-worn phrase, a cliche.
  3. He did know what it meant, knew the weight of it, and said it anyway.

If it was 1, he is possibly just a well meaning idiot, he could probably still get a job as deputy editor of Crikey but is he someone we want running the country? Someone who doesn’t actually know what “no means no” means isn’t someone you want as health minister or prime minister. Didn’t someone tell him? Is this the real Tony Abbott?

If it was 2 he is a malicious idiot. He made a joke about sexual assault (things that batter) in order to score a political point and is not someone who should be running the country because it shows a simple and total absence of empathy, a complete lack of understanding. Is this the real Tony Abbott?

If it was 3 he is not an idiot at all, he knew what he was doing, he knew it was nasty and we are all in a lot of trouble if the polls are anything to go by. The Real Tony Abbott? People who know him say he’s actually quite a nice guy. I dunno. I’m a bit frightened.

A lot of people are going on about how it was just a throw away line, how it doesn’t matter and we’re all too politically correct these days can’t you bitches take a joke? Well, if it means I have to sniffily disapprove of public figures making rape jokes then I will be PC till the day I die sitting up straight at the dinner table.

There is a lot of complaining to be done about the difference between the Real Julia Gillard and the others and which is which, but she’s not making rape jokes.