{"id":8334,"date":"2012-10-10T22:27:59","date_gmt":"2012-10-10T12:27:59","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thefatwebsite.com\/?p=8334"},"modified":"2012-10-10T22:27:59","modified_gmt":"2012-10-10T12:27:59","slug":"julia-gillards-misogyny-speech-to-tony-abbott","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.thefatwebsite.com\/?p=8334","title":{"rendered":"Julia Gillard&#8217;s Misogyny Speech To Tony Abbott"},"content":{"rendered":"<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><a href=\"http:\/\/www.thefatwebsite.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/tagauspol.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone size-full wp-image-6810\" title=\"tagauspol\" src=\"http:\/\/www.thefatwebsite.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/tagauspol.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"600\" height=\"75\" srcset=\"http:\/\/www.thefatwebsite.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/tagauspol.jpg 600w, http:\/\/www.thefatwebsite.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/tagauspol-300x37.jpg 300w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 600px) 100vw, 600px\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>In case you haven&#8217;t heard, it&#8217;s Opposite Week in Australia.\u00a0 Adelaide United are sitting on top of the A-League and the New Yorker ran an article about how <a href=\"http:\/\/www.newyorker.com\/online\/blogs\/newsdesk\/2012\/10\/julia-gillards-misogyny-speech.html\">Julia Gillard could teach Barack Obama<\/a> a thing or two about public speaking.\u00a0 &#8216;What on Earth is going on?&#8217; you might well ask.<\/p>\n<p>Well, the past couple of months have not been kind to Tony Abbott, who is officially the Leader of the Opposition and unofficially the Next Prime Minister of Australia.\u00a0 Firstly, he decided to give a rare interview outside of the safe confines of Rupert Murdoch&#8217;s News Ltd empire when he sat down with Leigh Sales at the ABC.\u00a0 Sales proceeded to absolutely destroy Abbott in an interview where he was ill prepared for her aggressive line of questioning.<\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" src=\"http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/zXhbg80E2JE\" frameborder=\"0\" width=\"629\" height=\"354\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>A few weeks later, Abbott&#8217;s parliamentary secretary Cory Bernardi gave an interview where <a href=\"http:\/\/www.abc.net.au\/news\/2012-09-19\/controversy-over-cory-bernardi-bestiality-comments\/4269604\">he linked gay marriage to bestiality<\/a>.\u00a0 Abbott was left with no choice but to ask for Bernardi&#8217;s resignation and gave a muted apology in a press conference referring to Bernardi&#8217;s comments as &#8216;ill-disciplined.&#8217;<\/p>\n<p>Not long afterwards, Abbott was once again in the hot seat when conservative radio shock jock and Liberal Party mouthpiece Alan Jones gave a lecture at a Young Liberal Party dinner where he proclaimed that Prime Minister Julia Gillard&#8217;s father &#8216;<a href=\"http:\/\/www.dailytelegraph.com.au\/news\/jones-says-gillards-dad-died-of-shame\/story-e6freuy9-1226484128451\">died of shame<\/a>.&#8217;\u00a0 The Young Liberals denied any such comment was made but they came unstuck when a journalist attending the dinner secretly recorded the speech.<\/p>\n<p>You might wonder what this has to do with Abbott.\u00a0 Alan Jones is Australia&#8217;s version of Rush Limbaugh, the influential American radio host who is so beloved by conservatives that he is considered an &#8216;honorary member&#8217; of the Republican party.\u00a0 Alan Jones carries a similar level of influence with the Liberal Party in Australia.<\/p>\n<p>Jones&#8217; talk back radio show on 2GB has a large audience mostly comprised of angry baby-boomers who like to call in and complain about Julia Gillard, Muslims, gays, boat people and damned immigrants taking people&#8217;s jawbs.\u00a0 Abbott is a regular on Jones&#8217; show and so it was a crushing blow when the tape leaked and public opinion turned on Jones.\u00a0 Once again, Abbott had to front the media and disassociate himself from the unsavoury comments being made by the people he associates with all the time.<\/p>\n<p>Somewhere amongst this unrelentingly negative press, Tony Abbott must have finally concluded that his personal attacks on Julia Gillard and his views on women were damaging his appeal to voters.\u00a0 To give you an idea, here are comments that Tony has made publicly, regarding women in the last couple of years:<\/p>\n<h2 style=\"padding-left: 30px;\"><em>\u2018The problem with the Australian practice of abortion is that an objectively grave matter has been reduced to a question of the mother\u2019s convenience.\u2019<\/em><\/h2>\n<h2 style=\"padding-left: 30px;\"><em>\u2018I think it would be folly to expect that women will ever dominate or even approach equal representation in a large number of areas simply because their aptitudes, abilities and interests are different for physiological reasons\u2019<\/em><\/h2>\n<h2 style=\"padding-left: 30px;\"><em>\u2018I think there does need to be give and take on both sides, and this idea that sex is kind of a woman\u2019s right to absolutely withhold, just as the idea that sex is a man\u2019s right to demand I think they are both they both need to be moderated, so to speak\u2019<\/em><\/h2>\n<h2 style=\"padding-left: 30px;\"><em>\u2018What the housewives of Australia need to understand as they do the ironing is that if they get it done commercially it\u2019s going to go up in price and their own power bills when they switch the iron on are going to go up, every year\u2026&#8217;<\/em><\/h2>\n<h2 style=\"padding-left: 30px;\"><em>&#8211; Tony Abbott<\/em><\/h2>\n<p>It seemed this outlook on women wasn&#8217;t working.\u00a0 So it was time to <a href=\"http:\/\/www.news.com.au\/national\/tears-and-downton-abbey-abbotts-other-side\/story-fncynjr2-1226488508684\">roll out his wife as a political prop<\/a>!\u00a0 Margie Abbott was given a front page article on News.com.au telling the country about what a sensitive and caring man Tony was.\u00a0 He even watches and cries during Downton Abbey!\u00a0 Surely this would do the trick and allow the public to see the new Tony Abbott, a kind and sensitive new age bloke who was attuned to women&#8217;s feelings.<\/p>\n<p>Abbott even spotted an opportunity to express his new-found sensitivity in the first session of parliament.\u00a0 It would be a great opportunity to call for the resignation of Peter Slipper as Speaker of the House.\u00a0 Slipper was a former Liberal turned Independent who left the LNP last year.\u00a0 Slipper was currently being sued for sexual harassment in a court case where text messages he sent about female genitalia (comparing them to &#8216;mussels without shells&#8217;) were made public as part of the trial.<\/p>\n<p>Abbott threw his support behind a motion for Slipper&#8217;s resignation, claiming he was shocked and appalled by the content of the text messages and their attitudes towards women.\u00a0 Shortly thereafter, it was Prime Minister Julia Gillard&#8217;s turn to speak.\u00a0 Not many people anticipated what would happen next.<\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" src=\"http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/ihd7ofrwQX0\" frameborder=\"0\" width=\"629\" height=\"354\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>Gillard, who is notorious for being a poor public speaker, threw down a relentless fifteen minute verbal barrage on Abbott, calling him out on his hypocrisy.\u00a0 She came armed with direct quotes from Abbott himself and gave a full-throated impassioned speech about what an utter, utter bullshit artist he was.\u00a0 Abbott&#8217;s smirk of confidence before she took the lectern turned into a sullen look of despondence once Gillard got going.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><a href=\"http:\/\/www.thefatwebsite.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/abbottreaction.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone size-full wp-image-8351\" title=\"abbottreaction\" src=\"http:\/\/www.thefatwebsite.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/abbottreaction.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"630\" height=\"202\" srcset=\"http:\/\/www.thefatwebsite.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/abbottreaction.jpg 630w, http:\/\/www.thefatwebsite.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/abbottreaction-300x96.jpg 300w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 630px) 100vw, 630px\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>The video clip then began circulating on the Internet and became a &#8216;thing.&#8217;\u00a0 It garnered widespread attention on Reddit, Gawker, Huffington Post and Youtube.\u00a0 It trended on Twitter and newspapers across America and the U.K ran articles covering the story.\u00a0 This voracious, clinical and well organized take down of a Grade-A shyster was exactly what people were expecting to see from Barack Obama in his debate with Mitt Romney.\u00a0 And that&#8217;s what lead to a columnist in the New Yorker bemoaning the fact that Julia Gillard of all people, had something to teach the President of the United States about how to effectively make a stand against your opponent.<\/p>\n<p>As for Adelaide United, its only the first round and they played the Jets who are totally rubbish.\u00a0 They&#8217;ll be wooden spooners by the time we get to Christmas.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>In case you haven&#8217;t heard, it&#8217;s Opposite Week in Australia.\u00a0 Adelaide United are sitting on top of the A-League and the New Yorker ran an article about how Julia Gillard could teach Barack Obama a thing or two about public speaking.\u00a0 &#8216;What on Earth is going on?&#8217; you might well ask. Well, the past couple &#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[15],"tags":[1046,577,50,578],"class_list":["post-8334","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-blog","tag-auspol","tag-julia-gillard","tag-politics","tag-tony-abbott"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.thefatwebsite.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8334","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.thefatwebsite.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.thefatwebsite.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.thefatwebsite.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.thefatwebsite.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=8334"}],"version-history":[{"count":18,"href":"http:\/\/www.thefatwebsite.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8334\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8353,"href":"http:\/\/www.thefatwebsite.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8334\/revisions\/8353"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.thefatwebsite.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=8334"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.thefatwebsite.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=8334"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.thefatwebsite.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=8334"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}