How Liberal Commentators Are Scraping The Barrel

By Samuel Leighton-Dore

Liberal commentators and right-wing nut jobs love nothing more than latching onto a timely faux pas and riding it all the way to the Murdoch-funded slaughter house.

We saw it on Tuesday this week when Newtown-local and “extreme artist” (whatever that means) Nicola Minus undermined the rightful protest of thousands by spitting (yeah, gross) in the face of Richard Pearson.

Despite Pearson claiming he had “moved on” and didn’t want to press charges, Minus was formally charged by police – and informally persecuted nationwide by political commentators and social media users alike.

Among others, Daily Telegraph columnist Tim Blair used the incident as a welcome segue into bashing Newtown Greens MP Jenny Leong – suggesting that Leong was somehow “cheering the chaos” and condoning the behaviour of Minus by publicly supporting the broader (peaceful) protest against Mike Baird’s undemocratic forced amalgamation of local councils.

We saw it again earlier this week when, following Victorian Premier Daniel Andrews’ historic apology to the LGBTQI+ community, Safe Schools co-founder Roz Ward commented on Facebook that: “Now we just need to get rid of the racist Australian flag on top of state Parliament and get a red one up there and my work is done.”

Despite issuing an apology and stepping down from her government post, Ward’s one cheeky – if not ill-timed – reference to Marxism online was enough to ensure the blood-hungry likes of Miranda Devine and Tim Blair have enough material to fuel more than three weeks’ worth of News Ltd opinion columns.

They quite literally live for (and off) this stuff.

“Ward’s Facebook frankness leaves no doubts about the anti-family, Marxist sexual agenda underpinning the so-called anti-bullying program.” Devine wrote in her column headlined Marxist agenda a red flag for not so safe schools in today’s Sunday Telegraph.

Funnily enough, this familiar and confusingly aggressive rhetoric doesn’t speak so much for the purportedly abhorrent behaviours of left-wing advocates as it does the entire lack of relevant, substantial, or in any way convincing source material these regressive, right-wing blubber mouths have to work with.

For example, today Miranda Devine was forced to quote statistics from the early 1920’s to back-up her claims that the “anti-family ideology” shared by feminists and marriage equality supporters would lead to the very same “catastrophic real-life consequences” as post-revolutionary Soviet Russia – i.e. increased divorce rates, plummeting birth-rates, homelessness, and a skyrocketing number of abortions.

Ahh.

Sit back and listen closely to the sound of Devine’s hawkish claws scraping at the bottom of the anti-gay barrel. I hope she’s comfortable, as she’ll likely spend quite a bit more time down there in the lead-up to this coming election and November’s possible plebiscite.

As has come to be expected of Devine and her writing, she fool-heartedly fails to acknowledge the ample research (you know, from this century) contradicting her reckless claims of the danger posed by marriage equality.

Such as the 2010 study showing that divorce rates were notably higher in U.S. states which had banned same-sex marriage (states without marriage equality showed an 8% rise in divorce, states WITH marriage equality showed just a 1% increase). Or the 2013 U.S. census which showed that married same-sex couples were up to five times more likely to adopt or foster children than their heterosexual counterparts (without any notable decline in birth-rate) and have more economic resources than unmarried same-sex couples.

Indeed, she’s so busy glaring furiously into the rear-view mirror and booking blink-eyed guest spots on The Today Show that she appears completely ignorant to the fact that marriage-equality has already been proven as nothing if not beneficial in aiding divorce rates and economic growth internationally. There have certainly been no reports (to my knowledge) of societal catastrophe in the fifteen countries currently celebrating equal marriage (Argentina, Belgium, Brazil, Canada, Colombia, France, Iceland, Ireland, Luxembourg, Norway, South Africa, Spain, Sweden and Uruguay).

So yeah. Left-wing, socially progressive advocates fuck up sometimes. That’s not a left-wing thing, it’s a thoroughly human thing. If I had a dollar for every time I’ve been spat on and called a faggot by someone resembling a Liberal voter, I’d have precisely $3. Sure, that’s no excuse. Nicky Minus obviously shouldn’t have spat in Richard Pearson’s face. Roz Ward obviously shouldn’t have tried to distract from the Premier’s powerful apology with her seemingly Facebook status.

But when it comes to the expected wining of conservative media over the campaign for social progress and the peaceful protesting over our democratic rights, they’ve spent all week ranting and raving over the comparably small slip-ups of two individual parts to a much larger picture; one that is gaining momentum.

Because it’ll always be easier to assassinate the character of one or two individuals than reflect upon the monthly rallying of thousands. It’ll always be easier to inflate one Facebook status with the consequences of 1900’s Russia than acknowledge the proven validity and effectiveness of a perhaps confronting government-supported educational program that reflects the times.

The facts, numbers and political realities are catching up with folks like Devine. Their arguments are running thin on the ground.

In fact, they’re grasping at straws.