Friday, April 18, 2008
THINKING WOMAN INTOLERANT
The Age’s Traceeee Hutchison rejects sexist Australian football:
I still love the game but as a proud, thinking woman I just can’t tolerate the increasingly absurd pre-occupation and propping up the blokes’ world that is AFL football any more.
Rise up, pre-resistance! Do not tolerate the pre-occupation! Happily for sports fan Traceeee, she can now follow the new Indian Premier League cricket competition - it’s multi-faith, ethnically diverse and impressively inclusive of women. All that remains is to select a team:
That last title is slightly improved; Mumbai Indians is too bland a brand to survive in this crowd. I’m partial to the Chennai Super Kings myself, mainly because they have the best-named player in sports history. Early IPL reviews (from Cheryl Morgan and a Teletubby) are mixed.
UPDATE. It seems Age editor Andrew Jaspan was the only person in Melbourne who shared Traceeee’s dredging obsession. As with Jaspan’s support for Earth Hour, this has hurt him:
According to a statement endorsed unanimously by 235 staff members, Jaspan had “pursued an undeclared campaign” against the Victorian Government’s dredging of Port Phillip Bay.
"The paper’s news reporting and analysis of this issue, as well as the selection, emphasis and presentation of stories, has been aggressively directed to reflect the view that the dredging is a mistake,” the statement said. “This is an issue on which our readers expect fair and objective coverage. Instead, the roles of editorial advocacy and reporting have become confused."
For Melbourne’s so-called top end of town, and those who walk the corridors of power on Spring Street, the condemnation by The Age staff vindicated their long-held concern that Jaspan had devoted enormous resources to wage a vendetta against the channel-deepening project.
UPDATE II. The Age reports:
The Victorian Government has been accused of letting industry decide environment policy ...
The government is just following Jaspan’s policy-outsourcing example.
UPDATE III. Nic looks at the facts.