Deconstructing a Paul Sheehan piece can be like shoving bamboo splinters under your toenails and watching them bleed. Fortunately I have pain killers.
Sheehan has, remarkably even for him, reduced the entire Abbott government leadership crisis into that good old patriarchal standby, the good woman/bad woman trope.
In yesterday’s Sydney Morning Herald Sheehan makes this claim: Tony Abbott’s new order: An invisible Peta Credlin and a visible Margie Abbott is the new template. Better late than never.
The new template? Template for what? The template for how, when all else fails, to use women to get you out of the trouble you think other women have got you into?
Margie Abbott is apparently at one with Sheehan on this strategy, calling for LNP “wives and partners” to get behind her man, a move Robyn Oyeniyi analyses succinctly in her piece on the topic.
Does Sheehan actually believe voters are so gullible as to be swayed by Tony Abbott wheeling out his wife in his time of sorrow, while tucking away controversial Chief of Staff Peta Credlin in a cupboard, presumably till things get back to normal for him, at which time he’ll pop Margie away again and let Peta out, because he can’t do without her?
Reading between Sheehan’s lines, which are so far apart you have to be careful not to fall into the abyss between them, he’s claiming something as simplistic as Peta Credlin got Abbott into this, and now Margie will get him out.
In an extraordinary own goal of unintended irony, Sheehan writes:
Mrs Abbott has never sought publicity but at the height of then prime minister Julia Gillard’s “misogyny” diversionary campaign in 2012 (amid several scandals) she famously intervened in defence of her husband: “Do you want to know how God turns a man into a feminist? He gives him three daughters … I believe a disservice is being done to women when the gender card is played to shut down debate about policy.”
Presumably, Sheehan and Mrs Abbott think they aren’t “playing the gender card to shut down debate about policy.” Really? Because it seems to me that’s exactly what they are doing.
In a desperate attempt to avoid the substantive issue, which is that some Abbott government policies have profoundly offended so many Australians the Prime Minister has been haemorrhaging political capital practically since the day he took office, Sheehan looks to a change of the woman behind the man to obscure this harsh reality, and save the government’s sorry bum.
Then there’s Mrs Abbott’s remark that God turns a man into a feminist by giving him daughters. And they say we should have god in schools. This is what happens when you let god in schools. Women grow up thinking we’re vessels for god to give men daughters to make them feminist. I can’t even….
Next we have this from Sheehan:
She has since endured attacks on one of their daughters over a college scholarship, with information accessed illegally and leaked to the media to embarrass the Abbott family.
No, Paulie, the Australian people had the right to know that while the Abbott government was intent on making higher degrees excruciatingly expensive for everyone else, the Prime Minister’s daughter was awarded a once-off scholarship to see her through her tertiary education. If this knowledge becoming public embarrassed the Abbott family, so it should. Though I doubt it did. Annoyed them, maybe, but embarrassed them? I doubt it.
The reason some men love the good woman/bad woman trope so dearly is because it removes all responsibility and accountability from the man. He is helpless as a babe in the face of the influence of a good or bad woman. Sheehan is an unreconstructed idiot, peddling this ignorant, venomous trash. It no more serves a woman to be put on a pedestal than it does to be despatched to the gutter. One can make allowances for Euripides, given his times, but Sheehan has no excuses.
No Place For Sheep 
Thanks for the shout-out Jen.
Some of what you are saying here ties in with SOME men’s attitudes to women that I highlight in the latter part of this article from a while ago.
http://teamoyeniyi.com/2014/10/02/the-muslim-assimilation-question/ Both are views of religious men.
Great article!
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Andrew Marleton, of FirstDogOnTheMoon fame, has a well known cartoon entitled Head/Desk. Accurately descriptive, it is an ode to incredulousness, the disbelief one feels when someone says something patently idiotic in the expectation we shall agree. It is the most appropriate expression of my current state of mind.
To Mr Sheehan and his ilk, I say “Seriously? You seriously believe & expect me to swallow that illogical rave?” To the author, “Well Said!”
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Thank you. My brow is bloodied from the amount of head/desk inspired lately
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Bugga, try again.
MUST mention an article by Lissie Johnson at New Matilda, 2/2, a psychological take that gets at what is actually a split in conservative thinking beneath that seemless surface they like to present, entiled “At All Costs: The Dark Psychology Behind Abbott Government Climate Policy”.
I’ll plead with readers, read it, then come back here and read this in the light of it.
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Here is the link to the article PW recommends: https://newmatilda.com/2015/02/02/all-costs-dark-psychology-abbott-government-climate-policy
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Team Abbott resembles nothing more than it does the Keystone Kops, flailing around in all directions for some traction.
If the number of daughters is what is required to make feminist, Joseph Goebbels must have been a fine feminist with his five daughters. Or perhaps Genghis Khan, who had hundreds of daughters.
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And now we hear there’s to be spill next Tuesday.
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Bishop backs Abbott… that REALLY mystifies me.
Turnbull has been stymied.
The question now is, will Turnbull “down” enable Abbott and Bishop to consolidate, against future challenges or will things fester away with more trouble in the future, given this governemts mulish outlook as to advice and criticism concerning real world issues.
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Well, it seems Bishop didn’t back Abbott, she merely referred to maintaining “cabinet solidarity” and only for the spill motion. She hasn’t committed to anything or anyone if spill succeeds.
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No, that’s unhelpful at best..
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Jesus H. Roosevelt christ ! – I didn’t realize Sheehan was so amazingly right-wing !! Well, my excuse is that I don’t read him. But, HONESTLY:
“She has since endured attacks on one of their daughters over a college scholarship, with information accessed illegally and leaked to the media to embarrass the Abbott family”
and he calls himself ‘a journalist’ ????
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Indeed he does.
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Hm. That isn’t journalistic reportage. I understand journos are meant to be impartial …
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Sheehan is a dead set libturd dildo,not long ago on the Drum he states converting to green energy waste of time and money when we will be burning and exporting coal for the next 100yrs.He is a pretender,tries to play the impartial role,but a true reptile he is.
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I suppose I’m remembering him when he was young, in the days when my husband and I used to have The SMH delivered. He hadn’t gone all redneck, back then …
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The sad reality for the neanderthal thinkers like him is that solar 18 months ago becaome an economically viable alternative on new technology for domestic commercial and industrial installations, hence the huge boom in startups installing it all over Australia…they will find out long after the fact that the social trend has already happened without them knowing ….that said the power companies are aware of it and stall and delay approvals for connection to the grid, that wouldnt happen if there was no threat to them
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M-R’s post suggests just what has been happening over the last decade. So-called journalists have picked sides and – usually with more subtlety – slanted each and every article as it suits them, or more often the proprietor. One known to some as the Dread Dark Lord, and to others as Rupert of the Murdia.
As the Looters Party and its henchmen get more desperate, the wool is dropping from the eyes of the much abused voters.
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Sheehan is a total knobhead, which is obvious by 99% of the tripe he writes and spouts on places like The Drum.
He is almost there with Cater, Kenny, Ergas, and Shanahan, to name a few bootlickers, but he has a little way to go to get down to their level.
BTW, top blog!
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Thank you!
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Folks this is an article you might be interested in. I liked it so much I re-blogged it but this link is to the original.
While it looks at USA politics, there are many parallels to the Australian political scene: provided you swap your blues and reds, of course! 🙂
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Thanks Rob, I just read that, good information.
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Funny thing, I thought of Team watching Rebecca Huntley, the one honest decent commentator on tonight’s Drum, forced to deal with a remaining panel of delusionist zombies.
How I ever respected someof those people is beyond me, but the scales fall away..
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The scales don’t always fall away, unfortunately, PW. At least you are willing and able to shed them!
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And yes,Team Oyeniyi, the post you just provided is dead right and points to the proliferation of Kochs and Murdoch TeaParty politics, now imported to this unfortunate place, also.
It is all about more of the ransacking of previously workable civil societies that we saw with the Meltdown and it is derived of uncompromisingly lunatic thinking.
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Wait a minute.. of course. The Bacchae.
The famous play of Euripides that deal with the downfall of a slightly stuffy ruler who tried to stop his subjects from indulging in the Dionysian Revels.
The fellow was torn apart in a frenzy by the Meanads, women who followed the god Dionysios (Bacchus, the earthy wine god), but once the “enchantment” had worn off things looked much, much worse, like the morning after the night before.
Priggy types like politicans in this era, have also found it difficult for themselves after trying clamp down on people for different reasons, so its a bit about how people in power lose touch with the common people.
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