Sorry, What Was That Bob?

During a panel discussion on Q & A last night about group sex and the NRL, Bob Ellis dropped this clanger on Tony Abbott.

Bob Ellis : "You have at least the record of a rugby tour, comrade."

Tony Abbott fear grinned for a few seconds, and the conversation moved, awkwardly, onwards.

UPDATE : From the Q & A transcript :

TONY ABBOTT: I thought you were going to say raise the age of consent for going on a rugby tour. Maybe only let 40 year olds go on rugby tours.

BOB ELLIS: You have a track record of at least a rugby tour, comrade.

Ellis was not making a lot of sense :

BOB ELLIS: The logic of this whole argument is surely to raise the age of consent because most of these people are saying, "Look, she's only 19. How did she know what was going to happen?" I mean, if you're going to go that far, you're either going to say how important it is or, if you're not going to go that far, you're going to say how unimportant it is.

Err, yeah?

Or he was making too much sense....

BOB ELLIS: But Roy Master's view of it is that it is, for better or for worse, common practice."

There you go. You really do learn something new everyday. I didn't know using the older, more famous one as reassuring bait to lure in a teenager and then stand by while the girl is, arguably, being raped, or at least seriously and severely abused, by up to dozen football players, watching each other masturbate, that this was common practice amongst rugby league teams.

"...and if this one man (Mathew Johns) is guilty and should be punished, there are thousands so placed...."

Thousands of rugby league players have done this kind, have they?

And then no sense at all. Ellis' mind is just about fried :

"....and I think there is a question not just of consent, but of complaint. If there was not consent on the night there should have been complaint the following the morning or complaint a week later. And if the complaint takes seven years...

TONY JONES: Well, there was complaint, as it happens, within days to the police.

BOB ELLIS: Yes. Okay. All right.

TONY JONES: So let me hear from Penny Wong...

PENNY WONG: I'm sorry.

BOB ELLIS: Okay. I withdraw that.

Fade out.

You Can Piss In The Street, But Make Sure You're Dressed Sharp

By Darryl Mason

I wonder if Miranda Devine extends the same level of boys-will-be-boys tolerance to the homeless?

No one enjoys the smell of urine in the street but (Willie) Mason's discreet call of nature was hardly a capital offence in the scheme of things and at least he was wearing a nice suit.

And I had no idea that widespread outrage about a 30 year old man leading a gang bang, or more accurately a Gang Wank, on a 19 year old girl involving at least eight men, leaving her unable to walk without help, was all part of a Feminist Conspiracy To Stop Men Violently Fondling Each Other In Public. Thank the smooth, waxed, hairless chests of manly men who chase footballs that Miranda Devine is around to set me straight.

And this is great :

In sanctioned team violence on the football field, young men can test their courage and express what it feels to be male, to have testosterone surging through young bodies, building huge muscles and attack instincts for which society has little use any more. It is teaching them, not to be violent but how to control their violent urges.

That must be why I'm so violent, because I spent more time in the library than groping other boys on a muddy football field. I played a bit of rugby league at school but found it boring, tediously pointless.

The library nerds, like me, knew the more interesting girls were not watching boys play football, but were always to be found where the books were plentiful and the chairs were comfortable. Library nerds also knew that we didn't have to cop an elbow in the jaw, or have a shin shattered, to impress these girls. You just had to listen more than you talked.

Miranda Devine can see the connection between "sanctioned team violence" and grown men standing around wanking as they watch their mates wanking, but she's too cowardly to go anywhere near that bell ringer.

From A Warm, Cosy Home Sydney, Devine Calls Devastated Queensland Cyclone Survivors "Whingers"

Miranda Devine Claims Anti-Iraq War Crowd Find Car Bombings "Satisfying", But Can't Find One Single Person Who Said So