Misogyny talk left to the US today

Image: "Women in binders" source; The peoples cube

The winning of a Security Council seat at a lobbying cost of $25 million plus substantially increased foreign aid expenditure seems to have settled down the misogyny talk from the government today.  Tony Abbott has been accused of wanting to put a wrecking ball through the economy and sack public servants, but he seems to have been given a pass on the War on Women meme.

Given that the Macquarie Dictionary has amended its definition of misogyny from hatred of women, which critics have pointed out didn’t really fit Tony, to a much more expansive one which with a large dose of spin could sound almost credible to someone who really wanted to believe it, perhaps Gillard is reviewing her tactics.

There is also the possibility that with the pressure off, and in the interests of the Australian US alliance, she has been able to redeploy her ‘Abbotts war on women’ spin team across the Pacific to help her ally with his ‘Romney’s war on women’ campaign.  Given the President’s response to Romney’s ‘women in binders’ remark about recruiting capable women into his state administration, this seems likely: 

US President Barack Obama has made rival Mitt Romney pay  for his awkward ‘‘binders full of women’’ comment that took on a life of its own after their feisty second debate. 

During a heated Tuesday night (US time) showdown, Republican nominee Mr Romney recalled consulting ‘‘binders full of women’’ when he was searching for qualified women to serve in his cabinet when he was governor of Massachusetts. 

Much like Romney’s ‘‘Big Bird’’ comments at the first debate two weeks earlier, thousands of people seized on the binders remark, and by Wednesday a “Binders full of women” FaceBook page received 303,000 likes. … 

Mr Obama latched on to the oddball expression at his first post-debate campaign stop, in the political battleground of Iowa, where he used it to highlight his record on women’s rights and his plan to hire thousands of maths teachers. 

‘‘I’ve got to tell you, we don’t have to collect a bunch of binders to find qualified, talented, driven young women, ready to learn and teach in these fields right now,’’ Mr Obama told a crowd at Cornell College in Mount Vernon, Iowa.

This is a rather puerile effort at using a strawman argument in response to his opponent’s statement.  The President seems to be using the method of argument whereby, "If you can't beat your opponent's ideas, you distort those ideas and maybe make some up. If you don't have a record to run on, then you paint your opponent as someone people should run away from.”  It was after all Obama’s own statement from 2008.

With the campaign emphasis now firmly back to his botched economic policies, botched foreign policy, and botched energy policy, it is doubtful that this will make any bigger impact than the Big Bird attack.