Abbott remarks; storm in a B cup

Says attractive candidate (L) has sex appeal

Probably the biggest problem Tony Abbott has is his tendency to run off at the mouth; he tends to let out the clutch on his vocal chords without putting his brain in gear.  There have been numerous examples of this, including his infamous advice not to pay attention to his unscripted remarks.

His ‘suppository of all wisdom’ comment was just a slip of the tongue, but a great deal of histrionics is being employed in the Labor, Greens, feminist response to suggesting that one of his candidates had sex appeal.  Kevin Rudd, always the political correctness fanatic is being especially pedantic: 

PRIME Minister Kevin Rudd says Tony Abbott would find himself in serious strife if he made his "sex appeal" comments in the workplace. The Prime Minister, campaigning in Cairns at the end of a sweep of marginal North Queensland seats, described Mr Abbott's comments as ''pretty odd''. 

“If any male employer stood up in the workplace anywhere in Australia and pointed out a female staff member and said this person is a good staff member because they've got sex appeal, I think people would scratch their heads at least and the employer would find themself in serious strife, ''Mr Rudd said. 

''In modern Australia sexism or racism or homophobia does not have any place,'' he said.Mr Abbott found himself at the centre of a twitter storm when he described one of the attributes of Liberal candidate for Lindsay Fiona Scott as having ''sex appeal''. 

On his first trip to the key marginal Sydney seat of Lindsay yesterday, the Opposition Leader was asked how Liberal candidate Fiona Scott compared with predecessor Jackie Kelly. 

"They're young, they're feisty and, I think I can probably say, have a bit of sex appeal," Mr Abbott said. … 

… Labor minister Kim Carr told the ABC Mr Abbott's words were ''pathetic''. ''Sometimes we should think Tony Abbott really hasn't crawled out of the 1950s.”

It’s good of old Kim to tell us what we should be thinking, but then, the doyens of correct thought and the current truth have been doing that to us for a long time now.  It’s probably time for us to stop paying attention to them.

Still, it’s given the remaining members of Julia Gillard’s old ‘hand bag hit squad’ a chance to wax lyrical on misogyny.

As for Rudd’s comments on statements in the workplace, he is probably correct but such a situation is wrong unless it forms a real part of some sort of sexual harassment.  Merely passing a compliment, albeit a clumsy one should not be the subject of condemnation.

It is also difficult to see where he is coming from on his ‘sexism, racism, homophobia’ statement.  It is not disparaging her, she is not of a different race, nor does ‘sex appeal’ appear to be homophobic, even if Ms Scott was a lesbian, something we have no reason to believe.  Rudd is merely trying to attach as many disparaging labels to Abbott as possible within the sound bite.

The media, which frequently uses such expressions as, ‘sexiest man/woman alive’, hot, ravishingly beautiful, and so on, are being rather hypocritical on this issue.

Abbott has many flaws and faults, especially on policy, but sexism is not one of them.

Had he referred to the candidate as, “Damn smoking hot,” it might have been inappropriate.