Found Guilty of Being Male

A NOTE ARRIVED last night from a reader, let us call him Mr Spring Street, who took exception to this little blog’s eroded faith in Victorian Premier Ted Baillieu’s intent or capacity to achieve, well, anything worthwhile. It seems that politics is a team sport and, even if your side’s captain has no idea to which end his squad should be kicking, those in the grandstand to the right of the oval have an obligation to shut up, wave the team colours and barrack for him anyway. A nice note, by no means abusive, it was in its way quite flattering. It is nice to know that one’s thoughts are taken seriously enough to be read, even if that consideration is but an overture to their summary rejection.

Then again, perhaps the correspondent had a point – for such was the thought which figured in the nightly examination of conscience as a weary Bunyip drifted off to sleep. Perhaps, to quote a recent example, Baillieu cannot be held entirely accountable for failing to respond with leadership and the bold stroke to the chaos that strangled Melbourne’s roads when the Burnley and Domain tunnels were shut down, just in time for yesterday's morning traffic peak.

But that’s the thing about One Term Ted, lovely bloke and consummate gentleman that he is. One makes half a decision not to harp on his deficiencies and the very next morning there it is, another example of what he isn’t doing! This morning it is an opinion column in The Walking Dead by a dancer called Jerril Rechter, now CEO of Victoria Health, who has made the recent and shocking murder of Jill Meagher her excuse to lament the low nature of all men, not the rather more narrow demographic of Labor-appointed judges and magistrates who turn loose career criminals and then shield their culpability behind the sub judice laws. Late-night TV viewers, who cop more than their share of tax-deductible public service announcements, will be familiar with Rechter’s schtick, which is of a kind. Those who retire early will get the drift from the clip below:

See, if the Great Bunyip hangs a pair of testicles (or even one) on the muscle-bound amalgam of idiocy and thuggery that is your senior feminist’s conception of a typical male, that carrier of the XY curse is a latent rapist by biology’s definition. Just water the seed of violence with a little beer and an angry pistil will spring forth to rear and twitch in the direction of any and every woman observed to be walking unaccompanied on a darkened street. Years ago, when feminism was first in flower, the Parkville Asylum and surrounding suburbs were plastered periodically with signs that captured the mindset in five short words, “All Men Are Potential Rapists”. The message is a little more polished these days, but the sentiment, bolstered by some very dubious statistics, remains unchanged.  Here is Rechter’s gist:

Sunday's peace march in Brunswick went beyond a community's outpouring of grief; it was also a show of solidarity for a woman's right to feel safe, no matter where she is. It was heartening to see so many men take part.

The march was also a reflection of how more and more men now understand that they are instrumental in preventing violence against women.

They can stand up for equality, they can refuse to turn a blind eye to a mate's disrespectful behaviour, sexist joke, or thinly veiled threat hidden behind a distasteful remark at the pub, work, or on the footy field. It has to stop. These are the conditions that breed violence and harm women.

Get the picture? Poor Jill Meagher is dead because Bill asks Bob if he has heard the one about the lesbian who jumped from the Eureka Tower and landed on a parking meter. Rechter is banging the same gong the left always whacks when a specific outrage generates headlines: Don’t look at the actual incident, never that. Instead, direct the debate and public focus to the general theme. There are more grants to be garnered by this means and, best of all, the broadest of broad-brush approaches precludes any standard by which the campaign’s success might be judged. In this instance, making blanket generalisations about all men, not just rapists paroled in defiance of decency and common sense, is both meme and gravy train.

It would be nice to think Baillieu appreciates this tactic and that he has some notion of how many Labor holdovers, like Ms Rechter, he has retained in his state’s public service, where they continue to operate as if the 2010 election never happened. They are biding their time, cashing their cheques and waiting for the day when the rightful, righteous party takes charge once again at the top end of Bourke Street.

Meanwhile, Victoria's judicial system remains an arrogant, slow, self-absorbed, crony-infested, immensely expensive citadel of incompetence populated by jurists who regard social engineering, not the public’s protection, as their primary brief.

The Billabong’s overnight correspondent opined that Victoria is not Queensland, and how a southern-state version of Campbell Newman would be rejected by the electorate. Be that as it may, we might as well have a Labor government in the Garden State if the existing one is capable of nothing more than operating revenue cameras and covering the mortgages of its embedded enemies.

UPDATE: Those who bristle at the ad featured in the video above might appreciate this:

Don't dare laugh or Rechter will be seeking to have you charged as an accomplice in Jill Meagher's murder.