Progressive causes There is something a little sour when a long campaign for change ends in acts of cloying bipartisanship. So it was when Prime Minister Anthony Albanese, who has an assistant minister for the republic in his team, decided to rename Aspen Island in Canberra to Queen Elizabeth II Island in honour of a “true and steadfast friend, through the good times and also the hard times”.
And now US First Lady Jill Biden has chosen to use air time and resources to unveil a stamp of former first lady Nancy Reagan. It would be weird regardless, but honouring someone so publicly associated with the silence of the Reagan administration during the AIDS epidemic during Pride Month has raised eyebrows.
Always check the references The imposition of affirmative consent laws in NSW is, obviously, a positive and overdue move. It would just be ideal if the NSW government would hire ad guys with better access to Google. Last week it was forced to pull one of its consent campaign ads after one of the actor’s TikTok accounts came to public attention. It’s not great: the actor wanders about asking young women, frequently visibly affected by alcohol, various sexual questions about positions and threesomes and things they’d rather their mother didn’t know. A useful reminder that the internet exists and can be checked before you hire someone.
Stamping out cops’ social media We’ve said it before, we’ll say it again — Crikey will not rest until “fun” posting by police social media accounts are eradicated. See the following TikTok from NSW Police:
How in the name of a damaging internal report did no one involved in this not see the connotations a video that gives you a unique point of view of a stomping police boot (not an abstract concept for everyone) might have?
A total circus The controversy that the Moscow Circus — a travelling Australian-owned circus with a name that’s, well, currently unfortunate — has attracted while performing in Darwin was noted by a tipster in the Top End, though they told us there is a whimsical touch in the promotion: “It’s located on the major road to the airport, but interestingly the large illuminated sign reads MO COW CIRCUS — maybe deflects the guilt and gives it an agricultural touch.”
Washing-ton your mouth out What is going on at The Washington Post? Various staffers have been publicly feuding for days. It kicked off when WaPo political reporter David Weigel retweeted a sexist joke by a YouTuber.
Fellow Post writer Felicia Sonmez took a screenshot of Weigel’s retweet and posted it on Friday with the comment: “Fantastic to work at a news outlet where retweets like this are allowed!” Wiegel swiftly deleted and apologised, which of course failed to resolve anything. A third writer then weighed in — Jose Del Real, while agreeing the tweet was “unacceptable”, encouraged Sonmez to approach the situation with “compassion”. Sonmez’s response was, shall we say, unequivocal: “When women stand up for themselves, some people respond with even more vitriol. Last night, a Post colleague publicly attacked me for calling out another colleague’s sexist tweet.”
Del Real replied with two elements that in hindsight seemed inevitable: that as a “gay Mexican American”, he didn’t need education “on being from a marginalised group”, and that Sonmez “reconsider the cruelty you regularly unleash against colleagues”.
Executive editor of the Post Sally Buzbee has now sent a memo to staff asking that they “treat each other with respect and kindness”. Which of course just led to a public airing of stuff that might be better dealt with internally (and was a metric tonne more exhausting). It shows no sign of slowing down or even retreating behind closed doors — we’ll keep you posted.
