“howling at the moon”

Last Monday Henry Ergas had an op-ed in The Australian that has obviously cut deep. It is the introduction and conclusion that has especially upset some people.

LITTLE Miss Bossy tells everyone what to do. Little Miss Naughty is badly behaved.

And Little Miss Fickle breaks her promises. But no one is as scary as Little Miss Ogyny, especially when she goes on the attack.

Not that she understands the difference between ad hominem and ad nauseam. Nor is she shy of veering into a Little Miss Statement.
…
Ever shriller in tone, our Little Miss Ogyny ends the year as she began: howling at the moon. And not even Little Miss Magic can wave her crisis away.

Perhaps it is the word “Little” or “Miss” that is causing the offence? Who knows? As my good friend Chris Berg points out it is the year to be outraged. Here is Tim Dunlop responding to Henry Ergas.

It doesn’t matter how valid the rest of his argument is, what grown-up would take him seriously when he couches the entire piece in the sort of wordplay and name-calling that would make an intelligent 10-year-old wince?

Really? I thought Henry had a wonderful play on words. Indeed given that the whole range of Mr Men Little Miss characters are in the stores right now it is clear that Henry got his inspiration from his Christmas shopping.

So how does their ABC columnist continue?

The article is replete with the giveaway vocabulary of the ignorance-in-plain-sight sexist, including references to “rabid feministas” and “mummy bloggers”.
This is not clever, it is not insightful, it is not a reasonable approach to take even under the broadest interpretation of the truism that everyone is entitled to their opinions.
It is nothing more than the misogynist bile of an emotionally stunted boy-man who, if he ran a blog, instead of a column for an enabling mainstream media organisation, would be unread and unheard of.

Those evil bloggers.

Yet here is Tim Dunlop just two months ago:

But it is odd that we tend to get more upset about incivility than we do about matters of deep political import.
There are so many things we could devote our outrage to – from the political neglect over climate change to the plight of the poor in Australia to kids suffering mandatory, indefinite detention, or, indeed, to Julia Gillard’s own stance on gay marriage – but we don’t. Not really.

Well, at least, Tim finally got the memo. No concentrating on “matters of deep political import” Gillard is the victim here and anyone who says otherwise is a misogynist or worse.