Substandard Rice
Stephanie Rice tweets 鈥渟uck on that, faggots鈥�, and she鈥檚 a villain.
Then she loses her Jag, goes on TV and blubs, and 鈥� Shazam! 鈥� now she鈥檚 the victim. It鈥檚 amazing what sexism allows a pretty young woman to get away with.
Take Schapelle Corby. She was caught with a boogie board bag full of dope, convicted and jailed. But because she鈥檚 a good-looking woman who does a nice line in 鈥楬elpless White Female鈥�, she鈥檚 been turned into a poor downtrodden victim of those nasty brown Indonesians.
Likewise with Stephanie. She blubbed, and chivalrous men everywhere leaped to her defence. Matthew Mitcham flung his towel at her feet saying, she鈥檚 my friend, she鈥檚 not homophobic. Kerri-Anne thundered, is this political correctness gone mad?
Comments online also ran strongly in the 22-year-old鈥檚 favour 鈥� even suggesting she was still an adolescent, and so could be excused!
Maybe she was immature when she posted those party pics on Facebook just before the Olympics. Swimming Australia excused her then because the young swimmers, including Rice, were all 鈥測oung and naive鈥� (nothing鈥檚 been said about the current flap). But that was 2008. A lot has happened since.
Then she was dating fellow Davenport undie spruiker Eamonn Sullivan.
Since then she鈥檚 been 鈥榬omantically linked鈥� with US swimmer Michael Phelps, rugby鈥檚 David Williams, training partner Brendan Capell, and currently, both swimming鈥檚 bad boy Nick D鈥橝rcy and Wallaby Quade Cooper. I salute her for working so hard at losing her naivety.
But let鈥檚 put this in its proper context.
Campaigners fight a daily battle to stop kids using 鈥楾hat鈥檚 so gay鈥� as a putdown. Then along comes this 鈥榮porting heroine鈥� (who, to judge by her language, spends far too much time around the boys鈥� locker room) and uses an even worse homophobic slur.
She suffered a little for it. But according to the tabloids and TV pundits, she should be let off because she鈥檚 pretty, young, white, female, and can cry convincingly on camera.
She鈥檚 not demonstrated that she understands what she鈥檚 done, nor made any offer to learn or make amends. She wouldn鈥檛 get off so lightly if she were old, or plain, or black, or male. Or gay. Can anyone say, 鈥楻enae Lawrence鈥�?
Good-looking young women have been using this 鈥榝eminine鈥� sob routine to get away with murder since time immemorial. What shocks me is that so many of the gay community fell for it and sprang to Rice鈥檚 defence.
Women have fought for decades to get rid of the old double standard, and to be held to the same standards as men, as is right and proper.
The Rice saga shows that a lot of Australian men 鈥� gay and straight 鈥� are still clinging to the old sexist double standard.
Off track but it is about about using the F word. Other Planets by Itch E and Scratch E use “Fag” in it. What’s the big deal with that word really?
Should stick to what ya know bloke, and thats very little…
No,Kay Danes, Schapelle certainly did not receive the required legal and stragegic advice from the onset…and that included help from her government, particularly from Howard, Downer, Ruddock & Ellison!
When it was, and still is a fact, that no one takes MJ to Indonesia to sell, Howards mob, instead of presenting an investigation report to the court to support this, and refuting the lies published by Mathew Moore on the day before her trial that gave the impression that so much mj was going to Bali from Australia, that it even had it’s own name “Aussie gold”….and demanding that the prosecutors prove that the drugs were imported from Australia, what did they do??? Absolutely nothing..Sweet FA, because they knew the drugs were never in Australia to begin with!!
Howard & co sacrificed her to prevent a big fall out with Indonesia! She was hung out to dry by her own disgusting gutless government!
Doug, it’s obvious you know nothing about the Schapelle Corby fiasco, and your article here is a low cheap shot at a woman who is obviously suffering due to a sham court trial that disallowed her to prove her innocence, and she is not being supported because she is an attractive white australian female, she is supported because there are too many unanswered questions surrounding her case and trial. Caught with a big bag of dope that she was supposedly imported from Australia?? really??!! Doug, did you know that the mj that was “discovered” in Schapelle’s bag, in Bali, was never proven to be anywhere else, other that at the Bali airport!! Not one shred of evidence was presented to the court that suggested in the slightest that the mj was anywhere other than in Bali. Check the court case register of the trial and find for us some evidence of importation please Doug, because we would all love to know about it….but, you won’t find it, simply because it’s not there!! In the mean time Doug, an a apology from you, to Schapelle, is in order.
Unfortunately for Schapelle Corby, she didn’t get the required experienced legal and strategic advice from the onset. When an Australian is detained in a foreign prison the issues become quite complex and emotions often run high. Couple this with the fact that many families do not know which way to turn or who to turn to. These cases quickly become quagmires and unless you get the right people on the job quickly, there’s a good chance the outcome can be much more dismal than what you expected. One question that continues to go unanswered, is how on earth does an Australian manage to get 4.2kg of dope through THREE Australian airports undetected? There’s never been any official explanation. I think the airlines need to bring the xray machines to the check in area so that when all passengers check-in, their bags are screened there and then. This would not be difficult to do and would give some assurance to the traveller before leaving Australia AND would serve as evidence in any future court case, if something turned up in their bag at the arrival at their destination.
I don’t think most of you commenters really read what Doug wrote, or thought about what he said. EVERYONE who makes homophobic comments like Steffies should be pulled up for it, whether they’re black, white, young, old,ugly, pretty, famous or nonentities. Including pretty young airhead sportswomen who cry for the cameras.
Read her ‘apology’, people. She has no idea why what she said was offensive, and she needs to learn and make some genuine amends.
And as for all you loons who never got past the Schapelle Corby line – put out your spliffs and grow up. There are many more people in foreign jails for doing similar things, but no-one gives a shit.
Which seems to be Dougs point. He wasn’t making fun of her, he was making a bitter joke about the way SHE gets all the press attention because she’s white and pretty, and most of the journos salivating over her predicament are thinking with their dicks, and dog-whistling racism while they’re about it. They know their market. Yer average sexist racist Aussie – straight or gay.
Leaving Corby to one side for the moment, I think the problem with Doug’s assertions are that there are too many counter-examples of people making homophobic comments who do get taken to task and are not model material. Bill Heffernan springs to mind.
My beef is that people like Kerri-Anne Kennelly trivialise complaints about homophobic comments as “political correctness” when she would not tolerate the sort of insults gays are expected to put up with. That’s the real double standard.
Wow, congratulations Mr Pollard. Now you are a true Aussie bloke. It takes a special kind of man to malign and ridicule a woman who’s been locked away for twenty years in a crowded cell, has a deteriorating mental illness and is relentlessly persecuted by her own countrymen. No wonder the poor girl fantasizes about superheroes! If it’s the likes of you she has to look forward to on her release I don’t blame her.
And how about that Peter guy? No one takes commercial quantities of marijuana to Bali. The stuff grows there wild and it’s pretty darn good too!
So I am not allowed to support Rice because of the usual Sydney mafia that are so PC you have to agree with them. I refuse to be told i’m running to the aid of someone. No, I think it was over the top for anyone in the gay community to call others the F word but scream when it’s used by outsiders, as if the world is coming to an end. Pffft, i’m glad I live in Brisbane and Melbourne, better cities anyway – oppps that is not very PC now is it.
I don鈥檛 believe Schapelle is innocent at all and yes she is a criminal but I don鈥檛 believe it gives us the right to ridicule and make fun in such an insensitive manner.
This way Doug writes reminds me of the articles on ninemsn.com.
Last time I looked Corby was declared guilty by a court of law and had exhausted all avenues of appeal. Now she’s just left to beg for government pardon.
That means she is guilty in the eyes of the law 鈥� like it or not, those are the facts.
Drug dealers do not deserve our sympathy or compassion – they deserve the hand that Corby was dealt – life in prison, where they can no longer peddle their filth on our children and continue to erode our society with their greed.
A mentally ill woman is dying is a foreign cell. A woman who anyone with the intellect to scratch the surface can see is innocent. A woman who has suffered 6 years there, who cannot cope because she knows she shouldn’t be there, and knows she will die there unless somone helps her.
But what do we get from this rag? Help? Support? Sympathy?
No: ridicule, abuse, sneering.
Disgusting and sickening. How the cowards who hide behind the tag ‘journalist’ to deliver such bile can sleep at night is beyond me.
Re these dumb comments of you columist:
Maybe he’d like to comment on this, to the families of the murdered and gravely injured:
As well get up QANTAS and the Australian Federal Police to answer THESE questions:
And digest THESE facts:
Sorry to say but I have smoked dope with Schapelle. She is not at all innocent.
Those of you who know she is innocent….why did you not contact the indonesian courts to give evidence?
By the Indonesians own admission the investigation, upon which Schapelle’s Corby’s trial rested, was only 50% complete. So the outcome and complaint of her case has nothing to do with her being an attractive, white woman or perceiving Indonesians to be nasty, brown people. It’s about insisting that a trial, that carried a heavy sentence, was conducted scrupulously by the Indonesian justice system. It’s about holding the Indonesians accountable as equals. Therefore turning this into a sexist or racial issue, actually make your arguments mysoganist and racist.
I question the sexism you speak of in relation to Stephanie Rice’s twitter comment also. There seemed a similar response to this issue as the one Eddie McGuire received after his gay joke at the Winter Olympics. He’s older,has a high public profile and should have known better. He went on the public record to acknowledge that such comments can hurt people and produce an environment where young homosexual people may feel uncomfortable about their sexuality and wish to keep it hidden.
I do think we need to allow high profile people, to feel the consequences of their actions but then separate the person from the action and simply use it as an opportunity to educate the public of the undermining damage derogatory comments can cause in people’s lives.
Defenders of Rice accused people who objected to her comments as being “oversensitive” and “politically correct” (what a tired old cliche that is).
If I described Rice using the ‘F’ and ‘C’ words liberally on Twitter I wonder if she would support my right to free speech?
PS: Corby should be glad she went to Indonesia and not Singapore. With that amount of dope in her luggage she’d have been hanging from a rope long ago. No arguments entered into.
“Take Schapelle Corby. She was caught with a boogie board bag full of dope, convicted and jailed. But because she鈥檚 a good-looking woman who does a nice line in 鈥楬elpless White Female鈥�, she鈥檚 been turned into a poor downtrodden victim of those nasty brown Indonesians.”
Your ignorance is only exceeded by your reverse sexism, not to mention the acusations of racism that you inexplicably try to bring into the discussion. I don’t even live in Australia, and I’ll bet you I know more about the Schapelle Corby situation than you do. I wonder how your macho crap would play if it was YOUR wife, sister or mother dying in a stinking, filthy, vermin-infested Indonesian toilet for the best years of her life.
Your blurb about Schapelle Corby is as offensive as it is wildly inaccurate. I’ve been a Schapelle supporter from the start. My support has been based on the highly questionable “facts” by which she was convicted. It’s got nothing to do with the skin color of the Indonesians. As someone who extensively travels the world, these types of questionable trials concern me. You must also be saying that groups such as the UN, Human Rights Watch, and Amnesty International are all racist organizations as they have each extensively written about the corruption in Indonesian judicial system.