Louise Roberts: The sisterhood’s not helping Gladys Berejiklian
David Frost and Richard Nixon it was not. The Premier’s grilling of her personal life by Kyle & Jackie O, who pushed the One Of The Girls routine to the limits of grossness, was baffling in the extreme writes Louise Roberts
Opinion
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In the immortal words of Kyle Sandilands, “what a week, hey?”, uttered just before he began grilling the NSW Premier on air about her sex life, offering this unique perspective: “You’re one of us now Gladys.
“You’re a human being,” the shock jock’s probing continued yesterday.
“Even though you are the Premier. And you’re, um, very good at your job — amazing, exceptionally talented — don’t you find that secret sex is always the best sex?”
And so it went on, as Gladys neatly sidestepped the sordid sound bites.
But when it comes to the boss of NSW and her former dolt Daryl Maguire, I am over it.
Not her role as leader, which is ultimately in the hands of ICAC and her party room.
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For the record, I have never argued that she should resign. She has done a tremendous job for us amid the shapeshifting COVID-19 crisis and the catastrophic bushfires before that.
Moreover, she has endeared herself to women like me by not playing the gender card when so many of her ilk (Gillard, Bishop et al) slapped it on the table at any opportunity.
What stuns me though is how so many women, after years of demanding equal treatment alongside the boys, now stand ready to give out a sisterhood pass to the Premier.
This was the clear message of some fascinating opinion polling revealed over the weekend.
Women are far more likely to cut her some slack, because hey, who hasn’t been humiliated by a two-bit shyster — in her case a man-squeeze who was involved in inappropriate property deals and fake visa scams.
Have we progressed so far that our desire to be sympathetic has trumped the critical need, especially where politicians are concerned, to be rational and assess the evidence bereft of emotion or pity?
The battle seems a tad familiar. You know, the feminists at war with the notion that when it comes to it, our girly heads and hearts are mush and we absolutely cannot be trusted with those tricky decisions.
The appearance on Kylie & Jackie O where her hosts pushed the One Of The Girls routine to the limits of grossness was baffling.
For example:
Jackie O: “When you were having conversations with him, how much of the time was he talking about money? Because even I was bored at what he was saying.
Gladys: “Well to be honest we would’ve had like hundreds or thousands of conversations and you deal with a lot of people like that over the years and it didn’t stick out for me but obviously those conversations did happen.
“But they didn’t stick out for me, but we’d talk about everything but that.”
Kyle: “You were probably just thinking, ‘just take your suit off, forget all this rubbish’.”
David Frost and Richard Nixon it was not.
But also, as with everything else we’ve seen so far out of the inquiry, not enough to damn her.
The thing about feminists is that they cherrypick their issues, using The Sisterhood as a type of teflon shield to crush criticism and distract the rest of us from their inevitable hypocrisy.
Listen, ladies. Women who demand equal treatment don’t do themselves any favours with the excuse that we’ve all been there with a fool — young or of Dazza’s vintage — who humiliated us. Gladys Berejiklian is proof that a woman can get to the top without playing the gender card.
She is NSW Premier on merit, not because she is the daughter of immigrants or because she campaigned on a misogyny ticket.
You know, the rah-rah message: toxic masculinity has hindered me all the way and thank God I’ve finally skewered it.
This could not be further from the truth for Gladys but we don’t get to choose which standards we apply based on somebody’s gender.
Do we demand equal treatment or not?
Is that not the basis of modern feminism, a mantra shoved down our throats as females as soon as we can walk and talk?
That’s why it’s been intriguing to watch the feminist agenda perpetuate the sentiment that rules of probity don’t apply.
It is possible to feel sorry for Gladys for the embarrassment Dazza has caused her while also recognising that seemingly helping one woman — in this case the Premier herself — actually harms the cause of all women.
Gladys is one of the shrewdest and whip-smart politicians you are ever likely to meet. A legit role model to many young women in the state and across the nation.
She can effectively deal with incendiary issues — navigating the many agendas of emergency services and state and federal governments as chunks of NSW and Victoria burned to the ground over summer is a case in point.
But crow-barring the bad boyfriend routine into every narrative is disappointing and certainly in Gladys’ case, completely unnecessary. The suggestion is that while running a state with a half-trillion-dollar economy is a piece of cake, it’s impossible to spot the landmines in your private life.
Romance may be dead for Gladys but my hope is that this mess does not skewer the formidable road map to success she has tarmacked for so many other women to follow.
@whatlouthinks