The Footy Show is still as sexist as ever, writes Susie O’Brien

SAM Newman is a sexist 70-year-old who, gathering by last night’s performance on The Footy Show, didn’t learn anything much during the season break, writes Susie O’Brien.

Sam Newman has written an op-ed taking aim at political correctness "gone mad"

SAM Newman is a sexist 70-year old with the face of a schoolboy and the maturity to match.

On The Footy Show last night he went through the biggest mob of sporting losers Australia has seen in recent years, and sided with them all.

Newman may be one year older, but he sure hasn’t learnt anything much during the season break.

In his rant, Newman managed to side with a sexual harasser who embarrassed a woman while she was merely trying to do her job, a man who pretended to have sex with a dog to get back at a woman who spurned his advances, and a man who threatened to stab a woman with a chopstick because she told him to stop being offensive.

It would be funny if it weren’t so pathetic.

So much for The Footy Show stars being ordered to stop the sexist by producers, says Susie O’Brien. Picture Jay Town.

First Newman took a swipe at TV reporter Stan Grant and the “jaundiced world he lives in”.

Then he stood up for cricketer Chris “Don’t blush, baby” Gayle, who was fined and disgraced for propositioning well-respected journalist Mel McLaughlin during a live interview.

This, Newman said, was just a matter of an innocent man being “slapped around by the righteous and pious media”. Hardly.

Newman was forgetting that McLaughlin was a woman just trying to do her job and Gayle objectified her as a sex object.

Newman said McLaughlin would be “secretly delighted” at being told she was appealing in public. Oops, there goes fifty years of feminism.

Mel McLaughlin and Chris Gayle.

Then Newman turned his attention – if you can call it that – to Mitchell Pearce, whom he labelled a “victim”.

Pearce is the NRL player who will go down in rugby history for being fined for simulating sex with a small white poodle.

Newman noted that this disgusting act, or as he called it “pretending to boof a dog” was at a private function.

He said Pearce was the victim of an “opportunistic parasite”. Wrong again, Sam.

Nothing is private when someone is standing there filming it all with a mobile phone – even he should know that.

Yet again, Newman’s sympathies were with Pearce. In fact he even suggested he wanted to mock up a similar photo but The Footy Show’s bosses wouldn’t let him.

Thank goodness for that.

Mitchell Pearce. Picture: Gregg Porteous

He then got onto the Dustin Martin controversy, which he dismissed as a guy “threatening to murder someone with a chopstick”.

Not surprisingly, he sided with Martin rather than the woman who was just trying to get a drunken footballer to behave in a public place.

“The world has gone mad,” he said.

So what did the panel think? Shane Crawford summed it up. Sh*t, his sign said.

I’m with Crawf.

Dustin Martin. Picture: Wayne Ludbey

The Footy Show clearly hasn’t improved during the break. Making matters worse, the show kicked off with Billy Brownless discussing Garry Lyon’s relationship with his wife as if it was a deal to be decided between two mates rather than an issue between two consenting adults.

BILLY BROWNLESS OPENS UP ON THE FOOTY SHOW

ROBBO: BETRAYED BILLY TAKES ONE FOR THE TEAM

So much for The Footy Show stars being ordered to stop the sexist by producers.

They might need another reminder – urgently.