Tayla Harris beats trolls

Social media trolls may have tried to lewdly mock AFLW star Tayla Harris but the furore has helped promote women’s sport.

Tayla Harris (left) prepares to speak to the media yesterday. Picture: Jason Edwards

You have all seen the magnificent shot of AFLW’s Tayla Harris in full flight. Glorious, just glorious.

You all know that the shot got posted on Twitter by @7AFL, and that trolls swarmed, tittering and twittering about her leg being in the air. What are you, fellas? Twelve? That’s actually an insult to 12-year-old boys and girls, who are mostly awe-struck when it comes to women’s sport. They pack the stadiums out in Melbourne. They line up to get autographs. The only thing that really matters is what happened next, meaning how did @7AFL respond to the trolling? Well, it was frustrating and predictable, and no less dispiriting for that. It pulled the image down. Punished the player. Censored the shot. Erased the woman. Threw a cloak over Tayla as if she had done something wrong. Why not remove the comments? They are what’s offensive here. Also, we need more, not less, women’s sport, which we’ve now got because the shot has not only gone back up — with a heartfelt apology from Seven — it also has been posted from Mudgee to Manhattan, meaning women’s sport wins and losers lose, and that is as it should be.

Bronny’s blast from past

How is this for a coincidence? It was 30 years ago (March 19, 1989) that The Weekend Australian Magazine published this shot of a different lady with her leg in the air. Bronwyn Bishop, who at the time was being touted as a future prime minister. Nobody complained. Well, not about the shot.

Bronwyn Bishop on the cover of The Weekend Australian Magazine way back on March 19, 1989.

Bronywn Bishop, as seen in The Weekend Australian Magazine, when she was seen as a potential PM.

Janet raises eyebrows

Yes, it’s only March, but most surprising column of the year-to-date has got to be yesterday’s effort by our own Janet Albrechtsen, who declared: “In 2019 we deserve and need a Shorten government.” Come again? “Shorten is a shoo-in,” Albrechtsen wrote, “and so he should be.” OK, so who wrote that column, and what has she done with Janet?! But no, it really was Albrechtsen, who went on to say that only by experiencing a Bill Shorten government would Australia ever “understand the danger of some really bad ideas”. More than one reader agreed, saying: “Spot on the money. Sometimes you have to eat lemons to know that oranges are sweet.” Others weren’t so sure: “I don’t think the patient will survive the medication!”

Josh the big jelly bean

Treasurer Josh Frydenberg has eaten too many sweets over summer, and it has given him a physique like this favourite, the nicely rounded jelly bean. Hey, it’s not us saying that, it’s him!

Frydenberg fessed up yesterday to being on something of a fitness kick, meaning he’s attending spin classes in Camberwell, in Melbourne’s east, on Sunday mornings. Quitting the cakes has proven easier than quitting his mobile phone habit: spies say the instructor told him off last week for trying to balance his phone on the bike while he’s spinning. He tells Strewth that he wasn’t actually on the phone, he was getting his staff to “send me Insider updates on my Whatsapp”. Now that’s a sentence that will make sense only to political junkies.

Crabb’s T-shirt grab

Happy Harmony Day! The ABC’s Annabel Crabb was feeling rather pleased with herself yesterday, telling fans that she “stormed Target a fortnight ago and smugly made off with the last two orange Ts. Only time in my whole life I haven’t forgotten. Tomorrow I shall awake with the ring of confidence.” As for the rest of you, we say again: Happy Harmony Day, when parents of all stripes are united in frustration at not only having to find orange — for the love of god, why orange? — clobber for their kids, but also a plate of food related in some way to their own ancestry, and all with seven minutes notice.

Lee Lin’s Daley dose

Journalist Lee Lin Chin has withering feedback for NSW Labor leader Michael Daley, after he claimed young people were forced to “flee” Sydney because educated Asian migrants were stealing their jobs. The former SBS news anchor tweeted: “Don’t worry @michaeldaleyMP I stole an Australian newsreaders job without a PhD. We will take all the jobs regardless of our education.”

www.carolineoverington.com