I’m not on Twitter. Don’t follow anybody therefore, including Mark Latham.
But I was watching Andrew Bolt this evening (Thursday) and he said he was banning Latham from ever again appearing on his show for something he tweeted. I forget exactly how he described it; something like a disgraceful homophobic slur, which Latham had since taken down.
Bolt didn’t say what the tweet was. I find this annoying. If you are going to go on air and ban someone for life; it must be for something quite awful. Yet you refuse to say what it is? I don’t find that at all satisfactory.
I am never ever going to admit that person into my presence again. Why? I won’t say. Did he murder somebody? Throw an old lady into oncoming traffic? Commit child abuse? The why matters if you are going to condemn someone. Inuendo doesn’t do it. What did he tweet that was so beyond the bounds of civil society is the question. I, personally, found the mysterious info in the UK’s Daily Mail.
First, reportedly, Latham’s tweet was “in response to gay Labor MP Alex Greenwich slamming him [Latham] as a disgusting human being.” Strong words. A rejoinder to be expected. The rejoinder was somewhat fiery.
According to the Daily Mail, Latham wrote: “Disgusting? How does that compare with sticking your d*** up a bloke’s a*** and covering it with s***?’”
Reportedly, One Nation leader Pauline Hanson was not best pleased with Latham.
My own view. I’m torn. Supposing Latham had written: Disgusting? How does that compare with sodomy. Would Latham have been so disowned by polite society? I don’t know. Maybe he would. But certainly his particular wording was confronting. At the same time, the actual act of sodomy is itself confronting and prone, I understand, to spread diseases.
These days we see two men marrying to the acclaim of those around them and blot out what that means. Look, I don’t even know what most male homosexuals do. Maybe sodomy is a rare feature of their intimate interactions. But it does go on. I know that. That’s why AIDS spread within the male homsexual community. So if it goes on and is OK, why is it beyond the pale to describe it in graphic terms?
Mind you, I prefer graphic terms to be reserved for graphic novels, which adults can read if they want to. My conclusion. Social media is a sewer. Latham should have been less graphic but in context of responding to an outrageous slur on his own character he committed a forgivable lapse; not a capital offence. Bolt and other Latham critics should endeavour to be less self-righteous. Those using social media, if they must, should endeavour to be civil and to never to use it when they feel under the weather, drunk, drugged or otherwise ill-disposed or indisposed.
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