EPIC QUAIL | Daily Telegraph Tim Blair Blog

EPIC QUAIL | Daily Telegraph Tim Blair Blog

Misogynist menu mythology sweeps the planet!
Here’s the Daily Mirror:

Australian Prime Minister Julia Gillard has hit back after an opposition party fundraiser menu featured a dish named after her that offered “small breasts” and “huge thighs”.
The menu was used at a dinner in March for Mal Brough, an opposition candidate for the September national elections.

Wrong. The menu was produced privately by the restaurant’s owner as a joke and was not used at the fundraiser. The National Post:

Gender has again taken center stage in Australia’s bitter and drawn-out election campaign after a menu at an opposition fundraiser featured a series of sexually derogatory names for dishes based on Prime Minister Julia Gillard.

Wrong. Those dishes did not feature on any menu at the fundraiser. The BBC:

Australian Prime Minister Julia Gillard has said a menu for an opposition party fundraiser that made crude comments about her body was “grossly sexist” …
The menu was for a dinner for Liberal National Party candidate Mal Brough.

Wrong. The menu was not for Brough’s dinner. Fairfax’s Jacqueline Maley:

Anyone who doesn’t believe that many of the attacks Gillard has sustained are sexist is in pure denial.
Take one look at the latest and get back to me – the menu for a Mal Brough campaign Liberal party fund-raiser …

Wrong. The menu was not for a Liberal party fundraiser. Chicago’s Scott Paulson:

Prime Minister Julia Gillard of Australia is unquestionably disgusted by the Opposition, Liberal Party’s sexist antics of which she has been targeted. In a bashing of Gillard, a menu displayed at a fundraiser for Mal Brough …

Wrong. The menu was not displayed. AFP:

Australian Prime Minister Julia Gillard on Wednesday accused the opposition of a pattern of misogynist behavior, branding a menu for a party fundraiser “grossly sexist and offensive” after it featured a quail dish named after her that offered “small breasts” and “huge thighs.”
The menu was used at a dinner in March for Mal Brough …

Wrong. The menu was neither featured nor used. The Guardian‘s Katharine Murphy:

The Australian prime minister has again been forced to confront sexism in the country’s politics after it emerged that the menu at an opposition fundraising dinner offered “Julia Gillard quail … with small breasts, huge thighs and a big red box.”

Wrong. No menu at the dinner offered such a dish. News Ltd’s Andrew Bolt:

The day after Gillard’s speech, we learned one Liberal candidate, former minister Mal Brough, had held a fundraising dinner featuring an appallingly sexist menu mocking the size of Gillard’s breasts and thighs.

Wrong. (Bolt, solitary so far in this list, has already apologised.) Fairfax’s Judith Ireland:

Opposition Leader Tony Abbott is standing by Liberal candidate Mal Brough, despite calls for the former Howard minister to be disendorsed after his fund-raiser used a menu that made lewd jokes about the Prime Minister’s anatomy.

Wrong. The menu wasn’t used. Fairfax’s Tony Wright:

By Wednesday, Gillard had the enemy square in her sights, thanks to the revelation that former Howard government minister Mal Brough had thrown a fund-raising dinner in March with Joe Hockey as honoured guest, the menu so overcooked with sexism and idiocy that it’d make an undergraduate waiter spit in the soup.

Wrong.  Sexist and idiotic that menu may have been, but it wasn’t part of Brough’s fundraiser. The Hoopla‘s Mary Delahunty:

Mal Brough’s crude menu of thighs, breasts and worse …

Wrong. It wasn’t Brough’s menu. As sdog points out, Julia Gillard’s misogyny quail is another plastic turkey, and for much the same reason: news organisations and reporters have established a conclusion ahead of all possible evidence. Without timely corrections, inaccuracy becomes reality.