Tony Abbott vs Miley Cyrus: Who Won 2014?
Miley and Tone have both spent the last year wrenching outrage out of an increasingly exhausted internet. But: there can only be one winner.
It’s been about a year since Prime Minister Tony Abbott set out — guns blazing — to take back the portfolios for Women and Aboriginal Affairs, and to prove once and for all that he not only owns at least three women, but is the rightful heir to a decent chunk of empty land that some white ancestors stumbled upon.
It’s also been about a year since Miley Cyrus set out — buns blazing – to prove she can twerk it out in front of a line-up of sexualised black women if she wants to, during the MTV VMAs spectacle that launched a thousand op-eds.
To celebrate the anniversary of both of these endeavors, we decided to take a moment to pit their achievements of the last year head to head, to decide arbitrarily whose cultural minister-y/minstrelry reigned supreme.
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Round One: Winkgate vs Twerkgate
Tony Abbott: Winkgate
Tony started his term as Prime Minister by nominating a Cabinet that contained just one woman, reinforcing that old adage that too many feminists in a Cabinet spoils the broth (because let’s face it, who of these women’s lib chicks can cook?).
Appointing himself Minister For Women for some reason, he selected Michaelia Cash as his assisting minister — who self-identifies as a woman, but not as a feminist.
Other hijinks which have defined his reign as Prime Chauvinist for Women have included (but are by no means limited to) his continued record of speaking to women in often the most sexist way possible, and the floating of his misguided and inequitable Parental Leave scheme, which was designed to win women’s affections, but instead pandered to the privileged.
This has all been exacerbated by his complete inability to understand that his “woman problem” needs to be addressed with humble contrition and sensitivity — a viral video of Abbott saying something cringe-worthy seems to be the rule, rather than the exception.
It all culminated in the Big One (or, the one most readily convertible into meme-form), when — on ABC Radio, on March 11 — he self-sabotaged an opportunity to champion his budget in a radio interview. That good ol’ wink was indulged in at the expense of a pensioner grandmother with three chronic medical conditions, who had been working a sex-phone-line to pay the bills.
The gif circulated as fast as a non-consensual J-Law nude — but the one woman he had in cabinet, Julie Bishop, abandoned the sisterhood yet again to back-up Abbott’s rickety defense: that the wink was merely code for “I’m okay to proceed with the call, mate“. AKA sorry/notsorry.
Miley Cyrus: Twerkgate
Around this time last year Miley, performed her hit ‘We Can’t Stop’ with a chorus line of black dancers whose gyrating posteriors were mostly used as props to symbolise Miley’s identification with a subculture she should arguably not be attempting to identify with.
MTV was probably more to blame for the performance than Cyrus herself, but the pop star was nonetheless the focus of weeks of backlash: the relentless pillorying of some who conflated her use of twerking with cultural appropriation; the defence of others who took issue with the way in which those who were doing the pillorying did the pillorying; all of which resulted in a semantic battle to the death.
Round One: The Results
Miley managed to not only withstand the deluge of op-eds that surrounded the VMAs, but she also profited from it. According to Forbes she gained 100,000 new Instagram followers on the day of the event, and her single ‘Wrecking Ball’ reached #2 on iTunes shortly after – and those are, of course, the most reliable markers we have for success.
She’s also come out of the whole mess a sight better than poor old Robin Thicke, who’s been in — or is pretending to have been in — a cocaine haze for the past year to save face for giving his best imitation of a human douche (and to avoid litigation from the estate of Marvin Gaye).
Abbott, meanwhile, appears to be stuck in a never-ending downward spiral in the eyes of his countrywomen, a culmination of all his misogynyunderstandings — a great deal of which occurred pre-election, not after. These included his self-alignment the pro-Liberal ‘ditch the witch’ brigade, and his many, many spoken gaffes, about abortion; women’s biologically different aptitudes; his fellow Liberal MP’s ‘sex appeal’ along with his daughters. The list, I’m afraid, goes on — and yet he still managed to be elected, and (somehow) still holds the most esteemed position for governmental power we have in the country.
In the grand cultural logic of our times, it seems that women’s earnings and cultural power, no matter how impressive, are always going to be trumped by the kind of swollen, blind privilege that would allow a man to think he’s entitled to become Minister for Women. So I’ve got to give it up to Tony for winning this round, in the name of men’s rights.
Round One Winner: Tony Abbott
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Up next is Round Two: The Tours — Arnhem Land vs Bangerz.