Overview
Miranda Devine. Yeah, you've heard of her. Maybe you connect her with the profile shot that gazes smugly at you from the pages of the Telegraph somebody's discarded on the seat of the bus, or then again, maybe you're picturing the scenes of speechless, apoplectic rage with which your friends and loved ones are occasionally wont to speak of her. But make no mistake, there's nothing wrong with Miranda Devine's opinions per se. She just likes things clean, white, middle-class, conservative and heterosexual. Nothing wrong with that, she's entitled to her opinion. In fact, she's so entitled to it that she is the "leading columnist" with the Daily Telegraph and the Herald Sun, who gift her an entire page in Australia's most popular tabloids in which to exercise her right to free speech. Which is all well and good until you get crazy-eyed hysterics ringing up talk-back radio and using her articles to back up what are often reactionary and evidence-free arguments.
On Sunday, August 14, The Daily Telegraph published her column entitled 'It's a Myth Conception: The problem of a fatherless society.' While ostensibly about the pregnancy announced last week of Senator Penny Wong and her partner Sophie Allouache, Devine manages to complete some truly spectacular logical acrobatics to take us from a pregnant lesbian couple to the seemingly connected statement, "You only had to see the burning streets of London last week to see the manifestation of a fatherless society." Makes sense, right?
To a lot of people it doesn't, and one of the people it rubbed up the wrong way was Tom Ballard, Triple J breakfast presenter, comedian and self-described "professional homosexual". Check out Tom's measured, yet whimsical, response below.
