Abbo is a perfectly normal fella.

By Gary Scarrabelotti

I’m glad that Abbo committed the “gaff” of saying that Fiona Scott, Liberal candidate for Lindsay, has “sex appeal”. It’s the perfectly happy reaction of a perfectly normal male to a lady who is clearly possessed of charms. In fact, I reckon that even the gaucheness of Abbo’s compliment is touching in its way. 

What the censorious femo-nazis on Twitter, or the journos in the Fairfax play pen, think about this incident is really neither here nor there.  Their gripes are a bonus for the Coalition’s campaign: the more hue and cry the new puritans make, so much the better.

The ABC’s “The Drum” was banging on yesterday evening about the same thing. The little drummer kids cut to the all too self-consciously grave Senator Penny Wong for moral compass. LOL. It reminded me of a couple of 1950s era maiden aunts censoring the ex-nuptial pregnancy of a wayward niece.  It just goes to underscore the far out-ness of Abbo’s critics and the plain decent ordinariness of his own persona. You see, Abbo is not “gay” or anything; he’s a real bloke. And that, after all, is what most voters really want to know, especially the other real blokes among the voters.

Meantime, the uppity choir boy, K Rudd, cut in to carol his own moral rectitude in the matter of blokey admiration for good looking women. He reminded us of how Abbott’s remarks might count as sexual harassment in the Australian workplace.

Good one, Kevin! So politically savvy of you to remind us of the tyranny of laws under which we labour and of which burdens, and their increase, you aspire to be promoter-in-chief.

Coffee

Sobered by all this, while taking coffee yesterday, I took it upon myself to correct a young waiter who was pining away to the cook over (I assumed) one of his waitress colleagues.

“Oh, she is just so beautiful,” he sighed.

And she was, in a lovely Latina way.

It was sad to have to spoil youthful ardour and innocence.

“Sorry, Mate,” I chipped in, “but such remarks are hardly politically correct and you are like to get into strife. For a bloke to moon over another bloke is one thing, but over a woman … that could be verboten.”

The waiter and the cook were amused, but at the same time they saw the sad point. Romance is politically dangerous.

To hell with the pursed lips, the wagging fingers, the shaking heads.  Out with the jealous aunties. Bring on The Bloke.