TV

Rebecca Maddern Checks Sam Newman’s Privilege After His Idiotic Eddie McGuire Rant

There was one voice of reason on "The Footy Show" last night.

by Sinead Stubbins  23 June 2016

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Last night on The Footy Show, Sam Newman emerged from a drain and decided to spout some archaic nonsense about Eddie McGuire’s bizarre joke about drowning Caroline Wilson. Surprise: he thinks everyone is making a big deal over nothing, we should all just leave poor mate alone and anyway, it’s Caroline Wilson’s fault for being the worst!

“If you’re going to want to be treated equally, the point is, don’t complain when it’s too equal,” he said. “The jig’s up Caro, honestly and truly. You’re becoming an embarrassment. And even if you were underwater, you’d still be talking.”

You want equality, but then you don’t like it when people bully you on national radio and laugh themselves silly at the idea of you being murdered? You can’t have it both ways, ladies! If there’s one person I want to teach me about the right kind of feminism, it’s a 70-year-old rich white dude whose claim to fame was building a house with Pamela Anderson’s face on it.

This guy.

However, Newman did not go unchallenged last night. Co-host Rebecca Maddern very succinctly mentioned that Eddie McGuire’s comments did actually make her “uncomfortable” and from the perspective of a woman — a perspective that Sam Newman seems incapable of considering — they were out of line. “If it was said about me, I must admit, that I would have been pretty upset by it,” she said.

“I think in the media, we have to be reminded that we are in a very privileged position. We have a voice. That voice is listened to by many people, and people absorb what we say. And in turn, because of that, we have a power to change the conversation and shape the public perception about certain issues.”

“If we want big things to change in the community then we need to start with the small things. Whatever the issue is. Whether it’s domestic violence, whether it’s violence against women, whether it’s coward punches, whether it’s bullying. Attitudes need to be changed if we are to get, eventually, to the big things.”

Maddern also noted that even though she believes that everyone should “move on” from the incident now that the Triple M team had apologised, she emphasised the power of language in casually reinforcing issues of domestic violence. For football fans who were disgusted by McGuire’s joke, Maddern’s comments are a nice reminder that not all AFL media personalities are antiquated, sexist ‘old boys’ who are out of touch with the modern football fan.

As far as Sam Newman is concerned though, Eddie McGuire critics are pieces of shit, CASE CLOSED. “Those excrement who have weighed into this — I’d like to mention their names, but as nobody reads or listens to them because they’re on second tier media outlets I won’t bother,” he said.

“But if you spray excrement with perfume or put aftershave on a piece of excrement, at the end of the day, it’s still a piece of excrement.”

Nailed it, Sam, For more second-tier coverage of the Eddie McGuire saga, click here.