2010: another year of sex scandals

Have you lost track of how many sex scandals have been exposed by the media during 2010? No doubt you would. 2010 was another year filled with plenty of scandal to keep the media happy. In Sunday’s Sun-Herald, Matt Golding published a witty cartoon that summed this up. I thought it was hilarious especially with the dog staring directly at “Canberra Raiders Lewd Act With Dog”.

Source: Matt Golding [Sun-Herald Jan 2 2011

Notice the pun used- “naughties”. I thought this was a very clever and accurate way to describe the decade that has passed. We like to talk about it as being a time of great technological advances thanks to smartphones and social media. But along with their popularity, we have seen a surge in the number of sex scandal stories to the extent that it might as well have its own section in the news.

Crikey recently published an interesting article describing how things have changed dramatically thanks to smartphones and social media. In the past, those whose dirty secrets were exposed were just unlucky. “The two Aston Villa stars made a VHS video (remember them?) in 1998 with four women only for “Joe Public” to “find” the video in Yorke’s garbage and hand it to UK tabloid The Sun,” writes Leigh Josey.

Nowadays, you don’t need to dig around someone’s trash to find a sex scandal because there is Facebook and Twitter, or better yet, the Internet where anything and everything will viral. There’s no point thinking about policing this because it’s impossible. Plus, you have to be really stupid to let people take photos of you doing something like having sex with a dog.

Unless these celebrities finally get the point and learn to think (I highly doubt this), we can only expect more sex scandals in 2011 and in the next decade.

Everybody hates Kristy

Kristy Fraser-Kirk has finally settled her $37 million claim against David Jones and its former CEO Mark McInnes. At last!

Sadly for her, she didn’t get that massive sum of money she wanted. Instead she received $850,000, which is still a lot of money. Never mind that she’s settled the case because Fraser-Kirk is not giving a single cent to charity.

What does that say about her character? In a statement, Fraser-Kirk says:

“I had asked the Court to award punitive damages, which was to go to charity, but as the Court will no longer be determining the case that’s no longer possible. I look forward, however, to participating in charitable work in the future.”

Pfft! What a lame excuse. Sorry guys, I would only give to charity if I got the sum I asked for, but since I didn’t I’m keeping it all to myself.

A cartoon by the Sydney Morning Herald’s cartoonist Cathy Wilcox explains this perfectly.

Well sorry Kristy, if you seriously cared about exposing sexual harassment in the workplace, you would have bettered your cause by perhaps giving some part of that money to an organisation or group that supports women.

A reader’s letter to the SMH probably explains it better.

“This is the latest distortion that has sadly affected Ms Fraser-Kirk’s credibility. First was the outlandish $37 million claim. ‘General damages in sexual harassment cases have never exceeded the low hundreds of thousands of dollars and ‘punitive’ damages are usually awarded in the low tens of thousands of dollars (if at all). Her claim can be viewed only as a poorly advised publicity stunt … To restore some credibility, she should donate some of the damages to charity. To say it is no longer possible is a distortion, and she knows.”

In a poll by the SMH, turns out most people agree that Fraser-Kirk was only out to get money.

Perhaps she was courageous (the other option) at first but any sympathy that I and probably many others had for her disappeared when she demanded $37 million, then asked David Jones to pay for her US holiday, and now this.

I hope she enjoys the money. She better save it because it’s highly unlikely any company will want to hire her now.

Photo of half-naked pedophile will backfire

Photograph of Dennis Ferguson and Brett Collins

This photo of convicted pedophile Dennis Ferguson frolicking on the beach is very disturbing when you look carefully at it and understand the context of the story.

Brett Collins (the man next to Ferguson) told Fairfax Radio Network that he submitted this photo to show the community Ferguson was entitled to a normal life because it “shows Mr Ferguson in natural setting”.

I totally agree with his choice of showing Ferguson half naked with his thumb up and little children are playing in the sand a few metres away. That’s his natural setting alright and it’s terribly ironic!

Balloon Boy is nothing but a hoax

Source: ABC

This stupid balloon boy saga has to be the worst excuse for a story and while I point my finger at the idiotic father who created this mess for publicity, the American media are also to blame for joining in.

It’s tough being a late night talk show host

Source: Mirror.co.uk

Late night talk show hosts have recently been hot topics in the media- for dating their colleagues. First we had the news of David Letterman’s affairs with female employees.Then Jimmy Kimmel joined in the fun and revealed that he had been dating Molly McNearney, a co-head writer on Jimmy Kimmel Live.

Hey Hey, It’s Controversial

Hey Hey It’s Saturday drew in more than 2.3 million viewers last night but unlike last week, where their high ratings were being the topics of discussion, they are now marred by the “blackface” controversy.

How to get away with crime: do a Polanski

The next time a person commits a crime but wants to get away with it successfully, my advice would be to run away and become famous.

That is the case with Roman Polanski’s arrest by Swiss police and it has the media in an uproar. The more I read about it, the more the tangled web of information does my head in! There has been a flood of viewpoints on the issue of Polanski’s sexual assault with a 13-year old girl: legal, social and political.

BREAKING NEWS! THE ‘SKINNY THING’ HAS BEEN FOUND!

How the Sun-Herald broke the news on their front page

“FOUND…Della’s other woman” was the headline screaming out at me on Sunday when I opened the Sun Herald.

So what? I saw absolutely no point in the story except to publish a paparazzi photo and milk what’s left of a dead and dusted story.

Another political scandal!

Since the start of the week, the news has been dominated by another political scandal which is John Della Bosca’s resignation after his affair with 23 year old Kate Neill was made public.

There are many different things that can be said about the case but a prominent opinion that has arisen is that politicians should be judged solely on their performance.

Supporters of this viewpoint say that affairs are not important, are “normal” and serve no public interest. In a letter to the Sydney Morning Herald, one woman wrote:

“Unless he is having sex with children or animals, John Della Bosca’s behaviour has nothing to do with anyone except his wife.”

The tabloids’ love of celebrity sex tapes

Since when were images of naked people worth making a gallery for? Well, according to The Daily Telegraph, it is

Earlier this week, Gray’s Anatomy actor Eric Dane, his wife Rebecca Gayheart and former USA beauty queen Kari Ann Peniche were “exposed” in a sex tape.

Courtesy of the Daily‘s website, you can see 14 large screen grabs from the tape but they cleverly avoid any claim of misconduct by covering the women with black rectangles.