Banning Bazza.

While I remembered the metaphorical milk and post on Monday I forgot to stop the papers while I was away, and one of the things that awaited my return from my little skive was the suggestion by Tony Abbott, leader of the opposition (il)Liberal party, to ban Barry "Bazza" Hall, the full forward of the Western Bulldogs Aussie Rules Footy club. Not to ban Bazza from anything, you understand. The suggestion is just to ban him. To begin with I assumed that this was because Prime Minister pro tem Julia Gillard is a Bulldogs supporter, but apparently this is not the case. Tony Abbott has explained that it's really because the Bazza is "confrontational". Well, I can see his point. Here's the Bazza at work.

Clearly the Bazza is all about confrontation, whether it be getting in (and occasionally rearranging) the faces of opposing players or growling "No comment" at journalists in airports the day after flattening someone, so I do get what Tony Abbott says. Not sure it's something Bulldogs supporters will be alongside the idea of banning the Bazza since he's their leading goal kicker, which was why they signed him in the first place, and ...... oh, wait. Mrs Exile's just told me I've got this all wrong. It's not the Bazza he's talking about, it's the burqa.

Again.


The thing is though, how confrontational is the burqa, which is basically a woman with most or all of her face hidden, compared to Bazza, which is basically a 6' 4" 17 stone hard bastard known to deck people? Well, to be brutally honest it's not really a difficult question. Big hard bastard footy player over woman in the one person tent with the ninja mask, every day of the week - it's not as if the king of the Ring Wraiths is in there, is it? That'd be a fucking confrontation alright, eh Tony, you big sook?

And then we come to the other problems. If the burqa is wrong but there remains no law against fancy dress then anyone who wants to wear a burqa can just go get a Nazgul outfit and tell anyone who asks that they're trying to drum up support for a Lord of the Rings convention. And if there's something terribly wrong with a woman having nothing but her eyes showing then which of these pictures of the same woman is worse?

Since we can safely assume that no one made her dress that way for any of the three pictures I'd suggest the answer is none of them, but certainly not the one where she's showing little more of her face than a woman in a burqa. Or, for that matter, a Middle Earth nerd or a female motorcyclist or even an entirely naked woman talking through the front door via the letter box. What's it to be, Tony? Are they all confrontational? Is the comically ill-named Liberal party going to ban all of them?

So it's no more confrontational than Barry Hall and no more concealing than fancy dress or crash helmets, all that's left is the guff about wimmin's rights and freedom as if, like I've said before, somehow liberty can be increased as a result of people being told they can't do something any more. I suspect the real issue is that Tony Abbott just doesn't like the look of it. Fair enough. I don't like it either. But then I don't like seeing middle aged politicians in budgie smugglers - it's not a great look either, Tony. The difference is that I don't feel the need to ask the government to ban either of 'em.

Oh, and go Bazza and go Doggies. Well, I'm not telling him otherwise. He's way too confrontational.