Just the facts, ma’am

Macquarie University journalism academic Catharine Lumby relates today in the SMH a horror trip via Air France from Paris to Shanghai, during which she was seated next to a gentleman who threatened to kill her. One assumes he knew nothing of the gross damage journalism schools have inflicted on a once decent and relatively honest craft, so a contempt for credentialism and ideology served as “education” are most unlikely to have inspired such antipathy. One might also marvel at her one-in-a-million misfortune in finding herself beside that rarest of rare specimens, a Frenchman — zut alors! — who does not like women.

Beyond that, one might also wonder if something is missing from the description she provides of her airborne antagonist:

‘…an older, bulky French gentleman, he huffed and puffed as he sat down and made it clear, under his breath in French, he was angry to be seated next to a woman. His only words to me: “Don’t talk to me”

Did her fellow passenger have a big, weird beard, and might he, perhaps, have been an adherent of a creed that holds all women, not just journalism academics, in low regard?

Probably not, because when Ms Lumby encounters a member of that particular faith, she makes a point to advertise her empathy with the oppressed and fearful, the downtrodden in their wretched otherness who are condemned to a shadowland of fear visited upon them by our racist and intolerant society. It is an attitude expressed for the admiration of all by Ms Lumby’s recent tweet, reproduced atop this item.

Unfazed by her ordeal and safely back in Australia, Ms Lumby’s real torment can begin in earnest as she pays heed to close pal Margo Kingston’s PhD on herself, underwritten by $40,000 from the public purse.

Lumby’s account of women’s sorry lot at the hands of skimpily described men can be read in full via the link below.

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