Sunday night’s showing of the Rebecca Gibney vehicle ‘The Killing Field’ did not help. It had a leading actress, seemingly striving to be the Aussie version of the Scandi-noirs’ Saga Norén or Sarah Lund, failing dismally in this punter’s opinion – Gibney is simply not in the same league. Included were some happenings that, embarrassingly, even surpassed the illogic of some of the more daffy American police procedurals. It was a bit of a stinker. Before you could snap your fingers our ‘brilliant’ blonde heroine had a hit-list of sleazeball males as long as your arm, all possessing the necessary ingredients to classify them as suspects for the serial murders of under-age girls. The town was choko with them. Their graves had recently been discovered within the small rural community’s boundaries. Were there any decent males to be found in Mingara? The school’s oily principal was definitely in the frame, as was the slavering fire chief. What a coincidence it was that both were visiting another town on the same day that one of the victims was snatched in it – how convenient. These two and others were just waiting to get their hands down the panties of nubile teens in a tele-movie that stretched believability to the limit. This tepid effort followed on from the excellent ABC/BBC series Janet King and Broadchurch – very classy offerings, but the principal was the same. Some of the most trusted defenders of the law, in the former, were in Janet’s sights as members of a ring of slimy paedophiles. The British effort even took me away from Friday night footy it was so addictive as David Tennant tracked down which of his small town’s shady characters were responsible for the defiling and death of a young lad. Then there’s Rolf, the Catholic church, Salvos, scout masters – this list is also as long as one’s arm. No longer are crimes of sexual perversity committed against defenceless children swept under the carpet – not a week goes by without some individual or organisation being the brunt of sensational headlines in the tabloids in much the same way as those ‘odious gays and their foetid practices’ were last century.

Please don’t misjudge where I am coming from with this. As a doting grandfather of an exquisitely beautiful two year old I would attempt to rip to shreds any predatory male that lay a finger on her, heaven forbid. And pure evil like Jimmy Saville should have been subjected to sharia law had he been still with us. What a cockroach – I never did get the Poms’ adoration of this odd creature before he was ‘outed’.

No, its not that. With so much bad news on the topic about, on our screens and in print, it’s only natural that mothers like Tracey Spicer go to the nth degree to helicopter their progeny against what is even the slightest possibility of something ghastly being perpetrated. Nevertheless, even if I agreed with almost every point made in her article ‘I Don’t Want My Kids Next to a Man on a Plane’, it still made me crabby and frustrated as a member of the male gender.

Of course Tracey covers herself by meekly scribing ‘…sure, not all men are paedophiles.’ Couldn’t she at least have stated that, despite the impression created by ‘The Killing Fields’ et al, that the overwhelming majority of us certainly aren’t and abhor the thought? Poor Johnny McGirr, forced to change seats on a Virgin flight when a computer placed his bottom next to an unattended under-ager Automatically above his head was raised a sign – ‘Potential Child Molester’. He was presumed guilty because of that y chromosome. I imagine, had it been me, I would have been mortified. How soul destroying to be labelled such a risk to the young and vulnerable. Yet I understand why Virgin and other airlines have such a policy – there’s always the ‘what if’ question and equally predatory lawyers out there waiting to feast on any bid for resulting compensation. It is also revelatory that Ms Spicer is protective of her own side of the ledger, promptly informing us of the minuscule percentage of women who are like offenders – only eight in a hundred, don’t you know? Despite her children recently making a transcontinental flight without her and retaining smiles on their faces at the end of the journey, she was still not satisfied. Although praising Virgin for their placement and treatment she ‘…was disappointed I had no choice about where they’d be seated.’

             Tracey Spicer

These days I get nervous around children’s playgrounds or beaches with a camera in hand when my sole intention is capturing the adventurings of that little braveheart who is my granddaughter. I hate feeling like that. I wonder where it will end. Will there come a time I will need a police check to carry a camera out in the open, or indeed to fly? Will male teachers one day be unable to ply their trade in schools until their pupils come of age? Will adult males be forbidden in the scouting movement. Perhaps that is a tad too extreme, but what about the case of a male wrongly accused on the word of a child? Check out that superb Danish movie ‘The Hunt’ to see the results of that.

I praise the media for making the world a safer place for our children, even if Ms Spicer contrarily laments that the world no longer engenders ‘…a sense of adventure…’ for her offspring. Yes, males are to blame for that too. I do know what she is banging on about is far too important to be merely a case of male bashing. By gee, though, reading this, I do feel for my gender.

Ms Spicer’s Opinion Piece =

Sunday night’s showing of the Rebecca Gibney vehicle ‘The Killing Field’ did not help. It had a leading actress, seemingly striving to be the Aussie version of the Scandi-noirs’ Saga Norén or Sarah Lund, failing dismally in this punter’s opinion – Gibney is simply not in the same league. Included were some happenings that, embarrassingly, even surpassed the illogic of some of the more daffy American police procedurals. It was a bit of a stinker. Before you could snap your fingers our ‘brilliant’ blonde heroine had a hit-list of sleazeball males as long as your arm, all possessing the necessary ingredients to classify them as suspects for the serial murders of under-age girls. The town was choko with them. Their graves had recently been discovered within the small rural community’s boundaries. Were there any decent males to be found in Mingara? The school’s oily principal was definitely in the frame, as was the slavering fire chief. What a coincidence it was that both were visiting another town on the same day that one of the victims was snatched in it – how convenient. These two and others were just waiting to get their hands down the panties of nubile teens in a tele-movie that stretched believability to the limit. This tepid effort followed on from the excellent ABC/BBC series Janet King and Broadchurch – very classy offerings, but the principal was the same. Some of the most trusted defenders of the law, in the former, were in Janet’s sights as members of a ring of slimy paedophiles. The British effort even took me away from Friday night footy it was so addictive as David Tennant tracked down which of his small town’s shady characters were responsible for the defiling and death of a young lad. Then there’s Rolf, the Catholic church, Salvos, scout masters – this list is also as long as one’s arm. No longer are crimes of sexual perversity committed against defenceless children swept under the carpet – not a week goes by without some individual or organisation being the brunt of sensational headlines in the tabloids in much the same way as those ‘odious gays and their foetid practices’ were last century.

Please don’t misjudge where I am coming from with this. As a doting grandfather of an exquisitely beautiful two year old I would attempt to rip to shreds any predatory male that lay a finger on her, heaven forbid. And pure evil like Jimmy Saville should have been subjected to sharia law had he been still with us. What a cockroach – I never did get the Poms’ adoration of this odd creature before he was ‘outed’.

No, its not that. With so much bad news on the topic about, on our screens and in print, it’s only natural that mothers like Tracey Spicer go to the nth degree to helicopter their progeny against what is even the slightest possibility of something ghastly being perpetrated. Nevertheless, even if I agreed with almost every point made in her article ‘I Don’t Want My Kids Next to a Man on a Plane’, it still made me crabby and frustrated as a member of the male gender.

Of course Tracey covers herself by meekly scribing ‘…sure, not all men are paedophiles.’ Couldn’t she at least have stated that, despite the impression created by ‘The Killing Fields’ et al, that the overwhelming majority of us certainly aren’t and abhor the thought? Poor Johnny McGirr, forced to change seats on a Virgin flight when a computer placed his bottom next to an unattended under-ager Automatically above his head was raised a sign – ‘Potential Child Molester’. He was presumed guilty because of that y chromosome. I imagine, had it been me, I would have been mortified. How soul destroying to be labelled such a risk to the young and vulnerable. Yet I understand why Virgin and other airlines have such a policy – there’s always the ‘what if’ question and equally predatory lawyers out there waiting to feast on any bid for resulting compensation. It is also revelatory that Ms Spicer is protective of her own side of the ledger, promptly informing us of the minuscule percentage of women who are like offenders – only eight in a hundred, don’t you know? Despite her children recently making a transcontinental flight without her and retaining smiles on their faces at the end of the journey, she was still not satisfied. Although praising Virgin for their placement and treatment she ‘…was disappointed I had no choice about where they’d be seated.’

These days I get nervous around children’s playgrounds or beaches with a camera in hand when my sole intention is capturing the adventurings of that little braveheart who is my granddaughter. I hate feeling like that. I wonder where it will end. Will there come a time I will need a police check to carry a camera out in the open, or indeed to fly? Will male teachers one day be unable to ply their trade in schools until their pupils come of age? Will adult males be forbidden in the scouting movement. Perhaps that is a tad too extreme, but what about the case of a male wrongly accused on the word of a child? Check out that superb Danish movie ‘The Hunt’ to see the results of that.

I praise the media for making the world a safer place for our children, even if Ms Spicer contrarily laments that the world no longer engenders ‘…a sense of adventure…’ for her offspring. Yes, males are to blame for that too. I do know what she is banging on about is far too important to be merely a case of male bashing. By gee, though, reading this, I do feel for my gender.

Ms Spicer’s Opinion Piece = .http://www.smh.com.au/travel/i-dont-want-my-kids-sitting-next-to-a-man-on-a-plane-20140424-375z6.html