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Speaker 1: There are a lot of remarkable things about that sea

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Speaker 1: word column yesterday, and one of them is that it

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Speaker 1: is still up online and apparently no one is sorry

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Speaker 1: for this. Now, if you haven't seen this column, let

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Speaker 1: me get you up to speed on this. Yesterday, Sunday

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Speaker 1: Star Times columnist Andrea Advance did something that I would

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Speaker 1: venture no other mainstream columnist has ever done in this country.

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Speaker 1: She called a minister of the Crown a sea word

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Speaker 1: in the newspaper. I shouldn't write the sea word out,

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Speaker 1: she wrote, se dot dot dot. The subject of it

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Speaker 1: was the gender pay equity revamp. The minister was Nikola Willison.

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Speaker 1: Andrea wrote, turns out you can have it all so

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Speaker 1: long as you're prepared to be a sa dot dot dot. Now,

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Speaker 1: I don't even know how to start explaining to you

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Speaker 1: how wild it is that that happened yesterday, that Andrea

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Speaker 1: dropped the sea bomb in the Sunday Star Times. That

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Speaker 1: word is the second most banned word on radio. We

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Speaker 1: are not allowed to say it. Like if we say it,

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Speaker 1: go to town on us complain because somebody is going

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Speaker 1: to get in a huge amount of trouble and we

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Speaker 1: will be saying sorry. But at least on the radio.

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Speaker 1: To some extent, I think we have the defense of

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Speaker 1: being able to say, hey, look, it was the heat

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Speaker 1: of the moment and the words slipped out of my mouth.

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Speaker 1: That is not what happens in newspapers, right. Words don't

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Speaker 1: just slip out onto the paper. You write it down,

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Speaker 1: you consider it, you rewrite it, you reread it, you

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Speaker 1: make sure that every single word is exactly what you

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Speaker 1: mean to say. It is nothing about that is in

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Speaker 1: the heat of the moment. And then you send it

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Speaker 1: to your editors, and your editors read it and they

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Speaker 1: look at it and they go, yep, that's okay. That

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Speaker 1: can go in the newspaper. And that is what happened. Now.

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Speaker 1: I'm not a prude. I am not offended by swearing.

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Speaker 1: I swear myself, and I have also done exactly what

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Speaker 1: Andrew has done. I have said things about ministers that

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Speaker 1: I shouldn't have said, and I've regretted and I've apologized

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Speaker 1: for it. But this is out of hand what has

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Speaker 1: happened here. There has to be some decorum. I mean,

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Speaker 1: we can hardly complain about anonymous trolls on social media

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Speaker 1: attacking our female politicians when our very own columnists do

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Speaker 1: it in print with their names attached to it, and

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Speaker 1: reverse this. By the way, if you're not offended by

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Speaker 1: I feel like now she had a coming to her,

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Speaker 1: reverse it, reverse it. Imagine it was Jacinda. Imagine that

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Speaker 1: a columnist had written this about Jasinda. How much outrage

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Speaker 1: that would have caused, How canceled that person would have been.

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Speaker 1: There were other sea words we weren't allowed to say

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Speaker 1: about you, Cinda, Cindy was one of them. Communist was

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Speaker 1: another one. And if you said either of the people

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Speaker 1: would flip out. Well, imagine how people would have flipped

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Speaker 1: out if we'd said the sea word. It is very

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Speaker 1: hard to respect an argument about how Nicola Willis isn't

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Speaker 1: a real feminist in a column that attacks her in

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Speaker 1: the most unfeminist way. Right, it uses the most gendered

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Speaker 1: put down that you can think of. It uses terms

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Speaker 1: like girl math to basically suggest that she can't balance

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Speaker 1: the country's books because she's a woman. Now, for the record,

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Speaker 1: I think Andrea Vants is a fantastic journalist and an

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Speaker 1: incredibly incisive opinion writer, and I think that her editor,

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Speaker 1: Tracy Watkins, is the best at what she does. But

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Speaker 1: this was a mistake. And it lets everyone down when

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Speaker 1: we drag the tone down that badly. For more from

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Speaker 1: Heather du Classie, Allen Drive and Live to News Talks,

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Speaker 1: it'd be from four pm weekdays, or follow the podcast

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Speaker 1: on iHeartRadio