JOE Palooka was a 1930s American comic strip pugilist who, when a thoroughly unaccountable event occurred, was bound to exclaim: "Who da thunk it?'
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Joe's punch-drunk ghost went a few rounds in this columnist's brain after Prime Minister Tony Abbott last week played the well-worn "sexist" card.
It followed Mr Abbott's chief of staff, Peta Credlin, being attacked for her influence and power over her boss.
Unless you have been down for the count, you would be aware of media claims that Ms Credlin has been going a round or two with the likes of feisty foreign minister Julie Bishop — supported by a bunch of purported photographic evidence.
Critics dubbed Ms Credlin "too controlling."
Heading out of his corner, Mr Abbott (old Oxford boxing blue that he is) landed a body blow with: "Do you really think my chief of staff would be under this kind of pressure if her name was P-E-T-E-R instead of P-E-T-A?"
The hairy-chested suggestion was that no one would backchat a similarly titled bloke.
This is as a mere preamble (as if you didn't know) to former PM Julia Gillard's comments on the matter of misogyny.
Especially in that speech to federal parliament in which she targeted Abbott on his attitude towards women.
Labor adviser Anne Summers, perhaps unwisely, backed Ms Gillard claiming the then PM was "being persecuted because she's a woman."
We reckon the best quote was from Fairfax journalist Peter Hartcher: "She was a woman when she was popular, she can't be unpopular now because she's a woman. The change is a result of her actions in office, not her gender."
The debate is detailed in Ms Gillard's newly-released 450-page tome My Story (Knopf Australia).
Autobiographies are truly a gold-edged invitation to indulge in self-reflection and self-justification with perhaps a teensy bit of self-deprecation just so the tale does not appear to be too flattering.
There's been a fair bit of this sort of thing lately with Ms Gillard being trumped in political memoirs by the likes of former Labor treasurer Wayne Swan, Bob Carr and Tassie's own Bob Brown.
As for Ms Gillard, after early chapters setting the scene for her career as a lawyer and social advocate, Ms Gillard details her parliamentary life before being appointed deputy prime minister in 2007, prime minister and then leaving federal parliament in September, 2013.
Discounting the truism that all political life ends in tears, the former PM concentrates on her struggles including the way she succeeded Kevin Rudd as prime minister.
Ms Gillard goes for the jugular with her apparently sexist assessment of Rudd's successful bid for leadership as "dreadfully wrong."
"I concluded that Kevin's flaws stemmed from a yearning for approval," she writes.
"That the difficulties of his childhood had produced a man who craved attention and the applause of the crowd . . . it appeared that here was a hole in him that had to be filled by success and the poor substitute for real love that is political homage."
There is nothing remotely sexist in the book concerning the long-running Tasmanian forestry dispute (and which is here documented to the point of exhaustion) yet misogyny is still the big chip on Gillard's shoulder as she remains annoyed at the media's intense scrutiny of her clothing and hairstyle, even claiming as an example of sexism how she was the only person not offered a drink at a Minerals Council of Australia dinner.
Some day that lame cry of "sexism" will have about as much effect as being in the ring with a woozy veteran boxer.
And we can all say: "Sexism, who da thunk it?"