No Swans song

The Swans fiasco had it all. Here was feminism's prized foe - brash young footballers hoovering up millions for kicking a ball - caught in the mother of all own goals. An early morning hotel frolic, paid strippers, industrial quantities of drugs, and a sexual assault allegation. Christmas had come early for the culture warriors.

And boy, did they line up to tar and feather the five young men caught up in it. Captain Callum Mills set the tone early, fronting the cameras looking suitably shattered to declare that the whole sorry affair had caused him to "put the mirror up" - not just at his five teammates, mind you, but at "all men within society."

Every bloke in the country, apparently, now owed the nation an apology for something that happened in a hotel room he'd never set foot in. "We need to do better," Mills intoned, apparently unaware that most men were fast asleep at 5am that Monday morning, not haggling over spanking surcharges in a Melbourne hotel room.

The men in sports journalism were quick to show they were on the right side. "Guys, it's us. We're causing this. And we've all got to do more to stop it," wrote Rohan Connolly in The Canberra Times.

The Governor-General weighed in too, declaring herself "shocked and troubled." Funny how selective this moral crusader's troubles are. Not a word on 27-year-old Oliver Conroy, lured last month to a Brisbane car park by a fake dating profile and killed by seven teenagers - two of them girls. Not a word on the homeless Afghan man charged with stabbing two women in separate Melbourne street attacks in the same week Mostyn spoke out. Not a word on the Perth man charged with threatening to "hunt down and kill" Pauline Hanson. Not a word on the ABC's skit joking about sodomising and torturing Gina Rinehart to death - "satire," apparently, when the target is a woman who votes the wrong way.

Gradually, details of what apparently took place in that fancy Melbourne hotel room leaked to the press. The ABC reported, citing police sources, that players paid extra to snort drugs off the dancers' bodies. A woman agreed to three slaps at $50 a pop but copped a fourth for free - and that's what blew up the room. As one commentator quipped, if that's really all there was to it, it belongs in the Small Claims Court, not a police investigation, and a national media circus.

What was a real hoot was our esteemed Prime Minister finger-wagging at the Swans, lecturing them that they "needed to do better" - only for it to emerge that one player had allegedly quipped about having "done an Albo" during the hotel frolics, a nod to the PM's own "melons" moment re that gift from the Japanese leader. Some role model.

From the media, the Swans and AFL hierarchy, right up to the PM and GG, we have had a pile-on which has ignored the requirements of due process. They talk of "victims", when nobody has been charged, let alone convicted. And offer apologies which clearly imply guilt. In a bid to placate the frenzied feminist response, those who we most expect to avoid speculation and to respect the rule of law, have trampled it underfoot.

Note that there's some talk of "inappropriate touching" and "unwanted touching in private areas." It's entirely possible there's a serious sexual assault at the heart of all this scuttlebutt, and if so, it needs to be taken seriously. But there's widespread public disgust that the women concerned have already engaged their own sleazy ambulance-chasing lawyer, one of whom told breakfast radio the case represented "the most disgusting actions and behaviour I have ever heard about in my 28 years as a lawyer."

Well-known commentator and Quillette founder Claire Lehmann summed up the mood succinctly, responding to news the women were preparing to sue both players and club: "This whole thing sounds like a shakedown."

What was encouraging was the lively online commentary, with men and women objecting to the moralising and anti-male bile. Here's a classic example: