David Campbell, a flock of grubs, and homoerotic activities in footy clubs ...

(Above: how better to start off talk of the media and sex with a Northern Territory News front page?)

Paul Tatnell isn't high on our reading list, but reading The blimp's back, BIG time, we couldn't help but notice the concluding sentence:

Airships or blimps were widely used before the 1940s, which was followed by numerous accidents, including the 1937 Hindenburg explosion that killed 37 people.

Say what? Is this a Media Watch moment?

Not really, not when you've got Tim Blair not so long ago frothing and foaming at the mouth, raging at Media Watch and stoutly defending the Northern Territory News. Regional paper mocked, he shrieked, presumably before the News surpassed itself with Horny roo stalks NT women, gaining widespread international notoriety even better than can be managed with a croc story.

Blair lathers himself into a rage at the NT News' expert budget coverage being ignored, thereby proving he can't tell a croc from a crock. But I guess if the wiki is correct and he did his cadetship on the sadly missed Melbourne Truth, then any croc of crap will do in a storm.

But this is all by way of an entree to the tragic news that Fred Nile's campaign for an open secular society has collapsed within a day.

It comes by way of NSW transport minister David Campbell getting done over for attending a gentleman's club.

Now it was only a few days ago that Campbell reacted to an NRMA survey of 382 businesses which noted that more than a third of respondent businesses had changed their business habits as a result of traffic congestion in Sydney. (Sydney traffic bad and getting worse: survey).

75 per cent said their journey to work was longer that a year ago, while 42 per cent have incurred costs as high as $10,000 because of congestion.

Campbell's response? Denialism:

"Traffic on Sydney's major roads has increased by 46 per cent over the past 18 years but travel times on Sydney's most important roads has remained steady," he said.

"[That's] through a mix of large infrastructure projects and smaller initiatives, such as the pinch point program, and improving public transport."

Unsurprisingly, this provoked some outrage in Manly (Campbell 'out of touch' on traffic jams). If there's one rule essential for sanity in Sydney, go nowhere near Military road or the Spit bridge during peak hour.

Campbell had an exceptionally well rounded form of denialism:

Mr Campbell was unfazed that 10 per cent of businesses also said they had moved to locations outside the city to escape congestion.

"I would actually welcome the fact that people are moving their business or investing and establishing businesses in the suburbs," he said.

Mr Campbell did not attempt to reconcile the RTA figures with a NSW Auditor-General's report in 2009 that found average travel speeds on Sydney's major roads hovered at 31km/h in the morning peak and 43km/h for the afternoon peak.

"The auditor-general collects information and publishes it in a form and the RTA collects and publishes information in a form," he said. (Sydney traffic congestion no worse: Campbell).

In any decent world, Campbell would have been sacked on the spot for his preposterous imitation of Pinocchio. "In a form" indeed. Yes minister and three bags full. But then this is the NSW government, where bald faced denialism is the daily go.

Now Campbell has fallen on his sword for his sex club visit, and the thing that provides the get out of jail card for the salacious, salivating media, led by a pack of hounds at Channel 7, is his ministerial car. Here's Tory Maguire:

NSW transport minister David Campbell has just resigned after being sprung using his taxpayer-funded car to visit a gay sex club (funny how it’s always the car that does them in). (Just another day in the swill that is NSW politics).

Proving yet again what a dropkick Tory is. If he'd been using the ministerial taxpayer-funded car to visit the local pub, or the local grocery store, or the local park toilet, would that have done him in?

Actually the taxpayer-funded car is like any corporate car, available for personal use.

Would even a visit to a brothel have provoked such a storm, if it'd been a decently heterosexual brothel? Well I guess a taxi would have been a wise precaution. But if we start outing brothel users where will it all end?

A better header for Maguire's piece might have been Just another day in the swill that is NSW media.

You have to turn to an unlikely source, Imre Salusinzky, for a little bit of libertarian logic, in Disgrace for the man, and the media:

David Campbell's disgrace is yet another unedifying moment in NSW politics.

But this is not a good moment for the media coverage of Macquarie Street either.

What was the public interest in putting to air last night the story of Campbell's visit to a gay sex club?

It did not involve his ministerial responsibilities and no misbehaviour is alleged to have occurred in parliament or in any government office.

The Seven Network report made much of Campbell's use of his official car, but ministers have full private use of their cars.

If Campbell's use of his car was a grounds for resignation, every NSW minister, along with Opposition Leader Barry O'Farrell, should be called upon to quit.

Memo to bubblehead Tory. That's how you write an opener.

The grubs at Seven of course have adopted a high minded view that they're exposing the hypocrisy of a politician purporting to be a family man, but high minded grubbery remains grubbery of the first water. If everybody's private affairs were to be shown on prime time television, we'd have a never ending stream of scandals.

Oh wait, we do. That's what the grubs rely on.

Meanwhile, don't expect any changes to Sydney traffic. Which was ostensibly the point of Campbell's job. You can't expect the media to focus on actual policies, not when it can evoke images of men in clubs dropping their towels. By golly, you can almost feel the saliva dribbling from Andrew Stevenson's lips as he scribbles The days of privacy in politics are gone:

... the political offence came at the point when he paid his $22 to enter Ken's - a sex-on-premises venue on Anzac Parade - undressed, hung his clothes in a locker, wrapped a towel around his waist and went to join the gathered men.

Campbell did not pay men for sex; he was in a club which does not admit minors and whose sole purpose is to provide a venue at which willingly consenting adult men have sex with each other.

The political offence? Having sex with men? Unwrapping the towel around his waist? Paying twenty two bucks? I can see the personal offence - Campbell has a wife - but the political offence?

But gee Stevenson writes an evocative piece, doesn't he, almost as if he's been there and done that, so real is the feel of the images of the locker and the towel and the gathered men. But was the towel white? Details please Mr. Stevenson!

As for the political offence, if Campbell had been a posturing conservative who spent his time decrying homosexuality, and then spent his time hiring a rent boy to carry his bags, there might have been a political contradiction worth exposing.

But the only political offence Campbell has committed is being in charge of transport in NSW. And that alone should have been the hanging offence, and a lot of other politicians hanging with him.

Not the righteous high minded blather from Peter Meakin defending the scandal mongering - as if Meakin himself hasn't been caught attending a school for scandal (Channel 9 revels in Meakin sentence).

Meanwhile, it's surely only coincidence that Jason Akermanis has been freely offering advice to homosexuals. Stay in the closet, Jason Akermanis tells homosexuals.

It's a pity Akermanis can't find his own personal closet, but it seems he too is worried about towels dropping:

Football clubs are very different environments. Locker room nudity is an everyday part of our lives and unlike any other work place.

I believe it would cause discomfort in that environment should someone declare himself gay.

Dear lord, the poor wilting sensitive flower. But then it tumbled out:

In an athletic environment the rules are different from the cultural rules for men.

Never in a mall will you see two straight men hugging, arse* slapping and jumping around like kids after an important goal.

Locker room nudity and homoerotic activities are normal inside footy clubs. (*the arse was presented as a--- in the original, but we like to call an arse an arse).

Homoerotic activities are normal inside footy clubs?

Calling network Seven. Time to get those cameras out and track AFL footballers day and night?

Meanwhile, damage control has begun, with Aker's viewpoint bizarre: Roos, a typical example.

The timing of the column comes a week after some media organisations staked-out the home of a current player in the belief he was set to sell his story about being gay to a rival company.

Sheesh, how could I have doubted you, valiant sleaze bucket Australian media. You are tracking AFL footballers day and night. Well done.

Some, such as Sydney coach Paul Roos, have taken a view:

"It's a staggering story when you read it. If it had been written in 1943 or something like that, you could have been forgiven. But in 2010, to hear something like that is just bizarre."

Sorry Paul Roos. In the Australian media, it's always 1943.

And sorry Fred Nile. Your valiant campaign for a secular, open, free from oppression society, has fallen at the first hurdle. Guess you're stuck with the burqa, and maintaining the rage about gays ...

(Below: back in the day - a full month ago - when David Campbell was being berated for real political crimes in NSW's Mr Slow lampooned for transport failures).