‘Q&A’ Under Fire Again For Letting Through R-Rated Abbott Tweet

By

Published

August 24, 2015

While most of us would probably prefer not to think about our fair Prime Minister Tony Abbott‘s sexual proclivities, we as a nation are now left with a mental image we will never be able to scrub thanks to last night’s Q&A.

During an otherwise fairly dry discussion about the distinction between memoirs and biographies, Annabel Crabb was mid-sentence when the show broadcast a Tweet from someone with the handle AbbottLovesAnal.

Whoever’s responsible for vetting the Tweets that go up on screen may or may not be in trouble for letting this one through:

What a disgraceful Twitter handle for @QandA to broadcast! #auspol pic.twitter.com/jOToWwVq28

— Fiona Scott (@FionaScottMP) August 24, 2015

Liberal MP Fiona Scott immediately latched on to the Tweet, calling it “disgraceful”, and Twitter went into meltdown as roughly half of your feed worked itself into a lather of outrage, and the other laughed like schoolkids.

The account in question Tweeted out speculating about Abbott’s sexual preferences was all in the name of “democracy”, while Zaky Mallah, himself no stranger to Q&A shitstorms, chimed in to congratulate the account holder, calling him “a friend of mine.”

@MattYoung bit of harmless banter. all in the name of #qanda, tony jones, democracy etc. lets get it trending #abbottlovesanal

— Gregg Schurch (@AbbottLovesAnal) August 24, 2015

FWIW, The ABC later Tweeted out a clip of the incident for all to see, so clearly they’re enjoying yet another news cycle’s worth of free publicity for the show:

The project of a biographer is different from the memoirist, says Adler. @annabelcrabb wants human frailty #QandA http://t.co/EZcrhfT7UT

— ABC Q&A (@QandA) August 24, 2015