A councillor, a freelance writer and an off-colour joke

If Angela has lived with the consequences of being a Cuming all her life, so has Mark had to deal with a moniker that colloquially corresponds to sexual intercourse. Perhaps he assumed that the journalist had a similar sense of humour about such things.

If there is one news item that sums up the ills of the age this week, it has to be the sorry saga of the Hamilton City councillor, the journalist and the internet meme.

Mark Bunting, a former radio ‘‘personality’’ turned local body politician, sends off-colour images to a freelance writer whom he mistakenly believed to the type of friend who could take a joke. Bunting’s timing is off.

Those prone to using that allpurpose buzz word beloved of handwringers would likely describe the action as ‘‘offensive’’. Not only do the photographs in question constitute a very crude attempt at religious satire – and I use the term loosely – they have an undeniable sexual edge.

It is clear why Angela Cuming is the recipient of this attempt at humour. Her name features in the punchline. The long-awaited second appearance of our Lord and Saviour has been deliberately conflated with an essential part of the procreative act. It’s a less-than-cunning pun.

Bunting’s comic timing is also questionable because it coincides with a political decision that Cuming opposes. In a heated council environment, one stirred up quite bizarrely by a Right-wing mayor who has somehow morphed into a tax-and-spend rate-riser since elected, Hamilton City representatives have conspired to deny metropolis youngsters some long-promised new playgrounds.

Bunting has necessarily been in the thick of this debate, or at least should have been.

Cuming has been lobbying for the playgrounds. In this context, the joke was like rubbing salt into the proverbial wound. Not only is your council indifferent to the recreational needs of the younger generation, its members send you filthy jokes – ones that mock your name.

It takes no great stretch of the imagination to identify with Cuming’s fury.

What she did next, though, is open to question. In the selfrighteous manner of the age, the politician is outed for the ‘‘grossly inappropriate and offensive joke’’.

Cuming tells the world – or at least the world as far as Sydney, where a friend of mine forwarded an ABC article on the matter – that Bunting’s insensitivity reduced her to tears. She was apparently shocked that ‘‘someone that I respected and thought was my equal and I thought respected me actually thought so little of me’’.

You could argue, of course, that the very act of sending the meme demonstrated such respect.

As someone whose own surname is ‘‘Bunting’’, it can be safely assumed that the councillor knows what it is like to be teased. He did, after all, once host a radio show called ‘‘Bunting in the Morning’’, a none-too-subtle word play on the notion of pre-noon conjugal relations.

If Angela has lived with the consequences of being a Cuming all her life, so has Mark had to deal with a moniker that colloquially corresponds to sexual intercourse. Perhaps he assumed that the journalist had a similar sense of humour about such things. It’s usually healthier to laugh than cry.

Cuming tells us that she ‘‘was hurt, humiliated and a little bit angry as well and overwhelmingly sad that it’s 2017 and this is still what we have to deal with’’.

Really? Whatever happened to a robust Fourth Estate that rolled with the punches? A couple of photographs sent you into a fit of rage and humiliation? What would your reaction be to something tragic or genuinely newsworthy?

Dare I suggest that the emotional responses of the journalist are not in and of themselves news? Is it really such a challenge to cope with a tasteless joke?

The Cuming indignation does not stop there. Breathlessly moving from her situation into the more generalised realm of gender politics, she tells us that ‘‘any joke of any sexual nature is never OK for a man – particularly one in a position of power and authority – to send to any woman, regardless of their name’’.

Well, there goes centuries of courtship practice. Men are no longer allowed to make jokes about sex? A humourless, sterile world is mandatory? Has Cuming heard of freedom of expression? We are back to Orwell’s 1984 and the notion of the ‘‘sex crime’’.

Let’s not forget in all of this that Mark Bunting did not himself write or compose the meme. He neither re-programmed the street sign, nor took its photograph. All he did was forward it on to someone he thought a friend.

Boy, did he get that wrong.