POSTER boy misogynist Andrew Tate and his equally dangerous brother Tristan are being treated like kings in America.
“Welcome to the States, boys,” said Ultimate Fighting Championship boss Dana White as he greeted them with, ugh, a chest bump, at a Las Vegas boxing event.
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It defies belief considering they’ve spent the past three years being detained in Romania on charges of human trafficking and sexual misconduct.
A country, I might add, where Tate pointed out that it’s easier to get off on rape charges and is “40 per cent of the reason” he moved there — not because he’s a rapist folks, but because, “I like the idea of just being able to do what I want”.
Meanwhile, President Trump slapped the back of “Ultimate Fighting champion” Conor McGregor as he greeted him in the Oval Office as though he were a long-lost relative.
Irishman McGregor, for those in blissful ignorance, was found liable for a sexual assault by a civil trial last year, an allegation he denies.
All of these men are the epitome of what some might see as the height of machismo, and they’re being entertained by a leader of the free world who once talked of grabbing women “by the p***y”.
So little wonder that the influence of Tate and his ilk is growing at an alarming rate.
Before he murdered his ex-girlfriend Louise Hunt — along with her mother Carol and sister Hannah — Kyle Clifford had watched podcasts by Tate, and the court heard his actions were fuelled by the “violent misogyny promoted” by him.
It prompted the UK Government to promise it will “crack down” on people pushing harmful beliefs such as extreme misogyny, but the law alone will not suffice.
Society as a whole needs to step up and challenge this burgeoning “manosphere” culture too.
Last week, someone sent me a video of a man raging at a woman on the Tube, jabbing his finger in her face and spitting, “What is your f***ing problem, don’t you start on me.”
They don’t know each other. Apparently, he had bumped into her, failed to apologise, and she had pointed this out — prompting his terrifying outburst.
Apart from one man who tentatively tries to calm him down, others stand idly by.
One even mouths “wow” at whoever is filming and then smiles as the man carries on with, “Shut up you stupid f***ing woman.”
We worry about terrorist sleeper cells, but there are sleeper cells of misogyny too and no one seems to be grasping the reality that, if it isn’t challenged, it’s only going to get a hell of a lot worse.
Particularly as Tate’s burgeoning audience is the young boys who will become tomorrow’s men.
Time to step up
The superb TV drama Adolescence, on Netflix and starring Stephen Graham, addresses this issue.
Centred on a seemingly mild-mannered 13-year-old boy who is accused of murdering a young girl, there’s a compelling scene where a female psychologist challenges him and ignites a misogynistic torrent of rage.
Similarly, stories abound of female teachers being told to “get back in the kitchen” by young male pupils emboldened by what they’re watching on the internet.
Yes, parents must play a vital role in making sure their sons grow up with respect for women (and vice versa), but schools need to be across it too, not to mention the justice system that, to my mind, often fails to take threatened or actioned violence against women seriously enough.
And the unwillingness of successive governments to tackle misogynism in certain ethnic minority cultures for fear of appearing politically incorrect has also played its part in where we find ourselves now.
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So it’s time for all of us to step up and call out misogyny when we see it.
Paul Ingrassia, a lawyer who has reportedly described his White House role as being Trump’s “eyes and ears” has called Tate an “extraordinary human being”.
No he isn’t. He’s a former Big Brother contestant who beefed up in the gym, made a fortune exploiting women and was perfectly summed up by Greta Thunberg in her online response to him goading her about his gas-guzzling car collection: smalldickenergy@getalife.com.
And the sooner Donald Trump — and anyone else currently who celebrates Tate — recognises his blatant inadequacies and casts him in to well deserved obscurity, the better.
FACE IT, PROFIT RULES
FORMER Facebook executive Sarah Wynn-Williams has blown the lid on the inside workings of the social media giant started by its chief executive Mark Zuckerberg.
In her memoir Careless People, she describes him as a cross between a toddler and a teenager, says he rarely gets up before midday and his staff feel obliged to let him win at board games.
She adds that the company is rife with nepotism, it felt like everyone had gone to Harvard, and the “bubble is opaque – you can’t see outside the private jet”.
Which might explain why profits seem to matter more than the pernicious effect of social media on young people’s brains.
For none of the bad decisions will have an impact on their gilded lives.
DAD KANYE DESERVES RAP ON KNUCKLES
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KANYE WEST, or whatever he calls himself these days, is on the warpath with his ex-wife Kim Kardashian over the parenting of their four children.
“I don’t want to just ‘see’ my kids. I need to raise them.
“I need to have say-so of where they go to school and who their friends are and whose houses they sleep over and whether my daughters wear lipstick and perfume,” he posted on X.
Fair enough, you might think. But then it turns out that, against Kim’s explicit wishes, he’s used his 11-year-old daughter North’s voice on a rap track with Sean “Diddy” Combs, currently awaiting trial on sex trafficking charges.
So let’s hold off on that “father of the year” award for now.
AMESS APATHY HURTS
ON the same day he was later murdered during his weekly constituency surgery as MP for Southend, Sir David Amess had picked runner beans from his garden.
“They were on the table ready for my mum to cook,” says his 39-year-old daughter Katie, speaking for the first time about her beloved father’s brutal death at the hands of Ali Harbi Ali.
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“After that, I had no idea what was going on. Your body just shuts down. When you’ve known someone for that long and they just suddenly disappear, it’s hard . . . ”
At his trial, Ali boasted about how easily he’d fooled the Government’s anti-terror programme Prevent which, Katie says, just “took him out for a cup of coffee” and said “are you a terrorist?”
He said “no”, then two weeks later bought the knife that killed her father.
She thought “all the failings would come to light” but “nothing happened”, so she and her mother, Lady Julia Amess, contacted some of his former colleagues at Westminster for help.
She says their letters were “ignored” so they got lawyers involved.
“Can you believe during the election campaign, Rishi Sunak and James Cleverly came to the constituency to do a speech about my dad on the election trail but were ignoring our petitions for help?” she adds.
All that happened was a Prevent “learning review” into the murder, which said mistakes were made because of an “administrative error”.
The murder of a loved one is bad enough.
But learning their death might have been stopped, then encountering apathy to that harsh fact from those in power, makes the loss ten times worse.
MOTOR WASTE SORRY
LAST year, I traded in my beloved Mini for a second-hand Volvo so my mum’s wheelchair would fit.
The paperwork revealed it had been sold off by the Government’s Motability scheme.
Largely funded by taxpayers, and now accounting for one fifth of car sales in the UK, it leases vehicles to people on disability benefits then sells them on when they’re three years old – which mine is.
It was in perfect nick, had just 25,000 miles on the clock, and no sign of being adapted for a physical disability.
Presumably meaning that it was one of the, gulp, 1.4million cars issued for “psychiatric disorders” between 2019 and October last year.
They didn’t have to pay the London congestion charge either.
Why do you need a taxpayer-funded, brand- new car if you’re physically able?
Worse, Motability gets to keep the cash when it flogs them off and is currently sitting on a £4billion nest egg.
Perhaps Labour’s “war on government waste” could also cast its headlights on this scandal?
