Channel 9 Footy Show's Sam Newman shows again what he's made of

Channel Nine's AFL Footy Show is presently running a soap opera send-up (The House of Bolger) featuring some of AFL's footy stars. Until to the program of 24 July this send-up was pretty much good fun and in as good a taste as could be expected – especially considering that the Footy Show's nasty court jester, Sam Newman, was involved. During this program, however, an unexplained pregnancy was referred to as being an 'immaculate conception'. As any faithful Catholic would know, this was an undisguised gratuitous attempt to ridicule a solemn doctrine of Catholic belief.

Now Catholics can no longer be surprised at the unrestrained anti-Catholic bigotry that flows through the media. What should surprise is that the Footy Show, presumably meant to cater in a non-partisan, non-political manner to ordinary families, should feel it necessary to gratuitously offend Catholics who, people like Sam Newman would no doubt be surprised to hear, are otherwise normal family people, too.

During the Footy Show there is a item called 'Sam's mailbag'. At first this was also amusing but, alas, has turned into a platform for the expression of Newman's particular crude and nasty bigotries. During last night's 'mailbag' piece, Newman puffed himself up to point of bursting in a rage of scornful sneering. The reason was that a viewer dared to write and complain about the gratuitous offence to the solemn Catholic doctrine of the 'Immaculate Conception'.

Newman could not express enough scorn for this. Despite being warned by Eddy Maguire, he thrust a face twisted with hate into the camera and said to the effect that he would stop gratuitously offending Catholics if Catholic clergy stopped sexually abusing their congregations. His all-sweeping formulation was typically in as crude a fashion as the network could allow. Now let's not resort to name-calling. Let's state the truth about Newman.

The Nine Footy Show's Newman is a moral and intellectual creep who has made a profession of holding ordinary Australians far less fortunate than himself up to public ridicule. He is a disgusting hypocrite who boasts of his adultery and who has turned his sexually abusive behaviour into a way of life. The fact that he has been assaulted for his infidelities and run over by a girlfriend is testimony enough to the sort of person he is.

Newman has little idea of right and wrong and less of how to behave in public. It is therefore the responsibility of Eddy Maguire and the Footy Show's producers to force Newman to apologise to Catholics in general and specifically to the letter writer and most of all to those ninety-seven per cent of Catholic priests who lead good lives – the sort of life Newman would not understand.

For Newman's information, these are some facts about clerical sexual abuse in the Catholic Church: the incidence of sexual abuse among Catholic clergy is no higher than in comparable organisations (and certainly not among deluded TV stars); the vast majority of the sexual abuse cases concern homosexual priests interfering with pubescent males.