He can’t help himself

Guest post by SB:

Bolt’s latest column “A good boy turned bad” is full of his typically casual defamation of a recently deceased citizen. Even though the subject of his post may have deserved some criticism, Bolt’s article displays his most unlovely characteristics -

Polarising provocation:

“Aren’t the many nicer people, who die anonymously after leading lives as virtuous as they are obscure, far more deserving of this newspaper space I’m giving to Cobani’s little thug?”

Callous disregard of the feelings of the bereaved:

“So forgive my indifference to the tears of another dolly only too drunk on the scent of a violent man.”

Hypocrisy:

“I politely mumbled approval as she recounted how she’d brought him to church and to concerts at the Arts Centre, and was so proud when he started reading National Geographic and the paper in just grade 3.”

No doubt he didn’t tell the mum about his more callous thoughts that showed up in the article.

Blame the Stereotypical Bogeyman, in this case the absent father. Bolt the criminologist conveniently works a favourite hobby-horse into the story.

As it is not controversial that the subject of the story is unlovely, the main point is that the article is a classic example of Bolt’s journalistic style.

Comparing apples and out-of-season oranges

Guest post by Toaf

Tim Blair’s jihad against Tim Flannery continues. Today Blair’s picked up on a report which suggests that global warming (which doesn’t exist anyway) will enhance Australia’s agricultural output over the coming few decades.

Warming (which doesn’t exist anyway), he declares, will cause “fooding”. So it seems that global warming (which doesn’t exist anyway) will actually be a good thing. Those damn environazis have been yanking our chain again!

What does this have to do with Flannery? Well, Flannery is on the record as suggesting that climate change will have a disastrous impact upon “world food production”. And Blair reckons that the news about Australian agriculture has like totally pwned Flannery’s prediction.

Trouble is, Blair is not comparing apples with apples. Flannery is talking about global food production while the report which Blair cites is about Australian agriculture. Blair is comparing apples with out-of-season oranges.

It is acknowledged that climate change will impact different regions in different ways. Australia may indeed benefit in some ways from higher temperatures or changed weather patterns. This does not mean, however, that this benefit will offset the negative impacts felt in other parts of the world.

After all, Australia is a small contributor to world food production, accounting for 1.5% of cattle meat (our high value output), 1.4% of cereals, and 0.4% of fruit and veggies.* Blair is arguing that increased agricultural output in Australia means that the world food system is safe, which is like arguing that global warming isn’t occurring because it’s cold today in Wagga Wagga.

Needless to say, the two News Ltd boys were groupthinking on this one.

* Thanks to the FAO Statistical Yearbook.

Tim Blair’s winged monkeys are revolting

By The Editor
Cross-posted at GrodsCorp

Blogger and Daily Telegraph opinion editor, Timmeh Blair, has struck a deal with his employer for the right to do officially what most bloggers do on the sly: blog on work time using work bandwidth. Blair this morning announced that he will be moving his extremely popular blogging activities from timblair.net to the Tele’s website.

This raises all sorts of questions about the pros and cons of such a transition from independent blogger with no real parameters for posts and comments to commercial media blogger bound by pesky rules about things like defamation and commercial interests. We’re planning on fully discussing these issues in tomorrow’s GrodsThink. (End shamless plug.)

But the moment I read Tim’s transfer news this morning I knew that the most interesting thing to watch would be the reaction of his winged monkey commenters who are acutely aware that their days of unmoderated freedom are over. Hilariously, they are bitching on the one hand about the moderation system at the new site which will surely prune 75% of their comments…

So we have to go back to a moderation system Tim?
– Ash_

held for moderator approval

Leave it to a dead tree publication with a website to kill the spontaneity of the threads, which are half the fun…
– Bruce Rheinstein

…but bitching on the other hand about losing the moderation provided by the infamous Andrea Harris, Administrator at the old site.

I miss Andrea already. Can’t you take her with you? Doesn’t seem right somehow.
– Mambo Bananapatch

So who will boot the morons and moonbats if not Andrea?
– Steve Skubinna

For the first time ever Blair’s winged monkeys are going to have to deal with — gasp! — alternative viewpoints without the safety net provided by Andrea’s overzealous use of the delete button. No wonder some are declaring Timmeh’s blogging days over.

Oh well - this is the end of an era and the end of free ranging comments and expression. If anyone wants an idea of what Tim’s new site will be like, just have a look at comments section on Andrew Bolt’s blog

No more free ranging fucking comments!

In fact I remember posting a couple of times to Australian newspaper blogs (not sure if it was the Australian or Bolt) but they did not appear. Either my pseudonym or comments (and they were clean) were unacceptable.

So it definitely will be no more fucking comments. And I dare say there will be no room for detective paco’s adventures. Sigh

Farewell Tim Blair’s Blog
– Wand

I feel like my favourite pub has closed.

Need to find a new one. Been looking at an interesting establishment down the road a bit.

Do you serve Aussie reds at your place Andrea?
– Pogria

But spare a thought for poor Andrea Harris, Administrator who now wields exactly zero power and exerts exactly zero influence over Blair and his ragtag bunch of defaming muppets, not to mention over the lefty minions of evil who dare oppose Timmeh’s thoughts. No wonder she’s left with no option but to beg people to visit her blog despite its complete lack of any content worth reading.

Hey guys, I have a website of my own. I even post to it from time to time. However, my posts aren’t all that interesting these days.
– Andrea Harris, Administrator

You don’t say.

My tiny kitchen has more cupboard space — and a pantry! — than the previous kitchen. So I’ve sacrificed some floor space; so what, it makes it that much easier to fill the cat’s water bowl.

The hot water stays hot for ages. In the previous place I was lucky if I’d get fifteen minutes of actual hot water in the shower with the super water-saver shower head I installed myself. Here I use the gusher that came with the apartment and I can stay in the shower as long as I want.

But thinking again about Blair’s decision to move blogs, it’s difficult to see how it could possibly be a good decision given that it will not significantly boost his stats and will likely cost a decent chunk of his current readership.

True love spurned

By The Editor

I’ve got to admit that I almost feel sorry for Andrew Bolt. Watching Gordon Ramsay on television a few weeks ago he fell in love. There was something about Gordon Ramsay — a man’s man with conservative values and masculine pride — that made Bolta’s heart beat a little faster.

I like particularly the standards Ramsay upholds and which drive him to fury when transgressed.

Ramsay, you see, thinks hard work honours man. Slackers drive him spare: “You might as well just f… off.”

He thinks if a job is to be done, it’s best done well. Sloppiness is an insult to a worker’s dignity. A moral crime.

He thinks if you’re taking a man’s wage, you owe him a day’s labour. Those who bludge on their boss are called “cheats” and the worst, like the manager of Dillons, are out the door.

He thinks reason beats irrational sentiment. If orange paintings of what seems global warming turn off customers, then too bad if the owner loves them to sentimental tears; they must go to save the restaurant.

He thinks some authority is better than none when you want things run well. Three managers in one chaotic restaurant get pared to one, despite the tears, because collectives and group fuzzies just don’t work.

Yet he also believes in loyalty and teams - the little platoons of society that are the bedrock of a community.

But just like a lot of desperate crushes this love was not to be. Imagine Andy’s feeling of rejection when he discovered that Ramsay wasn’t quite the man he believed him to be (with a bit of groupthink thrown in for good measure.)

My faith in Gordon Ramsay’s good sense has been shaken. Tim Blair exposes another eco-hypocrite - a global warming prophet in a Ferrari, and with a disturbing taste for banning other people’s little pleasures.

Having your heart broken is no joke. My thoughts are with you, Andrew.

As revisionist as communism

Guest post by The Happy Revolutionary

Bolt has plumbed new depths of ignorance today with an attempt to draw parallels between the Federal ALP’s new ‘alcopop’ tax, and Soviet Russia. Apparently, since the tax was introduced, there has been a ’surge’ in thefts of the alcopops, leading Bolt to deduce that the ALP policy ‘not only fails to stop the boozers, but drives some into thievery.’

Clearly, there are many reasons to be sceptical about a tax curbing a purported binge-drinking epidemic. That aside, however, Bolt has done a remarkable volte-face here for a vulgar Tory, and has gone so far as to attribute criminal behaviour to social conditions. Gone is the moralising rhetoric of ‘responsibility’, favoured by Bolt and other hacks and shock jocks. Apparently, social conditions and government policy are to blame for crime when this is ideologically convenient.

Let’s see how long it takes for Bolt to back-pedal from this position in a future post. I cannot recall Bolt ever displaying such ‘understanding’ when it comes to the property crimes of Aboriginals, for instance. When drug users feel compelled to steal to support their habit, does anybody seriously expect the likes of Bolt to attribute this to the government policies that keep such drugs illegal (and expensive)?

Finally, in a kind of inverse-Godwin piece of stupidity, Bolt invokes the spectre of Soviet Russia to dramatise his hypocritical observations. This might have been well and good if it didn’t directly undermine Bolt’s point, and betray his profound ignorance of some basic facts.

Since the fall of communism (1991), consumption of alcohol by Russian men has tripled, making Russians the highest drinkers of spirits in the world. Since Putin was in power, and capitalism was embraced, the rising cost of vodka in Russia has led some impoverished citizens to resort to cleaning fluids, and other dangerous alcoholic material. Since the Iron Curtain was lifted, alcoholism is the primary reason why the life-expectancy for the average Russian male has dropped to just 58 years.

The lesson of all this is to get your lackeys to acquaint you with some basic logical and historical facts before launching into overblown, melodramatic comparisons.

Bolta’s big boo-boo

Guest post by Bridgit Gread

The West Australian has responded to the Buswell chair affair with a little get-even dirt-digging. The West Oz’s journos had to delve back to 2004 to find anything of note: a boozy ALP function where Labor premier Alan Carpenter allegedly lifted the top of MP Jaye Radisich and exposed her bra.

‘Commenting‘ on the story, Andrew Bolt just can’t help himself and engages in the kind of base sexism and personal denigration we’ve come to expect from certain low-brow bloggers. He inserts the above pic as ‘ftgg.bmp‘ (as all sub-editors would know filenames for pictures are rarely random; draw your own conclusions what it might mean) and captions it with:

I suspect that [WA Labor MP Jaye] Radisich would certainly have noticed had [WA premier Alan] Carpenter attempted the job of lifting her top.

The Boltmeister then goes on to suggest that Carpenter’s alleged bra-lifting is actually worse than Buswell’s chair-sniffing because it is more “direct”, whereas Buswell was just “alarmingly inventive”. How cute. And all this moralising is predicated on an event that Carpenter denies, Radisich has never mentioned let alone complained about, and staff at the aforementioned function apparently did not witness. Not that either Bolta or the West Oz are likely to let the facts get in the way of a good smear job.

More selective moderation

By The Editor

Remember the Islam-hating comment that got published at Bolta’s blog? This time Andrew’s moderator monkeys let through a comment suggesting that ex-US President is a paedophile.

Why is it that the people who criticize the loudest also deny that private philosophy has nothing to do with public performance. If you believe something strongly enough in private it eventually works itself out in the public. Mr Clinton’s child sex abuse with Monica and others followed by his subsequent lying only made him more popular in America. My Buswell might be hoping the same things.
Billk of WA
Tue 29 Apr 08 (01:32pm)

I wonder how long this one will last once Bolta reads this post?

(Thanks to 243K for the tip off.)

Righty groupthink triple play

Guest post by Toaf

It seems that Bolt and Blair have noticed the global issue that everyone else has been talking about for a while: rising food prices. Maybe they have been posting on this topic for months now (I honestly don’t know). My guess is that they just learned about it from their co-thinker, Mark Steyn.

That’s right, it’s a Steyn-Blair-Bolt groupthink ménage à trois! So what does this esteemed group of independent thinkers have to say about the global food crisis? Do they have policy suggestions for governments and global institutions? Insights into the systemic causes of food insecurity in vulnerable communities in the developing world? Anything new to offer at all?

You’re dreamin’.

Bolt’s effort is to post photos of Indian actresses. He then characterises the issue as “the latest eco-panic” (whatever that means) and tells his readers that “green policies”, among other things, are to blame for rising food prices.

Later, Blair (by way of a Steyn quote, rather than his own words) suggests that it is biofuel-loving lefties who are to blame. No mention of other causal factors there.

Then Bolt returns to the issue, also quoting the same Steyn piece. No mention of the other factors he alluded to earlier. His heading reads, “Save the planet; starve an African”. (All vulnerable people are Africans, you see?) And his commenters take the bait:

Brilliant. Hear that lefties? You’re religion is killing people. YOU are killing people. Why? So you can feel good about yourselves. So you can be a good ‘eco-citizen’…

MattR of Melbourne

So there you have it. As far as our leading right-wing bloggers are concerned, all you need to know about the global food crisis is that lefties and green policies are to blame. And in the unlikely event that Today Tonight shows some video footage of a food riot in some developing nation African country, you’ll know exactly where to point the finger.

As surely as night follows day

By MrLefty

Resident Age cranky old self-appointed “lefty” Catherine Deveny sets the side back a few years with a facile piece exhibiting negative lefty steretypes. (We “miss hating Howard”, the out of touch duffer declares.)

Then Andrew Bolt attacks her as if she represents all of us. (”As if we didn’t know,” he snidely remarks.) See? Lefties do hate! One of them admitted it! I told you so!

You know what? Maybe Catherine Deveny is a right-wing satirical creation designed to embarrass us, just as The Editor suspects the same in reverse of Andrew Bolt. (Whichever lefty is behind the Bolt sockpuppet, please promise us you’ll reveal the gag eventually.)

Because they couldn’t really be what they claim to be and be genuinely unaware of how much they make their respective professed sides cringe, could they?

A triumph of justice

By MrLefty

Timmeh mocks an AFP story that inadvertently multiplies the US prison population by ten:

If true, this means the US prison population would be larger than the population of all but two states. The actual figure is closer to one per cent.

Yeah! That’s showing ‘em. One in a hundred Americans is behind bars - or, to be more precise, one in every thirty two adults.

Something to be proud of. ONE IN THIRTY-TWO. 2.3 million prisoners.

But why stop there? If they reduced the three strike rule down to two strikes, I reckon they could get it up to 3 million within a decade. What do you think, Americans? You’re not going to shy away from a challenge, are you?

Meanwhile, I love/am horrified by how the same number is seen in completely the opposite light depending on your side of the political spectrum. Righties look at the above figure and see a triumph; lefties look at it and see a national embarrassment. I do not know how you could ever get such people to understand each other.