BoltWatch

Dedicated to those who can tell the difference between A. Bolt and a nut.

Where Andrew Bolt's Deranged Polemic ... Gets What's Coming To It

Friday, December 21, 2007

Bolt 21/12: "Hear it from Hicks, Tracee"
He's certainly got the wackos fired up over David Hicks at his blog today. So fired up, in fact, that the keyboard warriors are sending in death threats, and (despite the "moderation" process) having them published on news.com.au.

Some examples.

From "Ross of Kew":
So David Hicks, that immature, snivelling apology for a man, wants to die a martyr.

Well Mr Hicks, I can, and am willing, to accommodate your wishes.

From "gomadsfr of Kirwan":
Perhaps Rule .303 should apply. Or is it now Rule 7.62 or Rule 5.56?

From "BC of Brisbane":
Hicks is a complete nutter - when he gets out he should be watching his back.

Andrew Bolt and News Ltd might like to note that - whatever his sins - David Hicks is an Australian citizen, and serious threats made against another such person can actually have legal consequences. Including for any organisation which publishes them.

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- posted by Jeremy @ 10:04 AM |
Saturday, December 15, 2007

Bolt 14/12: "Beware those whackers"
My god. He's finally cracked. Friday's column:
THIS may be my last column. If you don't see me again, you'll know the Pinata Left has whacked me, too, writes Andrew Bolt.

You see, Kevin Rudd's victory has unleashed a horde of haters with sticks who are trying to sack conservative commentators and close down debate.

Their demands are simple. They won. So shut up. No more of these "culture wars". No dissent.

I knew it would get this ugly, of course. The Left does hate best and is still the chest for the totalitarian heart.

He goes on, getting more paranoid, more shrill, more insane as the piece progresses.

THEY ARE OUT TO GET HIM.

Like Pauline Hanson's "if you're watching this then I am dead" video, Bolt's Friday rant is a fascinating look into the mind of a man with a staggering lack of self-awareness and a surprisingly poorly-developed sense of irony.


Fellow Australians, if you are seeing me now then it means I have been murdered.


Pretty much everything he throws back at "the Left" (as represented by one or two people getting a bit carried away in their triumphalism) could just as easily have been thrown back at "the Right" when they were ascendant politically.

I did like the way he tried to reinterpret what happened last time the government changed:
Compare. When John Howard's Liberals beat Paul Keating's Labor in 1996, I saw no hooting mob dancing on skulls and demanding an end to all argument. But with Howard's fall . . .

"Ding dong, the witch is dead," screeched Jill Singer on this very page.

Yeah, no-one on the conservative side screeched with joy at the slaying of Paul Keating. No, there was no loathing or contempt for that man. Keating haters? Couldn't have been. Keating's name starts with a different letter!

Of course, 1996 was a long time ago and there's been a lot of water under the bridge since then. No wonder Andrew's memory's a little rusty.

Still, I suspect (very strongly) that an identical piece, with the names reversed, could have been written in 1996 when the Liberals were crowing about their first victory in thirteen years. Because unlike Andrew's simplistic worldview - lefties = totalitarian thugs; righties = freedom-loving libertarians - the reality is that there are decent people and total douchebags aplenty on both sides.

Decent people, who enjoy openly and honestly discussing politics with people having opposing views in a spirit of open debate. And those who seek to misrepresent, slur and otherwise use their prominent positions to try to shut down debate with bullying and thuggery.

And although he's a freedom-loving righty, I'm not absolutely certain that Andrew Bolt fits in the former category.

UPDATE: Sorry, I missed this - as apparently did his editors - but he does actually begin the piece by referring to himself in the third person:
the Pinata Left has whacked me, too, writes Andrew Bolt.

Andrew Bolt appears to have lost his mind, writes Jeremy Sear.

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- posted by Jeremy @ 8:09 AM |
Tuesday, December 11, 2007

Bolt 11/12: "Pack-raped girl sacrificed to the “stolen generations” myth"
My god he's shameless. Bolt uses the raped 10 year old story to push his line on the Stolen Generations, in a balanced and well-reasoned piece entitled "Pack-raped girl sacrificed to the “stolen generations” myth".

If she'd been "stolen" earlier, he argues, none of this would have happened. Therefore, well, it's good to take aboriginal children from their parents.

Unbelievable. (Wonder how much better Andrew would have turned out if he'd been stolen from his folks?)

He then blatantly misreports the details of the case -
This is the girl who was pack raped at 10, with a judge letting her nine rapists - one a 26-year-old - walk free because the girl, she said, had consented.

That's not what the judge said at all. According to Bolt's own link, what was actually found was -
the sentencing judge saying the child victim “probably agreed” to have sex with them.

"Probably agreed" is a finding of fact differentiating the rape from one in which force was involved (the previous sentence in the judge's remarks, which News Ltd excluded). It is not a finding that she consented, which is flat-out wrong - and impossible, because she was ten years old. (Consent is a defence to rape, "probably agreed" is a mitigating - or at least non-aggravating - factor.)

Of course, Bolt's commenters leap on this misreporting as evidence that the judge doesn't know what she's talking about.

Funnily enough, he hasn't corrected it yet.

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- posted by Jeremy @ 9:18 AM |

Portions of any work of Andrew Bolt are taken from his webpage at http://blogs.news.com.au/heraldsun/andrewbolt/, are copyright Andrew Bolt, and are reproduced on the basis of the "fair dealing for purpose of criticism or review" section 41 of the Copyright Act 1968. Other material is copyright by its various authors, which sort of goes without saying really.