Andrew Bolt wants to kill a living national treasure
Not content with wanting to kill your and my Grandma with swine flu, Andrew Bolt now has Phillip Adams in his sights.
Bolt appears to think Adams — described by some (who are evidently more enormously fond of him than is Bolt) as a living national treasure — should be refused treatment and ejected from a Catholic hospital because Adams is a “militant atheist.”
“Was there not an atheistic hospital this militant atheist could have attended instead?” asks Bolt with the certitude of the clinically insane.
Given that, as Bolt almost certainly knows, there are no “atheistic hospitals” anywhere, the inescapable corollary is that Bolt wants Adams to be denied potentially life-saving treatment.
By Bolt’s logic, moreover, people with a philosophical aversion to the public Medicare system should be refused treatment at public hospitals. This would be another death sentence courtesy of Bolt, since there’s rather a paucity of emergency wards at private hospitals in Australia.
The whole thing represents a new low in Bolt’s demented campaign against his perceived adversaries on ‘the left.’ And the fact that Bolt’s post was inspired by one of his readers sets a new low in whoring for one’s readership.
It’s becoming increasingly difficult to imagine our raving national looney getting anything right. For instance, Bolt recently sneered:
Is GetUp! just an unpricipled [sic] Labor front, or will it attack Kevin Rudd as it attacked Tony Abbott for the very same policy [i.e., taking the ETS off the agenda]?
In fact, the supposed “unprincipled Labor front” posted an article and video attacking Rudd for just that, several days before Bolt’s post.
Astonishingly there are still some who believe Bolt to be a “thoughtful moderate.”
But in his frenzies, Bolt tears apart anything to hand that represents restraint, order or the related discipline of reason. Reading Bolt, I sometimes feel much like I imagine a Roman in the fourth century or German in the 1930s did, watching in despair as civilisation slowly crumbles.
Labels: Australia, blog whoring, bloggery, blogging, frenzies, politics
posted by Jacob A. Stam at 5/03/2010 10:00:00 PM
6 Comments:
Bolt is a prat. Such infantile logic well sums up the bloke: he would have an either / or world - for some; not necessarily himself though.
The Roman analogy is near the mark. He is rather like Polybius, the Achaean historian, who attempted to explain Greece's absorption into to the expanding Roman Empire. His lauded Achaean League, through utter self-interest, alternately sat by or allied itself with the Romans until, at Pydna in 168 bc, the last Antigonid king (of Macedonia) went down to Paullus. Achaea, Rome's ally, judiciously sat on the sidelines, both then and in 197, whilst the flood gates opened for pilferred Greek art and culture across the Adriatic.
Polybius-Bolt found much to say about the apathetic Athenians, the anarchic Anatolian League, Sparta and near anyone else of non-Acahean sympathy never once pausing to see the hypocrisy of Achaea.
For the Australian Polybius - Bolt - the Romans are everywhere and it is, of course, not his fault or those of his ilk.
It's to an extent fascinating (to the extent one can be bothered seriously reading Bolt) to witness Bolt's obsessive Rudd Hatred. Makes Margo's intense loathing of and polemics against Howard look like positive and constructive criticism. Which, to some degree, it actually was.
A really interesting aspect is that one of Bolt's favourite sneers at Rudd is about how he (Rudd) is such a priggish control-freak. As true as that is of Rudd, it's at least equally true of Bolt. Consider, for instance, the way Bolt attempted to micromanage his 'interview' - on Steve Price's program on Bolt's radio station - with Qantas CEO Alan Joyce. Pure control-freakery.
Mirror, Mirror, on the wall, who's the control-freakiest Stalinist commissar of them all. Beware the Bolt politburo.
By the way, the two sentences in my final para are largely Bolt's own words.
"tears apart anything to hand ... discipline of reason" was his take on twitter twit Catherine Deveney. Mirror mirror...
"I sometimes feel ... as civilisation slowly crumbles" was his take on the antics of a Melbourne suburban teenage hoon driver.
Thus, such sundry examples of general background dickheadery in society at large becomes, for Bolt, the barbarians at the gates of the citadel, with the Drama Queen himself cast as the Last Civilised Man. Oh it's such a burden, but he'll wear it resolutely and dutifully.
It's a nice gig for someone of whom a Victorian court of appeal in 2003 ruled: "Mr Bolt's conduct in the circumstances was at worst dishonest and misleading and at best, grossly careless. It reflects upon him as a journalist."
As for Bolt's nasty, petty little poke at Adams here, I think he's just jealous. Bolt hasn't a prayer of achieving anything like the stature of Adams, for all the latter's faults.
Might do a post on Bolt as an "unprincipled Liberal front" if I can be bothered. "More front than Myers..."
In the old days, when Insiders had a tiny piece of credibility you would have arguments between Bolt and Marr. In each case Bolt would emerge the thoughtful moderate. He has been a tower of strength to many of us through these difficult years.
Always so thoughtful and so moderate.
Oh but I do like Philip Adams.... I must confess. He has a sense of humour. Lefties never do but he does. An exception to the boiler suited Little Red Book rule.
Marr is a Maoist bastard
Interestingly enough, Tony Abbott had a brief flirtation with Marist ideology.
Post a Comment
<< Home