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Loving Andrew Bolt Or Please Click On The Bait And Share!

This morning I read an article by a Joseph Epstein which suggested that Joe Biden’s wife, Jill, should drop the title of “Doctor”, because well, you’re not a real doctor unless you’re an M.D. and delivered a baby; for her to be using the title for a mere Ph.D in Education was “fraudulent and a touch comic”. After calling her, “Madame First Lady”, he then ran through a list of possibilities, before calling her “kiddo”, which some found disrespectful even though I’m sure he was using it with the intention of making her feel like he was Humphrey Bogart to her Ingrid Bergman…

Of course, this is such nonsense that no thinking person would need to respond to it. However, many thinking people felt the need to point out the sexism and racism which was both explicit and implicit in the article. And one person on Twitter decided to pedantically point out that the writer had not actually said that you shouldn’t refer to anyone as “doctor” until they’ve actually delivered a baby; he’d merely said that a “wise man” once said it, leaving me to point out that the tweeter had been referred to as a “pedantic twat” by someone else but the mere fact of me repeating it did not necessarily mean that I endorsed it. Strangely the aforementioned tweeter responded in much the same way as those objecting to the article and said that I was responding with anger and hate when I was feeling neither but merely repeating the words verbatim that someone else had uttered… It’s easy to see how misunderstandings arise on social media.

The Jill Biden article is not the main point I’m writing about. What struck me was the way in which the writer had carefully composed a number of points designed to push all the right buttons to get people talking about what he’d written. Yes, exactly the way Andrew Bolt does. Once you use the phrase, “political correctness” I tend to think that you’re just trolling in the hope that someone will bite.

I mean, what is political correctness? Do these numpties not understand that the non-politically correct have been ruling in this country for most of this century? At what stage is politically incorrect to be the opposite of what used to be politically correct given that nobody seems to mind when the front bench of the Coalition offend the marginalised on a regular basis both in word and deed? And, whatever phrases one uses to describe Trump, PC is definitely not in the first ten thousand.

Yes, I can put forward as many brilliant arguments as I like about as many vital topics but I’ll probably get more responses when I say that it’s only political correctness that stops me describing that Christmas photo of the Scotty and #Jen&thegirls in accurate terms before ignoring the restrictions on what I’m supposedly not allowed to say and describing the staged photo op with venom and accuracy. If people respond, I can get further publicity when I argue that it’s a violation of my free speech and that the left should shut up because old, white males have the right to say whatsoever they please and nobody has a right to comment on their comments. Why look at cancel culture and how wrong it is when they do it, but how absolutely right it is when I call for a show to be banned, David Littleproud urges us to boycott Target or Pauline Hanson demands we stop buying goods from China

Yes, I only have to worry about balance if I work for the ABC where someone from the free market IPA needs to be balanced by the socialists in the National Party who argue that we should support farmers with subsidies. With the ABC someone warning us of the dangers of climate change needs to be balanced by someone who uses such spurious logic as carbon dioxide is natural so it can’t be harmful (water’s natural so drowning is therefore impossible) or there’s only a very tiny amount of CO2 in the atmosphere so what difference will it make (I’ll bet you want to know how much cyanide is in the glass of water I just offered you).

Of course, balance is only necessary sometimes. We don’t see the need to balance stories critical of Jeffrey Epstein with people telling us that he threw great parties. We don’t balance Macca’s “Australia All Over” with “Australia Not All Over Yet, There’s Still Hope In Spite of the People Ringing In To Say That Macca Is The Highlight of Their Week.” We don’t insist that any Christians appearing need to be balanced by Satanists. Although Christian Porter might provide balance all on his own with that one.

There’s something wrong when it’s the most outrageous that we respond to. How do we get to the point that the focus is on people having sensible disagreements or talking about the consensus of people who’ve studied the topic at length instead of jumping at the outliers like Bolt and the troll who called Dr Biden, “kiddo”? How do we refrain from doing what I did and responding to a person who clearly only wants a response and frames their stuff in such a way as to invite vitriol rather than a legitimate attempt to explore ideas?

Whatever, it won’t be by following the reporting of politics. While far too much media is now clickbait, political journalists – with rare exceptions – have become a parasitic class, dependent on their hosts for their insider scoops/press releases. No parasite can afford to kill their host. While Morrison talks about the Canberra bubble, I think we need a more accurate name for it, because a bubble is gone with one prick.

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6 comments

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  1. Gangey1959

    The Parliament ended last Friday, with a bit of argy bargy over the new “Screw the workers to the wall” deal from scottyfrommarketing and ag plonker, with all questions being deflected, and no-oen asking the simple question “Will the guvv’m’nt guarantee that under the new system not one single worker will be made redundant or be worse off?”
    Anyway. Come Saturday’s herald shite in Melbourne, apparently Andrews, and I assume the writer is talking about our current dictator not any other andrews, for example the Minister for Industry, Science and Technology, has cancelled Australia Day.
    You rotten Bastard.
    No. Not about cancelling the parade in celebration of Australia Day in the interests of public health, but the fact that the writer had decided that another sledge of the Premier of Victoria was more important than alerting all of the people who work hard, bury their heads in the sand and get their information from the above mention blot on the landscape, the voldemurdoch press, and sky news that their pay and conditions are now under immediate threat.
    I mean, which is more important?
    Some of us are suffering from more days off than we can afford already, so another pubic holiday at the employers expense is hardly good for business, it’s way to hot and windy for fireworks, and the younger generations just don’t understand that social distancing is further than a group selfie. Even on a stick.
    So yes Rossleigh. I agree. The world need a little more balance, but in the correct places.
    Political correctness went out of the Canberra bubble long ago. Who was it used the C word in reference to one of the Labor opposition ? The minister for the third reich, petulant petey dudone called Adam Bandt an enemy of the state. Yes, he withdrew the comment, but shit mr speaker, he should have been chucked out.

    A final thought. If the Canberra bubble burst, only the pricks would be left.

  2. DrakeN

    “While Morrison talks about the Canberra bubble, I think we need a more accurate name for it, because a bubble is gone with one prick.”

    Indeed.

    “Impenetrable dome of ignorance, self interest and obfuscation” is a more apt description.

    But then, it does represent a majority of the Australian population so that is only to be expected.

  3. New England Cocky

    Rossleigh, the way to distinguish between a real Medical doctor and a mere academic PhD is the sherry test. In academic circles, the opposite to ”sweet” is ”dry” while in medical circles the opposite to ”sweet” is ”sour”.

    As for the ”Canberra bubble” we certainly have one BIG PRICK anointed by Rupert to destroy the Australian economy for no reason that benefits Australian voters.

    Now do NOT be rude about the Nazional$ and their ”family values” as practiced by Barnyard Joke, the representative in New England. Every Nazional$ supporter recognises that ”family values” include adultery, alcoholism, bigotry, cronyism, deceit, deception, misogyny and it is nobody’s business when these values are practised in public office for the self-serving benefit of Nazional$ members or their mates.

    After all, rural socialism is not Communism because the farmers get to keep the cows while the taxpayers get to pay the bills for often inept farm management practices that destroy the landscape and allow landowners to whimper for government assistance that is always available to landholders but only rarely available to town service industries, especially during prolonged droughts.

    Surely ”balance in politics” occurs when the IPA makes a press release that main stream media-ocrity further broadcast as the Gospel according to Scummo, expecting every Australian voter to join the cheer squad as it they were in North Korea. Fortunately, some Australian voters received a sound education following the Whitlam education reforms and learned how to critically analyse self-serving clap-trap that mostly benefits foreign owned multinational corporations that pay little or no taxation in Australia and publish those analyses on independent media websites.

  4. wam

    Politically correct balance is a difficult one, rossleigh.
    The credliners and rabbottians expect equal access for climate deniers, antivaxxers, antimaskers and anti-abortionists, republicans and no access to labor.
    Political opinions, both in print and verbal, do not need to be based on facts and can contain lies for emphasis against labor.
    The ABC, especially since the 24 hours repetition and the demise of kerry,, has had a long history of imbalance not pro-labor for the watchers and pro-labor for the rarely-watchers or non-watching rumour repeaters.
    Some extremists think they are not???
    ps
    there shouldn’t be a degree in education much less a PhD with the status of an ingrown toenail.

  5. Bronte ALLAN

    Well said, as usual Rossleigh! Anything that ignorant dickhead Bolt utters Is the most unbelievable crap, & the same goes for all his stupid bloody mates on Sky news. As for all this PC nonsense, it seems almost anything anyone says today is interpreted as PC. WTF??

  6. Geoff Andrews

    ” the writer had carefully composed a number of points designed to push all the right buttons to get people talking about what he’d written.” …………….. just like you’ve done, Rossleigh!
    So, here I am. That makes 6 comments so far!

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