WARNING: This contains references to Peter Van Onselen so if you find that triggering…

Sometimes you have to wonder about people…

I mean, I know that various journalists have complained that Twitter is full of sewer rates and a nasty, nasty place. Naturally, I infer that there’s something wrong with being a sewer rat and that it’s much nicer to be a better class of rat but for those of you who are not regulars on Twitter, there has been a bit of an exchange between Grace Tame and Peter Van Onselen or PVO as many refer to him or POV (Point of View) as I intend to from hereonin because he seems to believe that his POV is interchangeable with the facts.

Now I know that he’s not Robinson Crusoe there, but just lately, he did a screen shot of Professor Gemma Carey’s tweet about being told that she was no longer welcome when she complained to her local GP about mask wearing.

A couple of interesting points here. He sued Carey last year, so she’s blocked him. To get the screenshot he must either had it sent to him or be using another account just to view her tweets. Whichever… the thing I find most strange is the phrase “a pain in the arse”. It’s a phrase I certainly wouldn’t be using to refer to POV or any of his Hale mates, because, well, I think that they’d probably find it libellous. However, now that Pete’s used it…

Anyway, this tweet attracted the attention of Grace Tame who replied with a screen shot of his tweet with the comment: When you victimise a vulnerable person, that’s a pretty good sign too.”

In the tweets that the two exchanged POV made the claim that he too was a victim of child sexual assault in spite of saying that he wasn’t last year and that the exchanges with Tame had forced him to reveal this.

Now, don’t get me wrong. I have no idea about Peter Van Onselen’s experiences and it would be an extremely bad precedent to disbelieve a person just because they said that they were lucky and that they weren’t one of the ones who wasn’t assaulted one year, only to change their minds and reveal it later. This would be something that frequently happens because of a variety of reasons from not wishing to relive the trauma to fear of not being believed.

My difficult in reading the exchange is that nothing Tame was saying forced the revelation at all. It wasn’t like she said something along the lines of him not having the right to speak because he just didn’t understand. When someone says that I can’t fully understand sexism or racism because I’m a white male, they have a point. If I were the Prime Minister, I suppose I could say that Jen explained to me because she’s woman so I completely understand now, but I’m not so…

Enter Samantha Maiden, the “mad, fucking witch”. (For those of you who object to this, like good journalists, I’m just quoting a member of the government without judgement. As I’m sure you’ll remember this is what Peter Dutton called her after the Jamie Briggs resignation. We all got to know about it because Dutton accidentally sent it Maiden herself instead of Briggs. This is why Dutton is such a good choice for Defence Minister because it was a bit of a worry when he was in charge of Border Force where security is an issue but in Defence…)

Anyway, Maiden decides to write a story about the exchange from PVO’s POV.

We could go back and forth about the various exchanges between Tame and POV, the most interesting part is that Maiden deemed it worth a story. She followed up by replying to Grace Tame’s tweet about not contacting her for comment before publishing. After a few back and forth comments, Tame blocked her on Twitter, leaving Samantha Maiden to tell Tame on Twitter that she was available to talk at any time even though she’d been blocked…. Which is a strange way to communicate. Reminds me of the time the IT staff sent me an email telling me that my password had been compromised sot they’d changed it. When I went to see them about my inability to get into my account, they explained what had happened and how my password was in the email. Strangely, they did not seem to understand that the reason I hadn’t read the email explaining all this, was because I COULDN’T GET INTO MY EMAIL.

Really, the whole thing is just one of those Twitter things and well, probably best left there were it not for the fact that Grace Tame had recently written a series of tweets about the various things that were wrong with the media, including this excellent summation:

“Her” being the late Labor senator. Strange then that one journalist would write a story about another journalist and the “spiteful” twitter exchange without speaking to one of the parties involved first. Strange also that both journalists work for different parts of the Murdoch organisation. Strange also that this should be the focus of attention in a week where there was not only a Budget, but a savage burn of the Prime Minister from a member of his own party who was “disappointed” about losing her position on the Senate ticket under the merit based selection process that put Jim Molan ahead of her.

But then I’m just a poor, sewer rat who doesn’t always understand the big picture…

Now, I’m not suggesting that anyone’s unhinged here, but if anyone has any spare hinges, could they please send them to Canberra.