Bolt and friends (and enemies)
There's been some argy bargy between Media Watch, the left's standard-bearer, and Andrew Bolt, the hero of the right. In response to Bolt's latest tirade, a friend of mine of the left, the modern day Che, Nahum Ayliffe sent this missive to the Hun columnist:
Well done Andrew,
I'm never one to hold back, and I hate Muslims just like you do.
All they want to do is bomb the hell out of us, and ruin our way
of life.
The ABC and SBS should be taken off air because they represent
different views to yours. David Marr, Liz Jackson, Stuart
Littlemore, Stephen Mayne, far from being fellow journalists or
colleagues, are all ignorant idiots. Serve them right for having a
go at you for you to hang them out to dry in your shockjock column.
My advice is, don't listen to them. If they are your only critics,
you only give them credit by responding to their ill-informed
ramblings. Develop a thick skin and let their hastily cobbled case
against you fall on deaf ears.
Only erudite and educated Australians watch the SBS or the ABC,
and they don't like you anyway. However, as Howard's popularity
shows, they don't have the numbers. It's the picture-paper reading
struggle-streeters to whom you most appeal.
Leave the pinkos and the poofters to watch the Aunty and keep on
doing what you do best. It gives me and many other Australians a
good reason to hate Muslims. And who needs a reason nowadays...
Regards,
Nahum Ayliffe
Hampton
Comments
N.
Love the line.
The piece was meant to be comic and satirical. My argument is that it is very difficult to criticize Muslims in the way Andrew does without being inflammatory. And it is dangerous to behave so recklessly in times like these. I am also a pretty big fan of an open dialogue and free speech. In my opinion, Andrew Bolt doesn't like being criticized, and doesn't encourage an open dialogue of different views. But then, that's not his job. The ABC and the SBS represent different views and good on them.
As for being a halfwit, I'll let other people be the judge of that. To being a wanker I plead guilty as charged.
Andrew is a idiot. Plain and simple.
Well..... he said it.
Seriously though, anyone who doesn't think that Bolt gives right-wing politics a bad name is kidding themselves. There are likely plenty of well-considered right-wing perspectives out there in the media, but Bolt's aint one of them. I believe he is both a demagogue and a racist. A Hansonite who has suddenly found himself with a megaphone in his hand.
As for Aunty, the reality is that the ABC, however slanted on occasions, manages to produce better quality news and current-affairs television on a skerrick of the Budget of any of the commercial networks. It is a necessary counter-balance for the mindless bullshit regularly trumpeted on Channels 7, 9, and 10.
N.
The ABC and the SBS represent a range of different views. There are views represented and in most cases they stand up to any test on being fair and balanced, moreso the ABC. You might remember when former Senator Richard Alston brought a brief of complaints against the ABC's news and current affairs department, several times through several different channels, (so ardently he was prepared to fight his case against the ABC) and the result was not the blatant or consistent bias that Alston and people like Andrew Bolt allege.
Let's be clear:
Bolt doesn't have to be fair and balanced. He is an opinion columnist, and to be successful he needs to be one-eyed, and he does a bloody good job of it. He is a very parochial Howard apologist, but he suits the HUN market, and is popular amongst the right.
The ABC and SBS don't represent the agenda of one political party so you will see a range of different views represented. They do a very good job of this.
The issue isn't the material or the market of either. Rather the issue should be, just how to we work towards the development of an inclusive community with all nationalities and religions, and how to we avoid inflaming those in the Muslim community and pushing them (through disenfranchisement and victimization) towards the evangelists of extremist ideology.
This has been and always will be my beef with the likes of Andrew Bolt, who are somewhat reckless with their influence on the large number who read that paper.
We want to build a community with room for difference, not divide up our community by attributing blame for horror on the whole of the Muslim community.