Squealing lefty piggies

Half apologies for the heading, but as my readership drops off over the weekend, I may as well ratchet up the rhetoric.

Anyway, in case you haven't noticed, Robert Manne and Mike Carlton both take great umbrage at Keith Windschuttle being appointed to the ABC Board.

Carlton says this:

The naming of the loopy polemicist Keith Windschuttle to the board of the ABC is the most hilarious appointment to public office since the mad Emperor Caligula threatened to make his horse a consul of Rome.

More a case of the Left simply smarting from quite a lot of success Windschuttle has had in his critical review of their academic work. (Windshuttle's work may also not be perfect, but the characterisation of him as "loopy" just doesn't gel with his writings and the media interviews I have seen.)

Laughably, Manne writes this:

Will Windschuttle at least tolerate the expression of views contrary to his own? To judge by his recent writing, he will not. In a recent lecture in New Zealand, Windschuttle launched a standard
neo- conservative attack on the "adversary culture" of the left intelligentsia. In this lecture radical Muslims were characterised as "barbarians outside the walls who want to destroy us", whose sinister work was aided by left-wing intellectuals, representative of "the decadent culture within".

So how would you characterise "radical Muslims", Robert? As fellows who would just like to invite us in for a nice cup of tea and a chat about our differences. And is there any doubt that if a strong "conservative" morality did dominate the West that the radical Islamists would not be quite so perturbed about the "decadent West"?

Oh poor delicate Friends of the ABC; to have one more person on the board who doesn't agree with the Lefty slant of the ABC will just be the biggest crisis.

As I have said before: it is not the job of the government funded national broadcaster to be primarily Left leaning in order to "even up" the right wing leanings of any commercial radio, TV or print network. A government funded national broadcaster should attempt an even handed approach that does indeed give ample opportunity to the Right to present its views without derision.

In fact, over the last couple of years, I have been pleased that in TV political commentary, The Insiders makes a good attempt to even up the left leaning commentary. On Radio National, Michael Duffy's "Counterpoint" is also an admirable attempt to bring a modicum of balance. But these shows are but one hour a week each, when (for examples):

* Phillip Adams gets 4 hours of radio a week (and, I believe, a sizeable production team) to push his agenda every week.

* The other day I heard Bush Telegraph, a Radio National show that is presumably designed to cover issues relevant to rural Australia. Guess what they were covering: gay marriage. They made it "rural" by interviewing a lesbian mother in Atherton in Queensland. The host made it perfectly clear that he agreed with gay marriage as a concept.

* Stephen Crittendon got another run as morning host on Radio National last week. He is completely incapable of hiding his left sympathies, and I always have to grit my teeth when his completely biased questions are asked.

Having said this, I agree with Gerard Henderson in his (5 minute!) segment on Radio National on Friday. Namely, the board won't actually change anything anyway, as it cannot directly affect the management of the ABC. So there is not point in complaining about the politicisation of the Board in any event.