The lonely job of being anti-Dunlop

I still don't get why Tim Dunlop, now blogging courtesy of News Limited, is not attracting much negative attention from the Right.

JF Beck has ripped into Blogocracy , and I added my comment of support. But why is there so little challenge of Dunlop on his site?

For anyone who cares, I am the lonely "Steve from Brisbane" who has been posting critical comments at Blogocracy. Here are some examples of matters Dunlop has been excited about recently:

1. Ex SAS officer Tinley criticises the government's decision to go into Iraq in what was obviously a highly politically motivated attack. Tim Dunlop can hardly contain himself:

Can all the pretending stop now? Have we finally reached a tipping point? Will comments today by war hero and former SAS officer Peter Tinley, finally give people across Australia—others in the military, the media, members of the Government—the courage to call the bluff on the prime minister’s discredited defence of the war in Iraq?....

Could there be a more devasting assessment from someone so intimately involved and so obviously dedicated to the military and to the defence of his country?

When it turns out within a couple of days that Tinley is a long time member of the ALP who has been in discussions about preselection, Dunlop can't see why people take the view that it was cynical media manipulation to make this attack without disclosing his personal incentive. Even long time Dunlop supporter Aussie Bob could see the point, I reckon, just that he thought it was funny that The Australian was sucked in.

2. Dunlop has been carrying on like a pork chop about how talk of challenge to the leadership of Kim Beazley is to a major degree the fault of the media, and News Limited in particular. His mate Aussie Bob posts at tedious length about how the media misreads polling all the time (conveniently forgetting how good the Liberals have been at gaining ground during Federal election campaigns). Today, Mark at Lavartus Prodeo agrees whole-heartedly; it's a regular Beazley support group.

Boys, boys, if the ABC and Fairfax press are running with leadership speculation too, doesn't this suggest the primary source of the problem is within the Labor party itself? Tonight The Age reports:

Supporters of a change have resolved to make no move before next week to maximise the focus on rallies against workplace laws being held today. But they rate the prospect of an approach to Mr Beazley to step down, or even a challenge by Kevin Rudd as "50-50".

No, no, the media should just ignore talk like that.

3. This one surprises me most: Dunlop posted a YouTube video purporting to show "White House manipulation" of video when it had been thoroughly debunked by Michelle Malkin and others weeks ago. When commentors point this out to him, he posts a not overly obvious semi-retraction at the bottom of the post as an "update", but leaves the offending video in its star position at the top. Tim Blair, you must be following Blogocracy, and if had happened on some other lefty blog I imagine you would have lept on this blunder with enthusiasm. (I remember Tim D let Tim B temporary host his blog while Blair had technical problems. Has this led to a reluctance to criticise him?)

4. Blogocracy has really become an exact clone of the old Road to Surfdom, including now the use of the "Howard's funny face" at the top of some posts. What's more, he posts about how the Left is so much more successful in blogging than the Right, citing Tim Blair as the only successful right wing blogger. Again, I would have expected some response from Blair, but none. Here's what I posted about this at Blogocracy:

Yes Tim, blogs such as yours add so much to current debate when you post a YouTube “White House manipulation” story as if it hadn’t been thoroughly debunked 3 weeks ago. (By the way, your semi-retraction at the bottom of that post is pretty half arsed. If you want people to really know that you think there probably is nothing to that video, why not put an update at the top of the post where people will clearly see it. Or do you think it isn’t conclusively debunked?)

The other interesting thing about that YouTube video is how it has about 213,000 views, compared to the debunking YouTube effort (as linked to by Malkin) has had about 1/7 of that. There is no doubt at all that the Left wing blogshphere is better at constructing an echo chamber, but I don’t see that as something to be proud of.

(I also reckon that the Left’s natural constituancy - students, academics, public servants, and the underemployed - simply have more [time] to spend on listening to the echo chamber than those on the Right.)

As for Blogocracy, it is rapidly going the way of SMH’s Webdiary. I reckon those who disagree are not bothering posting much because it is clear that the site has its own cheersquad that is never going to change its mind on issues surrounding this Howard government. This is not a healthy sign, and frankly I can’t see why News Limited would be thinking it was worthwhile to do a virtual transplant of Surfdom to here. (I would say the same if any other currently free website was transplanted here too.) In fact, I don’t get the whole “every columnist is now a blogger” thing either, unless readers are going to have to pay for the privilege sometime in the future.

To say something positive: Tim D obviously maintains a level of civility at his blogs, allowed in my increasingly critical posts, and is not exactly the "mad" Left.

But: there are many, many issues on which he is impervious to persuasion, and his anti-Howard schtick runs into the juvenile. If News Ltd wants to be part of blogging because it sees it as an interactive medium to promote discussion amongst its readership, why would it pick a private blog like Surfdom, which had clearly not been attracting much in the way of dissenting discussion, and let it be cloned?

It is just all puzzling to me. (As is the fact that Tim Blair has linked to posts here a couple of times over the last year, but there is no sign that I will ever be added to his blogroll!)