Saturday, June 27, 2015

Inappropriate, alright

Today's Saturday Paper alerts me to Helen Dale's 14 June Facebook post which is, indeed, completely inappropriate for a Senator's staffer to be writing with respect to a person her boss wants called to give evidence before his committee.  In full:
Okay, this is a message for those skeptics friends of mine in Australia who are into Public Health.
You need to pull the likes of Simon Chapman and Nathan Lee into line. First, you need to teach both of them to stop with the ad hominem. Then you need to teach the former statistics and how to read them. Then you need to teach both of them how to argue and clarify their thoughts.
David and I can turn both of them into mince on Twitter - yes Twitter - without much effort. This should not happen. I'm a lawyer with a finance major and David's a vet with an MBA.
Now while it's very nice to win arguments all the time, that's not the same as being right. And I'd rather be right than feel smug about my own argumentative aptitude.
My suspicion is - like many people on the left - they live in a bubble and get neither their arguments nor their evidence tested severely or regularly (the very opposite of this Facebook page, for starters).
I'm relying on you to fix this. And if it isn't fixed, I will take great pleasure in ensuring the individuals in question aren't just minced on Twitter.
Getting minced by a Senate Committee is a lot less fun, I assure you.
It also shows her tenuous relationship with sound judgement in that it is extremely unlikely that in a Committee match up between Chapman and Leyonhjelm that it's Chapman who will come out looking bad.

Dale doesn't seem to realise that outside of her small circle, most of the public already consider Leyonhjelm an eccentric kook.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Steve

You must be doing cart wheels over the Scotus decision. Finally you'll soon be able to marry in Australia.

Steve said...

Never quite left high school, did you, JC...