Wishing death on people you disagree with in Australia is not considered by sensible folk to be within acceptable political commentary or discourse. But Roger Franklin was attacking the ABC and all who sail within her, so it was too much of a temptation for the likes of Bolt, Blair and Sinclair Davidson to not endorse it, or go "ha, ha, that was witty satire, wasn't it."
Yet, another group of the Right side commentariat had their misgivings from the start - Chris Kenny, to his credit, was (I think) first off the ranks. But even Franklin, or someone at Quadrant, had a rethink and had edited it (with no acknowledgement) to remove the "if there was any justice" part aspect of it, so as to make sound less of a lament that Q&A wasn't bombed.
By late in the day, and following universal condemnation from real journalists and commentators across the land, there were more breaks in the ranks, so we ended up with Nick Cater criticising it, and Keith Windschuttle apologising "without reservation" to the ABC and saying that the article would be removed from the Quadrant website. Paul Murray on Sky apparently attacked it too. IBy the evening, Bolt had semi recanted, and today, he has even (again, silently) removed all reference to the Quadrant comment piece from his post.
And despite Windschuttle's apology and promise it would go from the site, some were saying that this morning it was still there. Hey, Quadrant, who's running the place, anyway? (Well, checking just now, I think it has gone. Took their time. Were Franklin and Windschuttle having fisticuffs in whose ever basement it operates from?)
And so here is my final wrap up of how it panned out:
* kudos to the one old Catallaxy regular (well, apart from monty) who came out with a straight condemnation that it was a stupid thing for Franklin to have said - CL. But any praise for a rare outburst of common sense has to tempered by the fact that he is one of the worst with hyperbole about how to deal with Islamic terrorism, as I am sure he has wished for the nuking of Mecca more than once.
* I had been meaning to note yesterday that Franklin had made it very clear that he hates Krauss with a passion partly because he was a "warmist" who "dares call himself a man of science" (I think that were the exact words: I can't check any more.) As I ended my piece yesterday, wingnuts have no perspective of risk because they cannot conceive that they are wrong on the matter of the biggest environmental risk the entire planet faces. Hence, any terrorist attack, no matter the number of victims and whether it was by a lone (Islamic inspired) mutter or not will be cause for saying that Western civilisation is about to collapse, yet the actual threat to long term civilisation is laughed at. Is the problem with their anger that, at some level, they can perceive that they are wrong on climate change, as their movement is diminishing as their handful of ageing contrarian scientists die off and the world does, indeed, continue to warm?
* Sinclair Davidson's rapidly diminishing circle of Right wingers he can trust diminished further when he complained that he probably wouldn't watch Paul Murray again after he also jumped ship and condemned Franklin. I'm not sure - hasn't he mentioned avoiding watching the ABC before? If this continues, he'll soon be down to just watching Bolt and reading comics the rest of the night.
* For all of that, the fact that the ABC called in security to advise about it was a bit over the top in its own way. Regardless of that, their hot anger at someone saying something as stupid and offensive as Franklin's original post was entirely justified.
Update: now Catallaxy readers (average age - 85 - mentally if not chronologically) are perturbed that Andrew Bolt said this on the radio:
“I think a lot of people are making mileage out of this in order to get the ABC off the hook. I think the reaction, the ABC posting extra security. I mean, give me a break. As if the Quadrant audience would get their zimmer frames out of the cupboard and shuffle off and go and do … come on, give me a break.” – Andrew BoltHa ha.
3 comments:
It was simply amazing. As I said at my place. you cannot now merely put Katesy as an outlier. They are all there now.
Catallaxy the delusional blog!
I see now Sinkers is claiming he does not understand statistics. not surprised.
yeeks,
It is all they can talk about.
NO self awareness over there at all
The Cat used to be a great political blog now it is mostly a quagmire of cranky people hurling insults every which way. It has developed it's own peculiar ideological structure and to step outside of that is to be beset upon by the Cat fundies screaming adherence to the mish mash ideology. They spend so much time destroying and so little creating. I'm stunned by that because in the past I enjoyed blogs\usenets where people were actually commumicating useful information in an accessible manner. I don't know what has happened but the decline is concurrent with the rise of a social media network that reminds me of Churchill: A lie gets halfway around the world before the truth has a chance to get its pants on.
So the Cat is the social media canary in the coalmine. We're stuffed I tell you, the Cat represents the end of life tragedy of those who cared so much about politics then spent hours complaining about it on social media but cared too little to change anything.
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