Andrew Bolt Is A Convicted Racist

By Darryl Mason

A headline on the front page of the Herald Sun online invites you to read Andrew Bolt's latest column :



Except the link doesn't take you to Andrew Bolt's latest column, it takes you to this Herald Sun news story :

Minister rejects call to alter race laws

by Staff Writer

Justice Minister Brendan O'Connor has rejected Coalition calls to alter racial discrimination laws after the Andrew Bolt case.

Last week shadow attorney-general George Brandis said the laws were flawed and should be altered because they could impinge on freedom of expression. 

He made the comments after Herald Sun columnist Andrew Bolt was found to have breached the Racial Discrimination Act in two columns about light-skinned Aborigines. 

Mr O'Connor told the ABC's Insiders program he had a different interpretation to Mr Brandis. 

"I think the conclusion that one would draw from reading the judgment is that this was an issue about ... omitting quite relevant facts," Mr O'Connor said.

Maybe Herald Sun editors have finally had enough of Bolt's bullshit as well.

Or perhaps not.

The full O'Conner quote the last paragraph of the story was drawn from :

But I think the judgment should be read by people and read properly, because I think we don't want to see people racially vilified and I think the conclusion that one would draw from reading the judgment is that this was an issue about not sticking to some facts, or in fact omitting quite relevant facts, which I think led the respondent to be in some difficulty with the articles that he wrote.

More from O'Connor :

There's no doubt that if you're going to attribute improper motives about someone, you should get your facts right. And in terms of any chilling effect that's supposed to have happened as a result of the decision, I've seen more of Andrew Bolt since the decision on the front pages of the largest circulated papers, even during footy week.

That's no exaggeration. Via Pure Poison :



Imagine being a Herald Sun journalist and having your front page story bumped to make way for that heaping pile of absolute absurdity? This is why there is much grumbling amongst Murdoch journalists and editors at their city papers right now. They find Andrew Bolt to be an embarrassment and a growing stain on their craft and their credibility.

It's very simple. Andrew Bolt knew claiming people raised as Aboriginals were pretending to be Aborigines for profit and personal gain would probably lead to legal action. He wanted this lawsuit. He wanted to be a martyr. And, apparently, Herald Sun lawyers didn't mind either. How else to explain why they let him publish two columns filled with flat-out lies, not merely deceptive language, nearly all of it unreliably sourced?

The Age explains the facts under this headline :



The question mark is superfluous :

Andrew Bolt conceded he made errors in two columns found to be unlawful under the Racial Discrimination Act last week but claimed that ''none seemed to me to be of consequence''. Justice Mordecai Bromberg disagreed, finding Bolt's writings were ''grossly incorrect'', and contained ''significant distortion of the facts''. This was critical to why his defence failed. Here is a sample:

 BOLT: ''For many of these fair Aborigines, the choice to be Aboriginal can be considered almost arbitrary and intensely political, given how many of their ancestors are in fact Caucasian.''

BROMBERG: ''In relation to most of the individuals concerned, the assertion in the newspaper articles that the people dealt with chose to identify as Aboriginal have been substantially proven to be untrue. Nine of the 18 named … gave evidence. Each of them had been raised to identify as Aboriginal and had identified as such since childhood. None of them made a conscious or deliberate choice to identify as Aboriginal.''
BOLT: ''[Associate Professor Anita] Heiss … won plum jobs reserved for Aborigines at Koori Radio, the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Arts Board and Macquarie University's Warawara Department of Indigenous Studies.''
BROMBERG: ''Each of those assertions was erroneous. Mr Bolt accepted that they were wrong because they were exaggerated. One of the positions that Mr Bolt claimed Ms Heiss had won as a 'plum job' was a voluntary unpaid position. The other two positions were not reserved for Aboriginal people but were positions for which Aboriginal people were encouraged to apply.''

BOLT: ''[Ms] Eatock only started to identify as Aboriginal when she was 19, after attending a political rally.''
BROMBERG: ''This statement is untrue. Ms Eatock recognised herself to be an Aboriginal person from when she was eight years old whilst still at school and did not do so for political reasons.''
BOLT: ''Acclaimed St Kilda artist Bindi Cole… was raised by her English-Jewish mother yet calls herself 'Aboriginal but white'.''
BROMBERG: ''That statement is factually inaccurate because Ms Cole's Aboriginal grandmother also raised Ms Cole and was highly influential in Ms Cole's identification as an Aboriginal.''
BOLT: ''The very pale Professor Larissa Behrendt, who may have been raised by her white mother but today, as a professional Aborigine, is chairman of our biggest taxpayer-funded Aboriginal television service.''
BROMBERG: ''The factual assertions made were erroneous. Professor Behrendt's Aboriginal father did not separate from her mother until Professor Behrendt was about 15 years old. Her father was always part of the family during her upbringing, even after that separation.''
BOLT: ''Larissa Behrendt has also worked as a professional Aborigine ever since leaving Harvard Law School, despite looking almost as German as her father … But which people are 'yours', exactly, mein liebchen? And isn't it bizarre to demand laws to give you more rights as a white Aborigine than your own white dad?''
BROMBERG: ''To her knowledge, there is no German descent on either her father or mother's side of the family although she assumes that because of her father's Germanic surname, there may have been some German descent.
Her paternal grandfather came to Australia from England. Mr Bolt also referred to her father as being white. Her father had dark skin.''
BOLT: ''Take the most prominent Yorta Yorta leaders - Melbourne University academic Wayne Atkinson and Victorian Traditional Owners Land Justice Group co-chair Graham Atkinson. Both are Aboriginal because their Indian great-grandfather married a part-Aboriginal woman.
''How can Graham Atkinson be co-chair of the Victorian Traditional Owners Land Justice Group when his right to call himself Aboriginal rests on little more than the fact that his Indian great-grandfather married a part-Aboriginal woman?''
BROMBERG: ''The facts given by Mr Bolt and the comment made upon them are grossly incorrect. The Atkinsons' parents are both Aboriginal as are all four of their grandparents and all of their great grandparents other than one who is the Indian great-grandfather that Mr Bolt referred to in the article.''

I used to call Andrew Bolt The Professional Idiot. But he isn't. His almost 100% negative columns and blog posts about Indigenous people and his obsession with demanding people embrace 'white culture' and for them to give thanks for what he believes is a European improvement on 60,000 plus years of successful land management and survival is much worse than mere idiocy. What he did was calculated and conniving.

And just plain sick.

It's a stain on Australian journalism, and an unfortunate fallout for all journalists and editors at Murdochs News Limited, many of whom now find themselves shuddering whenever their friends say the name "Andrew Bolt" in their company.

How does Andrew Bolt keep his job? He delivers what Rupert Murdoch requires in Australia: the maintaining of racist beliefs and attitudes, xenophobia, white nationalism, fear your neighbours suspicion. The controversy of Bolt's might sell a few extra papers, but the real satisfaction for Rupert Murdoch is seeing what he can do to the country, the chaos, misery and pain he can inflict from New York City. He doesn't even have to fly in to do it. His thugs and goons know how to please him.

Andrew Bolt's Reality Meltdown Over Fukushima

Andrew Bolt's Reality Meltdown

By Darryl Mason


Screengrab from The Australian online front page in the days following the March 11 Japanese earthquake and tsunami

How many times can pro-nuclear wacko and alleged journalist Andrew Bolt show himself to be grotesquely ignorant, wrong and ill-informed in the space of just one week? Five times? Ten times? More?

Following the March 11 earthquake in Japan, a 15 metre high tsunami wave slammed into a nuclear plant in Fukushima. The earthquake and tsunami killed more than 28,000 people.

For obvious reasons there was widespread concern in Japan, and around the world, about how good a job the Japanese government and the nuclear plant's operators were doing in containing radiation leaking from the smashed plant.

As a sign of just how confident the US government was that the Japanese government could contain radiation from the Fukushima plant, they began preparations for the evacuation of thousands of US military families within hours of the US government learning just how huge and potentially deadly the unfolding disaster actually was.

And, not unexpectedly, news media leaped on the 'Nuclear Crisis' story and ran with it hard, voicing arguments both for and against nuclear power.

This gave Andrew Bolt the opportunity to blame The Greens for nuclear "scaremongering" and to attack "the media" (of which he is one of Australia's most prominent and highly paid) for their coverage.

Well, attack some media.

Attack, primarily, the main newspaper competition to the newspapers owned by ex-Australian Rupert Murdoch that publish Andrew Bolt's often incoherent and poorly researched swill.

Bolt began his ill-fated campaign to bludgeon his ideological and political enemies for "fear-mongering" over Fukushima on March 14 :

"...the offensive media fear-mongering..."

"...the media coverage of some papers obsesses instead about trouble at some nuclear reactors..."

This was the only time Bolt linked to Australian newspapers he claimed were over-hyping the radioactive threat posed by the rapidly failing Fukushima nuclear plant. He didn't link to anything published in the newspapers he writes for, of course, because that would have proven what a deceitful idiot he is.

The stories from The Age and the Sydney Morning Herald Bolt did link to were, in fact, mild and quite low on undue hype and "fear-mongering", in stark contrast, that is, to the newspapers Andrew Bolt works for.






Here's the online front pages from the Bolt-publishing Daily Telegraph & Herald Sun the day before those Age & SMH stories were published.





Even more bizarrely, Andrew Bolt ran this headline on his blog...



....the day after his Herald Sun newspaper ran this front page :



Which proves Bolt doesn't even read the front pages of the main newspaper he writes for, because nowhere, in a week of blog postings, did he acknowledge it was the actually the Herald Sun shouting 'Meltdown'.

Here's more excerpts from Andrew Bolt's blogs & columns in the 10 days following the start of the Fukushima nuclear disaster, interspersed with online & print front pages from the Daily Telegraph, the Herald Sun and other Murdoch news media, including The Australian, published during the same period.

Bolt neither linked to nor mentioned any of these in any of his columns or blog posts.

March 15 :

The great green scaremongering gets worse.

March 16 :

No, there won’t be a nuclear explosion, “China syndrome” or “another Chernobyl”. The situation today is better than yesterday, and as each day goes by the chances of a big accident lesson. The nuclear fuel remains contained.

This scaremongering over the crippled Fukushima nuclear complex is extraordinary.

Isn't it though?



March 18 :

We will need to make some people accountable for this monstrous scaremongering once the truth becomes undeniable

March 19 :

The fear of Fukushima is deadlier than the fallout

Utter madness. The journalists who have whipped this up should be ashamed of themselves.

These journalists?



March 20 :

The wild reporting of Japan’s Fukushima nuclear emergency continues, with lurid claims of radioactive plumes, poisoned milk and more. The fact remains, though, that no one has been killed and probably never will.

March 21 :

no one in the towns around the plant is in any danger whatsoever from the radiation.

...the screaming, braying, lying, hyperventilating, fabricating, panicking media coverage is probably likely to kill you first instead.

March 21 :

It’s time to hold the scaremongers to account.

These "scaremongers?"



Andrew Bolt, March 22 :

Why worry only about the reactor that has killed no one?

Yes, why worry about a mostly destroyed, exploding, radioactive water spewing nuclear plant when you can, if you read Murdoch news media, worry instead about whether or not Mother Nature is now purposely trying to kill humans?



Her cruelty, eh?

March 11 wasn't, you see, another one of the hundreds of mega-earthquakes and tsunamis that have rocked, smashed and swept across the fault-line islands we now call Japan in the past few dozen million years.....it was instead a Terror Attack on humans by 'cruel' Mother Nature, at least according to the Gold Coast Bulletin :



None of the above headlines or front pages were criticised, or even mentioned, by Andrew Bolt is his 10 day campaign to blame "fear-mongering" over the deadly serious, ongoing nuclear disaster in Japan on "the greens" and non-Murdoch news media.

Not one.

And since it has been confirmed that explosions at Fukushima did indeed claim lives, that vast farming areas of Japan are so polluted with radiation they can't grow essential crops like rice, perhaps for years, or decades, and that radioactive water gushing into the Pacific Ocean from the nuclear plant has destroyed lifeblood fishing industries and clouds of radiation have even reached milk and food supplies in the United States, what has Andrew Bolt said?

Nothing.

As soon as Andrew Bolt realised facts and reality had proven him wrong, deceitfully wrong, about Fukushima, over and over again, he simply dropped the story.

Completely.

Like a petulant child who, once told he is wrong, runs to his room and slams the door on the reality of his mistakes.

Bolt has said nothing, not even an update or a correction, about the true scale of the Fukushima nuclear disaster in weeks.

Meanwhile, in the real world, the Fukushima disaster has been upgraded to a Level 7 nuclear emergency, the same rating as Chernobyl, the highest rating possible.

Quality journalism indeed.

There Is No Good Outcome For Fukushima Disaster

Your New Reality - Mother Nature : The Ultimate Terrorist



Darryl Mason is the author of the free, online novel ED Day : Dead Sydney. You can read it here


.

Not A Public Holiday, Yet

Under the watchful eye of the ABC interpretive dance bandicoot, rehearsals are underway for tomorrow's NABIADD :



What Is NABIADD?

UPDATE : More dancing, and this demand to choose a side, or at least a chanty dance style, on the murder of unarmed civilians in international waters :

This in many ways is a battle between civilisation and barbarism, and we are all called upon to choose on which side of the line to stand.

.

There's Gold In That There Climate Change ClickBait

By Darryl Mason

Dodi "The Royal Family Killed My Son" Al-Fayed is yanking the AGW deniers chain, bigstyle, and cleaning up on copies sold of his newspaper and a massive surge in website hits :



I'd like to read 100 Reasons Why Global Warming Is Natural. I'd like to see a comprehensive, well-argued, well referenced list. But this sure ain't it. It's chockers with pure opinion and outright absurdities.

Some of the Reasons Why Global Warming Is Natural published in the Daily Express :

- Peter Lilley MP said last month that “fewer people in Britain than in any other country believe in the importance of global warming. That is despite the fact that our Government and our political class—predominantly—are more committed to it than their counterparts in any other country in the world”.

- Politicians and activists push for renewable energy sources such as wind turbines under the rhetoric of climate change, but it is essentially about money – under the system of Renewable Obligations. Much of the money is paid for by consumers in electricity bills. It amounts to £1 billion a year.

- The “Climate-gate” scandal revealed that a scientific team had campaigned for the removal of a learned journal’s editor, solely because he did not share their willingness to debase science for political purposes.

And something local :

Australia has stated it wants to slash greenhouse emissions by up to 25 percent below 2000 levels by 2020, but the pledges were so unpopular that the country’s Senate has voted against the carbon trading Bill, and the Opposition’s Party leader has now been ousted by a climate change sceptic.

So the removal of Malcolm Turnbull from the leadership of the Liberal Party proves Global Warming is natural?

There's a lot of this sort of stuff in the list. They might have been able to get away with 20 Reasons Why Global Warming Is Natural, but that wouldn't be quite so dramatic a front page.

It's tabloid clickbait. Comment bait.

As Andrew Bolt well knows. And which no doubt encouraged him to declare :

The Tide Has Turned

This in reference to the fact that a daily newspaper, in the UK, with a reasonably high circulation has 'dared' to publish such a front cover.

Many of Andrew Bolt's readers now want to know when the newspaper he writes for, The Herald Sun, or any Australian Murdoch newspaper for that matter, will publish a similar front page.

"Why is this article NOT on the front page of the Heraldsun, Shame on the Editor."

"Now we need one of our Australian papers to do the same, perhaps The Australian?"

"Now someone else has done the homework / broken the ice, will the Herald Sun run the equivalent front page ??"

"come on andrew put the pressure on the editors it’s obvious that the public want to read this "

When will the Herald Sun run a similar front page to the Daily Express claiming Global Warming Is Natural?

How about never?

I'd be this blog on it.

We all know where Rupert Murdoch, and his media empire, stands on the reality of global warming-induced climate change and the coming carbon tax and trade :




.

Andrew Bolt Hates Democracy

By Darryl Mason

Not just democracy, but free speech as well :

"Those who still like (Malcolm Turnbull) should urge him to keep his silence...."

"(Malcolm Turnbull) should be manouvered out of Parliament, if not the party."

The Professional Idiot wanted democracy in Iraq, even if it cost a trillion dollars, the lives and limbs of hundreds of thousands of people, and made orphans of millions of Iraqi kids. But when a Liberal Party politician holds a differing opinion to his own and that of the new Liberal Party leader, Tony Abbott, well, The Idiot wants democracy and free speech in Australia to be subverted.

And with his usual cowardice, The Idiot refuses to link directly to Malcolm Turnbull's blog, so his readers can see exactly what Turnbull wrote, and make up their own minds.

Bolt droogie and fellow gatekeeper, Tim Blair, also refuses to link to Malcolm Turnbull's blog. Maybe he's just jealous because Turnbull gets so many more comments than he does these days....

Anyway, this is what Malcolm Turnbull wrote on his blog that has so infuriated Andrew Bolt and made rant like an anti-freedom of speech fascist :

While a shadow minister, Tony Abbott was never afraid of speaking bluntly in a manner that was at odds with Coalition policy.

So as I am a humble backbencher I am sure he won't complain if I tell a few home truths about the farce that the Coalition's policy, or lack of policy, on climate change has descended into.

First, let's get this straight. You cannot cut emissions without a cost. To replace dirty coal fired power stations with cleaner gas fired ones, or renewables like wind let alone nuclear power or even coal fired power with carbon capture and storage is all going to cost money.

To get farmers to change the way they manage their land, or plant trees and vegetation all costs money.

Somebody has to pay.

So any suggestion that you can dramatically cut emissions without any cost is, to use a favourite term of Mr Abbott, "bullshit." Moreover he knows it.

---------------

....the fact is that Tony and the people who put him in his job do not want to do anything about climate change. They do not believe in human caused global warming. As Tony observed on one occasion "climate change is crap" or if you consider his mentor, Senator Minchin, the world is not warming, it's cooling and the climate change issue is part of a vast left wing conspiracy to deindustrialise the world.

Which, in a remarkable coincidence, also happens to be a theory long promoted by Andrew Bolt and his commenters, some of whom were Liberal Party politicians, staffers and advisors writing under fake names.

Turnbull :

The Liberal Party is currently led by people whose conviction on climate change is that it is "crap" and you don't need to do anything about it.

Tony himself has, in just four or five months, publicly advocated the blocking of the ETS, the passing of the ETS, the amending of the ETS and, if the amendments were satisfactory, passing it, and now the blocking of it.

His only redeeming virtue in this remarkable lack of conviction is that every time he announced a new position to me he would preface it with "Mate, mate, I know I am a bit of a weather vane on this, but....."

Many Liberals are rightly dismayed that on this vital issue of climate change we are not simply without a policy, without any prospect of having a credible policy but we are now open to the charge that we are also without integrity. We have given our opponents the irrefutable, undeniable evidence that we cannot be trusted to keep our word or maintain a consistent position on the issue of climate change.

Unlike the cowardly Andrew Bolt, Malcolm Turnbull's blog is open for comments from readers on his stories and opinion, and unlike Andrew Bolt, Turnbull is not afraid to let through some very harsh criticisms indeed :

"are you throwing nothing more than an articulate tantrum?"

"As usual, you're hell bent on getting your own way like a typical spoilt brat, and couldn't care less about anyone else."

"Your a farce now Malcolm"

"(You are) nothing but a egocentric backstabbing bastard"

"Sour grapes from one of Rudd's elves. It doesn't matter what party you say you're on Malcolm, you are Rudd's boy. "

"unclench yours fists, stop stamping your feet and stop behaving like a spoiled brat."

"sour grapes comes to mind. Give me a break. You banter has as much BS in it as anyone who wants to take bat and ball and not play the game. Grow up"

Expect Andrew Bolt to grow only more hysterical and shrill when the Tony Abbott experiment doesn't produce the results the Abbott Army, firmly embedded in the Murdoch and Fairfax media, have been praying for.

It's going to be one of those elections.

Entertaining.

Australian politicians attacking and criticising each other through blogs and on social networking sites like Twitter is a new phenomenon. But it will cause much chaos, debate and delight as we move into the federal election campaign proper.

It's going to be ugly, and funny, but that's free speech. That's democracy.

UPDATE : After visiting The Orstrahyun to read the above story, Andrew Bolt finally provides a link to Malcolm Turnbull's blog, noting the harsh criticism of Turnbull in the comments section that I noted above. Bolt thanks reader 'Steve' for pointing this out to him, even though he based a lengthy post on what Turnbull wrote in that now controversial post.

So it appears Bolt didn't even read the Turnbull blog post himself, before writing about it here.

So much for research.

We Only Do Business With Freedom-Hating Communists To Make Them More Free, Or Something

By Darryl Mason

It's taken a while but finally, he's done it. The Professional Idiot is now using Fox News' Glenn Beck as a source of wisdom, and revelation :



Glenn Beck is, of course, the American version of Andrew Bolt, but with more tears, and only slightly more whining.

Bolt's boss, Rupert Murdoch, has bent over backwards (perhaps even frontwards) in recent years trying to do business with the Communists spawned by Mao.

Only a few days ago, Murdoch was literally begging the Communists to save his media empire by allowing him to expand into China. The last time he tried to do that, he lost a few billion.

Unfortunately, Rupert Murdoch didn't have the time to denounce the philosophy of Mao - as The Idiot and Glenn Beck think everyone should do - to his Chinese hosts while he was in Beijing.

Maybe next time.

Self-Interest, Reputation, More Important Than Free Speech

Oh, diddums!

Andrew Bolt has another whine about some of the hate-filled violence-threatening homophobic racist arseholes that are drawn to his blog like flies to shit :

Should I really be censoring such opinions? Should it really be an indictment of me that I don’t? Won’t it be said that the more I censor comments, the clearer it is that those I let through are the ones I endorse?

So as you can see, against my duty, as I perhaps arrogantly perceive it, to allow as free a discussion as possible, there is my ego and my self-interest in protecting my reputation. I should also admit that taking off the comments function should free up more than 10 hours of every choked week. What’s more, reading and checking those comments that I can get to can eat at my optimisim as well as my time.

You should see the stuff we must delete - or, rather, you shouldn’t.

Much there in the way of threats of violence against those you target that you thought you should pass onto any of our intelligence agencies? Or the police?

This is what I’ve been wrestling with in this wretched week.

Of course, it's all about The Idiot. Not about the people, the scientists, activists, journalists, community workers, he continually holds up for vicious ridicule and slandering by the worst of his droogies.

Get over yourself, mate. Your reputation will never leave you.

The internet does not forget.

Professional Idiot : Yeah, I Got Nothing

ABC pundit, Channel Nine Today Show regular guest and Herald Sun associate editor, Andrew Bolt, wishes a Jew-hating terrorist a very happy birthday :



Why would Andrew Bolt wish Yasser Arafat Happy Birthday?

Comment bait.

He may still also be working off that 'free' trip to Israel.

How To Kill A Blog In One Simple Step

The Professional Idiot Shyly, Slyly Asks : Will You Pay To Read My Blog?

The Answers Are Unanimous & Ugly

By Darryl Mason

The anticipation builds for Australia's media corporations and hundreds of nervous journalists. Will readers of Fairfax and Murdoch media pay to access the content they now get for free? Will a You Must Pay! system save Australia's corporate media from crashing and burning?

I'll guess we'll see, with both Murdoch and Fairfax now having announced plans to introduce charges to access some of their online content.

And so a carefully worded proposal from The Professional Idiot to his readers, and the dozens of commenters who supply much of the overall content of his blog, is floated under the ominous heading A Warning To You.

In this proposal, this delicate testing of the waters, The Professional Idiot asks "think it will work?" as he embraces the Digital Rupert New Age Of NewsOTainment mantra of convincing people they should pay to read Murdoch media news and blogs.

The answer from the Boltoids is unanimous, from the casual visitors to the diehard Andrew Bolt true believers and obsessive compulsive commenters. Fuck No, Rupert. We Won't Pay!

It's a nervous time for Murdoch execs and Rupert himself, along with many hundreds of Australian employees, they lost a lot of money, ad sales are down anything from 20-40%, or more, they have to give away thousands of copies of the supposedly blue chip asset, The Australian, everyday in the foyers of dozens of office towers in Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane, to keep advertisers happy, the old business model is rivering blood. They're fucking scared.

A few years back, Rupert Murdoch looked at the blog phenomena and decided that kind of content was going to become a big part of the new digital media future he was reluctantly forced to quickly try and get a grasp of.

Rupert Murdoch loved that prolific comments provided so many hits and free content for blogs, and on news stories. He was overwhelmed by the idea that there were all these independent bloggers doing what they did for free, for free! not like all those real journalists with their demands for....expenses and....sunlight and.....chairs, and all the rest of it. Rupert seemed to understand a few years ago that the blogger provided the starting point, the ignition switch, for the comments to flow, adding content, drawing readers back again and again, even if they weren't commenting, just to read what everyone else was saying.

So snap up a couple of independent bloggers, turn columnists into sorta-bloggers, and load their pages with ads. Oh, wait. The arse just completely fell out of ad revenue. Fuck, look at it go. Okay, what now? Let's make 'em pay!

Rupert fantasised, or believed the exciting blitherings of some 22 year old digital maverick who convinced him, either in all seriousness or in jest, that one day people will be happy to pay to read blogs. Yes, they will. They'll pay to read them and still write pages of comments for free. And they'll do it happily.

This idea must have been particularly tasty to Rupert : they will pay me to contribute free content to my media sites which I'll then charge others to read! Brilliant!

Well, if Rupert Murdoch did believe some scenario like that, he can forget about it right now.

That business model is already bagged and slabbed.

The daily readers of The Professional Idiot, the most popular (at least as far as hits go) of all the Australian Murdoch blogs, have filed their complaints about soon having to Pay To Read, and the complaints are many, and annoyed, and tone dark with the sound of soon to be departing eyeballs and interest :

"Shareholders should see this a sign of dementia - they should to tell him to enjoy his retirement and move over for his sons."

"Pay to post on news blogs? Tell ‘im he’s dreamin’."

"Once again MSM is planning to control what we read. I think it will actually bring a lot more underground blogs up which can only be a good thing. MSM is merely a propoganda machine anyway."

"It would kill blogging and kill your readership. It would kill discussion and debate on important issues."

"I trust that if Murdoch is planning on charging us to read your blog he’ll also be paying us for our contributions. Some of the entries posted by amateurs demonstrate more originality of thought, and indeed a higher degree of technical savvy, than articles written by Murdoch’s ‘quality journalists’."

"I’m sorry Andrew, I love reading your blog, but if I have to pay I will spend my time elsewhere. The content is great, but at the end of the day it’s entertainment and there is plenty of FREE entertainment on the net to choose from."

"Charge to visit the blog and the advertisers will walk out the same door as the readers."

"lol....paying for propaganda or half the story supplied by the murdoch globalist empire...the world according to rupert and his minions will need a truth and integrity injection before they get a cash injection..."

"I wont support a pay wall. Uncle Rupert will be lucky to make this stick. Lets say China decides to print News Ltd stuff for free. Is Rupert going to shirt front Beijing? Worked real well last time he tried."

"Pretty sad business sense. Loyalty was once a valued customer trait - not anymore - bleed the bastards dry."

"NewsCorp is mostly left wing dribble not much better than the Age. I look forward to their downfall."

"NOTE TO THE INCOMPETANT IDIOTS running NewsCorp: If you want more readers, sack your lying left wing arts degree journalists, and hire real journalists who will write the truth and and not the politically correct dribble most of them write."

"News Ltd are the bastions of the right wing point of view. If News Ltd make all their site user pays they are giving up ‘free’ news to the left."

"In terms of this blog. Nobody, except Andrew’s diehard supports are going to pay to access this blog. Then there will be so few people her that it just wont be the same. Very little debate just a love feast between a few."

"This is a business decision by someone who don’t understand the web."

"As much as I like you Andrew, if Rupe puts you behind a pay-wall then this is good bye."

"I ain’t gonna work"

"Like pornography, there are plenty of people willing to look up the news online when it’s free, but when it comes to paying for it, very few will do so."

"If Rupert wants to charges us to do so then I will cancel delivery of my Herald Sun. Therefore, the local newsagent will lose a customer and I imagine I won’t be the only one ‘pulling the plug’."

"Pay to read the news, and pay to post on news blogs? In a pig’s eye!"

"If he goes ahead with this it will be the worst decision he has made and one which will see the end of his media empire."

And countless examples of short and simple :

"No."

"No."

"Hell, no."

"I won't pay."

The major problem seems to be that most of The Professional Idiot's daily readers think the rest of the Murdoch online media is worthless trash riven with pagan socialist secret muslim leftie journos and global warming propagandising Rudd worshippers.

They don't want to pay to read Bolt's blog, and they'll be fucked if they will pay some sort of overall fee to get access to read the blog and the rest of the Herald Sun or Adelaide Advertiser, they don't sound interested in other Murdoch content outside of Bolt's blog, and they openly mock the daily Murdoch news as celebrity guff and Green-brainwashed fluff not worth a single click.

So it would appear the only way to capture any money from the Boltoids would be to charge readers for access only to The Professiona ldiot's blog, and not some package drawing in other Murdoch content.

If Rupert Murdoch is seriously considering charging to read a blog, or to comment at a blog, or to read comments, how much would he need to charge to make it worthwhile for the blogger, and to pay for the admin and moderators and researchers?

A You Must Pay! blog has to spot on, no mistakes, constant postings, breaking news as it happens, instant moderation and updated comments, all of this around the clock. The complaints from those who pay will be vast, grating and time-consuming.

Basically, Bolt's blog would need to become something of a news portal and blog, with quick turnover of stories, columns, comments. If Bolt doesn't then rely on free labour from students and interns, he's going to have be charging 10,000 readers at least $50 a year to make it worthwhile, or even break even.

But he's not going to find 10,000 who will pay to read his blog. Maybe a thousand, if he's lucky, more likely only a few hundred, and then only if the price is low.

If you could charge to read blogs, more bloggers would be doing it. It doesn't work. Unless you're a time traveller and can go check out the future for your subscribers and give them advice on how to avoid falling tree limbs or cyclones or shitty stock or house-losing divorces, people won't pay to read a blog.

And nor should they.

A likely scenario is that Bolt, like Tim Blair, Piers Akerman and Janet Albretchsen will be bundled together in a single subscription, monthly or yearly. You pay for The Idiot and get some bonus Planet Janet and Ak Attack. Such a subscription service might work on e-readers and iPhones, where the charge is added to your account, simple, but the problem remains that most of their online competition will not be charging, and everything they do charge for will end on fair use sites anyway, or liberally quoted in blogs.

They could call it The Sad Conservative Ranter Value Bundle.

Bolt's got maybe 30,000 readers who visit his site at least once or twice a week, that's a very generous estimate. The daily readership is obviously much less. It might be only 5000 or 6000 readers, for the most heavily promoted blog site in Australia.

Could Rupert charge Boltoid's $100 a year if The Professional Idiot got in and interacted with subscribers in the way George Mega already does at The Australian? Actually talked to them? Maybe a daily video of The Professional Idiot's eye-rolling, girlish shoulder shrugging and impudent whining that only Premium Content Bolt readers can experience?

The shock to come that should already be so obvious to professional media execs who get paid to know this kind of shit is this : most of The Professional Idiot's audience is attracted to the blog because of the range of intelligent to crazed to WTF? comments his blog attracts. When Murdoch starts charging to read the blog, the comments will disappear, the throb of life of anger of laughter of mockery of bullying of hysterical attacks of slayings and occasional good-natured cajoling will be gone.

The Professional Idiot's commenters mostly know this, because they are people who won't pay, and won't come back if they're expected to.

I know that market watchers have poured over all those comments at The Professional Idiot's as he tries to gauge reaction to a You Must Pay! version of his blog, and other Murdoch online media content. The reaction from Boltoids could not have been any more disastrous.

There may be You Must Pay! content on Murdoch media sites by January, 2010, but it seems unlikely to include Murdoch bloggers, particularly The Professional Idiot and Tim Blair.

Good luck to them if they can make it work.

The Professional Idiot On Iraq : We Won, We're Winning, We've Almost Won



By Darryl Mason

When you're a Murdoch media pro-war gatekeeper, you're not paid to be right, or even mildly accurate, you're there to maintain the illusion that war can achieve more than it costs, in treasure and life and dignity.

The Professional Idiot's very professional propaganda :

November 2, 2007 : "The Iraq War Has Been Won"

January 29, 2008 : "...the news about Iraq gets better..."

June 11, 2008 : "Challenges remain....the cost has been high..."

July 19, 2009 : "...Iraq is essentially won..."

From "We Won!" in November 2007, to 'We've Almost Won!' in July 2009.

Spin spin spin spin.

Whenever I see talk of "We're Winning This War!" or "We're Close To Victory!" I think about a hand-written sign I saw at a school students' anti-war rally in 2004. It read :

'War Is So 2oth Century.'

A Natural Master Of Radio And Comic Timing Shows An Amateur How It's Done


Father Bob : If you only see one Catholic Church service in your lifetime, see Father Bob's

The Professional Idiot holds court on John Safran & Father Bob's JJJ show, while Safran and Father Bob struggle to keep it entertaining, or even just a little bit fun.

The Professional Idiot first tries to steer the conversation away from who paid for his recent trip to Israel, where he declared his mate Peter Costello "The Messiah", The Idiot then waffles non-critically about Israel and then expresses surprise that the Palestinian politicians he met were well educated, one was even a pediatrician. Imagine that.

Then this :

The Idiot : "I’ve always tended to be on the side of people who are democratic, who respect, to as much as is consistent with their safety, human rights, and freedom of speech. And by that measure there’s only one party that would make me feel comfortable..…"

Father Bob times his moment of interjection perfectly.

Father Bob : "The Palestinians."

Silence for a few seconds, radio dead air, then you can actually hear The Idiot's jaw clench hard.

The Idiot : "..............you seriously think that or are you just being a fool?"

Father Bob : "No, I’m having a go back."

The Idiot is overwhelmed by such petulance and the standard whining and hilariously prissy outrage kicks in :

The Idiot : "Well, if you say something like that, there’s obviously no room for us to engage because what you’ve said is clearly nonsense....It’s clearly nonsense! Because it is nonsense! So what’s the point in arguing?"

Father Bob : "A conversation? No, this is not the time or the place..."

So much for The Professional Idiot's alleged love of a rousing debate.

You can hear it here. Jump to 41mins 30secs.

Andrew Bolt : God Doesn't Exist

The Professional Idiot :

Man who says sorry to people who don’t exist meets man who prays to god that doesn’t exist, either

Now you know. There is no God, and the Pope is a liar and a fraud.

It's strange, though. The Idiot was only recently prattling on about his belief in 'The Messiah', during a cosy little trip to Israel to attend a meeting along with Peter Costello, Julia Gillard and Christopher Pyne, a meeting he tells us he isn't actually allowed to report on.

Then there's this, from July 1 :

"....a Sistine Chapel makes a worshipper of even a pagan like me."

The Professional Idiot sounds like he's rolling with a bit of cognitive dissonance since his return from the Holy Land.

John Hartigan : Blogs Are Shit And My Bloggers Are Too Scared To Tell Me I'm Full Of It

By Darryl Mason

Yesterday, I wrote about the 'Blogs Are Shit' speech by News Limited CEO, John Hartigan. News Limited has dozens of blogs across its websites and online newspapers, including very popular blogs by Piers Akerman, Tim Blair and The Professional Idiot. Here's a reminder of what Hartigan had to say :

"Then there are the bloggers. In return for their free content, we pretty much get what we've paid for. Something of such little intellectual value as to be barely discernible from massive ignorance."

"It could be said the blogosphere is all eyeballs and no insights."

"Blogs, and a large number of comment sites, specialise in political extremism and personal vilification. Radical sweeping statements without evidence are common."

Yeah, he sounds like a fucking wanker, and Mumbrella and Pure Poison have already returned some fire, but what about reactions from some of News Limited's own bloggers? Bloggers who, amongst their ranks, pull in more than 4 million hits a month to News Limited websites? Surely Hartigan's snarky, smirking, dismissive anti-blog rant must have ruffled a few feathers amongst News Limited bloggers?

Here's The Professional Idiot's reaction to his boss labelling his '1 million hits a month!' blog "barely discernible from massive ignorance" :

He’s also confident that our own internet sites and blogs...can beat off the challenge of other blogs and news aggregators...

Err, right, Hartigan was talking about those "other blogs", was he?

Not in the speech transcript released to the media by Hartigan, or in the double-teleprompter speech he gave at the National Press Club yesterday.

John Hartigan said bloggers were full of "radical sweeping statements without evidence", and the Professional Idiot deemed his words "informed and provocative".

Even when John Hartigan spits in The Professional Idiot's face, insults his many readers who devote many hours to writing comments and providing free content for News Limited, he still curtsies and puckers up.

Surely Tim Blair, at the Daily Telegraph, will have the guts and self-respect to take Hartigan to task for dissing a blog like his that pulls more than 600,000 hits a month for News Limited?

Go hard, Tim, tear the boss the new one he deserves :



Oh.

Tim Blair pretends he hasn't heard or read his boss's complete dismissal of the Australian blogosphere and all the years he spent blogging and giving the new medium some spark and fire.

So if you're the CEO of News Limited and you pay your 'Tell It Like It Is' bloggers enough, you can not only buy their silence on Rupert Murdoch's promotion of corporate greenism, carbon taxes and global warming fearmongery (even in The Simpsons), but you can give a speech to a roomful of professional journalists and call your own bloggers' work meaningless shit in front of them all and your bloggers won't dare raise the slightest harsh word in their own defence. Or their readers defence.

How fucking embarrassing.

How shameful.


.

He Said 'Mate' But He Meant 'Messiah'

The Professional Idiot goes to Israel and comes home with a fever :

Peter Costello was in Jerusalem last week, just a few metres from where Christ rose from the dead, when he heard a voice.

"Mate," it said.

"Mate, ya gotta take over the leadership."

It was just another tourist who'd recognised the former treasurer as the Messiah....

The Professional Idiot closes his declaration of religiously-fevered brolove for Peter Costello with an Old Testament translation of what the tourist said, but didn't :

...even more would have added their voices to the one Costello heard a few days later by the hill of Golgotha.

Peter, rise again. Your people await their Messiah.

The Professional Idiot is now beyond parody.

The War On Iraq : We Won....Wait, They Won...Someone Won....Did Anybody Win?

By Darryl Mason

In November 2007, The Professional Idiot declared :

The War In Iraq Has Been Won

Now, finally, Iraq MP Nuri al-Maliki agrees with The Professional Idiot :

Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki said Saturday that the U.S. troops' withdrawal from Iraqi cities and towns by the end of this month would be a "great victory" for Iraqis.

"It is a great victory for Iraqis as we are going to take our first step toward ending the foreign presence in Iraq," Maliki said during a conference in Baghdad for leaders of ethnic Turkmen minority.

Hmm, probably not exactly the kind of victory declaration The Professional Idiot was counting on al-Maliki to announce. But then, The Professional Idiot was always living an absurd NeoCon fantasy when it came to Iraq.

This from The Idiot when it seemed, briefly, so many years ago, that President Bush was right, and the War On Iraq had been won almost as soon as it began :

"The war happened, all right, yet there were no refugees, and no huge casualties."

And here's "second stringer" Tim Blair, all but declaring victory before the War On Iraq even began :

John Hawkins: If and when do you see the United States hitting Iraq? How do you think it'll work out?

Tim Blair: It all depends on Iraq’s fearsome Elite Republican Guard. Why, those feisty desert warriors could hold out for minutes. Dozens of US troops will be required. Perhaps they’ll even need their weapons.

Wouldn’t expect it to last long once it happens.

No. not long at all.

Six years, a couple of trillion dollars, 4500 dead CoW troops and a few hundred thousand dead Iraqis.

At least they got rid of Iran's main enemy in the region.

Perhaps one day Tim Blair will get the chance to talk to some of the hundreds of young Australian soldiers who had their minds and emotions fucked by what they saw and experienced in Iraq. I'm sure they'll love to hear his explanation for why it was all worth it, and why he was so keen, all those years ago, to perpetuate the myth that the people of Iraq would cave in so quickly to foreign occupation.

"...those feisty desert warriors could hold out for minutes."

Or more than 3.2 million minutes, and counting.

Oh well, at least Blair got a job at the Daily Telegraph out of it.

Too Much Of A Coward To Have His Own Words Quoted Back To Him

By Darryl Mason

A few days later, The Professional takes a very similar stance to The Orstrahyun on the Gordon Ramsay publicity spectacular :

....will Channel Nine do the same and cancel future shows with Ramsay or will it reward him for attacking its star?

I submitted the following comment to The Professional Idiot's blog, where the freedom to debate on any subject is supposedly written in stone, and open to all comers, at 10.27am, Tuesday.

This is Andrew Bolt on Gordon Ramsay (April, 2008) :

"...I've fallen for the bloke. My kind of guy completely. More of him and civilisation is safe."

"I like particularly the standards Ramsay upholds...."

"He thinks reason beats irrational sentiment."

"Here's Ramsay coaching millions of Australians into Liberal values and making them seem contemporary."

"Ramsay...is an artist who uses them as tools to create something beautiful from nothing..."

"Make something of yourself, is his message. Test yourself. Find passion. Make a life and, in Ramsay's own passion, his values and his art, he has."

"(Gordon Ramsay) creates a noble calling from a job, and a life from a collection of days."

So, is civilisation still safer?

Is he still coaching Australians in "Liberal values"?

Is Ramsay still "my kind of guy completely."?

My comment quoting The Professional Idiot's own words in an earlier column on Gordon Ramsay hadn't made it into the comments when I checked at 11.37am, though other comments submitted by people not writing under their own names went up on a few minutes earlier, at 11.23am.

I resubmitted the exact same comment at 11.34am. No dice.

I tried one more time, at 3.56pm, thinking surely he isn't so ashamed and embarrassed of his enthusiastic praise of Ramsay's "Liberal values" that he'd censor his own words from his own blog comments?

It still didn't show up.

I sent him an e-mail asking if he still stands by his claims about Ramsay keeping civilisation safe.

Nothing.

So at 4.38pm, I sent this short comment, with a direct link back to The Professional Idiot's own column, archived at the Herald Sun, on Ramsay :

Do you stand by your April 2008 column where you claimed, amongst many other words of praise, that Gordon Ramsay personifies "Liberal values", that is, conservative values?

Your column, where you called Ramsay an "artist" also had you saying, "...I've fallen for the bloke. My kind of guy completely. More of him and civilisation is safe".

Now surely The Professional Idiot wouldn't censor a non-abusive comment that included only his own quotes about Gordon Ramsay, and a link back to his own column from which those quotes were pulled?

Surely The Professional Idiot can't be that precious?

Let's see.

UPDATE : The Professional Idiot really is that precious, none of my comments quoting his enthusiastic praise for Gordon Ramsay passed his censor.

So much for standing by what you say.

Interestingly, this Herald Sun columnist will not allow his own words to be republished on his blog when the quotes are attributed to him, but when Toaf put some of that big sigh Gordon Ramsay infatuation and praise in a comment under his name, and not The Professional Idiot's, well, up it went :



(click to enlarge)

The Professional Idiot celebrates his ever expanding American audience :

And thank you yet again: May set a new record on this blog for page impressions - 1,352,994

Scoring links on extremely popular American 9/11 Truther sites like Alex Jones' Prison Planet...



....and the 'Holocaust skeptic' site WhatReallyHappened.com....



...can really help boost those page impressions stats.

.

Please Give Generously

If only it was the Rudd government filling headlines for throttling the throats of each other, The Professional Idiot could have got 10 or 20 blog posts and thousands of comments out of it, but alas, it was Liberal Vs Liberal biffo and violence and so, he's got nothing :

I Hope Kerry O'Brien Really Did Say That, Because It's True

By Darryl Mason

Australia's most boring, dreariest columnist, Gerard Henderson, suddenly comes up with something to quicken the stale blood of all Australian conservatives obsessed with Lefty Commo Green Solar Nazi Pink Batt Obamaist Peter Costello-hating bias at the ABC, in all its most insidious forms.

Particularly that of Big Red himself, Kerry O'Brien :

Coalition Staffer: “Kerry , you realise…I respect Peter [Costello] a lot.”

O’Brien: “Well good luck to you then - I don’t. He doesn’t like politics; he has always been the first one out of here (Canberra) on Thursday. Peter Costello does not have the nation’s interests at heart. He is only in it for himself, always has been, always will be. He needs to get out.” (Note : O'Brien is out late, hammered on tequila, telling them what he thinks)

Coalition Staffer: “I actually really respect some of the reforms of the Hawke-Keating era.”

O’Brien: “Howard and Costello never recognised the importance of their reforms. Costello simply rode on the consequences of the Keating and Hawke wave of economic reform.”

Liberal Party staffers leaking on a journalist. Interesting.

Gerard Henderson only revealed the conversation notes of a close friend for the most hilarious and bitchiest of reasons :

....normally....(I) would not publish the note of a conversation conducted in private on a dark Canberra night or morning. But this is what the 7.30 Report’s political editor Michael Brissenden did concerning a conversation he and two others had with Peter Costello in 2005. Mr Brissenden’s release of the details of this off-the-record conversation a couple of years later was specifically approved by Kerry O’Brien.

Rowwrrr! Take that you unrepentant Whitlam groupie, you.

What really gnaws at the mind of Gerard Henderson is that hundreds of thousands of addicted 7.30 Report viewers will agree just about 100% with what Big Red told the coalition staffers that tequila-drenched post Budget morning. And oh, oh, how it eats at poor Gerard.

The Professional Idiot meanwhile must repute any and all genuine and accurate slayings of his precious Peter. The Idiot appears to have given up his dream-duty of hosting MediaWatch, and is eying up The Chair of Chairs at the ABC, that of The 7.30 Report. But first he and Henderson must drive Big Red from his perch, it's not going to be easy. The Idiot :

Gerard Henderson reveals something on his blog that makes me uneasy,

No, not the rumoured 'FaceBook Style Raunch' photo set Gerard took of himself to help drive recruitment to the Liberal Party. The Professional Idiot is uneasy because Kerry O'Brien apparently expresses 'bias' when he's half-blasted in a pub after a long day.

These freaks of conformity don't even want people to have 'bias' after hours.

Friend : Kerry! What sort of wine should we have with dinner?

Big Red : I'm sorry, the ABC charter does not allow me to express a preference for either the white or the red. Let me list in detail both the positives and negatives present in making such a choice, but I cannot guide you in anyway as you choose....

Friend : Just grab a damned bottle of the red.

The more I think about the possibility of The Professional Idiot hosting Media Watch or, even more fantastically, The 7.30 Report, the funnier it seems. It can only be topped by imagining Gerard Henderson hosting either shows. Obviously the novelty value would wear out fast.

Rupert Murdoch Pays Me To Never Mention He Belongs To A Pagan Cult Who Want To Destroy The World And Wipe Out Humanity

By Darryl Mason

This ad from the corporate green HQ of Rupert Murdoch's The Herald Sun....



...sits right above this headline from Herald's Sun associate editor, The Professional Idiot - 'Star Hypocrites Of The Warming Faith' :



The story includes this declaration :

Truly, global warming is the first major religion to be led entirely by shameless sinners, attended by assorted hypocrites and carpetbaggers.

Al Gore gets a mention, Richard Branson gets a mention, Oprah Winfrey gets a mention in the League Of Extraordinary Global Warming Hypocrites, but somehow, yet again, to my utter shock, The Professional Idiot forgets to include his boss Rupert Murdoch, the world's biggest, most influential promoter of global warming hysteria and Corporate Greenism, in his list of hypocrites and carpetbaggers.

Does Rupert Murdoch row a boat to Australia when he visits?

Doesn't the same multi-billionaire who uses The Simpsons to scare children about drowning cities use a corporate jet to travel the world?

Every time The Professional Idiot goes comment mining on global warming or carbon trading, the massive ad appears from the boss reminding him of just what a spectacle fucking hypocrite he is. And every time it appears it reminds readers how pathetically afraid The Professional Idiot is to criticise or even mention his boss's chief role in the worldwide promotion of global warming hysteria, while he religiously ignores his own newspaper's efforts in ramping up The Fear and following Rupert Murdoch's masssive plan to cash-in on the coming carbon trading market and carbon tax.



Then again, when you've already admitted there is no ideology so evil or inhuman that you would not take a job or a pile of cash from its believers, screaming Stop The Global Warming Hysteria! while working for a newspaper that regularly fills its pages with exactly that kind of hysteria, does make some kind of sense.

At least enough to not choke on your own hypocrisy every payday.

Maybe we should remember the Alan Jones excuse : It's not news, it's not even journalism, it's Entertainment.

It sure is entertaining.