By Darryl Mason
The Professional Idiot gets the nod from his ex-Australian boss and declares war on the Australian middle class, with all the venom and bile he usually reserves for single mothers, Aboriginal activists and immigrants :
"The explosion in welfare money hasn’t gone to bludgers so much as to middle-class and lower-class families that do work, but feel entitled (justified or not) to handouts of other people’s money for anything from first homes to child care. It’s bludging..."How refreshing to hear someone who is fortunate enough to be able to work from home and still earn more than $250,000 a year lecture the middle class because they can't afford to put their children into childcare while they hold down full-time and second jobs and because they were gullible enough to believe John Howard's lies about them all being "relaxed and comfortable".
Even better to hear the same hectoring from one of the richest men in the world, about how shameful it is that the Australian middle classes (or the New Poor) want and/or expect minimal financial help to prop up their McMansion, two kids in childcare, two cars, two jobs reality, even though that fantasy was routinely primed and pumped through all of Murdoch's Australian newspapers for a decade :
...while real incomes increased since the end of the 1980s, about 20 per cent of the working aged population today receives income support, compared with only 15 per cent two decades ago. While a safety net is warranted for those in genuine need, we must avoid institutionalising idleness. The bludger should not be our national icon.Yes, better our national icon be the working poor instead. Or perhaps a 50 year old man who worked and stressed himself to an early grave and missed out on seeing his children growing up.
But of course, when it comes to handouts, Murdoch was all for stiffing the American taxpayers with the $700 billion BailUp, which ensured some of those who traverse the same canape circuits as he does, back in Manhattan, are not forced to give up too much of their wealth because they monumentally fucked up the American economy and the retirement plans of millions of aging workers.
The lyrics of an old Insurge song, circa mid-1990ss, come to mind :
You tell me everyone without a job should go away and die,Here's a comment I made yesterday on The Professional Idiot's near total supplication to his boss, and why he should feel the hot sting of shame for being such a monumental wuss :
And what the government spends on welfare really makes you cry,
Well, you're a strange little thing,
You don't mind if a rich man does his thing,
When he gets his subsidies and tax breaks,
And his research and development grants
This is welfare for the rich,
but because it's welfare for your mates,
Here I am living in a welfare state
Andrew Bolt’s response to Murdoch’s speech was as expected : lame and just plain sad.
Here’s the biggest and most influential promoter of Global Warming in the world, who uses his media to endorse the reality the global warming and its “catastrophic” effects on the climate (seen Fox News lately?), and Bolt has nothing to say. Nothing.
Tim Flannery? Hell, he’ll do two hundred posts on Flannery for being an “alarmist” and a “true believer” and supposedly trying to destroy the world economy, but Murdoch gets a total pass. Is Murdoch a “true believer” in the “new pagan faith?” According to Bolt’s definitions, he sure is.
Does Bolt remind Murdoch that global warming has supposedly stopped? Or that climate change belief makes you a Green Nazi? Does Bolt tell Rupert that his mind has been poisoned by Al Gore’s new religion, statistical fakery and enviro-fascism? Of course not.
The fact that Murdoch is Bolt’s boss is not enough of an excuse for Bolt not taking Murdoch’s claims and advocacy of, for starters, climate change and Aboriginal reconciliation down to the mat.
Murdoch is reiterating primarily the Labor Party platform that won them the election, and Bolt has nothing to say. AT ALL. Even more bizarrely, Bolt’s followers mostly agree with Rupert, and support Bolt’s echoing of Rupert’s Ron Paul Meets Al Gore beliefs and opinions. In fact, they praise him for his vision and clarity.
It’s hallucinatory reading those comments. How many of these commenters are paid for their work? How many are News Ltd staffers? What other explanation can there be for almost unanimous support amongst Boltists when Rupert wings in from hanging out with Evil Pagan Lefties and ‘The Hollywood Elite’ in Manhattan and LA to remind Australia that climate change is a reality, that Aboriginal reconciliation is a priority, that welfare for poor people is a necessity and that John Howard was wrong on just about everything?
Bolt doesn’t believe what he writes, not really. That couldn’t be any more obvious now. How he handles Rupert Murdoch is always a good test. No doubt, Bolt is a passionate believer in some of his regular subjects of mockery and derision, but only just a few. Most of it is there for pure entertainment, to tap and trap a target audience of dwindling Howard-era conservatives.
What sort of man lets his boss trample all over his supposedly passionate, righteous beliefs and then hails him for doing it?
It’s clear too, now, that Bolt is also there to feed really bad ideas and self-circling missions to the Liberal Party, who plunge deeper into The Shit the more they do what he tells them to do. How can Coonan, Turnbull and Abbott not see that doing Bolt’s bidding harms them, not helps them?
A perfect example of this is Bolt’s demands that the Liberal Party go nuts over Rudd’s public mocking of President Bush over the G20 phone call. The story didn’t catch fire with the media because there is essentially nothing there. Bolt knows this, but he drives the Libs on and on to chase their own tails over it, when next to no-one outside of politics or the Boltarium could give a shit. Bolt also knows that the editor of The Australian newspaper was present when the Rudd-Bush call occurred, and that’s why the story got into The Australian newspaper in the first place. Does he tell his readers this? Of course not.
Murdoch’s got five lectures to go, where he will continue to essentially shore up much of what Rudd is planning for Australia, and our eventual integration into a larger Asia community, with China as our new, more powerful, more wealthy bestest friend.
Bolt will have five more opportunities to shred what he has told his readers, daily, he believes are dangerous and culturally disruptive ideas and policies. That they come from Murdoch should make absolutely no difference to Bolt’s usually venomous dismantling of such Evil Pagan Lefty ideals and beliefs. Considering the prominence, influence and power of the man delivering these messages of mostly liberal idealism, Bolt should be expected to spend a great deal of time indeed going at him.
Unless Bolt really is a fake, a mere entertainer, a carnival huckster, which would be disappointing for his fans and critics alike.
