Anne Summers’ essay on Andrew Bolt in The Monthly is free access for 24 hours. A key extract:
Media and politics today are less a contest of ideas and more a continuing conflict of opinion. “Bolt’s genius is that he’s always finding the fault lines and finding an argument,” Lachlan Harris, press secretary to Kevin Rudd when he was prime minister, told me. The resultant toxicity of our politics is only going to get worse. “In 2004, we estimated that people were getting 70% of political information from news outlets, television or papers,” says Harris. “Now it is flipped: most people get most of their political information from opinion, from a medium that is dependent upon division of opinion.”
Although Bolt describes himself as a conservative columnist, he is less a William Safire than a Billy Graham. He is like an evangelist, providing fixed points of reference for people who feel confused in a world where certainty has eroded. He tells people what they should be thinking – and hordes of followers lap it up.
Like the Fox jocks, Bolt tends to stick to just a few themes – “no stolen generation”, “honour the Churches”, “frown on divorce”, “crack down on welfare”, “stop the cult of victimhood”, “stop immigration”, “end multiculturalism” – and to hammer them over and over. Top of the list in the right-wing songbook, though, is the non-existence of climate change. Bolt is utterly obdurate when it comes to the subject. “I thought he wrote too much about climate change,” says Bruce Guthrie, “but he was immoveable.”
[…] unhappy synergy between the new forms of communication and publication and the old. At Club Troppo, Ken Parish quotes Anne Summer’s essay on Andrew Bolt in The Monthly: Media and politics today are less a […]
“Top of the list in the right-wing songbook, though, is the non-existence of climate change. Bolt is utterly obdurate when it comes to the subject.”
What a very strange and Orwellian statement. It would be straight leftist projection. But the use of Orwellian language makes the statement just very odd. Ken you may not realize it. But climate change has always been real. For as many billions of years as the planet has been around. Bolt knows this. Apparently you don’t know this. You might want to clarify your position. Are you claiming that climate change is a recent phenomenon? What exactly are you claiming?
Jikky
Ken isn’t claiming anything. What does this mean to you in terms of what follows on?
Bolt has never been a very numerate person afterall that is why the ALP brokers leaked him the internal poll that was flatly contradicted by every public poll but did he understand this?No. Climate change is the same.
Not good on memories with girlfriends either apparently
It is very odd and suspicious that Bolt wants to hide his personal and family history and it appears, even lie about it.
At the risk of taking “Jikky” more seriously than he deserves, generally when people refer to “climate change” these days they’re employing it as shorthand for “anthropogenic climate change”.
Thanks for your clarification Ken. There are very few skeptics who “deny” that the climate has been in a warming phase since the beginning of the industrial revolution, or that the increase in anthropogenic CO2 is having some effect on warming. The debate is centred around how much the present warming is man-made versus a natural phenomenon.
Interestingly, that debate is far less pronounced amongst people who actually conduct scientific work in that field.
Homes, as a Christian does the story about who is without sin cast the first stone mean anything to you? Ummm
The Bolt trial sorted out the evil News Ltd empire in australia, thus proving the local subsidiary at least as bad as the UK version. Next in the firing line is Quadrant magazine, when they print such appalling material as this.
As a lucky country whose luck is ahared by a mob of mediocre racists we have to give thanks to Mordy for our sharp jab to the plexis.
well JC I could have linked that famous stoush on Troppo when you got confused about what a denominator and a numerator is.
do you always like egg on your face?
Give it a rest Whyisitso.
If Bolt had have done just some research and have had shown some evidence for his allegations there would have been no trial.
He didn’t. The Catallaxy excuse doesn’t work in court.
Yes homer, everyone gets egg on them if they’re near you.
Link please. When did I get the numerator and denominator wrong?
I love it JC forgets.
It was all about Krugman and you tried unsuccessfully to show he was wrong but naturally you were wrong.
Egg on face is something familiar at Catallaxy.
Judy has it over Bolt naturally just as she had it over Bernie Fraser.
Summers says this
In 1957 Mijndert Huibert Bolt and his fiancée, Margaretha Korenstra, applied to migrate to Australia. Mijndert Bolt, then aged 24, from Utrecht in the Netherlands, had trained as a teacher, although he described himself as a clerk on his immigration application form. Korenstra, aged 26, was a shorthand typist and came from Aalsmeer, a town 13 kilometres south-west of Amsterdam famous for its flower market, the largest in the world, and notorious for having had a Nazi mayor during World War II. The couple undertook to marry before embarkation. The selection officer who interviewed Bolt said the applicant had created a “favourable impression on appearance and attitude” and that he “should assimilate readily enough”. Both applicants underwent medical and other checks. They were found to be in good health and to have no criminal record; they were confirmed not to have engaged in “political delinquency during occupation 1940–45”; and their “political reliability” was assessed as “good”.
Sinclair Davidson says ‘Just after the non-story about Bolt being South African the article implies that his mother was a Nazi.’
Steve from Brisbane says Oh really Sinclair. As the paragraph also says their “political reliability” for immigration was noted as “good”, I took to have the obvious meaning that they were, um, not fascists.
And now that I re-read it, as it notes their ages at the time they came to Australia, it’s clear they were young children during the war.
Maybe you should have been a defamation lawyer. Your cases may have provided entertainment value, at least.’
Then Sinclair then goes beserk having to justify the unjustifiable
You stupid f..k-nut – you asked for information, I responded. The appropriative response is ‘I didn’t read that into the article, but thank you’.
Can some-one point out just where the implication since Sinclair is incapable of doing this.
Looks like Sinclair Davidson is trying to ape the Bolt methodology, contempt for logic and facts.
Judy from Catallaxy says two important bits are inaccurate.
Elizabeth is not in the outback, However the article says it is a satellite town.
Ann Summers comes from Adelaide so I didn’t think she would say that.
Summers says Bolt had a fiancee and she saw the ring whilst interviewing said former fiancee. Judy says the fulminating Bolt saying he had no fiancee.
Either Ann saw no engagement ring or Bolt has bolted himself again.
Anyone else savouring the delicious irony of Australia’s foremost adult cyber-bully writing an entire column about how kids should deal with being bullied? Maybe the plaintiffs in Eastock v Bolt should now take this advice from Andy to heart:
“At the risk of taking “Jikky” more seriously than he deserves, generally when people refer to “climate change” these days they’re employing it as shorthand for “anthropogenic climate change”.”
Right. So Kens talking about me and not too me. And what Ken really means by “climate change” is “industrial CO2 release.” So Ken is treating people as though they were pitiful Soviet peasants, who needed to be beaten into submission, by recourse to relentless propagandizing of Orwellian memes.
Wouldn’t this issue be more simple if only it was about scientific evidence?
“Wouldn’t this issue be more simple if only it was about scientific evidence?”
Uh…
You are just not that smart are you Dan? No you are not. You are only capable of grunting.
Of course it is, since the majority have already been caught out suppressing the work of and bullying the minority who disagree.
You know, that whole scandal thing last year?
“The debate is centred around how much the present warming is man-made versus a natural phenomenon.”
No that is incorrect. The debate is an endless loop focused on the reality that the proponents have not found any evidence for CO2-based warming, globally, at sea level, in the slightest. No evidence at all. And no sound apriori argument that there would be such CO2-based warming.
Jikky, you have to get on board with the current denialist meme. Your brand of skepticism was big about 7 years ago, but now it’s more “no one is denying that CO2 may be causing some warming, it’s just that it won’t be catastrophic. In fact, it might be good for us!” Didn’t you watch Bolt Report last weekend?
Oh, I see from another thread that Jikky is gone. How sad. He did sound rather Birdian on the other thread.
When you get through with fashion narratives steve, you girlyman, you might like to come to grips with the reality that anything that works against progressive freezing is obviously a good thing, but no evidence exists that CO2-release is one of those things.
Part of being a scientist is being an adult.
Sockpuppets are one thing Bird, but using other people’s established identities is truly fucked.
What is “truly fucked” FDB, is your language. Now lets go over it again. You are a liar, since you support what you purport to be a scientific case, without evidence. That’s “rightly screwed” in anyone’s bad language. And its not okay FDB. Its not acceptable behavior for lying anonymous filth to be causing the problems you are causing.
Friends of mine tell me you don’t know if your man or a lady? Is that truly true? Yes or no?
“Friends of mine”
Plural?
Now that’s not even plausible Graeme.
Well I don’t think you are one to talk FDB. Is this an anti-Chinese thing? At least I know I’m a Chinaman. Whereas neither you nor your friends know if you are a bloke or a lady. How did that go for your ex-fiance? She must have been besides herself with confusion on this point. Just as you are.
Jason, I’ve heard tell you claim to be related to Sun Yet-sen, a pithy self-promoter and consummate bullshit artist who could talk a Maryknoll nun into doing 20 minutes of amateur internet porn. Are you indeed a descendant?
I’m pretty sure I’m related to relatives of his, and I don’t accept your communist and sodomite-inspired take on this great proponent of liberty and self-respect.
Sun Yet-sen was an ineffectual wanker, Jason Soon.
On October 10, 1911, Sun Yat-sen, the alleged “Father of the Chinese Revolution” was in fact in the United States. On a train. Reading about it in a newspaper. There’s not a shred of evidence he had any idea what was about to happen.
Once he learned that “his revolution” was underway, Sun of course hurried home via various European capitals where he exacted promises from the foreign powers not to intervene in escalating standoff between the weakened Qing dynasty and the revolutionaries. If anything it was his ability to convince the British, French, and Japanese to back the fuck off and let the Chinese sort things out themselves that was perhaps Sun’s greatest contribution to the success of the 1911 revolution.
All that said, when the revolutionaries looked around for a figure who could unite the disparate parts of the republican cause, Sun’s longstanding reputation as a flaky but still famous pain in the ass to the Qing government came in handy, and he was a suitable compromise candidate as the new president when the Republic of China was founded on January 1, 1912 although he didn’t hold the job very long.
Was he important to the revolution’s success? Possibly. Was he essential? Only in his own mind.
Oh right. So your communist sensibilities lead you to the conclusion that the father of the revolution screwed up on the grounds that he wasn’t able to time the uprising to happen just when he wanted it to.
Not real smart hey commie. Mao is not coming back. I know it hurts but he’s not coming back no matter how you wish upon a star. He’s not you know. He’s not.
bird…you’ve stolen another ID now. Good effort.
Its more than clear, from your own statements, if they are to be believed, that my man was ABSOLUTELY crucial to the revolution. Your narrative is notable for your conclusion being entirely at odds with your version of events. In other words your commie leanings cause you to be totally full of shit.
Good Lord. Don’t tell me that we are going to have bankster welfare-recipients chiming in with their expertise on Chinese revolutions?
You do realise, do you not, Jason Soon, that Sun Yat-sen grew up and went to school in Hawaii?
Ring any bells?
After completing high school he went back to Guangdong but he soon left that rural backwater for the bright lights of Hong Kong. Once there, he took to wearing Western clothing and pretentiously grew a little mustache. His Mandarin was nearly incomprehensible, but he was able to charm politicians, spivs and philanthropists and convince some of them to fund his dream of a revolutionary crusade.
Sun was always in the right place with a forked tongue and one hand in some rich guy’s pocket.
Its not helping you know. You’ve been shown to be quite unable to interpret the facts you have to hand. Gandhi once wore a top hat. I don’t quite know what you can make of that. Quite a lot if you are a communist ideologue who wants all the credit to go to Stalin’s little peasant bitch Mao.
Sun Yet-sen was an Obama figure. I really fail to see why you would support such a phony given the numerous parallels.
Despite his elite power plays and self-aggrandising revolutionary politics in the years following the Wuchang Uprising, life for most of China continued as before, If anything it got worse as local elites either grew increasingly predatory or else retreated to the cities leaving many rural areas in the hands of rapacious thugocracies.
For all his gimcrack plans, Sun and his cronies did little to alleviate the backbreaking poverty or provide the kinds of state services needed to keep farmers’ bodies and souls together in times of natural disasters or famine.
For most of the early part of the 20th century, the average Chinese farmer and his family lived a precarious existence, always one crop failure or bad season away from destitution and starvation.
That was his legacy.
Is this just for the in-mob, or can anyone join in?
I’m going for a swim so I’ll let Birdie have his fun for a little longer.
Jason Soon, let me ask you this. Do you support the Occupy Wall Street Uprising in the US? If so, why?
You are just full of shit Peter. By your own testimony you have shown that Sun was crucial to the revolution, whereas there is no revolution that Obama is crucial too. He’s merely a banksters little bitch in the same way that Mao was Stalin’s boy.
BTW I really liked that second law of thermodynamics line you were running a while ago Graeme. I think you should reprise it. It’s request time. The worst of Graeme Bird (a show chock full of extreme silliness).
“Jason Soon, let me ask you this. Do you support the Occupy Wall Street Uprising in the US? If so, why?”
Of course I do. The banksters have misappropriated 16 trillion dollars in the Us alone. Their hegemony has brought the UK, the US and the EUROZONE into permanent depression. Ergo the protestors need to see a one-sided jubilee of at least twice that amount, so the bankster hegemony can be put on the scrap-heap of history, and capitalism be restored.
Ho ho. Ken now thinks his new-Keynesian dreams of a perpetual-joule creation machine, have overcome the second law of thermodynamics.
Ken. When you have the second law of thermodynamics licked, be sure to alert ozblogistan, at your earliest available convenience.
I’m sorry you’re related to that tosser, but we can’t choose our relatives, so don’s sweat it too much but fact is, Jason Soon, Sun Yet-sen was one of the top-10 all time pantheon bullshit artists in human history. Much like Obama.
better than theatre.
No sorry. You’ve already proved that he was the key man in Chinese independence, whereas your necrophilia for Mao is just a part of your house-slave status, being as Mao had strings coming off his back, that went all the way to Moscow.
Bird
Where did you get that number from? It sounds a little on the large side of things. You’re not egg-aggerating are you?