Clutching at straws
Can Tim Blair stoop any lower?
Here’s his summary of the Perth anti-war protests (his emphasis):
Contributor J.F. Beck recommends, with good reason, that you read all the way through to the final line of this Perth Sunday Times report on protests in the the Western Australian capital:
The Perth peace rally on the Perth Esplanade turned briefly into a war of words when protesters turned up the heat on convicted racist Jack van Tongeren.
When one speaker realised Mr van Tongeren was present, she encouraged people to tell him to go home.
Almost the entire crowd turned and began chanting “Piss off Jack” and “Go home racist scum”.
One protester approached Mr van Tongeren in front of the media and told him he was a nazi and had no place at a peace protest.
“You spread hatred and you have got no solidarity with the working man,” the protester said.
Mr van Tongeren was released from prison in September 2002, after serving 12 years of an 18-year prison sentence for a race-hate campaign that included firebombing Chinese restaurants.
Asked why he would attend a peace rally, Mr van Tongeren told The Sunday Times he and the peace movement had a lot in common.
A racist nutbag turns up at a peace rally. The peace rally — in no uncertain terms — tells the racist nutbag he’s not welcome. Tim Blair concludes that they have lots in common.
Jack van Tongeren hates the United Nations, supports the right to bear arms, believes in private property, is concerned about illegal immigration, dislikes judicial activists, and demands freedom of speech.
So does Tim Blair.
What does that prove? Jack shit.
I mean, guilt by association is dodgy enough, but when the rally loudly and clearly dissociates itself from van Tongeren, you’ve got nothing.
I don’t agree with the protest’s aims — that’s why I wasn’t there — but resorting to this sort of outrageous defamation is just pathetic.
Calm down Rob. Tim’s just being a bit tongue in cheek about Van Tongeren’s statement that he has a lot in common with the peace crowd. Tim’s probably pointing to perhaps a John Ray type view of the hard Left, that the nutter rent-a-crowd lot and VT are a nice fit. Still it’s a bit like Pilger saying Bush, Blair and Howard are a nice fit with Fundamentalist Islamic Murderers. Nobody really takes it very seriously, although the labels might be apt for the odd whacker on both sides of the spectrum.
Yeah, chill out Rob, TB’s “only joking ©”
Robert,
Tim Blair concludes nothing in his point: the excerpt is from the Sunday Times. Perhaps you should compain to the editor. But, what exactly would you compalin about?
compain=complain, compalin=complain
It’s the heat.
By saying there is “good reason” to read the last line, and then emphasising it, Tim is giving it credence.
Whiplash, the innuendo is perfectly obvious to any unbiased party. it’s also obvious if you read Timbo’s Dopey Chorus in the comments box.
Rob, Tim has progressively lost all shreds of intellectual credibility in the last year or so - note his recent conduct with John Quiggin who has not been a knee-jerk peacenik by any means. I think he’s become worse since he installed his comments facility as his acolytes egg him on
I agree with this assessment in BrookesNews (which, should be noted, is a hard Right website which makes Tim Blair look like the unprincipled conservative Statist he really is)
http://www.brookesnews.com/032507cambria.html
“Blair’s articles and blog are, to be charitable, rather long on smart aleck commentary and extremely short on analysis. Furthermore, they suggest, rightly or wrongly, that he is not what one might call bookish. Now how can anyone successfully tackle the left without a reasonable knowledge of economic theory, the history of economic thought, economic history and of leftist thought? Yet Blair gives no indication of being even slightly acquainted with these subjects.
Nevertheless, despite his obvious shortcomings and shallow commentary Melbourne’s Adam Smith Club, the H. R. Nicholls Society, the Devines and now the publicly funded magazine Quadrant appear to be presenting Mr Blair as something he self-evidently is not — and that is a rightwing intellectual”
Your post reports that van Tongeren himself told the newspaper he had a lot in common with the ‘peace’ movement, Rob, so why go overboard about Blair? As your linked article says, you think the ‘peace’ movement has been “taken over by lunatics”, so surely you’d agree with the view that they DO have something in common with van Tongeren?
Or is it simply that you find it embarrassing when you and Blair appear to have raeched [partial at least] agreement on something?