Red Rag

This just in from our imaginary friend and Diana Elgar’s television industry colleague, Brett Kleinitz:

Hello Webloggers,

As co-recipient of the Best Post award in the Australian Blog Awards, I’d like to thank all of those who voted for us. It was, of course, a team effort and so I’d also so like to thank my fellow winners; Mr. Simon Hollins, BA, LLD, Ms Miranda Airey-Branson, Mr. Alexander Lew and Mr. Andrew Bolt.

I am very proud to have played my own small part in exposing to the many reader’s of the Blogs and of the Herald Sun one of the many depraved minds who populate this Nation’s television and film industries and seek to brainwash the minds of our children with their so-called “creativity”. The vile and foul-mouthed Ms Elgar has thankfully moved on from MacLeod’s Daghters, leaving more than one ruined relationship in her wake, and moved on to a more “adult” programme about young urban professionals at channel 7. I can only imagine these sorts of characters would be more suitable to her style of filthy “humour” that she’d like to put in they’re mouths, and leave the dialogue of the sensible rural characters of MacLeod’s Daghters to those less “sophisticated” writers who can string a sentence together without feeling the need to always including expletives which others have to spend hours and prescious dollars censoring, and can create storylines that don’t involve scenes of need to be completely rewritten.

Australian television is what it is today thanks to the hard work and dedication of dozens of executives and other, more junior, financial and legal minds, the unsung heroes who work behind the scenes with little or no recognition for their efforts, unlike a lot of manky, selfish-indulgent, little fame-whores cock-teasers whose only contribution is a bit of creative talent and a sense of humour.

Thank you for this award. It is truly a vindication.

Yours truly,
Brett Kleinitz.

I’d like to add a few words, if I may.

Pandagate was the strangest experience I have ever had in my life. I’m sure there are many people who still don’t understand exactly what happened (friends of mine who stumbled across it via Crikey said they couldn’t make head nor tail of it), so I’ll try to summarise it briefly.

1. A coterie of Young Liberals, based at Melbourne University and in the electorate of Melbourne Ports, started blogging.

2. They also engaged in some dodgy electioneering — pretending to be Greens while handing out how-to-vote cards for the Liberals.

3. This resulted in a newspaper report which mentioned the blog of Mirana “Panda” Airey-Branson, horse-lover, Brigette Jones wannabe and general Tiny Tory cliche.

4. Other bloggers read the report and didn’t take kindly to Miranda Panda’s comments about various issues (notably lesbianism), so in the spirit of vigorous blog debate, they took the piss out of MAB.

5. Miranda Panda cried and rang Andrew Bolt, who had become some sort of mentor to her.

6. The Liberals’ blogging transgressions got worse. They repeated defamatory claims about Michael Danby, and used their site and others to harrass his bride-to-be.

7. Someone claiming to work with Ms Fits — Brett Kleinitz — emailed the Liberals to tell them about her true identity: Diana Elgar.

8. Diana Elgar doesn’t exist.

9. That didn’t deter the Liberals, who kept promising to reveal Ms Fits’ true identity.

10. Andrew Bolt decided to write a column about Ms Fits.

11. Bolt later said he “had not talked to [MAB] before I wrote that article.” That was not true.

12. Alex Lew, Miranda’s boyfriend and a law student, wrote threatening emails pretending to be a lawyer. He CCed Liberal MPs on some of these emails.

13. In response, Diana Elgar’s lawyer, Simon Hollins (also a fictional character) started emailing cease-and-desist letters to the Young Liberals on behalf of his client.

14. Andrew Bolt, who had been in regular contact with the Young Liberals about Ms Fits and her supposed identity, chastised Simon Hollins for bullying Alex Lew (quite funny given Bolt’s later actions).

15. A series of emails between the various fictional characters and the Tories turned up in my inbox, and I duly published them.

16. Andrew Bolt went spare. It was funny, but also very scary. He emailed my boss, accusing me of “admitting to having impersonated a solicitor, which I believe is a criminal offence.” He also said “he boasts of lying and deceiving” and “he has published and emailed threats to others, which could be construed as blackmail.”

17. None of this was true.

18. Crikey joined in. Simon Hollins set Bolt straight, and pointed out his hypocrisy in threatening my employment.

19. Bolt continued to pretend the column he wrote was not prompted by contact from the Young Liberals, and that he had only contacted MAB in an interview some months ago. In fact, she had phoned him about Pandagate when it first started.

20. Eventually Andrew Bolt withdrew his insistence that “a man so shameless” — me, apparently — “deserves to be exposed for what he is, and for what he represents in the modern Left.”

21. However, he did promise me that “you have been filed under A for Anecdote.” I can’t imagine how entertaining his dinner-party conversation must be.

22. After I retracted my accusation that Bolt lied, I received confirmation that his version of events wasn’t accurate. Perhaps he was mistaken. I don’t want to risk more legal threats, so I won’t accuse him of intentionally misleading people, but here’s what Miranda told me:

    Yes, I did speak to Andrew. … I called him up and told him what was going on, and asked him how I should handle it, etc. Because I really was at a loss. He then looked at the stuff on the net for himself and decided to write about Marieke Hardy independently.

    So there.

23. Eventually, the Young Liberals took their bat and ball and went home to mummy.

Lots of fun. Thanks for playing.

(Remember, you can read all the Pandagate fun here.)