No one loves the old show of force — or pre-emptive strike, if you will — quite as much as the wingnuts. Yesterday, within a day of Pure Poison’s launch, we witnessed an attempted display of such from a tetchy bunch of bloggers, whose semi-united front against the new site and its contributors ended up looking more like a throng of screechy, scrawny teenagers wielding flaccid sticks of rhubarb.
The assault was led by the increasingly petulant Tim Blair, and was notable for only one reason: his violation of the “Lifetime Blair Immunity” he granted Jeremy Sear last March:
” … under the terms of which [Jeremy] may continue to write whatever [he wishes] about me but I vow never to respond”.
Blair, whose obsessive interest in the Israel/Palestine conflict should surely have made him an expert on ceasefire violations by now, managed to hold out less than 11 months. Granted, that’s longer than he predicted the invasion of Iraq would last — but it’s a far cry from a “lifetime”, even for a bloke who only quibbles over numbers when it suits his prejudices.
A man of his word? More like a man of his hero John “Never Ever” Howard’s word.
The rest of his attack is the typical Blair tomfoolery: old, self-declared “victories” rehashed — including one over GrodsCorp blogger Bron, who has nothing to do with Pure Poison — and a stunningly disingenuous treatment of Jeremy Sear’s bullying analogy that would make even Godwin blush.
Which leads us to the next attacker: Skeptic Lawyer (aka Helen Demidenko Darville Dale), who links approvingly to Tim Blair’s piece but then, today, declines to publish the following comment from reader James Boag:
[...]
The main thrust of Tim’s criticism of Sear is that using the events of WWII in Eastern Europe as a means to self-promotion, or to prove a fatuous point, is always evil and wrong. Do you agree?”(thanks, James, for the tip-off)
Clearly, The Hand that Signed the Paper‘s author has no sense of humour. Which makes her views on what constitutes a humorous blog all the more laughable. Dale is disappointed that Crikey has employed a bunch of bloggers from GrodsCorp — a site she calls “very, very unfunny” and whose contributors she describes as “bullying nitwits” and “among the nastier bunches floating around the Oz interwebs”.
Yet who do we find in Dale’s blogroll? None other than bullying nitwit Tim Blair who, in collusion with some of the “Oz interwebs’” most deranged bottom-feeders (including Andrew Bolt), has spent years trying to intimidate Jeremy Sear, prying into his private life, trying to damage his career, poking fun at his divorce and so on.
Jeremy is by no means the only person Blair, his winged monkeys and the blogosphere’s biggest creeps have targeted; and, needless to say, GrodsCorp has never involved itself in anything this disgraceful — but that’s beside the point.
The point, of course, is that gnashing one’s teeth about “nastiness” and “bullying” on the same page as a Tim Blair link is breathtaking in its hypocrisy.
As far as bottom-feeders go, little-known blogger J.F. Beck was the most unctuous to weigh in to yesterday’s Pure Poison attack. Beck’s blog has for years been little more than an exercise in ingratiating himself to Tim Blair with creepy personal pot-shots Jeremy Sear and ham-fisted attacks on Antony Loewenstein. Not surprisingly for someone of Blair’s ego, it seems to have worked — the two exchange links (and cuddly emails) with almost the same loving frequency as Blair and Bolt.
I won’t bother posting a link to Beck’s site because it (like the man himself, who all those years ago stalked Jeremy until he’d uncovered his identity) truly is a steaming pile of shit. But if you really must have a look at it, you can find a link in Legal Eagle’s blogroll at (gasp!) anti-bullying-humour-authority Helen Dale’s site.
Last, and most certainly least, a pathetic bankrupt you probably don’t care about had a crack too. But the less said about him, the better.
Blair yesterday claimed:
“Jeremy and co. have been throwing punches for years, but so far have never landed a hit”.
Readers of Pure Poison and the old Blair/Bolt Watch Project will, of course, make a more objective assessment of this than Tim. But to judge by the desperate and feeble attack of his hastily assembled strike force (UPDATE! UPDATE! UPDATE!) yesterday, I’d guess some anxious little birdies are anticipating some serious ruffling of feathers in the near future.
We look forward to rattling their cages.
23 Comments
Is this whole site just about you guys bickering with Tim Blair and Andrew Bolt?
8 out of the last 10 posts either refer to them or are solely about them.
Isn’t there anything else worth blogging about? Otherwise this site will get old really fast.
The difference is, PP critiques their writing. Beck and Blair engage solely in personal attacks.
I imagine PP would welcome it if Tim Blair had a rebuttal to what’s been posted here, but he won’t because anything besides personal attacks are beyond him.
Great post, Ant.
True, John. I’d welcome the subjects of Pure Poison‘s posts dropping in to debate them.
skepticlawyer wrote hand that signed the paper? hahahaha, i was forced to read that nazi apologist claptrap back in highschool. perhaps she doesnt find grods funny because of its complete lack of anti-semetic jokes.
interesting how Tim Blair happily links to Helen slagging you guys, i guess Nazi apologists are ok as long as they are bagging Tim Blairs enemies
Most of the attacks from the usual suspects were fairly predictable. They’re obviously worried that your critiques will reach a wider audience now.
The two surprises were Larvatus and dyspeptic Lawyer.
At Larvatus, many of the comments were favourable, but the post itself had pretensions to some moral high ground, and other affectations.
SL is disappointing. After reading her blog some time ago, I found her incurably mediocre, and utterly incapable of original thought. Then, I wondered if maybe she were getting less dumb. Alas, not so, as her post on you guys proves. She never fails to take some kind of middle ground, and thereby reduce everything to a symmetry that doesn’t exist. She’s one more pseudo-libertarian – in reality, a disgruntled right-winger needing intellectual cover for their prejudices, and somebody who is still settling scores with the fantasised lefties of their imagination.
You know that if you’re annoying these kinds of people, you must be doing something right.
Nice work, Ant. And about time you posted something!
I’ve long suspected that the more updates tim Blair makes, the more rattled he is about something. Of course, he’ll deny that. As is his wont.
I have it sitting around here somewhere. She really did write the story so that all the two-dimensional Commie bad guys are Jewish, while all the three-dimensional Nazi characters are secretly remorseful about being involved in unpleasantness.
Helen Dale shoul be thankful the whole controversy was before either Crikey or the blogosphere were invented–if it happened today she’d be torn to pieces, in real time, by LP, Grods, here–hell, even the nitwits at Catallaxy would be dancing on her quality lit grave!
Yeah, that’s right, nickws. Considering she hates mainstream media these days, it would have been interesting if she was still writing her now-defunct column for the Courier Mail.
well said ant. my impressions were a flurry of reaction from other blogs that actually said fuck all but managed to spit a fair bit of mis-directed bile, while timmy was incredibly sweet to give the new site a whole heap of free publicity. or perhaps it was that he fell for the sucker punch? it’s hard to tell with him sometimes.
keep it up.
Catallaxy libertaritard Jason Soon belies his name, weighing in later than everyone else with this brilliant effort. Bravo, champ.
Bron:
I’ve long suspected that the more updates tim Blair makes, the more rattled he is about something. Of course, he’ll deny that. As is his wont.
What an amazingly undergraduate argument.
It’s like me suggesting that you like having sex with farm animals, but noting that you will probably deny it as is your wont.
I would say that using beastiality as the crux of you argument is more undergraduate.
Ah, Daniel Lewis, great defender of tim Blair and furious letter writer to the SMH.
Come off it, Surname. Joking about bestiality are funny as, especially when directed at “Paleostinians”.
Er, “jokes about bestiality”. I am having a fine day. Born to typo.
beastiality: the New Racism of the Right.
“beastiality: the New Racism of the Right.”
Bwahahaha, I’m tempted to try that one out but fairly dubious about whether it will get posted.
Laughing at the wingnuts is kosher.
Antony Loewenstein is about as accurate and all-embracing as Miranda Devine. At least readers know Miranda writes from a position of opinionated and false outrage. I am afraid too many people still think Antony writes from a platform built on factual reportage.
I really do not like the style, and would prefer less poison, and no stalking, from everyone involved.
Incidentally, Antony’s last name is spelt ‘Loewenstein’ (L-o-e).
Thanks for the spelling correction, Tim — fixed.
For the record, if Pure Poison ever starts writing posts about journalists’ and bloggers’ personal relationships, their cats or the timbre of their voices, I’ll concede that we’re guilty of “stalking”. Until then, you’ll just have to accept that what we’re doing is scrutinising people’s arguments and journalistic ethics — even if you feel (rightly or wrongly) that we’re only targeting the work of people you approve of.
Feel free to tip us off about specific instances where you believe a member of the mainstream media has been unreasonable or dishonest. As we’ve already stated, we’ll do our best to investigate it.
Hi Ant Rogenous. I do not feel Pure Poison is targeting people I approve of, I approve of none of them.
I also do not approve of Jonathan Green’s greeting to John Pilger, posted in January, on the 20th. Which was published here, at Crikey, verged on stalking, and turned me off visiting his blog. Who knows, it really could have been a chuckle that Pilger might have shared, or it could have been cleverly disguised harassment – which I have seen too much of and dislike on any site.
I agree comment on the timbre of a writer’s voice is a weak device. And ‘shrill’, followed by ‘shill’, are over-used.
Fair enough, Tim. Thanks for the clarification.