Daily Telegraph Opinion Editor Tim Blair is very proud of his eponymous “law”, which he codified back in his pre-News Ltd. days.
The ongoing process by which the world’s multiple idiocies are becoming one giant, useless force.
Blair’s Law is essentially code for Teh Left. It is Blair’s way of saying that everything of Teh Left is idiotic, and all Leftists are confused idiots who mindlessly support idiotic causes regardless of the links (or lack of links) between them. Of course, it’s easy to write a “law” about the convergence of non-related Leftist causes when you do the converging on behalf of Teh Left.
Blair’s latest column for the dead tree arm of his employer attacks four concepts: smoking, supervised injecting rooms, voluntary euthanasia and population control.
If cigarettes were marketed as “time-delay euthanasia inhalables”, they’d be endorsed by the assisted suicide lobby as a medical breakthrough.
There’s the first paragraph, and the hypothetical (see the “if”?) convergence is flagged immediately. The next twelve paragraphs attack efforts by governments and bodies around the world to remove smoking-related images and advertising from the public sphere. Then, in a beautiful Blair’s Law segue, the anti-anti-smoking argument links to an anti-supervised injecting room argument, suggesting that Teh Left are hypocrites for supporting smack but opposing smoke.
…model racing cars can’t be sold in Australia if they appear as they did in the ’70s and ’80s, with cigarette branding. An opportunistic business now exists in after-market cigarette decals.
They’d probably throw you out of the drug injecting room at Kings Cross if you turned up with a little toy Marlboro car.
The place was established so junkies would have somewhere cosy to shoot up heroin (or something described as heroin, sold to them by a filthy scab-armed housebreaker in an alley) but they don’t permit smoking.
It’s bad for your health.
On a roll, Blair then links anti-smoking and pro-heroin to population control, blaming the lot on “the same class of social engineers” (read: Teh Left).
This week, South Australian busybody Sandra Kanck – whose surname is but one consonant away from complete accuracy – decided Australia’s population needed to be cut to just seven million in order to save us from “environmental suicide”.
See how Blair called Kanck a “skank” without having to quite say it? Classy.
Sandra Kanck represents two of the “multiple idiocies” drawn together in Blair’s article, because she supports a reduction in Australia’s population at the same time as supporting voluntary euthanasia. Of course, once Kanck’s (silly and seemingly arbitrary) 7 million figure hit the news last week it didn’t take long for Blair to start suggesting that perhaps she wasn’t too committed to the “voluntary” part of “voluntary euthanasia”. Two more idiocies converged — ding!
Blair wraps up the article by bringing the whole string of forced convergences full circle, linking not-so-voluntary euthanasia back to smoking, and suggesting that Teh Left are idiots for being anti-smoking when its “alleged” adverse health effects would assist depopulation.
The alleged deleterious sexual effects caused by smoking should be seen as a positive.
Smoke to save the planet!
What is it with Teh Left and supporting everything stupid?
70 Comments
Pages: « 1 [2] Show All
By the way, I DO look up words as a matter of course. It’s just one of the things I really enjoy doing. Strange, I know.
Agreed, Zoomster. “Crank” is in my Macquarie (”an eccentric person, or one who holds stubbornly to eccentric views”, which is exactly how Tim was describing her); “Skank” doesn’t make the cut. It may be generational but I can honestly say I don’t think I’ve ever described someone as a “skank” — and I say this as a reasonably educated 30-something — and I would be appalled if I heard a child of mine use the word.
Actually, I reckon Macquarie is wrong, you pogo or slam to punk rock, you skank to reggae and ska. They must be talking about the Clash or the Ruts, you know (maybe) Punk Rock bands that cross over to reggae/ska frequently.
I’m with Chuggle; I remember skank first appearing in the late ’70s and it did have something to do with a dance or a dance move, or something.
I thought Konck. As in Konck out o_0*
This is ridiculous BTW.
““Skank” doesn’t make the cut.”
You need to get down to Borders, get a new Macquarie and either opt to pay for a bag or not. It’s in my Macquarie, what year is yours? I’ve got pnline access at work. ‘Kranck’is not in it.
One consonant, right? ONE consonant! Take one away you’ve got anck, or any other variety of meaningless gibberish. Add one you’ve got ’skank’ there is no Kranck!!!!!
I suppose if we remove one consonant (k) ,move another (C) and then add another (R) then we could come up with the word ‘crank’
‘This is ridiculous BTW.’
Ah well, it’s amusing me.
bertus – I tend to agree this argument is way off track.
Q: Why does Blair have to resort to name calling and playing the man? or in this case the woman?
“Sorry
We could not find “kranck”.
Did we find “skanck” ?
I agree with Catsidhe at #47 too — except perhaps about Patriotism.
Despite the protestations of Blair’s defenders, the most common interpretation would be “skank”, and the suggestion that Blair was completely unaware of the “skank” interpretation is simply implausible. The average Australian would determine that Blair has thrown a crude sexist insult at SA Democrat Sandra Kanck.
‘Did we find “skanck” ?’
Hmmm good point. Still, less juggling of consonants though ;op
“except perhaps about Patriotism.”
Patriotism, makes no sense to me, no-one ever chooses to be born in a specific country. German Nazi’s were patriots. Timothy McVeigh was a patriot.
Outside of cheering for your football team (for fun) patriotism is nothing but trouble! I reject patriotism in favour of espousing the good points of the nation I choose to call home. A patriot IMO is blindly loyal, will fight for their country regardless of whether it’s the right thing to do.
Oh, so now you’re saying Blair can SPELL!
“Still, less juggling of consonants though…”
You’re right of course Rob, I was just being a little mischievous there — this is kind of amusing me too….I must be delirious or something.
“The average Australian would determine that Blair has thrown a crude sexist insult at SA Democrat Sandra Kanck.”
Well, I’m no apologist or supporter of Blair, but I’m obviously not an average Aussie either
I agree that patriotism has caused more than a little trouble over the centuries, but on the other hand, a couple of days ago we had a remembrance parade for a few thousand people who were fairly patriotic.
You’re right Rob, we have seen plenty of extreme nutters calling themselves patriots, but there’s been plenty of well intentioned and decent people who have described themselves in the same way, so I think to call patriotism a refuge for scoundrels is a little harsh…
I think he may have meant “Kransky” as it is probably quite rude to call someone a sausage. Or he may have meant “Kronk”, as in Kronk Pepikrankenitz, who was Yzma’s clumsy, well meaning assistant in Disney’s animated film The Emperor’s New Groove from 2000. Kronk was voiced by Patrick Warburton who also, in the same year played Al Burnett in The Dish. I thought The Dish came out way before 2000.
Typical. Here we all are having a deadly serious political debate and Firstdog drops in to try and be funny, totally derailing our conversation.
And gets it right.
I’ll amend the post, changing “skank” to “kransky”.
Since Tim did not say, maybe he meant swapping letters to “Knack”?
Toaf at # 33 that is GOLD.
So which one is it Shabadoo?
http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=shabadoo
Skeptic, I’d rather be shabadoo than shabadone!
Love,
Jimmy Joe-Joe Junior Shabadoo.
GavinM,
Bierce’s definition does not mean that patriots are necessarily scoundrels, but that cornered scoundrels will attempt to use patriotism to defend their … um … scoundrelness. If all patriots were scoundrels, it wouldn’t be much of a refuge, would it?
Nobody apart from Catsidhe has really taken Shabadoo to task for his rather fulsome (and extraordinary) defence of Blair’s credibility @ 4. Virtually everyone else has just taken potshots at minor points or got bogged down in the stupid argument about “skank” rather than carefully dissecting this piece of meretricious nonsense. I wish I had time to do so myself. Blair is a featherweight.
Blood5
to do that, we’d actually have to read him.
Pages: « 1 [2] Show All