Destroy the Joint destroyed by true people power

As Paul Sheehan notes, Alan Jones is back on top commercially. Of course correlation doesn't necessarily imply causation, so this may be due in major part to factors other than public resentment towards the boycotting campaign. But one thing's for sure: Destroy the Joint has failed dismally to achieve its goal of bitching, moaning and nagging the Sydney broadcaster off air.

I knew that the censorious, slacktivist campaign would ultimately fail. But I didn't think this outcome would be clear quite so soon. So it's a pleasant surprise.

Deep down the gimlet-eyed, hatchet-faced communards who dreamt up this vicious pile-on must be spitting even more chips than they normally are. That's a funny thought.

Still, like Bob Brown talking up even negative election results as positives for the Greens, they'll claim it was a success. They do that to keep their spirits up, and also because they are totalitarians who think that "a thousand repetitions make a truth". Ironically, they themselves are the only ones simple-minded enough to believe their repetitions. What a tragic psychological state to be in!

One of the lies they tell themselves in the hope that it will catch on and "go viral" in the minds of the masses is that their tightly controlled and centrally managed online bitchathon was a true act of "people power". But it was the opposite. If anything, the true collective act of people power in this case was all those listeners, consumers and business people refusing to go along with their nasty little campaign.

It really shows the power of the individual, doesn't it? One man in his seventies against thousands, most of whom are half his age and younger. And he wins!

You'd think they might learn from this. But nup. They'll just redouble their efforts next time, and make it even more clear what a pathetic pack of tiny-minded bullies they are.

Robbie Farah's trolling ordeal and the push to censor Twitter

Gotta feel sorry for Robbie Farah. Must be horribly upsetting to have such nasty things tweeted about his mother's death. But this crusade he's on is just pointless. He, like Charlotte Dawson, has made the mistake of feeding the trolls. And of course the abuse hasn't stopped.

Obviously, anyone who posts such nasty, vile hate messages is a waste of skin. But unless they're actually making physical threats then you should just ignore or block them. If a well known person acknowledges that the troll really landed a punch it makes him feel important somehow -- exactly the result he craves. 

Obviously, if someone is posting what seem like serious and repeated threats to kill or harm then that's another matter. Go to the coppers. And if someone is tweeting lies about you -- saying you're a crook or rapist or whatever -- and it's affecting your reputation, then maybe defo action is justified.

But this recent troll-hunting push is not about defamation or criminality on Twitter. It's something else entirely. It's more to do with taste, really.

It reminds me of the legislation that the complainants in the Andrew Bolt case used to silence him. It's Orwellian as all get out.

It's stupid in the extreme to enact and enforce laws to protect people from having their feelings hurt because by their very nature they are so subjective.

Then there's the slippery slope aspect: Firstly, how can you define when major snark crosses the line into intolerable trolling? Twitter is a seething maelstrom of bitchiness. If the wished-for crackdown were to occur the jails would be full in no time, and the authorities still wouldn't have put a dent in the problem.

And if mocking someone's death on Twitter is deemed a criminal offence, then what about other media? The Chaser gleefully making fun of Peter Brock's demise comes to mind here. Nasty, tasteless and offensive, sure. But criminal? (Actually, I thought it was one of the best things they did because it actually required some writing, musical and performance skill, unlike most of their other "work".)

If this taste push gets momentum, then will such sketches be deemed illegal? If they are, then that would be terrifying. And if they aren't, well, it would just show how silly and inconsistent this nanny statist campaign actually is.

I think you can make a strong case that the Chaser boys should be thrown in jail for crimes against comedy. But of course that would be ridiculous -- just a little more so than criminalizing nasty tweets.

Defend Free Speech in Perth group hardly anti-censorship

The term "free speech" is being used a lot lately. However, its meaning seems to change quite a bit according to who's doing the, er, speaking.

Take the Defend Free Speech in Perth group. Sounds like they have admirable aims. You know, the kind of people who'd be appalled at the silencing of Andrew Bolt. They'd be staunchly opposed to the Government's creepy exploitation of the British phone hacking scandal to increase restrictions on reporting here, wouldn't they?

Nope. These guys are a bunch of hectoring lefties. They believe that freedom of speech is not the right to shout what you believe, but the right to shout other people down.

They actually interrupted a Perth City Council meeting, which then had to be adjourned:

The Defend Free Speech in Perth group filled the gallery, holding up signs comparing the council to the Nazis and calling out after they were not satisfied with a question answered by chief executive Frank Edwards.

This group was the, er, brainchild of extreme leftists associated with Occupy Perth. No wonder the poor sprog was stillborn.

Professor Bunyip, Saffron Howden and accusations of racism

Professor Bunyip has posted an open letter to journo Saffron Howden regarding her piece in The Age. Have to agree with him. I haven't read all of the Amazon reviews of Am I Black Enough for You? But the ones I did read, while sometimes snarky, certainly didn't qualify as racist (that is, implying or overtly stating that the book's writer Anita Heiss was inferior or even merely different because of her Aboriginality).

Fluffy wuffies have an amazingly flexible definition of racism. They use it to describe pretty much anything they don't like (which is a helluva lot). They've now made the word next to meaningless to any rational person.

And they almost never seem to want to explain why something is racist. They just label it so. Look at Howden's article. "Racism" is used frequently but there's never a clarification of why or how the examples she mentions qualify as such. About the only thing that comes close to clarifying what she might mean is this paragraph:

Heiss was one of nine Aboriginal people who took Bolt and his publisher to court over articles that implied light-skinned indigenous people chose to be black for personal gain.

Now, that may be bad, wrong, nasty or whatever. But how is even that racist? If he did do what's claimed, Bolt was being maliciously personal and accusing them of a form of corruption. What, so Aborigines are incapable of corruption, and it's their Aboriginality that makes them so? That's just too silly for words. 

Maybe it's because Howden herself is terrified of venturing a definition that she obediently repeats the politically correct line. After all, she includes this creepy little quote from Jody Broun: ''Let's be clear, Aboriginal identity is defined by us, no one else."

Broun seems to be saying that you simply aren't allowed to have an opinion on the matter unless you yourself define yourself as Aboriginal (and in the way that she and her political allies demand). If that's not totalitarian, I don't know what is.

Imagine if I, or another white person (and when I say "white" the definition does not include fair-skinned Aborigines -- er, is that qualification "racist" too?) were to say: "We define who is to be called white, and no one else." The accusation of racism -- which would no doubt be hurled, along with a host of others -- would actually be true. 

Clearly, these PC zealots believe that if they keep repeating the accusation ad bloody nauseam that it'll become true. Except it won't. All that will do is make it increasingly obvious how meaningless, hollow and fear-based their ideology actually is.

The worrying thing is, though, that their false accusations can have legal force. The Bolt verdict proved that.

So, they are a pretty scary bunch! But you've gotta feel sorry for the poor little petals, too. They've cornered themselves big time.

Trapped in a paranoid, pompous pose of lefteous indignation, they are now incapable of constructing an actual argument in response to criticism. Such a state would be sad for anyone. But if you're a writer or a journo, well, it's tragic as.

Kyle Sandilands slapped with creepy, patronising ACMA ban

I thought that the social engineers determined to control Australians' thoughts and feelings had decided to focus pretty much entirely on race lately. But they haven't forgotten gender, as their censorious ruling on perennial bad boy Kyle Sandilands attests:

The Australian Communications and Media Authority has ordered Sandilands not to say anything that could be regarded as offensive or demeaning to women or girls.

That is an expansive decree that is very much open to interpretation. Different women get indignant about different things, after all. Say Kyle starts ranting about abortion. If Sandilands says that it should be outlawed he will outrage heaps of lefty feminist, pro-choice women. And if he says that those who oppose it are ultra-religious throwbacks he will offend conservative right-to-life women.

And that's just one issue that relates to chickdom. There are squillions of 'em!

Even if he tries his damnedest not to be offensive, it's likely that Kyle will rile a certain proportion of his female audience. So whose miffed feelings will be deemed more deserving of some sort of official response? I suspect that those who are more left-wing and PC will get a more sympathetic ear. Hell, they'll be more likely to arc up about him in the first place since bleating about stuff that most sane, independent-minded women find trivial is pretty much all they do anyway...

But back to the ruling itself. I love this aspect of it:

Neither the authority nor Austereo is revealing what Sandilands and his colleagues cannot say.

So, they've issued this ruling in the interests of Australia's females. But the so-called beneficiaries of it aren't actually allowed to know what it consists of. The media thought police are saying: "We know what's good for you, women and girls. But you don't need to know. Don't let it worry your pretty little heads, okay!"

I know that according to today's laws of offense taking, I'm immediately disqualified from having an opinion on such matters on account of my gender. Still, I've gotta say that I find the secretive subtext of ACMA's ruling deeply offensive to women -- even more offensive than the noxious rant of Kyle's that provoked the ban in the first place.

Julian Burnside's "paedos in speedos" Twitter smear

Hot on the heels of Geoff Clark's Orwellian claims that he hoped his legal censoring of Andrew Bolt would actually promote debate comes another little event that clearly illustrates the jaw-dropping hypocrisy of the PC left.

The foppish, latte slurping hand wringer Julian Burnside has beclowned himself quite splendidly with a nasty little tweet linking Tony Abbott to paedophilia.

To his credit he apologized for it immediately. But true to socialist form he combined this with some deft weaseling, denying that the tweet did actually refer to the Opposition Leader. 

Which begs the question: If it wasn't about Abbott, then why did he apologize to him?

Not surprisingly, Burnside is an assiduous of promoter of the "it's not about freedom of speech" line regarding Bolt, something that his fellow concerned aristotwat Derek Sapphire approves of immensely.

I find behaviour like this just so depressing. It really makes you wonder if these ridiculous people will man up and be honest about anything at all, ever? 

Sure, what Burnside did was pretty minor in the grand scheme of things. And it did serve a useful purpose. The infantile nastiness of it is sooo typical of the circles he moves in, and constitutes yet more proof of what a petty and prejudiced level these people are on. 

But just imagine if a prominent conservative were to make a similar online "mistake" about paedophilia in Aboriginal communities, playing on the media image of a prominent Indigenous politician or activist ...

I rest my case, Your Honour.

Geoff Clark on his Bolt case motives

One thing that's always creeped me out about the advocates of political correctness is how easy they find it to say the complete opposite of what is clearly the truth. They say it unblushingly, with a straight face. It's sad, funny and scary all at once.

A perfect example of this is the line that the silencing of Andrew Bolt is "not about free speech". Of course it's about free speech! His enemies were appalled and angered by what he was saying (and how he was saying it) and so they all got together in a concerted effort to muzzle him. And they succeeded.

One of the complainants, Geoff Clark, had the spectacular gall to say not only that his action was not an attempt to curtail free speech in Australia, but this as well: 

"It creates debate, there's nothing wrong with that debate, provided it's not harmful or offensive."

Got that? Intimidating someone into silence (and making an example of him, which Clark admits was part of his motivation in this revealing interview with Neil Mitchell) creates debate. So, less is more, night is day, and two plus two equals five. 

That aside, when Clark is demanding that there be more civility in this debate that he so clearly and sincerely wants to encourage, a reasonable person might find it a little odd that he would characterize his victory in this way:

"The sword of justice has struck, and cut off the head of the serpent. Let's hope it doesn't grow two heads."

Firstly, I think that calling someone a serpent (or more specifically, a serpent's head) might be perceived as "offensive" by most people. 

And forgive me for my lack of cultural sensitivity, but it just doesn't seem to make any sense. Geoff, how can the serpent you so sincerely wish not to silence keep debating you when it has no head?

Really, mate. Just be honest about what you're trying to do. You might actually earn a little genuine respect then, instead of just achieving compliance through fear and intimidation.