Oooh, this is a fun-looking game:
Peter Hartcher, one of Kevin Rudd’s most feverish cheerleaders, surely can’t believe what he writes:Among some of [Tony Abbott’s] more feverish cheerleaders it has sometimes spilt over into incitement to physical violence too, like Alan Jones urging that the Prime Minister be tied up in a burlap sack and dumped at sea.
Does Hartcher, hand on heart, seriously believe Jones was inciting listeners to violence against Gillard with his figure of speech? Really, Peter?
I don't believe jones was _really_ inciting violence. I think he was just talking it up and doing his unhinged schtick to make his angry and misinformed listeners feel righteous and justified and good inside. But it was definitely inappropriate. Joking about killing the prime minister - not a good thing, I think we can all agree (if we're being honest).
But it's interesting that bolta would leap onto "faux outrage" like this. I mean ... he's got such form himself. Let's look at a few recent examples which sprang to mind:
Do we REALLY think the greens are just like the NAZIs? I mean, yes, the NAZI movement had a naturalist thing, but it was hardly what made them NAZIs. In fact, of all the totalitarian creeds of history, the NAZIs were the only one that didn't think nature was just there to exploit until it died. Hence, presumably, the need for people who DO want to do that to stress the historical connection.
The NAZIs also believed in technological advancement, which hardly makes silicon valley or tokyo just like NAZIs. They embraced physical achievement - that doesn't turn the AIS or AFL into NAZI tributes. Hitler had a mustache, so ... what are we to think about ian turpie?
Nobody REALLY thinks the greens want to round up gypsies and homosexuals and send them to work camps (they're not going to be rounding up jews either - it should be unnecessary to point that out but, hey, there's that particular theme I'm responding to). Nobody believes it, that is, except ....
Back to eugenics with the greens I remember being attacked when I warned of the strong links between Nazism and Germany’s green groups in the 1930s. The totalitarian instinct, and the disregard for the individual, seemed only too common to both ideologies.
Now, as the global warming faith develops, the links I warned off grow far less tenuous. Take the latest idea - to breed a race of super-greens. Yes, we’re back to eugenics again
www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2012/03/how-human-engineering-could-be-the-solution-to-climate-change/253981/
News flash - the NAZIs didn't invent eugenics. In the early 20th century, it was a mainstream point of view, even in australia. All the nazis did was demonstrate out the logical progression. If they hadn't done it, it was probably only a matter of time before somebody else did. Maybe by, let's say, "taking away the half-castes and letting the aborigines breed themselves out". And no, nobody who bothers to read the article really believes that the author is proposing anything of the sort.
And we're well aware of bolt's terribly serious comparisons between a "totalitarian creed" and people who point out that cremation is a massively energy-intensive and polluting enterprise. A bit of "faux outrage", I suggest.
But wait - there's more. So much more.
Save the planet! Gas the scepticsGlobal warming is the latest refuge of the closet totalitarian, as warming alarmist Jill Singer today confirms:I’m prepared to keep an open mind and propose another stunt for climate sceptics - put your strong views to the test by exposing yourselves to high concentrations of either carbon dioxide or some other colourless, odourless gas - say, carbon monoxide.
You wouldn’t see or smell anything. Nor would your anti-science nonsense be heard of again. How very refreshing.
www.heraldsun.com.au/opinion/sideshow-around-carbon-tax-must-stop/story-fn56az2q-1226079531212
Singer's comment might have been a bit droll, but clearly meant sarcastically. Here's the bit that bolta didn't quote - the bit that singer was responding to:
Then there's David Murray, chair of Australia's $71 billion Future Fund and recipient of a $28 million golden parachute from his time running the Commonwealth Bank. Murray states there's no link between global warming and carbon dioxide emissions because carbon dioxide is necessary for life, colourless and odourless - and therefore can't be considered a pollutant. It's a popularly held view.
Andy Semple of the Menzies Institute claims it's "refreshing" for someone with Murray's standing to take on the global warming "scam" by expressing such views
Yes, the common refrain that carbon dioxide isn't a pollutant. That there's nothing wrong with it. It promotes LIFE! Singer's point: Let's see if you really believe it. Show us how non-pollutant CO2 really is.
But if you're into "faux outrage" you could try claiming that singer is proposing TOTALITARIAN MURDER! Which is, of course, bullshit. And yes, the endless comparisons with the holocaust remain as tired and broadly offensive as they've always been.
Just to repeat for those at the back: The holocaust was not poor-taste jokes, or a bit of government regulation on light bulbs, or trying to save energy or stop kids from eating heavy metals. It was way, way worse than that. So please, knock it off.
Should I go on? Oh, hell - why not ... there's so much faux outrage to choose from. Lets go with one of david letterman's many face-egg incidents:
Don’t spare even their childrenON Monday night, famed American TV host Dave Letterman told a rape joke about a little girl.
Not just any little girl, of course, because that would be wrong.
No, his joke on national television was about the daughter of Sarah Palin, the popular Governor of Alaska . . . and a Republican. Which, to many of the Left, apparently made it right.
We're talking about letterman's fairly cretinous joke about (what he thought was) palin's older daughter. At least, that's what he says. Nobody really knows. But it turns out that the daughter in question was the younger one, so when he joked about a particular player's alleged philandering as applied to said daughter:
“One awkward moment for Sarah Palin at the game. During the seventh inning, her daughter was knocked up by Alex Rodriguez.”
It was FAUX OUTRAGE PAYDIRT!!!!1! Nobody could resist, not even our non-faux-outrage-liking columnist:
Why a 62-year-old thought the statutory rape of a 14-year-old was funny I’d hate to think.
Here's a thought - he probably didn't think about it all that hard. Try watching the guy sometime - it'll become obvious. No, I really honestly don't think he thinks that rape is funny. And no, he definitely didn't represent the entirety of the left - hence he ultimately had to apologize or lose sponsorship and ratings. He barely even represented his audience (god knows where he gets THEM from).
But do I think the hooting from the palin caravan was opportunistic? Yeah, it was. There was a level of genuine "oh, for god's sake", but it was basically just ammunition to be used. And use it, they did. And did any of those people really, truly believe that letterman advocated the rape of a 14-year old girl? No, really, I doubt it. But material like that doesn't come along often. You just don't ever let it go to waste.
Now - I agree that families should be left out of the political abuse industry. I totally do. But nobody on the right thought that when it was chelsea clinton in the frame. Particularly unpleasant jokes about her were mainstream, and certain US political leaders liked to tell them. Heck, one of those leaders was even sarah palin's running mate. Should we cue the FAUX OUTRAGE?!!
Should I go on? Ok, just one more. This already way too long, and there are too many open tabs here to cover it all. But I think this one is important. It goes to perspective. And MFEDs.
A baby’s life isn’t sacred, but an ethicist’s is Now the Journal of Medical Ethics has published a paper by professional “ethicists” that confronts the very hypocrisy that troubled me - that we permit the killing of children in the womb who we’d rush to protect if outside it.
But here is how Alberto Giubilini of Monash University and Dr Francesca Minerva of Melbourne University say that hypocrisy should be overcome.
“What we call ‘after-birth abortion’ (killing a newborn) should be permissible in all the cases where abortion is (permissible), including cases where the newborn is not disabled.”
That’s right. Since we already permit the killing of babies inside the womb, why not outside it, too?
Indeed. And because somebody wrote that down and published it - it's FAUX OUTRAGE PAYDIRT!!!1!
Let's get some things straight. We KNOW the authors do not advocate the killing of children. They made no policy recommendations. We know this because they've said as much, repeatedly.
Obviously they attracted a lot of attention there, because they went and did something the one right utterly hates the most - they took the premises, did the syllogisms and pointed out the consequences. The one word that keeps getting lost in the coverage of that article is the word
If.
See, where babies are concerned you're not supposed to do that. There is only one position allowable, or it's death threats for you. Oh ... unless those babies are under a cruise missile, I mean. One of OUR cruise missiles, obviously. When that happens, it's just taking the tough decisions. That "right to life" thing comes with a ruddy great asterisk.
These authors weren't threatening, or killing anyone. Nobody is taking their paper as the basis for a revamp of medicare. They explored ideas and wrote them down. And for THAT, we get the following astonishing moral equivalence:
Poor ethicists. How scary if some people feel entitled to threaten you, as if you were just some baby.
After all, even in a world where a baby’s life isn’t sacred, an ethicist’s is.
And he tells us in another column that his missus encouraged him to tone that down lest...
I’d be seen to endorse threats to the lives of these philosophers, just as they themselves endorsed threats to the lives of babies
Well, thank goodness for that. Because then that would probably be astonishing, rather than just ridiculous.
If somebody writes down the logical consequences of a series of premises, we're to believe that then justifies actual, real-world threats of against the authors ... "just as they themselves endorsed". We're to think that the people making those threats ""feel entitled to threaten ... as if you were just some baby" whose "life isn’t sacred". You know, I'd love to see the original, before it was "tempered".
And I'm really glad that bolta thought to point out, in a later article, that he DOESN'T endorse threats to the authors. Otherwise people might have got the wrong impression. It'd have been nice if he'd said so in the original article.
But do you REALLY believe those things are equivalent, andrew? Really? Because I think those are two quite different things. Whatever you might happen to think about a hypothetical, it is still just a hypothetical. Whereas an actual death threat to an actual person is not "just as" hypothetical.
Let's just go back to the point of this screed - did peter harcher REALLY think that alan jones wanted somebody to kill the prime minister by drowning her at sea?
Let's apply that test to that last example. Does andrew bolt REALLY think those authors truly want to be running around, nutting babies as they're born so inconvenienced parents can play the pokes a bit more, and does that article really warrant real, actual threats of real, actual violence to real, living, actual people?
See, I honestly hope that one was "faux outrage!!!!1!", because if not ... wow.