Tim Blair

> "Email of the week is from the enigmatically named "Uncle Milk" ..."

Quoted in the Bully by proxy?!! Flattered, Timbo. Actually the name comes from the incomparable Lileks -- a column that you, in fact, originally linked me to. See http://www.lileks.com/bleats/archive/03/0503/051403.html . One of the most side-splitting Lilekses -- actually, if he's Latvian-American, that should be "Lilekai" -- ever composed.

Speaking of pseudonyms -- readers may know "Anthony Daniels" better as "Theodore Dalrymple". And no, he is not fluent in over six billion forms of communication ...

That Spectator article about Pauline Hanson is bizarre. It contains what is quite possibly the most laboured metaphor in the history of journalism, anywhere, anytime:

Pauline Hanson irrupted on to the Australian political scene in the early 1990s, giving voice to blue-collar Australians who resented the immense social changes that had been brought about without their consent. They felt that the world of ice-cold tubes and meat pies was under threat, economically and culturally, from the world of kir and sun-dried tomatoes, a world in which the mainstream politicians, of whatever political stripe, increasingly lived and moved and took their being. When Hanson spoke in crude terms of the dangers of Asian immigration (a return to the yellow peril) and of the feckless Aborigines, she immediately won 22 per cent of the vote in her native Queensland. The proletarian lava had suddenly broken through the bourgeois crust.

And that's not all. Go read...

The Spectator article is truly bizarre:

"On the other hand, she allowed Mr Howard to do what before her advent would have been impossible, namely to restrict Asian immigration by putting would-be immigrants and asylum-seekers into camps, where their applications to reside in Australia are lost in the deep entrails of bureaucracy. Films about the camps are played to target audiences in Asia, to discourage any impromptu efforts on the part of its huddled masses to reach Australian shores."

1. Immigration has INCREASED under Howard.

2. Mandatory Detention was introduced by the KEATING government in 1992.

Ignoramus.

And how about:

"The Labor premier of Queensland, Peter Beattie, at first expressed no sympathy at all for Hanson; on the contrary, his hostility to her could hardly have been greater. But having seen the local opinion polls after her imprisonment..."

versus:

"His [Howard's] own party, the Liberal party, hates Hanson because it believes that she delivered the normally conservative Queensland to the Labor party by splitting the vote. She broke a very comfortable mould. "

It might have been worthwhile to point out that the Liberal Party was correct on the psephology of One Nation, and that Beattie's comments were palpable nonsense from an experienced media tart.

And this little gem:

"It is even possible that she failed to understand the law, rather than that she broke it deliberately..."

It's arguable that she was ignorant of the law; but the Jury found that she was dishonest. That's the whole point. It doesn't matter if you know what's in the legislation, you don't tell porkies to the government to get taxpayers' money. That's called stealing.

And I usually like Theodore Dalrymple's work. He "gets" the British underclass; from his article, I don't think he "gets" Australia.

Oh, Mr D... Mr Overclass! Over here!

While you're wetting your pants over another lame effort from the Spectator, here's a report that cut-and-paste Tim conveniently missed/ignored...

========
In Besieged Iraq, Reality Pokes Ideology in the Eye

By CHRISTOPHER MARQUIS

WASHINGTON — Deputy Secretary of State Richard L. Armitage, a hard-liner who had pressed for five years to topple Saddam Hussein, admitted last week to mistakes in planning the war in Iraq. He said, for the first time, that the administration is considering placing American and British forces there under a United Nations flag, provided their leader is American.

Mr. Armitage declined to give details. "I don't think it helps to throw them out publicly right now," he said. Too late...

But isn't the UN irrelevant Can anyone from the overclass help me here?

miranda

Those links again for all my admirers...

Too late...

and irrelevant

It's a great service to the public you're providing here Tim.

What happened in Rwanda a few years back? Tens of thousands killed - where was the almighty UN then?

Kosovo - who went in and bombed old Milosovich into submission? What would have been the outcome otherwise? Why didn't good old Clinton get the UN on side first? Why didn't Europe act - it was right on their friggen doorstep for god's sake!

East Timor - you really think that we managed to waltz right into Indonesia's claimed territory like that because they were worried about what the UN was going to do? Why do you think that Australia has been so friendly with the US since then? What did they do to help us? Is there a connection?

Richard Armitage said: 'The administration is considering placing American and British forces there under a United Nations flag.'

America is driving this now, not the UN.

If the UN was irrelevant, it caused this condition itself, not the US which beseeched it to take action on population-murderer Saddam Hussein. Instead the UN embarked on an endless and irrelevant 'proof' search which was always going to be a nonsensical musical chairs affair.

Fact is, the US is in there. The sons and daughters of the US are in harm's way. The US is doing the dirty work. As always.

The vultures and braying jackasses are on the sidelines salivating and wisecracking. As usual.

Just read your column, and I've got to ask how did you get a racket like that. You must be getting at least 500 for this. Is anyone reading your limp excuse for a column. It's riddled with mistakes and is surely a drag on the profitability of the Bulletin. I want to know why a Gen X retread who can't even get his cut and pastes right is getting a single dollar of the shareholder's money. This is an outrage.

That's nothing. Patrick Cook's been writing the same column for years. Just changes the jokes occasionally.

Oh no, some dipshit called Richard is outraged! Run Tim!

Calm thyself, D! That article wasn't by Dr. Dalrymple at all, it was by someone else whose name escapes me at the moment - first name Anthony, I think?

TimT, as Uncle Milk said above, Theodore Dalrymple is Anthony Daniels' pen name.

See here.

Anthony Daniels is a very versatile, err, man. He's also gone up against no fewer than two Dark Lords: http://us.imdb.com/name/nm0000355/.

"I’ve just returned from my hold school, where I spoke to senior high school students about careers in journalism (my central message: it beats having a real job)."

Atta boy, Tim... the cut-and-paste, fair-and-balanced, hit-and-run "journalist".

Tim, have you ever interviewed anyone in person in you whole career? Or has it all been vicarious surfing and cut-and-paste?

TimT:

Theodore Dalrymple is Anthony Daniels' pseudonym. He sometimes writes columns under his own name; I have no idea why.

I love Miranda's accidental reference to Tim's hold school, makes it sound like some kind of detention centre or reform school for naughty writers who obstinately refuse to interview people.

Some on, you lame crowd! Isn't SOMEBODY else going to make a C-3P0 wisecrack about Anthony "Theodore Dalrymple" Daniels? Where WERE you people in 1978??!!!