July 19, 2003

IRON MIKE

Mike Carlton is all crybabyish about being described as anti-American:

Frank Devine recently offered me this hoary insult in Paddy McGuinness's Quadrant magazine and again in The Australian - an unsurprising coupling - along with the baseless libel that I had plagiarised a column from Maureen Dowd of The New York Times. There is no gutter too mucky for these chickenhawk warriors to roll in.

What a pansy. Note that he’s yet to correct his Dowdesque error.

Posted by Tim Blair at July 19, 2003 02:44 AM
Comments

Sometimes tears help.

Posted by: Wunderkind54 at July 19, 2003 at 02:49 AM

Chickenhawk? That's like, so 2002.

Posted by: David Gillies at July 19, 2003 at 03:47 AM

well, I for one am glad I voted for Carlton in the "slap" poll

Posted by: Steve at July 19, 2003 at 04:06 AM

You didn't accuse him of plagiarizing MoDo's column. You accused him of being too lazy and/or stupid to use an accurate version of the quote she used in her column. There's a difference.

Posted by: T. Hartin at July 19, 2003 at 04:36 AM

Yeah, I know. But Carlton doesn't.

Posted by: tim at July 19, 2003 at 04:39 AM

Poor baby. We have several versions of our own in the US. These types get quite upset when someone questions what they write using facts. I guess it's a new concept to them.

Quote:
"In fact, thoughtful Americans themselves are now contemplating the deepening military and diplomatic quagmire to which Bush has led them."

He's correct only if he defines what he means by 'thoughtful Americans'. So far as I can see, the 'Average' American is still pretty satisfied and supportive of what we're doing in Iraq.

Same can't be said for many in our 'chattering classes', far left/right nutz, and politicians trying to score political points. These must be the 'thoughful' citizens he refers to. They keep beating the same drum about Bush is bad, Iraq is hopeless and all variants in between.

Frankly, I wish our 'thoughtful' citizens would give it a rest. It gets more than annoying after a while.

Posted by: Chris Josephson at July 19, 2003 at 04:50 AM

T. Hartin and Tim,

He didn't accuse you of baseless libel, he accused Frank Devine of baseless libel.

"Six months ago, Howard Dean had just retired as governor of rural Vermont, hardly a speck on the political landscape. Today, the polls have him as the frontrunner for the Democratic presidential nomination in 2004."

Frontrunner for the Democratic presidential nomination is hardly a speck on the political landscape.

And who'll want to bet he'll change frontrunner for Democratic presidential candidate as it suits him?

Posted by: Andjam at July 19, 2003 at 01:02 PM

Considering how poor certain left-wing columnists are at checking their facts, and that Carlton is still smarting over Rumsfeld referring to France and Germany as "Old Europe", could it be possible to fool Carlton into thinking that Rumsfeld referred to France and Germany as an "Axis of Weasels"?

Posted by: Andjam at July 19, 2003 at 03:52 PM

Is it just me, or are some of these folks unhappy because the Iraqis put up so little resistance. Would he have been happier if Saddam had had enormous amounts of WMD, used them with a 45 minute launch cycle, and caused hundreds of thousands of causalties and millions of displaced persons?

Oh, wait a minute. I forgot of whom I was speaking. Of course they would have been happier.

Posted by: JorgXMcKie at July 19, 2003 at 03:56 PM

JorgXMcKie,

I've felt tempted at times to write a letter to the editor saying "Ok, the left was wrong over the amount of civilian casualties, how hard the fighting would be, and international reaction. We may have overestimated Saddam's WMD capabilities. Can we be glad that each of us were wrong and call it quits?"

Posted by: Andjam at July 19, 2003 at 04:20 PM

My slap vote was also well placed.

By the way, is he actually suggesting that North Korea does not have nuclear weapons because our intelligence services tell us they do? North Korea admit they have them don't they? or has this escaped the most slappable journo in Australia?

I do like the sound of his Windschuttle museum though, and burning Mannings books sounds like a larf.

Posted by: Gilly at July 20, 2003 at 04:16 PM

That's crybabyish? Sounds like he's slapping back, to me.

Posted by: Bon Scott at July 20, 2003 at 11:05 PM