Reason #2 why The Age is doomed: Caroline Wilson

If you believe the current witch hunt against the Essendon Football Club and James Hird is an upright investigation of potential drug use, you haven't been reading Age chief football columnist Caroline Wilson, who can spot a villain when she is told to see one. From her column on Friday, which deals guilt by association -- guilt, that is, if you work at The Age and know for a moral certainty that anyone who associates with Liberals must be up to no good:

...by discrediting Demetriou, Hird's supporters, led by the formidable Liberal spin doctor Ian Hanke, have muddied the waters...

....Hanke, currently holed up in Spring Street in the same building at (sic) the Victorian State Parliament press gallery....

...One of Hird's closest friends, Rod Law, is a senior executive at Fox Footy, and a key occasional mentor is Rupert Murdoch's international right-hand man, the Melbourne-born Essendon supporter Robert Thompson....

That settles everything. Hird must be a drug-pushing scoundrel because, well, he has a Liberal ally and is friendly with someone who knows someone who knows someone else who works for Rupert Murdoch.

Tomorrow, expect Wilson to bare Hird's carbon footprint and his diabolical plan to drown polar bears by leaving the post-training showers running at Windy Hill.That story would be easier to report than the truth, which is that the ASADA farce was ginned up by Julia Gillard as a distraction from her political woes.