Ah, Tim, such memories! It is quite a few years since the ABC high-flier has dropped a line to the Billabong, but Andrew's reference brought the memories flooding back. As a guide to the perspective and sympathies that will shape ABC coverage of what promises to be an extended bout of Papist-thumping, here is what Tim had to say in his spirited and entirely unsolicited defence of an institution far more curious than the Catholic Church, Margo Kingston, who was then doing so much for Fairfax's credibility at her original Web Diary:
Dear Stanley
Time was when tedious right wing crackpots would shuffle off to a cabin in Montana, form a militia and (mercifully) barricade the rest of the world outside.
Now they set up the grownup's version of the lemonade stand - a weblog.
I never thought I'd side with Mr Sheridan on anything but your piece on the virtues of colonialism has achieved that.
I haven't laughed so hard since I read Paul Johnson's Modern Times (obviously a seminal text for you) with its dunderheaded central issues like "who was the better President, Nixon or Reagan?".
So how did I get to your Sargasso Sea of ideas - via Crikey of course. But don't be too encouraged by Mayne's reference, I, and I suspect most others, won't be back.
You write about Margo Kingston's log "It’s like watching some poor unfortunate have an almost-daily seizure. You should turn away, and you know it. But it’s impossible to drag your eyes off the spectacle".
Unfortunately the same can't be said of your site. It's more like watching someone die of prostate cancer. It's tedious, the viewer may die of something else in the meantime and in the long run you just don't want to know about it anyway.
regards
Tim Palmer
When you read, watch or listen to the latest news it is always nice to know a little about about the sort of people who shape it.
