Today's Item 13....
ANDREW BOLT VS PHILLIP ADAMSAndrew Bolt's Tirade in today's Herald Sun was a complete hatchet job on Phillip Adams. It might have interested the readers of Quadrant but was completely irrelevant to Bolt's battling readers.
Ironically, Bolt claimed that Adams focuses on elite things that people don't care about. By devoting all this space to fighting ancient ideological warfare, Bolt is doing exactly the same thing.
Bolt begins by chronicling what he believes to be Adams' professional demise, from his high profile role in the Adams-Packer films of the 1980s, to his current position on a low-rating late-night ABC radio show.
He is critical of Adams' beliefs and says, "olive farm socialists like Phillip, are busier fighting for mythical 'refugees' in a mythical Woomera 'concentration camp' than fighting for real Australian battlers in Dandenong."
Adams stands for everything Bolt despises, but today Bolt is crowing over that fact that Adams "is being disowned by the Left".
Bolt welcomes what he calls, "new attacks on Phillip from important players within his Labor Party," and he cites a Labor lunch with Kim Beazley two years ago and comments from Mark Latham to support his claims.
Bolt clearly regards the Labor snub as the final nail in the coffin for Adams. "He is suddenly being held up by Left-wing modernisers as a symbol of what's wrong, not just with their movement, but with Labor in particular."
Bolt even goes on to criticise Adams for fighting passionately for the issues in which he believes. He says, "Phillip and his kind mount their crusades in which the invariable rule is to feel good by calling everyone else, and our society, evil."
Funnily enough Bolt does not recognise that the same could be said of he and his crusades against the Left.
Adams regards Bolt as one of his three stalkers - the other two being Tim Blair and Imre Salusinszky. It is interesting that Imre and Bolt were both sacked by Radio National after failing to cut it when they were put up as the right wing Phillip Adams two years back.
Chris Mitchell, the Commo-bashing editor-in-chief of The Oz, then hired Imre to write leaders and columns.
We suspect that Imre was responsible for this Anti-ABC Editorial in last Thursday's Oz.
Given that it calls for Radio National to be abolished, it does raise the issue as to whether Imre had a conflict and was just grinding an axe because he and Blair failed to rate on Radio National and were "not renewed".
And don't forget that Radio National has more listeners than 3AW, 2GB or 2UE and that Phillip Adams is the station's biggest "switch on" factor.
Finally, Bolt does appear to land a blow on Adams for his hazy memory about exactly how long he was a member of the Communist Party. It will be interesting to see if Adams responds.
I thought Bolt stalked John Faine and Tim Blair tag-stalked with Imre on Abe Nat?
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