A Bolt from the Green

Andrew Bolt is interesting to contrast with Miranda Devine, in that he shows none of the flair or panache so keenly demonstrated by the latter. Each time Devine is set loose on a topic, she sinks her teeth in and rips it to pieces, not caring how she savages it, content to know that people have been told.

In comparison, Bolt is merely lazy. His output on his blog is nothing short of prodigious, but the majority of it is a link to something that he finds objectionable, then a sentence or two amounting to little more than “this is lies! Damned lies and fabrication!” (Poor grammar simulated for effect). You have to wade through a morass of these items to actually discover his columns, or anything of substance –and I use that term loosely.

“Five reasons not to trust this jihad against our farmers” gets the title right, at least: inflammatory, discriminatory, and predicated on a lie. He’s doing his bit for right wing opinion-holders everywhere. Sadly, Bolt has forgotten how to write. Almost every paragraph is a mere sentence long, and none of them are interesting. The most damning quote, from Frank Sartor, has been plainly denied by its alleged source.

Bolt is content to throw meaningless figures at the audience, provided by “furious” interest groups, and then somehow tie them together by suggesting that it’s all part of a “green conspiracy”. Bolt is entirely unaware of the fact that he’s using the language of fear to suggest that environmentalists have embarked on a fear campaign based on science that he considers “dodgy” at best.

Bolt’s work is eminently forgettable, to the point that one would be hardpressed to remember, by the end, why they had started reading in the first place. The problem is this: with the plainly superior Miranda Devine now comfortably installed at News Ltd, what is the use of carrying Bolt’s dead weight? The Melbourne/Sydney divide isn’t as important as it used to be: the internet lacks frontiers.