Environment correspondent Sandi Keane launches her new weekly column, 'The Planet vs East Bumcrack', handing her first 'Crackers' award to Channel 10's new talkshow host, Andrew Bolt.
The Great God of Broadcasting has heard my prayers! No more Andrew Bolt on Insiders!
In an unprecedented compassionate move to save viewers of ABC’s Insiders from reaching tipping point, going over the edge and committing axe-murder on their neighbour, Channel 10 has come up with a cunning plan. Bolt will be quarantined in a secure facility in another state for the entire length of Insiders broadcast, every Sunday morning. Hallelujah!
Bolt is the most rabid of Murdoch’s band of climate deniers. When you’ve suffered him a number of times (thanks to the ABC), you quickly twig that he’s been programmed to vent, at frequent intervals, the well-rehearsed chant (or should that be cant) of the denier. Without deviating from the script, like Pavlov’s dogs, Christopher Pearson, Miranda Devine, Piers Ackerman and Terry McCrann echo the refrain – “it hasn’t warmed since 1998”, “it’s the sun” - robotic-like, over and over. You really do just want to run amok. One of “Insiders” guests, Annabel Crabb, almost lost it, accusing Bolt of “sounding like another factoid you picked up from East Bumcrack University”, before going out and smashing a number of phone boxes.
Now help is at hand. We can also help the ABC to deliver “balance” (or we can just irritate the hell out of the deniers we meet in our everyday lives). A really cool app is on the market. You can download it onto your iPhone, iPad or Ipod. All the well-rehearsed skeptics’ humbug is there (theirs is a fairly limited script to facilitate rote learning). You hit a button and up comes the quick rebuttal on “hockey stick” or “the world is cooling”, etc. If you really want to exact maximum revenge, you can read out the whole enchilada. So when the ABC invites well-known climate deniers and skeptics onto its programs, it can issue the other guests with this handy tool. Then we might start seeing some real balance and we can all stay calm and remain in our homes.
So, congratulations Andrew Bolt on receiving the inaugural 'Crackers' award — you thoroughly deserve it.
And more on that wonderful Skeptical Science Iphone app, and on brave defender (and my hero) of the planet, John Cook and his brilliant Skeptical Science website in our next edition of The Planet v. East Bumcrack.
