Issue 271

– FROM MIKE (“I’LL POUR THE GIN”) CARLTON

To #swf2015 this morning. Sunlit harbour, fabulous crowds radiating civility. And no Gerard Henderson ! It doesn’t get any better.

— Mike Carlton (@MikeCarlton01) May 21, 2015

This missive was sent out by Mike Carlton on Thursday 21 May 2015 while at the Sydney Writers’ Festival among Sydney’s very own Sandalista set. Just after pre-lunch drinks and just before post-lunch drinks. For the record, Hendo has never been invited by the SWF supremos to address the assembled SWF sandalistas on Sydney Harbour on a Thursday – or, indeed, any other day. Which means that he doesn’t have to decline an invitation. But he may receive an invitation to the 2015 Melbourne Writers’ Festival and is currently working on his wardrobe. See below for Hendo’s first dress-rehearsal in his Che Guevara cap – kindly provided by a Melbourne-based avid reader.

• DUCK LOVING LEUNIG A REAL QUACK: TAKE 2

How wonderful to see that The Age’s house leftist Michael Leunig rocked-up to talk to ABC1 News Breakfast presenters Michael Rowland and Virginia this morning. [Was your man Leunig wearing sandals – of the kind which he wore when interviewed by Andrew Denton on Enough Rope all those years ago? – Ed].

The duck-loving Leunig arrived at the Southbank studios to flog his latest collection of cartoons titled Musings From the Inner Duck (Penguin Australia, 2015). This demonstrates that at least one duck-lover is a real quack.

This tome includes Leunig’s recent cartoon supporting parents who refuse to vaccinate their young children against such dreadful illnesses as whooping cough and the like. You see, in Sandalista Land there is opposition to vaccines.

Discussion soon turned to this matter as Young Mr Rowland (recently returned from his leadership role in the Aunty Invasion Force to the Dardanelles) and La Trioli expressed surprise at Leunig’s ambivalence about vaccinations. Let’s go to the transcript towards the end of the interview where The Age’s Sandalista-in-Chief is defending his opposition to vaccinations and all that:

Michael Leunig: So we don’t tolerate the outsider voice that says the improbable thing? That’s what my job is, Virginia. It’s not to march entirely with science – it’s to be the improbable. And, of course, people like yourself and you Michael or anyone else to get head up and say: “Stop this, what is this, what is this fierce, anti-vaccination, why so emotional about it? I’m emotional –

Michael Rowland: It’s called public health, Michael….

Michael Leunig: What’s that?

Michael Rowland: It’s called public health.

Michael Leunig: Oh, if we cared about public health we wouldn’t design cities like this. We wouldn’t have appalling television, dreadful media, you know. Public health is at disarray on so many levels – and all we’re worrying about is this tiny little needle. I mean if we care about public health let’s be serious about public health, the full spectrum –

Virginia Trioli: We’re going to let the viewers have the argument at this and it will continue as when you leave but it’s good to have the argument with you on air this morning Michael Leunig.

Michael Leunig: But I’m not standing for – against vaccination, it’s this thing the individual conscience. As a matter of conscience, I was a conscientious objector in the Vietnam War, right? So I understand about it.

Yeah, right. Leunig was a conscientious objector in the late 1960s and, consequently, avoided being called up for military service during the Vietnam War. How frightfully interesting. So this means, apparently, that The Age’s in-house leftist is somehow qualified to give advice about the best way to contract whooping cough by dodging “this tiny needle”. Or something like that.

And what about Leunig’s view on public health? At a time when Australians have never lived longer, The Age’s in-house leftist reckons that Australians experience poor public health because of the design of our cities like Melbourne, bad TV programming and our “dreadful media”. So why worry about whooping cough while Rupert Murdoch still controls Melbourne’s Herald-Sun? What a load of tosh.

For avid MWD readers with poor memories, Michael Leunig’s original cartoon is re-published below along with Nancy’s cover-cartoon (which is destined to win a Walkley Award).

• MR ALY’S DEFINITIONAL SLUDGE RE TERRORISM

Fairfax Media columnist and Monash University politics lecturer has come up with this definition of terrorism in The Age and the Sydney Morning Herald today:

Terrorism is an offence against our public selves. The scale of its repugnance lies not in the direct damage it does, which is limited, but in the symbolic damage, inherent in such a violent rejection of the collective us.

So there you have it. The victims of the 9/11 attacks in the United States and the 7/7 bombers in London and the Lindt Café siege in Sydney and more besides – according to Aly – suffered only “direct damage” which was “limited”. However, the rest of us suffered “symbolic damage”. In Waleed Aly’s opinion, the essential problem with terrorism is that it involves a “violent rejection of the collective us”.

This is complete nonsense. Waleed Aly has not stated precisely who comprises the “collective us” which allegedly experiences feelings of “violent rejection” following terrorist attacks. Mr Aly is an academic.

WHY DOESN’T NICE MR SCOTT JUST ASK LEFTIST PRODUCER PETER MCEVOY WHY HIS Q&A PROGRAM LEANS TO THE LEFT?

As reported in The Australian last Thursday, ABC managing director and (so called) editor-in-chief Mark Scott has agreed to order a review of issues covered on Q&A. This commitment followed criticism of the ABC as Senate Estimates on Wednesday.

Nice Mr Scott also said that the ABC would investigate some of the taxpayer funded public broadcaster’s post-budget interviews. Presumably those done by Leigh Sales (7.30), Emma Alberici (Lateline) and Michael Brissenden (AM).

Don’t hold your breath on the outcome. Last year the ABC commissioned former journalist Colleen Ryan to review the 2014 post-budget interviews. Ms Ryan found that in 2014 the 7.30 presenter Sarah Ferguson’s inaugural question to Joe Hockey was “emotive”. Colleen Ryan also found that Hockey was not treated with sufficient respect and that the interview breached the ABC’s impartiality guidelines on two occasions.

What happened? Well, Nice Mr Scott’s managerial team dismissed the Ryan findings. That’s what. Ms Ryan also criticised parts of an Emma Alberici interview on Lateline. This was also dismissed by the ABC.

Nice Mr Scott is supposed to act as the ABC’s editor-in-chief. So he should not need to order a review of Q&A. All he needs to do is watch the program with a critical eye.

If he did, Mark Scott would soon discover that most weeks Q&A has three left-of- centre panellists to two right-of-centre panellists. Like next Monday – when Anthony Albanese, Jack Charles and Miriam Lyons will go up against Josh Frydenberg and Judith Sloan. Q&A presenter Tony (“I was an anti-Vietnam war demonstrator when in short pants”) Jones invariably sides with the left-of-centre types against the right-of-centre types.

Like last Monday, for example, when Joe Hockey appeared all-alone in front of an essentially hostile audience and a sneering presenter. As The Australian’s “Cut & Paste” section documented on Wednesday, the Treasurer was ambushed by Jones who had a copy of a Labor Party commissioned report which was not available to Mr Hockey.

Soon after, Jones called on a pre-arranged question from a certain Mark Travers who sought to embarrass the Treasurer since, when in Canberra, he rents accommodation from his Sydney-based wife. As an avid MWD reader has pointed out, this Mr Travers bears a certain resemblance with the radical left CFMEU trade unionist of the same name.

Then Tony Jones constantly interrupted Joe Hockey as he tried to finish a sentence or two on the Abbott government’s superannuation policy.

If Nice Mr Scott really wants to know why Q&A constantly tilts to the left, perhaps he might ask Q&A executive producer Peter McEvoy. Mr McEvoy is a leftist of long standing. No formal inquiry is necessary.

PRESENTING HENDO’S COLLECTION: ITEM 1

There has been overwhelming interest among MWD’s hundreds of thousands of avid readers about the state of your man Hendo’s wardrobe – in case he accepts a possible invitation to address the Melbourne Writer’s Festival in August.

In last week’s issue, MWD provided a preview of Hendo’s gear – from the Che Guevara beret to the Che tee-shirt, to the Che trousers, to the Che sandals, to the Che jacket and to the Che carry bag (containing a copy of Lenin’s State and Revolution).

Earlier this week, Hendo took his first item of apparel on a road-test, so to speak. Impressive, don’t you think. And sure to bowl-over the Sandalista inner-city left – destined to attend the Melbourne Writers’ Festival per courtesy of much taxpayer subsidies.

Here it is:

• HOW MARK KENNY FORGOT GREG HYWOOD’S AGE AND COLOUR

Did anyone read Mark Kenny’s piece in the Sydney Morning Herald on 15 May 2015 titled “Stupidity of Abbott and Hockey indicate they have not learnt from last year’s budget”? Possibly not – since it has only recently been drawn to MWD’s attention by an avid reader.

This is how your man Kenny commenced his column:

You would have thought Tony Abbott and Joe Hockey had learnt their lesson – after all, it had very nearly cost them their political lives. But no. The paid parental leave debacle now consuming an otherwise soft and friction-free budget, is testament to the stubbornness of ageing white men and to the durability of their ideas, even really bad ones.

Now the very white Mark Kenny is not a young man any more. Moreover, Tony Abbott was born in November 1957 and Joe Hockey was born in August 1965. However, Gregory Hywood, Fairfax Media’ managing director, was born in – wait for it – September 1954. Mr Hywood is also white.

So there you have it. Fairfax Media’s Mark Kenny whinges about “the stubbornness of “ageing white men” without apparently remembering that the stubborn and white Mr Hywood is older than both the Prime Minister and the Treasurer. Can you bear it?

[Er, no. Not really. Perhaps someone should take your man Kenny to Professor Triggs’ Human Rights Commission for some counselling about gender and age discrimination awareness issues – Ed].

• SCOTT BURCHILL’S TERRORISM AND CONSTITUTIONAL CONFUSION

It was great to learn that Deakin University academic Scott Burchill had a full load on board last Tuesday – which made it possible for him to drop into the ABC1 News Breakfast studio in Southbank studio on his way to the tip. Nancy’s (male) co-owner very much liked the black number worn on set by Dr Burchill (for a doctor he is) since it tends to hide oil stains which can be part of anyone’s tip experience.

So what did your man Burchill – who has risen to the exalted rank of senior lecturer at Deakin University – have to say? Well, as it happens – lotsa.

First up, Burchill bagged Tony Abbott for allegedly beating up on terrorism. Let’s go to the transcript:

Virginia Trioli: What’s on your list today?

Scott Burchill: Well, terrorism again. Mr Abbott’s going to appoint a new anti-terrorism tsar as well as give the new Minister for Justice an additional title, so we’re gearing up for the terrorism threat again.

Virginia Trioli: Well the terrorism threat is clear and present and real.

Scott Burchill: Well, this is my first point. I have a specialist American friend who looks into this. Americans are more likely to get involved in an act of terrorism than any other nationality in the West. And you are more likely to get struck by lightning twice in your life than be involved in a terrorist incident.

So you need to put this in perspective and just exactly how much of a threat this poses. And my first question to Mr Moriarty, the new anti-terrorism tsar, would be: “to what extent has our involvement in bombing ISIS in Iraq increased the terrorism threat to Australia?”

Burchill seems unaware of the fact that in recent years large parts of New York, Washington DC, London, Madrid, Paris, Sydney and more besides have been in lock-down for one or more days due to terrorist attacks. This has never occurred with a lightning strike. Most of these terrorist attacks took place before the birth of the so-called Islamic State (or ISIS).

Then after a discussion about Iraq, attention turned – as it invariably does on the taxpayer funded broadcaster – to same sex marriage and all that. Let’s go to the transcript:

Michael Rowland: Let’s go to The Age. It has the focus this morning on the same sex marriage debate in Australia and the possibility of a vote in parliament sometime this year.

Scott Burchill: Yes. The Greens are going to introduce a bill next month, and I think there’s another one coming as well, from an independent Senator.

Virginia Trioli: David Leyonhjelm. Is putting together a bill, yes.

Scott Burchill: Now what’s interesting about this, do you remember Mr Abbott said yesterday that we only have referendums on constitutional matters? Do you recall – you’re not as old as I am – but do you recall a referendum on the national anthem? That we had to choose?….It had nothing to do with constitutional change, it was a plebiscite to see what…And it was a referendum that had nothing to with constitutional change, it was to try and get the public’s views on what should be the national anthem, so I don’t see why we can’t have something like that on same sex marriage.

What a load of tosh. Scott Burchill claimed on no fewer than two occasions that Australia had a “referendum” on the national anthem – or national song – and once, in passing, he mentioned the word “plebiscite”.

In fact Australia has had three plebiscites. Two – in 1916 and again in 1917 – on conscription for overseas service. And one – on 21 May 1977 – on the national anthem. Not one was a referendum – which, unlike a plebiscite, leads to a change in the Constitution.

Tony Abbott was correct. Australia only has referendums on constitutional issues – so far at least. Australia could have a plebiscite on same sex marriage – but its introduction does not require constitutional amendment. Consequently, it does not require a referendum.

Dr Scott Burchill (who teaches politics at Deakin University) does not seem to know the difference between a referendum and a plebiscite and uses the words interchangeably. Can you bear it?

• ROBERT MANNE CONDEMNS AUSTRALIANS AGAIN

May 2015 – and it’s The Monthly’s 10^th Anniversary edition – Hip, hip, hooray and all that stuff.

To celebrate the occasion, editor Nick Feik rolled out the usual quota of leftist contributors who put their thoughts to paper – in between advertisements for Penfolds Grange, the Sydney Film Festival, Academy Travel, the Belvoir Theatre, Rolex watches and so on. The Monthly is read by the Sandalista class, you see, who enjoy a Grange during the interval at the Belvoir in inner-city Surry Hills before checking the time on their Rolex watches as to when the second act commences.

Your man Manne’s contribution to The Monthly’s May 2015 edition is yes – you’ve guessed it – yet another rant at Tony Abbott in particular and Australia in general. Oh yes, Manne (who now is an out- and-proud Greens voter) has a go at Labor – but from the left, of course. However, his piece is essentially a rant against the Coalition, John Howard, Tony Abbott, etc. It is dedicated as follows: “For Malcolm Fraser, who saw what was happening.” Enough said.

Towards the end of the piece, Emeritus Professor Manne went into his familiar the-end-of-the-world-is-nigh mode:

…Abbott’s ministers and their cheerleaders in the Murdoch press were outraged when US president Barack Obama spoke to students at the University of Queensland about the dangers facing the Great Barrier Reef. Even British Conservatives now regarded Tony Abbott’s climate change views as “flat Earther, “baffling” and “eccentric”. Australia has now not merely the developed world’s leading per capita carbon polluter. It was almost universally acknowledged to be the world’s most recklessly and brazenly irresponsible nation with regard to action on climate change. How many times must it be said? On this question the future wellbeing of humankind depends.

How about that? According to Robert Manne, the future wellbeing of human kind depends on Tony Abbott. Really.

By the way, the anonymous British Conservatives to whom Manne referred were Lord Deben (aka John Gummer), Tim Yeo and Gregory Barker. Deben/Gummer quit the House of Commons in 2010 and currently works for an environmental consultancy group. Barker and Yeo stepped down from the House of Commons at the 2015 general elections.

In other words, none of the British Conservatives to whom Manne referred are in any way significant. Manne’s (unacknowledged) source was Fairfax Media journalist Paola Totaro who seems to have travelled the streets of London looking for a Conservative who would criticise Tony Abbott. (See her piece in Fairfax Media newspapers on 21 November 2014). Ms Totaro could do no better than Lord Deben and Messers Yeo and Barker.

Professor Manne concluded his May 2015 The Monthly piece as follows:

…the melancholy fact that the lucky country [i.e. Australia] has in the past few years steadily and cheerfully forged its present character, and embraced without shame its present reputation, as the developed world’s most comfortable, complacent, privileged, self-absorbed and selfish nation, seems, to me at least, beyond serious dispute.

So there you have it. Robert Manne has spent his entire adult life in employment which was paid for, or subsidised by, taxpayers. And yet, in semi-retirement and essentially living off a taxpayer subsidised superannuation, Professor Manne condemns Australians as a complacent, privileged, self-absorbed and selfish lot. Can you bear it?

PROFESSOR MANNE’S MEMORY OF AN EVENT THAT NEVER HAPPENED (CONTD) AS OFFER FOR EVIDENCE INCREASES TO $8000

While on the topic of Robert Manne, Gerard Henderson has decided to increase his offer to Professor Manne to $8000 – to support an asylum seeker charity of his choice. All the learned emeritus professor has to do is produce evidence for one of his evidence-free claims. So far the professor has not accepted the challenge.

As avid MWD readers will be aware, Robert Manne claimed in 2011 that Gerard Henderson demanded that The Age dismiss Manne as a columnist in 1993. Or maybe it was 1995. Your man Manne is not too sure about this – having previously cited both dates.

Professor Manne says that the 1993 (or perhaps 1995) the demand was made in a “dossier” on Manne which Henderson faxed to The Age’s opinion page editor Paul Austin. So Mr Austin (allegedly) has the original. Manne says that Henderson sent a copy of the dossier to Morag Fraser who is one of Manne’s besties. It is not at all clear why Hendo would send a copy of so sensitive a document to one of Manne’s friends – but the allegation is part of Manne’s story. So Ms Fraser (allegedly) has another copy of the document. And Manne says that Austin gave him a copy of the document. So Mr Manne (allegedly) has a third copy of the document. By the way, Mr Manne changed his original assertion that the dossier was sent to Paul Austin in 1993 to 1995 since it was brought to his attention that Mr Austin was not working at The Age in 1993. How about that?

So here’s a reminder of the up-graded challenge. Hendo will hand over $8000 to Robert Manne – for a designated asylum seeker charity of his choice – if the learned processor can produce the “dossier” written by Gerard Henderson to Paul Austin demanding that Manne be sacked as an Age columnist in 1993 or perhaps 1995 or whatever.

If such a dossier exists, this should be an easy task to locate it. After all, Robert Manne (allegedly) has a copy and so (allegedly) does Paul Austin and so (allegedly) does Morag Fraser. They could all get together at The-Guardian-on-the-Yarra and exchange documents while enjoying a Chai Latte.

Robert Manne’s failure to produce the document after four years – even with the inducement of a generous offer – provides further evidence that he has an appalling memory. You know, the kind of “memory” you have when you “remember” events which never occurred. Just like the time when Robert Manne remembered marching under a “Neither Washington Nor Hanoi” banner in the 1970 Vietnam Moratorium march – a banner which his mate Rai Gaita has acknowledged they never got near. It was a kind of virtual banner for an academic with a vivid imagination.

We’ll keep you posted about the $8000 offer. But don’t hold your breath. No such document was ever written – and Robert Manne is just too embarrassed to withdraw his false and unprofessional allegation. [Interesting. You should remind avid readers next week of Robert Manne’s faulty memory on the Soviet agent in Australia – a certain Ric Throssell – Ed].

ALBERT LANGER’S SUPPORT FOR THE KHMER ROUGE IN ARENA, NO LESS

Due to popular demand, this feature examines Guy Rundle’s recent comment that left-wing hero Tom Uren – along with “many people” – said “silly things” about the Khmer Rouge in the 1970s. Just silly. Nancy’s (male) co-owner’s favourite Marxist comedian has also asserted that the left only said “positive things” about Pol Pot’s murderous regime “when reports of the Khmer Rouge rule were few and frequently disbelieved”.

This is absolute tosh since – as MWD has documented – evidence of Pol Pot’s crimes was available as early as July 1975 – i.e. only a few months after the Khmer Rouge came to power in April 1975 – and the left supported Pol Pot until communist North Vietnam invaded communist Cambodia in December 1978.

Among what your man Rundle would call the “silly things” the left said about the Khmer Rouge, is left-wing radical Albert Langer’s turgid article “Kampuchea: The Problem of Facing the Facts” which was published in Arena No 55, 1980.

Yes, this is the very same Arena – a journal of Marxist opinion, no less – which Guy Rundle later came to edit. It is said that during Mr Rundle’s time as editor of Arena magazine you could not move in the tea-room without bumping into a one-time barracker for Pol Pot who supported the Khmer Rouge when the Cambodian killing fields were choked with corpses.

Here is Albert Langer’s opening paragraph in response to an article by one-time Khmer Rouge supporter Gavan McCormack who had changed sides and became a Pol Pot critic some time in 1978:

The bulk of Gavan McCormack’s article was a detailed refutation of the case against the Khmer Rouge, as made out in 1975-77 by people like Father Ponchaud, [John] Barron/[Anthony] Paul and company. This successfully proved that the “case” rested on crude fabrications by malicious propagandists, and is contradicted by other, more credible, evidence. Verdict – “not guilty”. An even more thorough demolition job on this “case” will be found in 160 pages of Chomsky and Herman’s recent book – an invaluable reference for any one seriously concerned to seek out the truth about Kampuchea.

In his 1980 Arena article the “silly” leftist Langer also wrote:

….I certainly don’t believe the Khmer Rouge were responsible for the deaths of hundreds of thousands, let alone millions, let along deliberate executions.

As the Marxist comedian and one-time Arena editor Guy Rundle would say: How SILLY was the leftist Albert Langer in 1980? And how SILLY was the leftist hero Noam Chomsky to earn Langer’s praise on Cambodia.

Next week – if Nancy’s (male) co-owner can find the 1979 tome The Political Economy of Human Rights: Volume II, by leftist Noam Chomsky and leftist Edward S. Herman – MWD will publish an extract of “Silly” Noam Chomsky’s one-time positive views on the Khmer Rouge. [I can barely wait – Ed].

SOMETHING NEW AT LAST

As avid MWD readers are aware, Nancy’s (male) co-owner reads Morry Schwartz’s The [Boring] Saturday Paper on Mondays. It’s that boring that there is no reason to follow the pretentious sludge until after the cock crows on Monday morning.

Take last weekend’s edition, for example. In between advertisements for the exclusive Supernormal restaurant in Melbourne, James Turrell’s “A Retrospective” at the National Gallery of Australia, the Emerging Writers’ Festival, Morry Schwartz’s The Monthly Today, the Sydney Film Festival, Morry Schwartz’s Quarterly Essay, Morry Schwartz’s The Saturday Paper, Aesop’s signature stores (Newtown and Fitzroy of course), Morry Schwartz’s The Monthly and Mercedes-Benz cars there are invariably long boring articles by such left-wing scribblers are Martin McKenzie-Murray (he of what Paul Keating once termed “the hyphenated name set”), Mike Seccombe and Paul Bongiorno. Yawn.

But, wait. The most recent edition of The Saturday Paper contained some REAL NEWS. To wit, a grovelling apology to Liberal Party Senator Cory Bernardi which read as follows:

APOLOGY TO SENATOR CORY BERNARDI

On February 21, 2015, The Saturday Paper published an article by Kate Doak regarding Senator Cory Bernardi. In discussing the financial and business dealings of Senator Bernardi, the article falsely alleged that one of the senator’s companies had been forced to surrender its security dealers’ licence after a review by ASIC, that the senator improperly used his electoral office as a place of business, that the senator withheld funds from a children’s charity, and that the senator breached parliamentary obligations in failing to comply with parliamentary disclosure requirements.

The Saturday Paper and Ms Doak retract those allegations and apologise to Senator Bernardi for the distress and damage caused to him by their publication.

As Herald-Sun columnist Rita Panahi tweeted on Saturday morning: “Umm did they get anything right.” According to Sharri Markson’s “The Diary” in The Australian last Monday, the terms of settlement included “compensation for damages and legal costs”.

You wonder how The Saturday Paper’s editor Erik Jensen let through so many of Kate Doak’s howlers. [No I don’t. Young Erik is not a fact-based kind of guy – Ed]. If only property developer Mr Schwartz had adopted Hendo’s long-standing gratuitous advice to Schwartz that he should employ a fact-checker, none of this might have come to pass.

Until next time – keep morale high.

Gerard Henderson’s friday self-harm update is here

Adam Brereton, via Twitter, May 15, 2015

[Gerard Henderson’s Media Watch Dog is] batshit mad.

– Guy Rundle in Crikey, 14 May 2015:

I’m in the sort of mood that if I saw Gerard Henderson in the street I’d hit him with his own umbrella

– Ben Pobjie, via Twitter, 8 May 2015

It’s a glorious day when Gerard Henderson has a go at you

– Adam Gartrell, via Twitter, 8 May 2015

Meeting of Gerard Henderson Appreciation Society tonight Sydney Opera House phone booth

– Phillip Adams, via Twitter, 28 April 2015, 1.36 pm (after lunch).

“Gerard’s condescension levels high on #insiders this morning”

– Lenore Taylor, via Twitter, 22 February 2015

“Gerard Henderson and David Marr are on #Insiders this week. Like a political Felix and Oscar.”

– Mark Scott via Twitter 19 February 2015 at 1.10 pm

“I once called Gerard Henderson `a complete f%^wit’. I deeply regret that. I was being much too harsh on f%^wits.”

– Malcolm Farr via Twitter 14 February 2015 at 10:14 am

“Oh Gerard. You total clown.”

– Jonathan (“Proudly the ABC’s Sneerer-in-Chief”) Green on Twitter, Friday 3 October 2014, 4.31 pm [Mr Green must be an obsessive avid reader to respond so soon. – Ed]

“Good morning. All the gooder for being attacked (for thousandth time) by silly Gerard in the Oz”

– Phillip Adams via Twitter, 27 September 2014

“What troubles me most is that he [Gerard Henderson] shows such low journalistic standards, yet he is politically quite influential. He is often on Insiders. It’s hard to see why: he comes across as a crank.”

– Kate Durham as told to Crikey, 16 September 2014

“The unhinged but well spoken Gerard Henderson….”

– Bob Ellis, Table Talk blog, 10 August 2014

“Gerard Henderson and Nancy are awful human beings.”

– Alexander White, Twitter, 25 July 2014

“This is my regularly scheduled “Oh Gerard” tweet for every time he appears on #insiders”

– Josh Taylor, senior journalist for ZDNet, Twitter, 20 July 2014

“…that fu-kwitted Gerard “Gollum” Henderson….”

– Mike (“I’ll pour the gin”) Carlton, via Twitter, 12 July 2014

“[Gerard Henderson is a] silly prick”

– Mike (“I’ll pour the gin”) Carlton – tweeted Saturday 27 June 2014 at 4.15 pm, i.e. after lunch

“If Gerard Henderson had run Beria’s public relations Stalin’s death would have been hidden for a year and Nikita [Khrushchev] and co would have been shot”

– Laurie Ferguson via Twitter – 22 June 2014 [By-line: Mr Ferguson is a member of the House of Representatives who speaks in riddles.]

“[Gerard Henderson] is the Eeyore of Australian public life”

– Mike Seccombe in The [Boring] Saturday Paper – 21 June 2014

“Without in any way wanting to breach anyone’s human rights or free speech – why do people write emails to Gerard Henderson?”

– Katharine Murphy, Twitter, Friday 6 June 2014

“[Gerard Henderson is] an unhinged prick”

– Mike Carlton, Twitter, Thursday 12 June 2014

“There’s no sense that Gerard Henderson has any literary credentials at all.”

– Anonymous comment quoted, highlighted and presumably endorsed by Jason (“I’m a left-leaning luvvie”) Steger, The Age, 31 May 2014

On boyfriend’s insistence, watching the notorious Gerard Henderson/@Kate_McClymont Lateline segment. GH: What an odd, angry gnome of a man.

– Benjamin Law, via Twitter, Thursday 17 Apr 2014, 11:21 pm

Can’t believe I just spent my Thursday evening with a video recap of Gerard Henderson. I’m a f-cking moron.

– Benjamin Law, via Twitter, Thursday 17 Apr 2014, 11:23 pm

“[Gerard Henderson is an] unhinged crank”

– Mike Carlton, via Twitter, Saturday 29 March 2014, 4.34 pm

Complete stranger comes up to me: that Gerard Henderson’s a xxxxxx.

– Jonathan Green via Twitter, 8 February 2014