Friday, September 08, 2006

COMMENT: Poor Andrew gets bolted

On Monday September 4 I joined Andrew Bolt for an on-air debate on Channel 9’s Today Show. I was in the Canberra WIN-9 studio while Bolt was presumably in the Melbourne studio.

During our on-air 'debate', Andrew had just been caught out as a possible supporter of radical clerics who oppose stem cell research and want to limit the availability of abortion to women who need it.

He then was forced to effectively contradict the Prime Minister's ringing endorsement of Muslims as 99% integrated.

The Channel 9 Today Show interview of Monday September 4 finished at around 7:20am.

He must have returned to his office desperately trying to google me searching for something.

And this is all he could find.

Contradiction? Not really. My criticism of John Howard is still valid. John Howard hand-picked a Reference Group stacked out with middle-aged migrant Muslim leaders. I didn't. Neither did the 99% he now praises.

As for Costello, notwithstanding his ignorance on what sharia actually means, he's made some insightful comments on the experience of kids in the "twilight zone" and on how converts can be sucked into radical nonsense due to lack of pastoral care by religious leaders.

Now poor Andrew Bolt faces the prospect of having 70% of his column content being rendered irrelevant by the effective combined messages of our pollies. I summarised those messages in my New Matilda column of 6 September as follows:
Ninety-nine per cent of Muslims are perfectly integrated, speak English, adopt Australian values, and treat women as badly as the rest of us do. Converts need pastoral support to understand Islam isn’t violent or terroristic.
Poor Andrew.