Racial Vilification

Simon Katich doesn’t deserve a reprimand. He deserves an award for restraint.

After falling foul of the thought police at Cricket Australia he was called up before that stuffy little outfit’s resident kangaroo court to explain his so-called “spray” against Michael Clarke. “Spray”, as it was dubbed in headlines, is a ludicrously overstated term for what Katich had said. All he said was that he doubted he would ever get a spot in the Test team under captain and selector Michael Clarke.

Katich, you will recall, grabbed Clarke by the neck in a dressing room dust-up in 2009, risking serious damage to Clarke’s latest haircut. His assessment of his chances of reclaiming a baggy green under Clarke was both accurate and unremarkable.

Continue reading "Simon Katich and the year of living silently" »

This is a difficult column to write. It involves a matter of principle which is important to me. It also involves a colleague whose work leaves me cold.

If this were a year 10 debate we would take the gentleman’s option of inserting the obligatory declaration from the French writer Voltaire, the tiredest quote in political philosophy, where we state that we disagree with what Andrew Bolt says but would defend to the death his right to say it, and everyone goes home feeling good about themselves.

I am not inclined to defend Andrew Bolt to the death. Not even close. His columns make me laugh in disbelief or fold up the paper in anger. I am sick of seeing Bolt being held up as if he were a company spokesman. He is no such thing.

Continue reading "Deeply irritating columnist versus seriously flawed law" »