the sound of silence

Andrew Bolt
amongst other things, a Holocaust Denier

Waleed Aly

Currently, Andrew Bolt* is criticising Waleed Aly , not for defending Islam but for failing to hold Islam responsible for every crime ever carried out in the name of Allah. This is about as logical as blaming the Pope for the Snake Handling traditions of Appalachian Pentecostals.

No disrespect intended, but Ruby’s comment at 20-22 seconds in cracks me up every time I hear it:

Like Christians, Muslims are a diverse bunch. How can we turn to one single person/group in Australia for for a view that will be representative of the whole Muslim community? Why should we expect we can?

If an issue directly affects one branch of Christianity, e.g. the Catholic Church, the media traditionally go to a spokesperson for that Church for comments, thus providing consumers with balanced reporting. When George Pell, amongst others, said that talk of paedophiles in the Catholic church was nonsense, the theory is we had a better chance of assessing the truth because he had been asked to comment. [Rather than bore you with details, I’ll leave you to add to the list of ir-responsible denominations] – but I digress:

What I’m simply trying to say is that it is a very long time since I read/heard a line like “The Hun contacted a spokesperson for the Islamic community, but he/she declined to comment”.

In truth, most journalists do turn to Waleed Aly for a moderate Islamic viewpoint – but usually only when a story relates to terrorism.

Rita Panahi is a Hun columnist, slightly to the left of Andrew Bolt. Like Bolt, she happily resorts to the “silence is deafening” mantra when something arouses her indignation.

She opines:

“THE violent student protests around the country have highlighted not just the entitled mentality of those protesting but also the duplicitous hypocrisy of the feminist movement.”… […blah blah blah deafening…]

Excuse me, but did I miss something? Feminists are responsible for this?
Personally, I think a lot of protestors underestimate [or are ignorant of] the power of non-violent non-cooperation, and their behaviour simply proves they are downright rude arseholes. But their behaviour does not automatically make them feminists.

As for the sound of silence generally, the only way I’ve ever been able to get anything published in the Hun is to pay for a funeral notice – and this is way more consultation than I get from any other branches of the media. 
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*For more juicy detail of the latest Bolt/Aly clash, see Raf Epstein’s reply

http://www.heraldsun.com.au/news/opinion/we-cannot-afford-to-confuse-ridiculous-with-reasonable/story-fni0ffsx-1226923183795