News from the weird

The Right’s response to Hager’s revelations about National and C/T has been (a) to try to pretend that all political parties engage in the sorts of practices with which C/T seem to be associated (they don’t), and (b) discredit Hager.

Far-right attack dog Fran O’Sullivan has a go this morning. I have to say that, like Ethical Martini, I had trouble following O’Sullivan’s line of “thought”. But here goes. After outlining an Australian television satire called, spookily (not!), The Hollowmen, and in which politics is run more like a corporation than a constitutional democracy, O’Sullivan argues that:

“… instead of examining whether New Zealand’s incumbent Prime Minister also employs such tactics, Hager trots out the line that National’s continued employment of Australian political strategy firm Crosby/Textor (just one of the consultants the party has hired) is proof positive that aspiring PM John Key is little more than a political puppet for “foreign” ventriloquists who feed him all his lines.”

Leaving aside the deliberately misleading summary of what concerns Hager and the rest of us — see right-wing counter-attack (a) above — O’Sullivan doesn’t produce any evidence that Helen Clark employs such tactics. She then switches to right-wing attack (b):

“On Planet Nicky, NZ political journalists are nothing more than ready dupes who unknowingly parrot the lines conjured up by the real power brokers who, ipso facto, must be irredeemably evil.”

More arrant tosh. Again, there is no evidence that this is how Hager views NZ political reporters. (With the exception perhaps of the likes of Colin Espiner, who features in Hager’s The Hollow Men for, well, parroting the lines conjured up, etc; and who is now cited on almost a daily basis by Farrar and other right-wing bloggers.) Ethical Martini goes so far as to suggest that, “It seems to me that Fran has perhaps not read Nicky’s piece in the SST.” He could be right.

Then there’s some stuff about Keating and Rudd, and Hager being thin-skinned. Impossible to follow, but it may be bad subbing that’s at fault. Another sudden unrelated shift in her argument and we have Brash’s letter to someone about the emails being stolen. It’s treated as gospel, but there is no evidence to support any of this. (See a pattern emerging?)

Then nasty insinuations about a policeman and finally we come to the (non) conclusion, “Maybe it’s time that Planet Nicky came down to earth and investigated the real constitutional issues.”

Weird. Someone tell O’Sullivan she needs a break.

O’Sullivan’s echo chamber (a.k.a. The Hive) gushed about “one of New Zealand’s very best political journalists writing [this] in the biggest newspaper.” True. And, after a similarly disjointed and incoherent ramble (though they claim not to be O’Sullivan), they say:

“Maybe the Police should be taking note. It is not too late to be absolved….We won’t be releasing the e-mail until 4 days before the election so be patient on this one, but it is a hum dinger!!”

There is no earlier reference to an email, so we cannot say for sure what they are talking about. Maybe they share the same subbie. Maybe they should join O’Sullivan on her holiday break.

Oh, and the post is headed “Where Did The E-mails Come From Pat (we mean Nicky)?” I guess Pat knows who he/she is. All very weird.

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Tags: Hager, National Party, NZ blogs