Most politicians – indeed, most people – would be alarmed and challenged by such a reaction to their behaviour. But not #Abbott. He delights in being in an iconoclastic and beleaguered minority. He is as incapable of caring about the ridicule of the majority as an ISIS terrorist is of caring about what others think of the morality of beheading innocent hostages. Indeed, such ridicule validates and affirms his sense of self-identity. Like Evelyn Waugh, even if Waugh could not conceive of this weird bunyip caricature of himself, Abbott delights in being out of step with the mores of his times. Nevertheless, he can still count. And he is rat-cunning enough to know his support is slipping where it counts — inside the party room. And so it has begun. After 15 months of the Abbott horror show, the MSM is now regularly criticising Abbott, and a kind of ritual has emerged since Christmas: 1. Abbott opens his mouth and says or does something (usually stupid); 2. sundry critical columns appear in the Fairfax press, the Guardian, or the ABC; 3. hundreds of negative comments pour forth in response. It is interesting that the online comments supporting Abbott have dropped right off in recent months. I would estimate the ratio of anti to pro Abbott comments in such (non-Murdoch) MSM forums is now about 9:1. And the comments that convey extreme distaste and contempt for the man make up an increasing proportion of that 90%. #ElectronicGraffiti Read More:
Posted on: Tue, 27 Jan 2015 09:29:13 +0000