Tim Blair’s winged monkeys
Timmeh Blair’s rabid commenters are the stuff of legend all over the blogosphere. Whenever Blair writes one of his famous one-line take-downs of another blogger, all anyone has to say is “winged monkeys at 12 o’clock” and we all know what they mean: that Blair’s pet vultures will spend the next twelve hours descending on the linked site to personally attack the subject of Blair’s post with an aggression rarely seen — even on the intertubes — before disappearing once more into the night.

A Tim Blair commenter in captivity
This morning Tim Blair woke up, drank his morning International Roast, and decided to have a crack at Terry Wright of The Australian Heroin Diaries.
Terry writes a very personal blog about his battle with heroin addiction. He also writes about the politics that surround drugs policy in this country and internationally. We make no comment here about the politics, nor of Terry himself; rather, this post is to highlight the way that Blair’s readers, and Blair himself, operate.
First let’s take a look at the post.
JUST SAY MOO
If you prefer your milk laced with opiates, you may wish to visit the “Dairy of an Australian Heroin Addict”.
Pretty standard Blair fare: 20 words with all the meaning implied in the spaces between. Terry is addicted to heroin > He made a spelling error > Terry is a no-good junkie who is a worthy recipient of every ounce of scorn you’re all about to pour on him — particularly when you arrive at his site and discover he’s also (cue intake of breath) a lefty.
Fly, monkeys! Fly!

One of Tim Blair’s commenters reaches out to touch Timmeh’s stick
Winged monkey Amos was the first to divine the higher meaning of Tim’s post, and so excited was he that he cross-posted the following at Blair’s and Terry’s blogs:
[…]
There’s a reason Tim Blair linked to you, you’re a case study in why everything you believe in leads to dysfunction and misery. Good Lord your life is hell, even I felt depressed reading some of your entries, and what I find amazing, and not a little ironic, is that from a position of complete failure, you can lecture “God-fearing, right wing Australia” on everything under the sun, as if you aren’t an utter, utter fuckup and we should all respect YOUR OPINION.
Incredible.
When it was pointed out that his reading of Blair’s post seemed more than a little presumptuous, Amos stood by his gormless “assessment” of a man he knows nothing about, adding:
Terry Wright is a classic case of Narcissistic Fuckup Disorder.
Terry, showing admirable restraint under this manner of personal attack, responded to Amos’ first comment at his own blog, accepting full responsibility for his drug addiction and explaining that it began in the wake of his wife’s death. Terry also disclosed a long-term mental illness.
Amos’ reply at Terry’s blog begins with:
Ah, the ever-collectible victim card, classic offensive option A of the passive aggressive lefty…
and ends with a declaration that he is a proud member of “Howard’s Australia”. As if the odious, sanctimonious creep had to spell that out to anyone reading.
Back at Blairville, when alerted to Terry’s comment about his wife’s death and his late diagnosis of bi-polar disorder, Amos summarily dismissed the charge that he was being a bully, with a terse:
… I’ve said my piece and I’ll waste no more time on Terry the junkie…
In predictable winged-monkey style, the Blairville commenters (who would be appalled if someone made light of, say, someone else’s brush with cancer) seized on the only part of Terry’s comment that provided the opportunity for a lower blow than a shot at his addiction:
“I wrongly turned to alcohol and drugs when I woke up beside my dead wife one morning.”
Oh poor fucking Terry.[…]
Pogria (quoted above) then contrasted Terry’s ordeal with that of Stuart Diver, who lay trapped under building debris for an incredible 65 hours next to his wife’s corpse. Since Diver’s grief didn’t lead him down the regrettable path of drink and drugs, Pogria implies that it totally negates Terry’s experience — and, of course, justifies his scorn and ridicule at the hands of the morally upright Blairites. Obviously.
Picking up on Pogria’s appalling sentiment, administrator par excréments Andrea Harris chimed in with a line of such brazen disingenuousness as would embarrass even Andrew Bolt:
“I wrongly turned to alcohol and drugs when I woke up beside my dead wife one morning.”
Wow, immediately, like he had it right there on the nightstand? You know, instead of drinking a glass of water or something, he immediately started injecting…
[…]
Yes, fuckwit: that’s precisely what Terry meant. With “administrative” judgement like this, it’s little wonder Blair’s blog is populated by the nastiest, most ignorant and least imaginative dregs of the blogosphere — and that they’re permitted to publish the kind hideous bullshit they did today.
Worst of all, however, is that permission to post this rubbish is the least of the site’s problems. Tim Blair’s “read between the lines then go forth and attack” style of blogging positively encourages this behaviour.
Think that’s unreasonable? Consider this: Blair had ample opportunity today to step in and hose down his commenters before they got too excited. Early on, when it was suggested that Amos had read a little too much into Blair’s post and he nonetheless proceeded to insult Terry further, a perfect opportunity was presented to Blair to step in and shut down what any fool could see the thread was about to degenerate into.
Did he intervene? Did he fuck.
Eventually, Timmeh posted an update to his “Just Say Moo” item:
Fixed! The Dairy is now a standard old narcotics Diary.
And with that, the Australian blogosphere’s second-most dishonest bullyboy had once again leant his tacit approval to puerile behaviour he’d instigated, which is completely and utterly beneath contempt.

A Tim Blair commenter smiles, safe in the knowledge that it has once again pleased its master
(In a GrodsCorp first this post was jointly written by The Editor and Ant Rogenous. They will attend a movie together next week, followed by a romantic dinner the week after. The relationship will be consummated later that night after spag bol, two six-packs of beer, a bottle of red, half a bottle of Scotch, and a Rohypnol.)
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