The difficulty with being a bullshit artist is that you have to be meticulous about maintaining your facade, lest you become entangled in the intricate web you yourself have spun. And what makes this task doubly difficult is the fact that chronic bullshitters inevitably begin believing their own propaganda, which makes spotting the little chinks in their story all the more tricky.

It takes something of an evil genius to make a successful career of bullshit artistry; dimwits need not apply. Which is where Leon Bertrand came unstuck last week.

Self-styled superlawyer Bertrand, whose chubby little fingerprints were all over the recent “George Athanasi” debacle, thinks himself an exemplar of the Rational Right; by his own account, a “courageous” conservative with nothing to hide:

[…]
See, right-wingers tend to post under their own names because they are not afraid of the rest of the world knowing their views. It’s probably because our views are generally respected, so we don’t feel there’s anything to hide.
Either that or we are more courageous.
[…]

So imagine my delight last week when I discovered, in the “George Athanasi” comment thread on Bankruptus Maximus’ blog of shame, the following:

Evidently, Leon — silly sausage that he is — posted a sockpuppet comment but forgot to remove his URL from the homepage field. And it’s lucky I took a screen grab of the comment, because if you pay the thread a visit now, you’ll notice that Slandy has kindly removed the homepage from his adorable little sidekick’s comment.

One can’t help but wonder what this courageous conservative hypocrite has to hide.

PS: You’ll also notice, in the same comment thread, that Bertrand has now resumed posting under the name Leon — most likely due to an email I sent him yesterday alerting him to his embarrassing blunder. In that email, I asked him to explain what he had to hide. As yet, I’ve received no response.

PPS: Hilariously, Landeryou isn’t buying my denial that my name is George. Neither is Bertrand, who ingeniously asked me to provide proof that I’m not George. It’s a good thing I have my wits about me this morning: the crafty devil almost tricked me into revealing who I really am!

The Australian blogosphere’s most unctuous bottom-feeder, Andrew Landeryou, has proved once and for all the maxim “if you sleep with imbeciles, you’ll get dribbled on”.

Acting on a tip-off from Queensland’s most pernicious™ semi-literate blogger, Iain Hall, Landeryou last week “outed” me as one George Athanasi.

Partners in grime: blogging superheroes Rapunzhall and Bankruptus Maximus

The revelation raises several questions about blogging ethics. Leaving those aside, however, the most important question it raises is this: who is George Athanasi? Because it sure as hell ain’t me.

Several weeks ago I decided to test Iain Hall’s oft-repeated claim that he’s not a malicious net-stalker by setting him up. I sent him an email from my Ant Rogenous Gmail account, but changed my name to another fictitious one: George Athanasi.

The premise of my plan was that any decent, ethical person would ignore the name at the top of the screen and content himself with responding to the body of the email. If Hall did this, it would go some way to demonstrating that he is indeed the unassuming “respected conservative commentator” he has claimed; if, however, he chose to focus primarily on my “identity” and threaten to reveal it, it would provide conclusive proof of what most people already suspected: he is full of shit.

Predictably, Hall couldn’t resist the urge to go after “George”. His response began:

George
Thank you for sending me an email and is that really your name?
[…]

The fish was nibbling at the bait; it was time to set the hook. I changed my name back to Ant Rogenous and replied:

Never mind what my name is, Iain.
[…]

Hall’s response came quickly:

George
That must be your name as you have now very hastily changed the name that appears to recipients of emails from this account.
Would you care to offer an argument that makes a case for my discretion in the matter of who you actually are?
[…]

Hook. Line. Sinker.

Two sets of correspondence ensued in which I played up my indignation, eventually making a ludicrous counter-threat that Hall predictably construed as blackmail (more on this later).

Incredibly, Hall resisted the urge to reveal George’s identity outright, publishing instead a password-protected post at his ScroteWatch blog, where he merely reproduced our correspondence alongside my photograph and fake name. The password, imaginatively enough, is “George”.

Despite Hall’s claim that “compassion stayed his hand” in deciding not to out me, he clearly shared the information of my “identity” with at least two other people: fellow wingnuts Leon Bertrand and Andrew Landeryou. The former turned up in the comment thread of the ScroteWatch post, obviously having been given the password by Hall; the latter, of course, revealed all about George on his own blog, naming “conservative Queensland blog patriot Iain Hall” as his source.

Landeryou’s post is ridiculous, even by his usually embarrassing standards. In addition to beating up the non-existent story and quoting an obviously satirical, pun-laden biographical note about Ant Rogenous from Meet the GrodsTeam, he tracked down two real people by the name of George Athanasi and published their addresses.

He owes both of these men a public apology.

As a part of his beat-up, Landeryou also wrote the following about my “blackmail” attempt on Hall:

Legal insiders tell the OC that the threat made by George Athanasi is almost certainly a breach of s.87 of the Victorian Crimes Act, which sets out the offence of blackmail and prescribes a maximum sentence of fifteen years imprisonment for offenders.

So, what was the threat? Here’s what I wrote (since Landeryou conveniently didn’t quote it, preferring instead to make a vague reference to “software privacy (sic)”):

Hi Iain
I trust that your copy of Photoshop is a registered and legally purchased version, as software piracy is a very serious offence. It’d be a terrible shame if you’d obtained the software illegally and someone from Adobe received a tip-off and began asking you some difficult questions.
The easiest way around this tricky situation you might find yourself in is to delete the “Who is Ant Rogenous” post from Scrotewatch and undertake never to refer to me as George again — publicly or privately.
[…]

It’s clearly a preposterous threat, but “blackmail”? Hardly. The section of the Victorian Crimes Act to which Landeryou links hoses down that shrill claim itself:

… a demand with menaces (”blackmail”) is unwarranted unless the person making it does so in the belief-
(a)  that he has reasonable grounds for making the demand; and
(b)  that the use of the menaces is proper means of reinforcing the demand.

Since Hall was threatening to reveal, without my consent, an identity he’d gleaned from my private correspondence, any claim that my threat constitutes blackmail is laughable.

Landeryou’s “legal insiders” seem to be as daft as his source for the information about “George”. But just who are these legal heavyweights to whom he defers? The GrodsInvestigationUnit has narrowed the suspects down to two:

1. The customer-service professional at Brunswick KFC who once patiently explained why Landeryou could not legally use eight two-for-one Colonel Burger vouchers in a single transaction. It is believed that Landeryou was so impressed, he immediately entrusted this 16-year-old with his legal counsel.
2. Self-proclaimed superlawyer Leon Bertrand (pictured below).

“Goo-gah-brrrrrrrr. The prosecution rests”

So, what have the events of the past couple of weeks taught us?

First, Iain Hall is a malicious, unethical net-stalker who, in the absence of an ability to debate intelligently or in good faith, goes after the personal lives of his political opponents, and will swallow the most tenuous bit of bait — which any sane person would recognise immediately for a hoax — if he fancies it’ll give him some leverage. Brigid Gread demonstrated this some time ago with her (admittedly far more complex) sting. Already once bitten, Hall showed that he’s not intelligent enough to be twice shy.

Second, Andrew Landeryou is a miserable, odious peddler of bullshit whose inability to conduct his own research or even rely on that of credible sources gives a good insight into why his business ventures were doomed to abject failure.

In short, we’ve learned nothing we didn’t already know.

People who reside in several safe-houses
to avoid creditors shouldn’t thrown stones

Game off.

PS: Elsewhere, I note that Landeryou is threatening to reveal the identity of another blogger, Chief Bastard (CB) of Bastards Inc. Despite the fact that CB is a malicious, contemptible turd himself, I don’t condone what Landeryou claims he’s about to do. Hopefully “George Athanasi” has taught him to keep it in his pants — or, at the very least, get his facts straight if he’s intent on waving it around.

Much has been made recently of the website Wikiscanner which allows users to track the Wikipedia edits made by an IP address or range. Australian newspapers this week went nuts over the fact that government employees altered a number of Wikipedia articles, conveniently ignoring the edits made by their own staff.

After a few days of exhaustive research GrodsCorp can reveal the following controversial Wikipedia article edits that have been made by prominent bloggers:

Andrew Bolt
- The Greens (”eat the fetuses they have forcibly aborted from mothers at 26 weeks gestation. Hat tip: Tim Blair“)
- Climate change (”the dinosaurs died out and they didn’t drive cars! Hat tip: Tim Blair)
- David Duchovny (”dude is seriously hott”)

Timmeh Blair
- The Greens (”eat the fetuses they have forcibly aborted from mothers at 26 weeks gestation. Hat tip: Andrew Bolt“)
- Climate change (”the dinosaurs died out and they didn’t drive cars! Hat tip: Andrew Bolt)

MK
- Homosexuality (”something much more meaningful than just a beautiful lifestyle choice”)
- Guns (”for men with small penises”)

Jeremy Sear
- Cats (”rock”)

Andrew Landeryou
- Red Rooster (”pale KFC imitation”)

Mikey
- John Howard (”a truly great man”)

Iain; Hall
- McDonalds (changed article title to “Fine; Scotish; Restuaront”)
- English language (”constentley; Evolveing”)
- Islam (”the one Tru caling;”)

John Surname
- Emo (”the one true calling”)

Have you found any edits made by bloggers that you’d like to add to the list? Leave ‘em in comments.

Six months ago Andrew Landeryou’s readers were effusive in their praise for Lachlan Connor, Independent. Now Tim Blair’s readers have expressed their admiration for the brave independent Senate candidate:

“Mr. Connor would do well to look in a mirror.”
– rbj1

“Mr. Connor would do well to look in a mirror.
He does and is mystified that he sees nothing.”
– El Cid

“That Cocklane Loner chap looks constipated in all of his photos”
– egg_

“hasn’t he got a good psycho visage? ever so slightly pointy head too”
– KK

“Checked out his campaign manager?”
– egg_

Hello to all the righties who read this blog. I don’t know how many of you there are, and frankly, I don’t want to know.

But maybe I’m a bit harsh sometimes. I feel that after my “truths of the left” revelation, I should do another post to help you out. You need all the help you can get. Look at you. Are you licking the oil out of a sardine tin as you read this? Yes? Well, then listen up.

Many of you probably read right-wing blogs (like Bolt, Blair, AWH, RWDB, and Landeryou) and ask yourselves “How can I write a blog like that? And just why does this tin keep cutting my tounge?”. Well, I am here to answer one of those questions. The blog one. The tin one you’ll have to answer on your own.

Using examples from some of Australia’s most popular right-wing blogs, I intend to demonstrate how to write a self-serving, dishonest post with lots of blaming, leftie bashing, context changing and quote misuse.

1. Blame the left

For God’s sake, blame everything on the left. Right-wing bloggers blame everything on the left. From the War going badly, to David Hick’s lengthy incarceration, nothing is their fault. The idea that the left might have always been right on these issues is a scary one, so they merely turn to blaming when the heat is on.

2. Dishonesty

When quoting make sure you take it out of context entirely. Very rarely do the readers of Tim Blair actually click on the link and read the entire articles for themselves.
For example:

Fairfax blogger (and pal) Jack Marx:

“I think I’m losing my patience with the stupid … I’ve worked at some of the most allegedly foolish periodicals in the nation - The Truth, Ralph, The Picture - but it’s only at Fairfax that I’ve received such stupid correspondence from readers.”

There Blair ended the post, without even commenting on it, allowing for the false insinuation that Jack Marx thought Fairfax readers were of low intelligence. Had they clicked on the link themselves, they would have found Marx’s follow-on:

“I don’t think one can assume from this that the Fairfax readership is dim, but simply that it has a longer reach than the others.”

Bolt and Blair are especially notorious for this kind of dishonesty. When you are a true right-wing blogger, you will think nothing of twisting comments, quotes and contexts to create your own truths. Both of them are so convinced they are right, that they think nothing of this kind of behaviour as long as their original intention gets through - in Blair’s case, that Fairfax readers are stupid. Right-wing blog readers don’t question this kind of blogging as they want to believe it.

Another good example is a recent post on global warming by Bolt:

More than two dozen demonstrators braved cold, wet weather Saturday in Reno to attend a rally designed to draw attention to global warming.

You’d have to be puffin’ muffins, cuddling cactus and an absolute dingleberry to believe that any downward change in the weather cancels out global warming. Bolt knows this, but still writes dishonest posts like this in the (very likely) chance that people will read this and believe it. Again, he is so convinced he is right that he is more than willing to trick people into his point of view through dishonest methods.

3. Hate The Age

Australia’s best daily, The Age, attracts much scorn from most right wing blogs. Why? Because it’s left-wing, and there is no comparable right-wing paper. The Herald Sun is a joke. The Age has superior news coverage, a fact reflected in the right-wing blogs linkage to their website. In the case of Andrew Landeryou, however, the agenda is slightly murkier.

You see, Landeryou’s company IQ (which eventually went broke) was contracted to deliver sports statistics to The Age. They didn’t deliver, and The Age went elsewhere. Subsequently, Landeryou spends his life trying to pick fights with Age writers, claiming it’s a “vile, leftist rag” when in reality, his beef lies with the fact they fired him and his company.

Does he disclose any of this? No.

Gerard Henderson claims that The Age should move to the centre. He’d love that, as it would leave no major left-wing daily in Australia. Like many on the right (AWH, I’m looking at you) he spends his time extolling the virtues of free-speech, meanwhile speaking out against anyone who doesn’t share his view, demanding they should change (MediaWatch, for example).

4. Make false accusations about “The Left”.

Make sure you make those with left wing views sound like a monster that is about to tear down the city, and ruin your life and the lives of everyone you care about. Don’t refer to them as people, refer to them as “The Left”. Example, claim the left are “hateful”.

According to good ol’ Jonny Ray:

Leftists are great haters and to cover up their own hatreds — of America, the rich, WASPS, the bourgeoisie and anyone who is happily doing well for themselves.

Not true, of course, as many lefties live in America, drive BMW’s, are white and hell, some of us even work (unlike a popular right-wing blogger).

Of course, the right only hate people like minorities, atheists, anyone of colour, and lefties which is okay, as evidenced in this regrettable post by one Tiberius on AWH:

“The filth of the treasonous left has been allowed to fester for too long, and it has now become so bad that the wound can no longer simply be drained of pus. The whole limb must be excised.”

Not hateful at all. Now, please notice that all comments on that post have been removed.

Free speech, anyone?

5. Groupthink

Think only the left groupthink? Wrong. Spend your time linking to other right-wing blogs that share your point of view (but don’t actually explain why they have that point of view, like Blair), and all your little anonymous righty friends will post vauge attacks on the left on your blog.

So anyway, I hope this has been a help to any wannabe right-wing bloggers out there. If you have anymore to add, don’t forget to in the comments.

__________

The Editor Updates (17 April): Andrew Landeryou has emailed Lachlan Connor who has, in turn, forwarded the message to me. It reads in part:

Whoever is telling you that Fairfax didn’t want my little company providing footy stats when we pulled the plug on them is pulling your chain.

The simple truth is that we walked away from the contract, forcing them to negotiate with the wolves of News Limited who were their only other source at the time. And from memory, they were rather ruthlessly screwed by them on it. Apparently the Fairfaxistas came back to us several times but by then we’d moved on from the whole very labour intensive and not particularly prospective activity to focus on other ultimately not particularly profitable activities.

In the few years IQ dealt with them, the provision of footy stats being a pretty small part of the business and my contempt for The Age being much the same then as it now is, I never actually met with anyone from Fairfax. So your “explanation” of my dislike of them is in fact utterly bullshit. As is your claim that I hadn’t “disclosed” the fact that IQ had done business with them. It’s no secret, mentioned on my blog and in at least one Age story I can recall.

The email threatened that if a correction wasn’t published then Lachlan “must surely know what happens next.” I don’t know for sure but I suspect it has something to do with photoshopping a photo of Lachlan Connor into a compromising image of a man and a sheep. You know, the standard kind of thing that goes on over at Landeryou’s website. Lachlan tells me he’s suffering in his jocks.

GrodsCorp has always given right of reply to those who are featured in blog posts and Landeryou has now been afforded the same opportunity as everybody else. As Landeryou himself is so fond of saying: “we report, you decide.”

Satirical blogger Andrew Landeryou has been having fun recently photoshopping Anonymous (Jeremy Sear) Lefty’s face into photos of brothels and strip clubs. Inspired, Lefty has issued a Green Screen Challenge whereby bloggers are invited to photoshop his face into ridiculous situations. The Editor never backs away from a challenge so GrodsCorp proudly presents:

And in the spirit of fairness, here’s something I prepared earlier:

UPDATE: While we’re in the photoshop mood I couldn’t help but whip this up when I discovered that GrodsCorp’s favourite try-hard blogger has been into the thesaurus again and now calls himself…

Iain Hall; heterodox man
(stray semi-colon included)

The violent G20 protests in Melbourne this weekend have drawn vehement criticism from all corners of Australian society and I cannot strongly enough add my voice to that criticism. The mindless and aggressive morons whose underdeveloped intellect can only see the world in terms of “me” and “them” should be dealt with most vigorously by the police for their actions and intent. However, there has also been a predictable chorus from all of the usual suspects about the feral protesters being the face of “the left” and representative of everything that’s bad about “left” politics.

To understand how ridiculous this argument is we can extend the logic and postulate that neo-Nazi skinheads are the face of “the right”. I wonder how Tim, Andy and Andy feel about that?