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!

Timmeh Blair’s principled take on the fudged Australian Grand Prix attendance figures:

The crowd count at the Grand Prix is always controversial. Does the event attract 400,000 paying customers, or just a measly 300,000?

So what if the event organisers have been lying to the public, rounding up the paid attendance figures by a not-in-any-way-preposterous 25 per cent? The Grand Prix is still a huge, well-attended event for Christ’s sake! With cars! Which are awesome! Vroom!

Obviously, we can expect Timmeh to be just as forgiving the next time a journo from his pet-hate club overcooks some global warming stats. Because he’d be a hypocrite otherwise, and no one would ever accuse him of something like that.

Andrew Bolt, pants fairly bulging with admiration, has posted an item about John Howard’s first major post-crucifixionelection speech, given today in Washington.

Howard, who you may remember as only the second Australian prime minister in history to be turfed out of his own seat during an election, has used his Irving Kristol Lecture for The American Enterprise Institute (a neo-conservative wankthink tank) to take what Bolt describes as a “well-deserved swipe” at the new Rudd government.

The Australian reports:

Mr Howard also made two key criticisms of the Rudd Government, which swept him from office in November last year, saying Australia should not withdraw its combat troops from Iraq and should not roll back his government’s industrial relations reforms.

“That will be a mistake. It will be the first time in 25 years that a major economic reform in Australia has been reversed,’’ he said. “In particular, bringing back the old unfair dismissal laws will stifle employment growth amongst small businesses.”

Bolt foams with indignation whenever Paul Keating points out the mistakes of the government that succeeded his. Worst of all, suggests Bolt, is that Keating’s comments insult the voters who saw fit to remove his government from office and hand Howard the mandate for his many controversial reforms.

You’d therefore expect the ever-reasonable and balanced Bolt to be equally critical of Howard’s petty self-indulgence, right? Well, you’d be wrong:

Howard may in time prove a more fearsome critic of Kevin Rudd than Brendan Nelson. For one, he’s sticking to his guns.

I’m beginning to think Andrew Bolt might be a bit of a hypocrite.