On the phone to a mate just now. While we were talking I heard the sounds associated with gathering keys, wallet etc., closing the front door, and walking down the street. A couple of minutes later the background noise increased dramatically as he walked into a shop. Pausing mid-sentence, my friend said, “Excuse me, Scott,” before holding the phone away from his mouth and saying to somebody else, “Large latte, please.”

(Cross-posted at BoltWatch)

Andrew Bolt bemoans (does he ever do anything but moan?) the “information class talking to itself” while outsiders must “shout to get a word in”:

The number of journalists, for instance, who regularly switch from reporting politics to being politicians or their flunkeys is extraordinary. I speak, of course, as someone who twice worked for Labor himself.

But add to them the other members of this cultural elite – the teachers, preachers, ad men, lawyers, broadcasters, political flacks and other species of word-wranglers – and it’s clear politics is increasingly run by a same-same class of chatterers.

Take Victoria: Our last three premiers have been, in order, a teacher, an ad man, and another teacher. Our last five Opposition leaders include three former teachers and a real estate agent.

It’s the same story around the country. Of our eight state and territory leaders, three once were journalists, two lawyers, one a teacher and two union officials and political advisers. Words are their business.

Too much of this can be suffocating. We have now a collective of politicians whose colleagues and advisers sound just like them, and whose doings are reported by people who sound just like them, too.

Here is the Information Class talking to itself, while outsiders must shout to get in a word.

Bolt’s inference is that only dirty, latte-drinking lefties are members of the information class while poor righties like himself must shout to be heard.

Of course, Bolt has lots of trouble communicating his message to his adoring public. There’s his twice-weekly, full page column in Australia’s largest selling newspaper, his blog, regular appearances on ABC TV’s Insiders, and in the last few days he has featured on Seven’s Sunrise, 2UE with Alan Jones, radio 3AW and radio 6PR. There’s even a rumour — that Bolta is talking up — that he’s about to be given his own show by ABC TV.

Poor Andrew. It must be so hard to make oneself heard above all that lefty latte-sipping.