One of our favourite bloggers, Timmeh Blair, likes to make fun of typos and spelling mistakes on various websites and blogs. Anyone who is either left-wing (whether real or imagined) or not his employer come in for some serious scrutiny.

Well, tonight, Timmeh’s employer The Daily Telegraph came in for some serious scrutiny when, against my better judgement, I decided to have a peek at their website. What I saw, I knew I had to share.

Anyone silly enough to bother with Timmeh Blair’s blog nowadays might have noticed this fatuous little dig at a recent post by Kim at Larvatus Prodeo.

Let’s contrast that with the overwhelmingly lovely, heartwarming and not-in-any-way-despicable behaviour of several of his good mate Andy’s BoltStrokers™ over here, commenting on the news that Gough Whitlam is in hospital. 

Pompous git will only be missed by the Labor nostalgics.
kevin of Armidale

Um, who cares? He was wasted space as a politician now he’s wasting space in a hospital bed. The sooner these overinflated egos are off the public nipple the better.
Craigresides of Newbridge

Nothing trivial I hope - this bastard ruined my Australia.
An Australia I lost a father and a grandfather to in trying to save it from external tyranny only to be betrayed from within by this…
Hell will be too good for him.
Lawrie of Sydney

May he suffer the long and painful death that he and his ilk have inflicted on Zimbabwe in supporting terrorism in Rhodesia.
Mournful of Brisbane

If it is terminal, it is 38 years too late to help any one.
Parlirama of Dural

 

Thank heavens for “conservatives” — politics would be a filthy arena without their shining example to guide us all.

Here are the notes that I typed up while watching last night. Jeeeeee-zus Christ that show is terrible, and Timmeh seemed to fit right in.

9:32 — Even the opening titles are underwhelming.

9:33 — Timmeh is a “climate change iconoclast” apparently.

9:34 — Timmeh bats off ridiculous question about baby bonus encouraging abuse. Fumbles lamely in doing so. Pining for his flying monkeys?

9:42 — Timmeh makes audience stop clapping long enough to laugh at one of his Canberra-bashing jokes. Tries rooly, rooly hard to keep a straight face and bask in his funniness.

9:47 — Just fell asleep for a moment. Why the fuck is Timmeh on this episode? It’s not exactly one of his pet areas of commentary.

9:49 — Timmeh has a pathetic dig at Belinda Neal before Bill Shorten totally pwns him by having a dig at his News Ltd. employment.

9:50 — Tony Jones cuts Timmeh off after he shamelessly plugs his newspaper. However, Timmeh has moral victory due to spending one whole minute talking without making any point whatsoever.

9:51 — Fucking audience applause!!!1!

9:52 — While Bill Shorten is talking, Timmeh resorts to primary school attention seeking tactics. The adults at the table ignore him.

9:55 — Timmeh is offered opportunity to make serious comment but he “handballs” directly to Greg Hunt instead. Probably wanted an opportunity to construct pithy, one line strawman argument with NOUN VERBED headline instead.

9:58 — Question on teh muzzies. Excellent fodder for Timmeh.

9:59 — Timmeh gives restrained and sensible response. Just wants to get to the greenroom mini bar.

10:05 — Timmeh offers one word answer (“no”) which makes him feel much more comfortable as it’s closer in size to his normal blog post output.

10:09 — Timmeh accuses Kevin Rudd of being more “happy clappy” religious than John Howard. What utter bollocks.

10:19 — Timmeh makes good point about green policy implementation negatively affecting party’s votes.

10:25 — Timmeh says scientists are not the same as science. Profound.

The GrodsTeam and GrodsReaders discussed the show live in another comment thread from here. And as for GrodsCorp’s Timmeh Blair challenge: FAIL. Timmeh receives the grand total of no dollars from my salary to spend on petrol in an effort to spite me.

Regular GrodsCorp reader and occasional GrodsCommenter under a number of screen names, Timmeh Blair, is tonight appearing as a panelist on ABC TV’s woeful Q&A. To mark the occasion I’ll put aside my distaste for the program long enough to liveblog it on a slight delay. (I’ve currently got no access to internet and TV simultaneously.) But in preparation for tonight’s show I’d like to launch a double-barrelled GrodsChallenge — one challenge for GrodsReaders and one challenge for Timmeh Blair.

GrodsReader challenge
Here is the short bio that Timmeh wrote for the Q&A website. I have highlighted three sections that I challenge you to rewrite.

Tim Blair

Tim Blair is a columnist and blogger with The Daily Telegraph, Australia’s second best-selling newspaper. He describes his columns, which have previously appeared in The Bulletin, The Australian, The Age, the Sydney Morning Herald, Time magazine and the Australian Financial Review, as [dealing calmly and rationally with the subject of climate change, on which Blair is a world-recognised non-expert.]
Blair recently celebrated World Environment Day by [driving from Sydney to Mackay, Queensland. Only 108 litres of fuel was consumed, a figure Blair himself describes as “pathetic”.]
Raised in Werribee, Victoria, Blair worked as a labourer for five years after dropping out of university. He began his journalism cadetship two decades ago at 23, working for the now-closed Truth newspaper in Melbourne.
Blair supports [the Collingwood Football Club]. He lives in Bondi Junction, Sydney.

Entries in comments. The best substitution will win a framed copy of Blair’s Law, autographed by the lawmaker himself.

Timmeh Blair challenge
Here’s a chance for Timmeh to make some cold, hard GrodsCash. I will personally send him a cheque for the following amounts if he says the following words on the telly tonight:

1) $20 if he says “GrodsCorp”.

2) $50 if he says “Fleshlight” in an obviously sexual context.

Thems the challenges, all. Who will rise to them?

It is with regret that I announce my decision to stop updating the Righty Groupthink Tracker. This is due to the drastic increase in clicking required to complete the task since Blair’s blog move to the Terrorgraph’s website. You see, prior to his move all I needed to do to monitor the groupthinking blogs of Blair and Bolt was to subject my eyes to them in my RSS reader, but the RSS feed of Blair’s new blog contains post summaries only. So to read Blair’s posts I now have to click through to the actual site and then click on the “read more” link at the end of each individual post. TOO MUCH CLICKY!

I apologise for my lack of dedication to the important task of pernicious groupthink monitoring but I take comfort from the fact that since October 2006 GrodsCorp has successfully exposed the extent of intellectual (sic) duplication between the two RWDBs.

AB luvs TB 4 eva

The Editor, John Surname, Ant Rogenous, Wah and Craig discuss:

* The budget — baby bonus, luxury car tax, Medicare etc.
* Victorian Liberal party shafting itself
* Tim Blair’s commercial blog move
* Justice Kirby vs. Alan Jones in the GrodsThink naked cagefight

** Because Jeremy Sear is using all of Australia’s bandwidth to play XBox online in regional Victoria use only the “Play in popup” link or the “Download” link. **

 

 GrodsThink 16 (13 May '08) [33:46m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

Subscribe:   

Blogger and Daily Telegraph opinion editor, Timmeh Blair, has struck a deal with his employer for the right to do officially what most bloggers do on the sly: blog on work time using work bandwidth. Blair this morning announced that he will be moving his extremely popular blogging activities from timblair.net to the Tele’s website.

This raises all sorts of questions about the pros and cons of such a transition from independent blogger with no real parameters for posts and comments to commercial media blogger bound by pesky rules about things like defamation and commercial interests. We’re planning on fully discussing these issues in tomorrow’s GrodsThink. (End shameless plug.)

But the moment I read Tim’s transfer news this morning I knew that the most interesting thing to watch would be the reaction of his winged monkey commenters who are acutely aware that their days of unmoderated freedom are over. Hilariously, they are bitching on the one hand about the moderation system at the new site which will surely prune 75% of their comments…

So we have to go back to a moderation system Tim?
– Ash_

held for moderator approval

Leave it to a dead tree publication with a website to kill the spontaneity of the threads, which are half the fun…
– Bruce Rheinstein

…but bitching on the other hand about losing the moderation provided by the infamous Andrea Harris, Administrator at the old site.

I miss Andrea already. Can’t you take her with you? Doesn’t seem right somehow.
– Mambo Bananapatch

So who will boot the morons and moonbats if not Andrea?
– Steve Skubinna

For the first time ever Blair’s winged monkeys are going to have to deal with — gasp! — alternative viewpoints without the safety net provided by Andrea’s overzealous use of the delete button. No wonder some are declaring Timmeh’s blogging days over.

Oh well - this is the end of an era and the end of free ranging comments and expression. If anyone wants an idea of what Tim’s new site will be like, just have a look at comments section on Andrew Bolt’s blog

No more free ranging fucking comments!

In fact I remember posting a couple of times to Australian newspaper blogs (not sure if it was the Australian or Bolt) but they did not appear. Either my pseudonym or comments (and they were clean) were unacceptable.

So it definitely will be no more fucking comments. And I dare say there will be no room for detective paco’s adventures. Sigh

Farewell Tim Blair’s Blog
– Wand

I feel like my favourite pub has closed.

Need to find a new one. Been looking at an interesting establishment down the road a bit.

Do you serve Aussie reds at your place Andrea?
– Pogria

But spare a thought for poor Andrea Harris, Administrator who now wields exactly zero power and exerts exactly zero influence over Blair and his ragtag bunch of defaming muppets, not to mention over the lefty minions of evil who dare oppose Timmeh’s thoughts. No wonder she’s left with no option but to beg people to visit her blog despite its complete lack of any content worth reading.

Hey guys, I have a website of my own. I even post to it from time to time. However, my posts aren’t all that interesting these days.
– Andrea Harris, Administrator

You don’t say.

My tiny kitchen has more cupboard space — and a pantry! — than the previous kitchen. So I’ve sacrificed some floor space; so what, it makes it that much easier to fill the cat’s water bowl.

The hot water stays hot for ages. In the previous place I was lucky if I’d get fifteen minutes of actual hot water in the shower with the super water-saver shower head I installed myself. Here I use the gusher that came with the apartment and I can stay in the shower as long as I want.

But thinking again about Blair’s decision to move blogs, it’s difficult to see how it could possibly be a good decision given that it will not significantly boost his stats and will likely cost a decent chunk of his current readership.

For two years Jeremy Sear has worked hard at BoltWatch to focus a magnifying glass over Andrew Bolt’s writing, but given that Andrew Bolt and Tim Blair so furiously groupthink it seemed only logical that their writing was watched in unison. So today Jeremy, along with GrodsCorp’s The Editor and Ant Rogenous, are pleasured to launch The Blair/Bolt Watch Project which has as its mission: “tackling the multiple idiocies of the Australian blogosphere’s most giant, useless forces.”

Go visit. Comment. Have a cup of tea.

Tim Blair’s winged monkeys commenters not group-thinking:

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

Read the rest of this entry »

RWDB and spotter-of-cancer-jokes-where-none exist, Tim Blair, has a tale to tell of our Maoist-dominated education system:

Niece Amy is now at a fancy private school, having followed family tradition by scoring (in my case, scamming) a scholarship. First challenge at the big new place: debating.
Topic: Should the Prime Minister have apologised to the stolen generation(s)?Amy’s team were (sic) assigned the negative case. They won.

I don’t have time to give Timbo advice on the use of singular and plural subjunctives, I’m too much in shock that those red flag-waving Phrygian cap-wearing Che-loving bastard teachers permitted debate about such a contentious topic - and not only that, the negative team won! What the hell is the world coming to? Surely indoctrination is the name of the game, not the development of skillz and tolerance of debate. And who was the freakin’ judge, Wilson Tuckey?

Some future debate topics for leftist teachers to prevent a recurrence of this ugly tolerance-of-views rubbish:

1. John Howard should be castrated with barbed wire, not disembowelled.
2. Is George W. Bush Satan or the Antichrist? Discuss.
3. Debating is counter-revolutionary dissent and you will be shot if you disagree. Do you agree?

If nothing else, the storm of RWDB indignation over Jeremy Sear’s parking ticket post has exposed the pecking order within the blog chain of righty groupthink.

	At the top of the chain is Timmeh Blair who sparked the groupthinking.
	Next in the chain is Andrew Bolt who, as Blair’s number one groupthinking partner, thunk along as usual with Blair.
	And at the bottom of the chain are various bottom feeding and illiterate bloggers around regional Australia who desperately seek Blair and Bolt’s attention by furiously groupthinking with them.

Sear was just feeding the chooks.

ps/- Despite the order of the groupthink food chain, the results were interesting when Bolt and Blair fought to the death in a naked cage fight.

The Editor, John Surname, Ant Rogenous, Jeremy Sear and Craig discuss:

* Brendan Nelson’s “vision” thing
* Mercy Ministries and Gloria Jeans
* Peter Garrett flip, flop and flapping
* Basil Brush is a racist bastard
* Andrew Bolt vs. Tim Blair in a naked GrodsThink cage fight to the death

** Because there’s still a blockage in the (inter)tubes use only the “Play in popup” link or the “Download” link. **

 

 GrodsThink 8 (18/3/08) [35:27m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

Subscribe:   

Ideological bantamweight Tim Blair has ridiculed youth minister Kate Ellis’ performance in Parliament today, and in doing so has linked to a completely unrelated photo of her in air-force kit. Go figure.

Anyway, in keeping with the tone of irrelevance, I have a question: who looks more ridiculous tarted up in battle fatigues — Kate Ellis…

… or Timmeh’s adorable little mate, Right Wing Commander Andrew Bolt?

How cute is this: Andrew Bolt has adopted two of Tim Blair’s hilarious misspellings — global warmening and Traceeeee Hutchison.

Heavens, I can’t even type those words without chuckling. Oh you, Timmeh!

GrodsCorp understands Bolt’s collaboration is part of a wider Blair experiment in the controversial discipline of Comedic Rovenomics, whereby feeble catchphrases are believed to be rendered increasingly humorous by years (and years) of repetition.