An unfortunate misapplication of camel case in a National Times article strikes me as an excellent name for this blog – if I were a little more egomaniacal:
More abuse followed from others in the Twitterverse much along the same lines. One of the top tweets of the day was from JeremysEar who said “@JamesMassola is quite right; only journalists may discuss politics. Everyone else needs to have their job threatened.”
I’m not quite sure why that sarcastic remark qualifies as “abuse”, but, well, that’s not a bad title for a discussion site THAT IS ALL ABOUT ME AND THE STUFF WHAT I THINK – “Jeremy’s Ear”.
But I don’t think I could go through all the hassle of changing the URL again.
ELSEWHERE: Christian Kerr gets back at me in The Australian for running over his dog*:
“It’s also worth noting that the `blogosphere’ supposedly outraged is the small incestuous clique of self-identified lefties, with readerships composed mostly of themselves, who were more than happy to out other bloggers a few years ago with whom they disagreed.”
That last bit, for the uninitiated, is a reference to the modern dull and doctrinaire Crikey and its very own Adrian Mole, barrister-blogger Walter Jeremy Sear, and his role assisting The Sunday Age dissect the corpse of the spectacularly snarky site The Spin Start Here that offended sensibilities for years until it reached its logical conclusion and ripped itself apart. Sear was happy to help with an outing then.
The whole thing smacks of naivety and self-righteousness.
Of course, that’s not an accurate description of what happened – I wasn’t sorry to see that someone had outed the TSSH mob, but it wasn’t because I “disagreed” with them. It was because they’d been using that shield to out others. (And bully them fairly outrageously, as it happens.) Of course, Christian’s imputation of hypocrisy in that paragraph is fairly defamatory – “his role assisting”, “happy to help with an outing” indeed. This is the paragraph to which he must be referring:
Responding to the website, Mr Duncan and Ms Hamilton went to court for an interim intervention order against Bill Dennis, a blogger they suspected was responsible. The couple, who live in Eltham, alleged Mr Dennis was “stalking” them through the site.
To barrister Jeremy Sear, once a target for the Hack and Caz, such a complaint smacked of hypocrisy:
“They were particularly vile in the way they treated anybody who disagreed with them or they took a dislike to,” he says. “It’s almost funny that they’ve reacted so badly being ‘outed’, as this was something they regularly took part in with others.”
Mr Dennis was due to appear in the Heidelberg Magistrate’s Court next Tuesday to hear Mr Duncan give evidence against him. But it now appears that the pair have dropped their case.
“I think it’s probably a smart legal decision,” Mr Sear said. “To have the interim order made permanent they would have needed to give evidence and allowed themselves to be cross-examined. They would have been quizzed about their own blogging activities and therefore have to admit to being the Hack and Caz — or perjure themselves by denying it.”
Doesn’t really match Christian’s description, does it?
PS What the hell’s with the “Adrian Mole” crack? I don’t get it.
*I assume I must have unknowingly done something like that to motivate this particular effort.
Moved On 
Yeah, I was wondering about that – I assumed it was you and that maybe you’d decided to tweak your moniker a bit for the Twitterverse…
Jeremys Ear – hmmn how intimate – sounds like a good name for the adult version of your blog, only accessible between 9 and 5 M-F to Canberra IPs …bring on the fishnets, Mr Bean.
* The problem is you’re a lawyer that doesn’t have an evil smirk. Work on that and Kerr will be your buddy.
Here is a picture to practice with.
http://bit.ly/9jbdnv
Can everyone stop making me picture Jeremy in fishnets with an evil smirk? If I wanted to be with someone like that, I’d be living with Alexander Downer.
Wait wait, let’s just get one thing straight…your name is Walter?!
I’m not really familiar with Christian Kerr, so can’t speak to the specifics of the article. But for what its worth, in my experience journalists and politicans form one not-especially-large, highly incestuous clique; while frankly unavoidable in some ways, it is undoubtedly a big source of dysfunctionality within our democratic system. So for mainstream media to accuse anyone in the blogosphere of it is almost certainly the rankest of hypocrisy.
Journalists are no longer an elite class of opinion makers. They are upset at the end of their monopoly that has been brought about by new technology. The funny thing is that when ‘real’ journalists take to the alternative media they often behave badly and become what they criticise.
ooh oww, scyooz moi Mr Splatterbottom, if you are going to bandy such generalizations around so willy nilly, can you be more specific?
Kerr’s been around long enough to know the Blogosphere better than that – shame – the way he’s worded that bit about The Ear doesn’t seem straight forward & one could be mistaken for thinking he can’t tell the difference between harassment and fair comment by bloggers. Do you think he’s just a dufus?
DM I have long detected a derisory attitude from the MSM about bloggers. You know, comments by smug NYT journos suggesting that bloggers are just people sitting around in their pajamas.
I have also noticed that when self-absorbed MSM types such as Dipshit Deveney get anywhere near twitter they completely beclown themselves. You might also care to consider the blog-droppings of journos who take to blogging.
It is tempting to think that the medium influences the quality of the output, but there are many blogs that produce serious high quality stories without the help of professional journalists and news organisations.
I was being silly Splatterbottom, it was meant to make you giggle.
“You might also care to consider the blog-droppings of journos who take to blogging. ” You need to tread carefully on that one.
I think a lot of good journos know that there are a lot of great bloggers but you’d need access to the musings of more journos than just the sensationalist ones in order to see that.
Re the droppings, there’s good and bad everywhere, and superiority complexes, like the one you note from NYT. Journos can be a bit elitist – even towards each other, between media outlets, between genres, between MSM and independent media – maybe they’re just a bit full of themselves because they’re the appointed mouthpieces of the nation, but you don’t really get that in other countries. For what it’s worth, I felt there could have been much more scrutiny of all political events from around mid-June right up to the election, but it’s all about commercial interests these days and the tabloids scream out over respectable hard-working media outlets.
But so far as important news – on the ground – is concerned, usually commentators as such miss the boat unless they aren’t isolated from real life and the community. Bloggers can be commentators often, but they usually aren’t as disconnected. There’s an old school of thought that journos need to be neutral but some end up merely isolated and none of us, bloggers or journos alike, can really be neutral.
DM “You need to tread carefully on that one.”
No need to worry. Being an immoderate centrist I see fault on all sides.
As to new vs traditional sources of information, people will be able to sift the good from the bad, and those that can’t were always going to be fooled anyway.
Keri, how did the smirk and fishnets thing go? Where you able to get him to put on suspenders? Personally, I find pantyhose both thrilling and liberating.
You’re not a centrist. We know it. You know it.
No dice, SB. Thankfully, or I may never sleep again.