Guest post by Alec Rawls
Richard “bonehead” Glover, radio talker and 20 year columnist for the Sydney Morning Herald, dares to be outrageously conventional:
Surely it’s time for climate-change deniers to have their opinions forcibly tattooed on their bodies.
There is no actual scientific debate you see. There are just left-wingers and right-wingers following their different natures. “People on the left instinctively believe in communal action,” says Glover, so they were instinctively receptive when the science showed communal action to be necessary.
Conservatives in contrast are by nature selfish, or “bloody minded” as Glover puts it (alluding, one presumes, to Tennyson’s “nature red in tooth and claw”). Consequently, conservatives instinctively disbelieve any scientific analysis that demands anything of them.
Glover means no offense of course. Conservatives can’t help their amoral natures. But what if they had no way to escape recrimination from the grandchildren whose interests they refuse to account? That’s the ticket. Brand ’em with their denial of science. Unable to escape accountability, they will be forced to consider the consequences of their actions.
Don’t you lesser beings get it? Glover’s not just a semi-sincere Nazi wanna-be: he’s a brilliant social scientist! By this simple mechanism, the bloody-mindedness of those nasty conservatives could be overcome!
Just one problem with Glover’s theory. Us “deniers” have been tattooing our names all over the internet for years, and funny thing, we want the next generation to know how we have been fighting for them:
“Deniers” care about their children?
“But how can this be?” The Grinch pondered and scratched. “If they cared for their tots, wouldn’t they act just like me, and put all their faith in the IPCC?”
Glover’s brain, say the Aussies, grew three sizes that day. “Crikey,” it dawned, “they must mean what they say!”
They’ve looked at the science. They know it’s a crock. That carbon was framed, and energy is the rock.
The moral of the story?
A tattooed blunder, in pixels or ink, will often be a curse. Take it far enough to impoverish the world, and I’ve got just one more verse:
New York Representative Anthony Weiner insists that opposition to CO2 cap-and-trade supports terrorism by sending more money to terror-supporting oil states. At the same time, he has voted down-the-line against the development of domestic fossil resources. Truly the lowest of the low, so I tattooed him. Forcibly.
See Mr. Glover? I’m not completely unsympathetic.
Will Glover have me on his radio show? I’m sending him a request. As you might guess, his analysis is completely fact-free. Does he even know that there is a solar theory of 20th century warming, or the implications for climate if this theory is correct, now that the sun has dropped into a quiet cycle? I’d like to put him some information, and he sounds game enough. We’ll see.
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Rosie Young says:
June 10, 2011 at 10:32 am
Richard Glover’s response:
http://www.smh.com.au/opinion/society-and-culture/a-climate-change-wave-of-hate-20110609-1ftix.html
We can all relax now. It seems that once again we have all proved our status as ignorant redneck rubes by being incapable of grasping the sophisticated sense of humor with which the international alarmist community is so abundantly blessed. You know those ribticklers about exploding children and such that just zip by over our skulls full of mush. Heck, down under even the Foster’s marinated goodoldboys knew that all that smack about tattooing and staking out in the surf for climate skeptics was just a litlle harmless joshing. And after all he was just as hard on the ecoloons on the other side. No, really he was.
Unfortunately Mr. Glover suffers from the same fault he sees in his American readers. I can almost guarantee him that all those suggestions for genital mutilation, anal rape, and 9mm lobotomies that he received in his Emails were offered in the same spirit as his oh so witty column. It’s all just good fun. No, really it is.
SARC/off
He really does not get it… so a follow up email has been sent:
It seems that you simply do not get it Richard. You posted to the internet which, I should explain apparently, is open to all to read outside of communist states that filter certain sites. Consequently when you single out a particular group and then insult them by calling them deniers (a clear association with the Nazi Holocaust), suggest they should be forcibly tattooed (another association with said Holocaust) and then tied to posts in the ocean and left to drown… what did you expect to happen? Did you think you would get a bunch of adoring fan mail with hugs and kisses?
When you spew hate speech on the internet people justifiably get miffed. Your latest piece claiming this represented misunderstood humour is not a mea culpa but simply an attack on those who wrongly threatened you in emails. I in no way support such threats, but neither can hate speech such as yours be supported in the media. Your weak attempt at a conditional apology in the last line is noted and found wanting.
Given your reticence, and the paper’s, to acknowledge this gross misjudgement, I shall make a point of elevating the original complaint to the appropriate authorities. I shall also make a point of directing your advertisers to this article, particularly those that may have Jewish connections and/or interests. I am sure they will find your piece as entertaining as others already have.
Should you think of removing the article, please be aware that all web pages are cached… in the language of the internet this was an epic fail.
Sincerely,
Mike Wilson
I have written to the editor of the Sydney Morning Herald as follows:
Dear Sir,
When Richard Glover suggests, in an newspaper given Australia-wide circulation and a website seen around the world, that climate change sceptics should be forcibly tattooed, he is apparently merely being ‘funny’. But when sceptics respond with private messages outlining what they would like to do to Mr Glover, they are sending ‘hate mail’, How about dropping the double standards and conceding that Glover’s first article was actually a vicious and unprovoked attack, designed to stir up hatred against a group of people whose only crime is asking for evidence rather than mere assertions?
What would have been the result, do you think, if such a vile suggestion had been directed in a national newspaper against, say, Muslims, Christians or One Nation voters?
His address is editor@smh.com.au
Oh Dear,
You’re all getting far to excited, Richard is very harmless and carries on like this on every issue to draw comment on his afternoon drive time radio show, most of it is satirised. His radio show is safe for kids and grandmas too listen and is a mix of fun and news. He is always very light hearted and hates to cause offence, the likely trigger for his article is listeners calling in, expressing frustration.
If you grew up in Sydney, you would not be offended by this at all, as your knowledge of the author would suffice to explain it.
Still form what i see above, I cant believe the posters here cant see it is ribbing the left and right mercilessly. I simply cant believe the comment above: “I find Glover’s invocation of soviet-aligned communism sympathies among the left most apposite to the current situation”. I am sure Richard will feel entirely undeserving of analysis. Chill out
He does not have the fortitude and courage to defened himself and properly explain his, so called, humour, hiding behind his employer. Actions have consequences Mr Glover, this should be a very expensive lesson for you to have learnt.
The skeptics here have just had their abuse exposed. Disgusting and counter productive behavior .
http://m.smh.com.au/opinion/society-and-culture/a-climate-change-wave-of-hate-20110609-1ftix.html
Barry,
Glover’s article was so close to the way the alarmist crowd thinks that he brought it on himself by not noting somewhere that it was satire.
Now his feelings are hurt. I suggest that Mr Glover fill out and submit this form.
Glover’s lines are a very good illustration of the mindset of the activist left on almost any subject, they cannot comprehend opposition – especially true individualists, they even position themselves in the left-right ruts.
BTW “D Matteson”, your circle analogy is as flawed as left-right, the reason communists may have cheered Nazis is they are cousins – Nazi standing for National Socialism.
“Cassie King” – interesting point about leftists being amoral at heart.
As for leftist libertarians, that’s a bizarre notion, unless the concept is what is called “anarchist” in the pjerorative sense.
Someone mentionned Facism – time to reread “The Ominous Parallels – Nazism and Contemporary America”, by Leonard Peikoff.
As for loose-cannon Ann Coulter, she certainly has a “way with words”, and correctly identifies the mob nature of “Modern Liberals”.
At 12:10 PM on 12 June, Keith Sketchley writes:
Neither the “right-left” spectrum nor the “circle analogy” have been valid in mapping the political landscape for some many, many years. With all due deference to Dr. Jerry Pournelle’s effort at a two-dimensional depiction of the political axes (see here for Dr. Pournelle’s characterization thereof), I prefer the late David Nolan‘s representation, which has the benefit of proving extremely robust as well as more definitively delineating real political commonalities and hostilities.
See the “World’s Smallest Political Quiz” long promoted by the libertarian group Advocates for Self-Government.
When you get down to it, right-wing authoritarians are focused more sharply on constraining “personal issues” – matters of individual preference which tend not so much to impact upon interactions in the division-of-labor economy – while left-wing tyrants put their emphasis on denying the individual human being’s rights to truck and barter in productive purposeful activities which redound to material benefit. The so-called “economic” freedoms.
This does not mean, of course, that right-wing thugs don’t want to engage the engines of “Rotarian socialism,” or that left-wing pillaging “spread the wealth around” ACORN/SEIU goons don’t want “Fairness Doctrine” violation of their opponents’ freedom of speech.
It is inadequate simply to say “a pox on both their houses,” of course. What we’re looking at with regard to the “Red” Faction of the great Boot On Your Neck Party permanent institutional incumbency is a truly deadly dangerous force in our polity. The right-wing fascisti are simply more comparable to cholera (which can kill you) than to the metastatic bowel cancer of the left-wing catastrophically Keynesian “Blue” fascist conspiracy – which will kill you.
Glover entered the ring, took a swing, and now is crying because people swing back.
Put on your big boy pants, Glover. Also, if you want “civilized discourse,” you might want to open with something other than tattooing your opponents so you can easily identify them for abuse later.
Besides, journalists lie so much, I’m not sure I trust that the “hate mail” is entirely credible.
What a lot of biased misrepresentation you have here in your original post and in the comments.
Richard Glover is a humorist, and you didn’t ‘get’ the humour (which obvious to Australians in the second sentence ‘I’m a reasonable man’).
You misread and misrepresented his piece. And as a result he got 2,400 hate emails, 5% of which threatened violence, mostly from Americans. ‘True individualists’ ?? Not what I would call them. I’d call them narrow minded aggressive bigots.
If you want someone to hate, make it worth your while and choose a bigger target — someone who does REALLY bad stuff, not a humorist on the other side of the world.
Better still, get over the hate stuff. It doesn’t help anyone.
Here here Gillian.
I find it hard to believe that such an incredible reaction has been made by people who appear to want to be taken seriously. Scary to think that a website that also wants to be taken seriously posts a response article entitled “Silly Nazi Hijinks: let’s tatoo deniers “for the grandchildren”.
Obviously a very rational individual with an open mind wrote this article, as are majority of the people who have posted comments above. Makes you lose a bit of faith in humanity reading some of these comments.
Completely agree with Gillian and Jack. By taking a clearly satirical piece literally, you’ve all just made yourselves look a bit silly…
[snip – over the top- tone it down, Anthony]
Don’t know about a tat, but I’d be happy to wear the t-shirt. Watts, how about running a slogan competition and pumping out a few shirts? Here’s a starter:
‘I’ve gone cold on global warming’