Sunday, March 16, 2008
GET THESE GUYS A ROOM
I wonder if ABC-defending, Bush-hating, warmy-howling, Blair-obsessing, motorbike-lovin’ Queensland journalist Wayne Sanderson has ever met ABC-defending, Bush-hating, warmy-howling, Blair-obsessing, motorbike-lovin’ Queensland journalist (and constant Catallaxy commenter) “MichaelF”?
Seems they have a lot in common. Although “MichaelF”, who is big on journalistic ethics, would presumably never stoop to lifting NYT columns and selling them at his own website.
UPDATE. It’s almost as though these two chaps are related:
• Wayne: “What about ‘only a few bad apples on one night’ involved with torture ...”
• MichaelF: “He reckoned ... that Abu Ghraib was the work of a few bad apples on the night shift ...”
• Email from Wayne, August 2005: “Your biggest fuck-up: Abu Gahraib abuse wasn’t so bad, only happened on one night, few bad apples.”
• MichaelF: “[Blair wrote] that Abu Gahraib was the work of a couple of bad apples on one Saturday night shift.”
In terms of the direct quote, Mike and Wayne might be getting me mixed up with an unnamed someone once cited by Andrew Sullivan.
UPDATE II. More shared thoughts from Wayne and/or Mike:
• MichaelF: “Blair wrote about the Johannesburg Earth Summit in a column for The Australian, in September 2002. In it, he made the bold prediction that environmentalism was dead.”
• Email from Wayne, August 2005: “You said ‘environmentalism is dead’”.
• MichaelF: “He told Oz readers in a column (around 2003) that ‘environomentalism was dead’”.
I wish it was; I hate environomentalism. But here’s what I actually wrote (link to original column no longer available): “Call me an optimist, but signs of wonderful green death seem to be appearing all over.” This time Wayne (or Mike; or Wayne and Mike; or Loudon WayneMike III) has me confused with Nick Kristof.
UPDATE III. Say what you will, neither Wayne nor Mike are feckless:
• MichaelF: “Did the Bushies miss the warnings and fail to do enough to stop the 9/11 attacks. Of course they feckin’ did.”
• Wayne: “Jeesus Tim, your feckin’ hypocrisy knows no bounds.”
• MichaelF: “They are not a bloody PhD paper where every feckin’ word has to be weighed for its precise meaning.”
UPDATE IV. Catallaxians discuss their imaginative inhabitant.
UPDATE V. Wayne - booted from Crikey (!) in 2006 - is listed as a Queensland government employee, which explains why he has so much time on his hands. He’s - ahem - a “multicultural advocacy manager”. (Via Rog.)