Young Leftist Andrew Bolt
Unlike many people I’ve only been truly annoyed with Andrew Bolt once. It was a Thursday in the late 90’s. Flicking through the Herald Sun to the opinion pages, I’d expected to find Peter Ruehl’s walrus mustache and suspenders. On that particularly gloomy Thursday, looking back at me, was some nondescript looking bugger calling himself Andrew Bolt.
I assumed Bolt was doing the funnies in Ruehl’s absence. Reading on, I wasn’t impressed. Nothing funny, just some uninspired wowserism. “This bozo won’t be around long,” I told myself. For months on end I kept checking back each Thursday. Bolt kept looking back at me. It took a couple of years of dog like expectation to wear off, but I finally accepted Ruehl wasn’t coming back.
Waiting for Master Ruehl to return and scratch my belly was a lonely experience because I occasionally allowed Bolt to take me for a walk. As you’d imagine, they were blunt, boring affairs, where he’d growl at me if I cocked my leg at anyone’s roses. Ok. Enough of the doggy metaphors, I’ll get to it. I found Bolt mind numbing. There was nothing particularly fascinating about what he had to say. That cookie cutter tabloid work, where he moaned about druggies, TAC ads, dodgy teachers, crap modern art on the public dime and more druggies. The type of middle of the road, banal drivel that most tabloid reporters launch into when they’ve failed upward far enough to land a column.
There was no indication of what Bolt was to become. The former Labor staffer, former Fairfax reporter and arts degree dropout, was doing little more than going through the motions for his audience. His destiny was to be an unremarkable dinosaur. His high mark would be approval from the office dribbler. You’d hear the yelp of “he makes good points!” from the corner of the lunch room each week. That was it. But looking back, there might be several clues into what fueled Bolt’s rise.
Read the full column, The Idiot Tax blog here
The Idiot Tax blog* describes itself: Break the shackles of material and media enslavement. Grow a pair (or stiffen up those titties) Insulate your mind and recognise your money is the most powerful weapon you’ll ever have – if you stop wasting it. The Idiot Tax creator is known to the Editor.
• There is a permanent dinkus to The Idiot Tax blog in TT’s left-col Favoured Blogs …
