Claire Harvey, MasterChef, nasty anonymous blog people, and ways that News Corp can make the world safe for genteel liberals

(Above: an artist's impression of a typical News Corp blog reader and commenter. aka The Hostage by N. C. Wyeth, for Stevenson's Treasure Island).

Being a slow starter, I've only just caught up with Claire Harvey's poignant MasterChef leaves nasty taste.

She's not talking about the show - she loved it, it was just so nice, so sweet and uplifting, it's as if a host of angels sang her to her sleep.

No, it's all those extraordinarily nasty Australians who lurk on line thinking they're invisible. Not that she's one of them ...

...  I'm not a participant in the online MasterChef forums on Network Ten's website, or one of the thousands who've commented on other online fora.

These vicious cruel luddites obviously hankered for the old days and the old ways. Big Brother and back stabbing and bitchy and brutal.

Many of them clearly liked reality television just the way it was: cold and cruel. Online, the positive MasterChef vibe evaporates into rage and vitriol.

The contestants are ugly, or liars, or just fat. The judges are corrupt, inept, or fat. The producers are callous and cynical, definitely racist and probably fat, too.

And when they've finished shredding these complete strangers, the chatters turn on one another. Each thread of conversation eventually twists itself into a skein of accusations and faux affronts and, most tedious of all, emoticons.

Wow, thank the lord I never ventured amongst these ferals.

There are some thoughtful, considered remarks _ usually published with the writer's full name. No coincidence, I reckon.

But it proves that even when producers excise the nastiness from reality TV, plenty of viewers will rush to their keyboards to put it back in.

That's why FremantleMedia begged the contestants not to read what was being said about them online; Fennessy says he knew from working on shows like Biggest Loser that contestants were unlikely to read anything nice.

And wouldn't you know, it's all the fault of the full to overflowing intertubes.

It's the guilty pleasure of whispered sniping in the tea room, with the added protection of anonymity. Just as road-ragers think nobody can see them popping veins behind the wheel, cyber-bitches think they're invisible.

But that's the Internet - the magical global web that unites us in anonymous nastiness.

Web 2.0 (which is just tech-speak for websites where everyone can participate) was supposed to be the fresh flower bed where a thousand opinions could blossom.

More often, it's just schoolyard bullying for grown-ups.

Well Claire, I'm sure you saw way more nastiness than I could cope with on all those MasterChef sites, but have you ever dropped into your own back yard - you know blogs peopled by followers of Piers Akerman, Andrew Bolt and Tim Blair and the like, all beavering away for Chairman Rupert?

Lordy, I get the cold shivers and fall to fainting just thinking about it. Why, if ever there were a livelier, sharper band of cut throats, pickpockets, rogues and ne'er do wells assembled under the skull and crossbones since the time of Captain Flint, I've never found it.

A dainty moderate or a genteel liberal stepping in amongst these cut purses will as likely as not lose honor, virginity, loose change and an intact caratoid artery.

Why even The Punch, dumbest conversation on the intertubes, seems to have given up the notion of people using their real names, which is just as well since some of the actual writers using their real names do themselves a grave disservice with their preening and poncing.

But what to do about it, since journalists at News Corp seem regularly enraged by the intertubes and the democratic way people feel free to speak their minds, subject always of course to rigorous moderation. 

Well perhaps the offending blogs could be shut down. You know one nasty comment, you're on notice, three you're gone. Whether you give your name or not, we'll kill the blog stone dead. Niceness could rule the land.

The trouble of course is the blogs would be gone in a flash, in a trice, in an instant, and then where would the boasts about a billion hits a day go?

Perhaps the comments sections could be shut down. This happens. Some people don't like comments, don't need them, vent their opinions in a blog and move on. It could be a new form of ethical News Corp journalism. Ban the readers, so the journalists could resume their place on the podium as proud upholders of the magisterium.

But what would happen to the journalists playing the game of feeding corn to the chooks and lathering their fans up into a flapping and a crowing? Pecking at anybody who expresses a contrary opinion, teaching them who's top chook in the barnyard.

Perhaps News Corp could show the way in banning anonymous comments - demanding names and contact details, and putting them on a register, and immediately banning any nasty comments, with a three strikes and you're gone rule? No pen names or avatars. Just yourself, as expected of election comment and letters to the newspaper. 

Lots of sites do it, why not News? We could all eat cucumber sandwiches while engaging in civilized discourse.

Because after all the intertubes is the sum of its users, and you could re-phrase your thinking so that instead of berating the intertubes, you could write something like "But that's News Corp on the intertubes - a lovely nice oasis of niceness on the magical global web that unites us in Greek polis loveliness and kindness and niceness."

Ah well it was only a dream. Sorry I can't join in either - I know I'd be pecked to death within the hour.

So carry on News Corp with the schoolyard bullying for grown ups, while meek and mild moderates carry the badge of anonymity, like an invisible Potter cloak that hides us from the raging ratbags of the right.