Janet Albrechtsen, Jason Wilson, and if you make me laugh enough, maybe I'll keep reading

Over at New Matilda, Jason Wilson gets very upset with the squawking of commentariat columnists, and even goes so far as to dub these fine feathered loons as 'trollumnists'.

Now everything Jason writes in "If I Make You Angry Enough, Maybe You'll Keep Reading" is fair enough and true enough, except that he somehow seems to think it's a new phenomenon, when the reality is that the likes of Miranda the Devine have been trolling their trade for many years, even before the intertubes.

But the formula's the same as the one he analyses in detail - polarizing, extreme, dividing the world up into camps, and hurling abuse. Which these days you can get for free in any number of forums as 'letters to the editor' become the mass of indignation and outraged howls that makeup the full to overflowing intertubes.

Her (the Devine's) work is intellectually, morally and politically barren, but importantly, it gets a reaction, with social media and blogs pointing traffic in her direction with each lazy, offensive column she issues forth. I'm one of the worst offenders, regularly, exasperatedly linking to her work when I read it. It only recently occured to me, as one of my own comments cascaded out through friends on Twitter, that however incrementally, I was increasing the size of her audience.

It's not just Fairfax, of course — in News Limited's broadsheet, The Australian, for trollumnists like Janet Albrechtsen or David Burchell, one regularly gets the sense that the content of any particular piece is far less important than axe-griding, and the blunt provocation that gets the bloggers fuming and the tweets ricocheting around the tubes.

Unfortunately Jason takes it all too seriously and wonders if old media realize how much damage they're doing to the brand while in pursuit of short term hits and easily observed statistics showing that attention is being paid on the intertubes.

What he misses is the therapy value. Look at a Devine column, and it's hard not to reel away thinking "thank the lord, I'm not as mad as her", or "I might have a bee in my bonnet, but did you see the size of that bumble bee buzzing around in Miranda the Devine's brain today", or "I might be a loon without any understanding of the world, but they pay Miranda the Devine to write this stuff?"

There's also the humor. What would we do without a loon writing how Sydney motorists are terrified of cyclists, or wondering how the plasticity of the brain is leading to the decline and fall of western civilization (when Devine herself for example exemplifies that decline, not least for watching Ladette to Lady).

Sure it's masochist and perverse to take pleasure in the ramblings and musings of trollumnists - such a nice word, I'm sure to borrow it often - but if you're willing to do hot wax in an SM session, then reading a column by Janet Albrechtsen is nothing, nothing I tells ya.

Which is why you can turn to Janet Albrechtsen's latest column with tremendous good cheer and chortling as she writes about Seeing through hoax of the century.

The clear implication in her ramble is that climate change is the hoax of the century. Even bigger and better than the last hoax:

Perhaps we are wising up to modern day millenarianism where end-of-the-world cults - those who have the most to gain from their fear mongering - preach calamity. Remember Y2K? The cult back then comprised computer experts. They predicted disaster. Planes would fall from the skies. People would be caught in halting elevators. Chaos would descend on anything that relied on a computer, from financial markets to utilities. Governments duly prepared for disaster with the BBC reporting that global preparations for the millennium bug were estimated to have cost more than $US300 billion. All for nought. Nothing happened. It was, as James Taranto wrote in The Wall Street Journal, the hoax of the century.

Nothing happened? Would any of that have anything to do with the elaborate precautions that were taken? No, nothing would have happened if they hadn't spent a cent? Well only a fool would say that. There were computer related issues that could have caused disruption and inconvenience. Would these events have been as extreme and dire as those predicted by panic merchants? As likely not, but is there any matching basis for calling it the hoax of the century? Only by loons who understood nothing about the technical issues, and determined to grind an axe.

Sure there were nutty extremists and survivalists and end of century millenarians who got on to the show biz circuit - in much the same way as Albrechtsen routinely predicts liberal secularists will shortly bring about the end of the world - but the noise just obscured some house keeping that needed to be tended to, in much the same way as the wise back up their data, and so do the fools after their first hard drive crash removes everything that was digitally precious to them.

If you want an intelligent look at the Y2K issue, you go elsewhere - for example to this wiki under the header Year 2000 problem - which summarises issues, and provides pro and con arguments regarding the seriousness of the issues. But of course this is an old riff, regularly deployed by commentariat columnists (who can forget Malcolm Colless's uproarious and comical Heating beat-up has echoes of Y2K as the bees keep buzzing in the bottle?)

Albrechtsen's style is to sample a couple of voices that confirm her world view - which might best be summarized as cynical paranoid right - and go at it hell for leather:

Maurice Newman, who was chairman of the federal government’s Y2K committee told The Australian last week that “in pressing the urgency for compliance, the committee members relied heavily on confirmatory bias. Most of this came from so-called experts who had much to gain from creating a sense of alarm. The consequence of widespread inaction was claimed to result in chaos and systemic failure. As there was no alternative authoritative voice, this became perceived wisdom and was certainly believed by the committee. As such the Y2K phenomenon took on a life of its own.”

Of course whatever your viewpoint on Y2K, one event in the field of computing is no guide to the logic, rationality or credibility of a theory in another area, such as the arena of climate change science.

Would scruples of logic stop Albrechtsen delivering illogical abuse? Of course not:

Deja vu? Preparing for the deluge of rising sea levels, we were treated to footage last week from parliamentary question time starring Julia Gillard and her gumboots. Appropriately she was followed on ABC1 by Bananas in Pyjamas. Could man-made climate change turn out to be the greatest hoax of the present century? Certainly, ordinary people are beginning to ask questions.

Gillard, gum boots, kids' V, and ordinary people asking questions? Yep it's as incoherent and inchoate as rambling on about a Halloween freak show with bonus vegetarianism, 'roo eating and the carbon dixoide in champagne thrown in for good measure (forget the gas in soda, forget the hot air exhaled by Albrechtsen, forget the disloyalty to Australian wines by evoking a foreign cheese eating brew when our own sparkling wines have been carefully manufactured to reduce the amount of fine beading bubbles, or so they tell me after I've knocked off the fifth glass of cold duck).

Now how to respond? Well according to Jason, you might get angry, but me, I laugh, and I laugh. Talk about a chortle. I mean, Bananas in Pyjamas?

When I finish reading Albrechtsen, I usually click over to a nice Christian tract about the impending arrival of the Rapture or the certainty of creationism, and then I begin to wonder if Christianity is the greatest hoax of the present century (and every other century). Certainly ordinary people who watch Bananas in Pyjamas are beginning to ask questions.

And there are other treasures:

Viewers of the 7pm News on ABC1 were told by a Richard Branson lookalike - complete with longish wavy grey hair, beard and crisp white shirt - that the township of Byron Bay would be completely flooded by rising sea levels. His expertise? He is a resident of Byron Bay.

Even if the following bit was omitted by the editor:

Readers of The Australian were told by Janet Albrechtsen lookalike - complete with longish relatively straight blonde hair, post modernist spectacles, and crisp clothing which might range from a tie to a strange neck rug - that climate change is the hoax of the century. Her expertise? She is a columnist for The Australian.

There's plenty more juicy tidbits, but you get the drift. Would you turn to Janet Albrechtsen to get an understanding of climate change science? Not if you're sensible. But if you want to read an exuberant bit of trolling, she's unfailingly reliable:

Increasingly, the road to Copenhagen resembles a suburban street on Halloween with the number of climate change freak shows and stunts reaching a nadir in recent weeks. Nicholas Stern says we should turn vegetarian in order to combat climate change. If you must eat meat, eat kangaroos, says Ross Garnaut, because marsupials emit negligible amounts of methane. And that champagne you drank on Melbourne Cup day? Scientists scolded us with a report that a 750ml bottle of bubbly could produce 100 million bubbles, releasing five litres of carbon dioxide.

Deja vu? Eerie. Did I forget to mention that's how she opened her nice uncombative column before going on to cherry pick a little science to show she's really quite informed about the issues?

What to do? Well have a nice 'roo fillet and wash it down with a glass of bubbly, or head off to work feeling refreshed.

Should you write a response rebutting all Albrechtsen's standard points culled from the usual suspects about climate change? (This time Nils-Axel Mörner gets a guernsey in the rotating pantheon of sceptics).

Well only if you like hitting yourself on the head with a hammer, as if that somehow would make any kind of difference. Once you see a header shrieking hoax of the century, and carried on reading, you know that you're in the world of shit-stirring provocation, hastily cobbled together on a weekly or bi-weekly basis to stir the pot and arrive at no truth or insight whatsoever.

And that is the charm of the commentariat trollumnist. It's always deja vu all over again, and if you get agitated this week, then surely you're an all day sucker and you've bitten back in October in Beware the UN's Copenhagen Plot, wherein climate change was going to lead to world government, or her peddling of the same soup back in July 2008 under the header Apocalypse Soon?, wherein the Garnaut Report was the villain, or any of the dozens of other references you get if you google up Albrecthsen and climate change - though when I went looking for my personal favorite, wherein she embraced Ian Plimer, the intertubes seemed to have lost the file. Strange, a file that big and important should be lost, but hey, we move on. (Oh wait, here it is, at a new address, A tale of two worlds).

You see, it'd be like trotting off to Cardinal Pell in the expectation of a sensible consideration of the relative virtue of the Catholic church up against any other form of belief or non-belief.

All you're ever going to cop is the ranting of a true believer, so with Albrechtsen you have three choices: the sensible one is not to read her, thereby doing your blood pressure and your humor the world of good; the irrational one is to read her, and get enraged, and write off indignant comments to her column, as if expecting somehow that logic might sway her into the path of rationality, thereby confirming you're as delusional as she is; and the third one is to read her, chortle away as she peddles the same old snake oil, and then after a cleansing laugh go about your business with not a care in the world, nor a momentary pause for bizarre thought that this is the strange way some shit-stirrers make a living.

The only harm you might do? Well a click to read is harmless - it's free and causes Chairman Rupert no end of heartburn, pain and financial loss, and soon enough he'll be after you to get the value of Albrechtsen behind a paywall. No, it's if you've paid money for a hard copy of the paper to read Albrechtsen, thereby delaying the moment at which Chairman Rupert will put her behind a paywall ...

So I urge you to join the campaign to put Albrechtsen behind a paywall by not buying The Australian. And if you're feeling a little snarky, despite all the chortling, never ever click on an advertisement carried online by the Murdoch press. But remember that might delay the moment that Albrechtsen is put behind a paywall ...

Damned if you do, and damned if you don't, but remember some day you too can be in a Chairman Rupert social community and be friends with Dame Slap a Lot (aka Janet A), and all for a measly fifty quid a year or so ...

Speaking of paywalls, it seems the first pirates who've breached old media paywalls are already being sent to prison, or so Simon Dumenco tells me here.