And now for a course in advanced self-pity ...

(Above: screen cap, link to story here).

And so to the strange case of Andrew Bolt, who surely must go down in history as the most bizarre abuser of the English language doing the commentariat rounds, as first noted here ...

How anyone could juxtapose the Royal family and elites boggles the pond, all the more so when addle-brained punster Kathy Lette is proposed as the 'leet in question.

Bizarrely Bolt proposes - at the very moment when the Queen is doing a farewell tour of the Antipodes worthy of a Queen farewell tour - that it's celebrities that killed off the republic. So somehow he arrives at the point that the Queen isn't a celebrity, the Royals aren't a circus, and nor are they part of the elite, despite their squillions and love of hunting on various estates ...

No wonder the Queen is smiling as she shuffles from flower show to garden party, trailing a Prime Minister and a Governor-General who are both republicans.

Of course she's smiling, because Andrew Bolt somehow believes the Queen, shuffling from flower show to garden party, with assorted flunkies trailing behind her, is excluded from the 'leets, and better still, crushes the 'leets, which surely must involve an element of masochism and self-harm...

Well the Bolter has always been inclined to be a dolter, ideological zeal and pure zealotry always standing by in place of reason and logic, but he really has excelled himself of late, and in the more personal and problematic domain of old relationships ...

The latest flurry has involved a piece yesterday in the Fairfax rags, Bolt from the past: a heartfelt history lesson to the man I loved, and Bolt's outraged response, in On Fairfax's obsession with my private life.

It's truly rich and wonderful to see the Bolter getting agitated about his own private life, when he felt no such compunction when delving around in Julia Gillard's private life (or taking a view on the identity of indigenous people going about their private lives).

Then it was suggested it was right and true and proper that the delving into Gillard was a sound, proper journalistic exercise, testing whether it was appropriate for her to continue as PM, given her past indiscretions, and injudicious personal behaviour.

To which it could be countered that delving into Bolt's past is an entirely appropriate way to test his ongoing role as blogger, television host and serial commentariat abuser of others ...

The trouble for Bolt started with his outraged initial denials, which when read in the above context, sound more than passing weird and strange ... as if The Monthly and Anne Summers might have some trouble producing the "unnamed ex-girlfriend of mine from more than a quarter of a century ago" (Defamation removed).

The naughty woman, as well as claiming fiancée status, remembered a man with an opposition to sensationalist journalism ... (I know I can be forgetful, but ...)

But these were just passing shots, with the main course the truly bizarre How I became a monster, accompanied by a truly bizarre illustration:

Now there's the way to defang a story, and indulge in a quiet retreat to take the heat out of the affair. And then there's the Bolt way, where you might happen to think you've become the story, you are the story, the story is you, and everything revolves around you and your world view ...

Well the pond is perfectly happy to leave the matter of the Bolter versus his alleged fiancée to others.

In the end comes down to a 'he said', 'she said' scenario, when who knows what might have been said over a six year long relationship, and more to the point, who cares?

What's interesting is the way that the Bolter has continued to stir this pot with agitated, vociferous denials, and abuse directed the way of the alleged fiancée, the Fairfax media, and anyone else who notes the hypocritical, self-serving, self-pitying tone of his ranting.

So is this the image of himself that Bolt carries everywhere in his head? (Naturally we picked the master El Greco's stylish portrait of St. Sebastian to avoid any suggestion that it's a low rent image).

Shush, we're only following the Bolter's preference for rich visual stylings and illustrations ...

The point being that even this latest controversy - where more private people might be inclined to shrink into privacy - has become grist to Bolt's mill, and to what can only be termed a cult of personality.

Read the comments below Bolt's On Fairfax's obsession with my private life, and there's an astonishing mix of abuse of the woman involved, and an astonishing outpouring of sympathy for the travails of Bolt, to the point where Bolt felt compelled to add this disingenuous note:

UPDATE

Please no comments about Suzanne Walshe. The real issue is The Age and the SMH.

Actually the real issue is also Suzanne Walshe, and why she felt the need to go public, and the surely delusional notion that the Fairfax rags twisted her arm and demanded that she write what she wrote ...

As for the 'no comments' note, presumably calling Walshe a 'perfidious woman!' in the comments section below counts as an objective summary of the state of play. Here are a few more synonyms that might come in handy for commenters:

... disloyal, false, fickle, inconstant, faithless, recreant, traitorous, treacherous, unfaithful, untrue

And somehow this minor personal squabble gets elevated to a matter of global consequence:

We are now in the most brutal ideological war I have evr seen in my life… This war is not fought with guns and fists, but with media campaigns and activist lobby group pressure..

It is a war noone with love for our great nation can afford to ignore any more, for it is a war that MUST be fought and won on the battlefield of public expression.. It is a war for no less than the hearts and minds of the Australian People… The silent majority MUST let our voices be heard over the incessant barking of the PC totalitarian dogs of socialism......

And so on and so forth as the perfidious, bitter, unladylike woman, the Fairfax rags deep in slime, and socialists and totalitarians and barking PC dogs, the Labor party, lefties and such like cop a pounding, while poor, brave, sensitive, harassed and sullied Andrew Bolt has balm applied to his fevered brow, eyes lifted to the heavens in supplication at his suffering ...

As if in dishing it out, he can't handle a few knocks coming back at him, and not from Fairfax, which merely acted as a platform, but from his ex-girlfriend ... a tiff somehow now turned by some of his readers into part of a global war ...

Spare the pond, so this is what it's like to drink the kool aid.

We once quoted Richard Flanagan to the effect that:

Well, I think if you stood on the moon, two things would be visible, the Great Wall of China and the self pity of Andrew Bolt.

Sorry Mr. Flanagan, it turns out you - we - got that wrong.

The Great Wall of China has just been covered by a huge outpouring of pity, self and other, and now all that can be seen from the moon is the pity of Andrew Bolt wrapped in the embrace of the cult of personality, and a willingness to maintain the war on all fronts, including a war with a past girlfriend ...

The Great Wall of China didn't stand a chance ...

(Below: yes, you can even take courses in it).