The Red shoes

EoR welcomes Bronze Dog's announcement to blog more frequently, and to cover such topics as cognitive dissonance — the ability for people to simultaneously hold contradictory views.

Andrew Bolt has found himself on something of a roll with the John Howard shoe throwing incident. His audience love this sort of stuff, proving the 'barbarity' and 'violence' of the Left (EoR isn't able to comment on how Timothy McVeigh proves the barbarity and violence of the Right, since Bolt hasn't mentioned it, and EoR can't form an opinion until Bolt tells him what to think).



Commenters ramble on about how Peter Gray (the thrower) shouldn't be allowed to breed (Bolt's commenters are very big on 'breeding' — who should be permitted to breed, who shouldn't, and how the purity of the race from infection by inferior races should be maintained), but some also comment on Gray's Degree in Classics. EoR would have thought that this showed his determination to improve himself, but not in the eyes of Bolt's Believers:

What is a university degree in classics?

Classic cars?

Classic catches?

Classic hits (105.9 BRock FM)?

Classic nutcases?

and

How frigging useful is a classics degree I ask you? So he doesn’t work in helping with the environment which he could do with a say civil engineering degree, he gets a degree in classics. Useless.

Bolt's Believers, of course, would not see the irony that one of their heroes, the increasingly marginalised Christopher Monckton, has a Degree in Classics. Indeed, when the contradiction is pointed out to them, a commenter responds that it's a Masters in Classics, not just a Degree. As if that was some sort of devastating distinction. Presumably, a Degree in Classics is "useless" but a Masters is an Object of Eternal Admiration. Of course, Bolt's Brigades detest the "elites" (probably because many of them wouldn't qualify as such) but other "elites" (hereditary aristocrats, for example) are a Good Thing. Indeed, a love of opera is not in any way at all 'elitist'. The only distinction being (and this is an important one in Boltland) a political one.

Personally, EoR is going with the conspiracy theorists who believe Howard organised the whole incident. The shoe throwing was very half-hearted (in fact, EoR would have called it a 'shoe tossing'), they were nowhere near Howard, and Howard never flinched, almost as if he was expecting it!!!! And then there was the tweet a short time before the incident*, suggesting someone throw their shoe at him!!!! It could only have come from a Howard staffer!!!1!! It's certainly much more likely than conspiracy theories about the death of Paul the Psychic Octopus.

*In the paranoid world of Andrew Bolt, even though this wasn't visible to Peter Gray (or because it wasn't visible) this proves the culpability and bias of the ABC.