George Orwell would be amused. After indignantly parading and joining a string of sharp attacks on Pru Goward’s op-ed on the disadvantaged, the ABC’s Media Watch on Monday night conceded our point that the critics had grasped the wrong end of the stick.

What host Paul Barry called a “slur against the poor in general” maybe wasn’t what Professor Goward was saying about the “underclass” after all, he finally admitted. The slur actually was what Professor Goward depicted as misguided government and middle-class views and treatment of the underclass.