Tim Blair: Left-wing outrage is just theatre

From Canberra to Washington DC, leftists keep working on their strategies of coercion and shaming by pretending to be much angrier than they really are, writes Tim Blair.

There has never been a better time for the performing arts. Everywhere you look, stunning artistic presentations are on show.

Not many of them, however, are in theatres or other conventional venues. Instead, performers are displaying their talents on the streets, on television – and even in boring old Canberra.

There is no doubt that former Australian of the Year Grace Tame’s antipathy towards Prime Minister Scott Morrison is completely genuine. But her angry antics last weekend at The Lodge were pure playhouse.

Prime Minister Scott Morrison with Grace Tame at the 2022 Australian of the Year finalists morning tea. Picture: NCA NewsWire / Gary Ramage

Tame’s opening move was a downcast handshake with the PM while her free hand remained in her pocket. This is typically the way sullen children behave when ordered to apologise and make up. Brilliant!

Then came a sequence of glares and side-glances perfectly choreographed to frame the PM as an object of loathing. Magnificent!

Grace Tame and Anthony Albanese at the 2022 Australian of the Year awards. Picture: Anthony Albanese/Facebook

And finally the diva-style walk-off into The Lodge. Stunning!

The most magical part of all this was that Tame accepted an invitation to arrive in Canberra and meet Morrison. She was otherwise under no obligation to attend.

And why would she, considering the whole show was evidently such an ordeal for her?

It’s like driving 800km to visit a specific McDonald’s and then chucking a tanty because hamburgers are on the menu.

It was nice of The Bangles to lend her that jacket, though.

And it was also nice when Tame recovered her smile at a later Tuesday function when greeting Labor leader Anthony Albanese.

Perhaps feminist crusader Tame has never seen parliamentary footage of Albo snarling “smash her!” when a Labor colleague challenged Liberal minister Sussan Ley.

(Sadly, Ley let down the performing arts world by brushing aside the incident as “hardly of concern”. The correct form in these circumstances is to pretend you’ve been clubbed like a baby seal.)

Albanese revealed his own acting chops at an Australia Day function, claiming he refused to shake the PM’s hand because “the health advice is not to shake hands”.

Miraculous! Through the universe-bending power of his own masterful thespianism, Albanese has time-travelled back to March 2020. Take a bow, sir.

Illustration: Terry Pontikos

Elsewhere, US conservative Matt Walsh provoked a spectacular baby seal act after debating two trans activists on the Dr Phil program.

“What is a woman?” Walsh asked at one point. “Can you tell me what a woman is?”

“No, I can’t,” replied activist Ethan, “because it’s not for me to say. Womanhood looks different for everybody.”

“You stood up here and said, ‘trans women are women.’ What is a woman?” Walsh asked the second ­activist.

“Womanhood is something that I cannot define,” Addison Rose Vincent responded.

That reasonable line of questioning led to Vincent posting this claim on Instagram:

“Since the taping, Ethan and I have been experiencing a heightened level of anxiety to the point that we’ve had numerous nightmares and depression spirals over the last month.”

That’s how you do it, Sussan Ley. Given even the slightest opportunity to play the victim, work that angle as hard as your “depression spiral” will possibly allow.

Walsh didn’t fall for it. Instead of apologising or pleading for forgiveness, he put up a new clip on YouTube: “I think you’re completely wrong about everything you say. What’s more, I think you’re narcissists and bullies.” He went further than that, to such an extent that Australian media restrictions would punish publication. So look it up for yourself, and behold a man who redefines the phrase “doubling down”.

In 2018, US President Donald Trump once directed a particular insult towards a reporter. Washington’s press pack reflexively went into baby seal mode.

“Calling a journalist a son of a bitch?” CNN’s Brian Stelter wrote on Twitter.

“It was wrong when Trump was just a candidate, and it’s even worse now that he’s President.”

Others worried that Trump’s insults could intimidate or terrify ­journalists.

But Joe Biden recently did exactly the same thing.

US President Joe Biden speaks at Mill 19, a former steel mill being developed into a robotics research facility. Picture: Jeff Swensen/Getty Images/AFP

And Stelter, along with the rest of the mainstream media, was fine with it.

“Fox’s Peter Doocy asked, ‘Do you think inflation is a political liability in the midterms?’” Stelter reported. “Biden deadpanned: ‘It’s a great asset – more inflation. What a stupid son of a bitch.’”

He’s gone from “wrong” to a judgment-free “deadpanned” in just four years.

Just like Ley and Walsh, incidentally, Doocy didn’t play the game. He didn’t scream about being scared.

Instead, he laughed it off, joking on screen that the President’s opinion hadn’t been fact-checked.

I’ve had my own experiences with these actors. In 2014, I posted a poll online asking readers to vote for their favourite frightbat – then provided a list of Australia’s most hysterical leftist-feminist media personalities.

The reaction was, as you’d expect, hysterical. Women who’d frequently published obscene abuse pretended to be absolutely horrified by “frightbat”, a word I’d invented and that they’d never seen before.

They fumed about it for months, demanding I be sacked or similarly corrected. In the end, though, nothing happened.

So exactly one year later, as an experiment, I ran another frightbat poll. Same format, same words, many of the same names.

And the frightbats didn’t say a thing.

They’d taken their shot the previous year and missed. No point pretending to be furious again, because it didn’t work the first time.

Keep that and the examples above in mind when next a left-wing outcry erupts. It’s theatre. It’s all for show. And you don’t have to buy a ticket.