What happens when you tweet heartfelt prejudices on your tear-stained sleeve

TIM Blair deconstructs the outpouring of Twitter grief and fury by The Guardian's Van Badham.

TIM Blair deconstructs the outpouring of Twitter grief and fury by The Guardian's Van Badham.

The Daily Telegraph's Tim Blair in his blog yesterday:

NORMAL people don't worry much about appointees to the Human Rights Commission. In fact, normal people can't even name any HRC appointees. And then there is The Guardian's Van Badham, for whom the HRC appointment of Tim Wilson was an event equal to Princess Di shooting JFK during 9/11. Let's follow Miss Badham's desperate emotional journey as she struggles to cope with the terrible news.

Van Badham tweet, yesterday:

PLEASE advise me if you know: does Tim Wilson have ANY experience in human rights, representative advocacy, law, inclusion or discrimination? (Blair interprets: In other words, if he isn't a veteran of the whining industry he has no business on one of the Left's precious little worry lobbies.)

Badham:

TIM Wilson thinks human rights are "the right to free speech & property". You know - the privileges that white people have & don't wanna give up.

(Blair: These are universal rights. They apply to everybody.)

Badham:

ISN'T this the wonderful new world they're creating? One of unfettered expressed hatred without accountability?

(Blair: A leftist hears the words "freedom of speech" and understands them to mean "unfettered hatred". Interesting.)

Badham:

SO how's everyone feeling about a right-wing party like the LNP moving to make anti-Semitism perfectly legal? Does that ever turn out well?

(Blair: Talk to your leftist mates in the anti-Jew club, Van.)

Badham:

PEOPLE do understand that repealing the Racial Discrimination Act doesn't just kick black Australia, but re-allows Jew-hating as well?

(Blair: You just know where this is heading.)

Badham:

YOU know, last time we had a failed artist from the Right telling people it was OK to hate Jews ...

(Blair: Yep. Van's gone the full Hitler.)

Badham:

OK, I'm clearly upset. My sincere apologies to all for succumbing to fear and reacting with blind, very careless, fury. Sorry, unreservedly.

(Blair: Now she's hit the grieving phase.)

Badham:

I KNOW, I get into the white space of rage sometimes. Useful for battle, but not for discourse.

(Blair: The "white space" of rage? RACIST. Apparently all of this distress led to a great crying fit.)

Badham:

TOTALLY had one myself. Fear, rage, nausea. And crying. And much crying.

(Blair: If the term wasn't associated with masculine gender constructs that diminish the oppression of women, you'd almost think Van was hysterical.)

Badham:

I APOLOGISE unreservedly.

(Blair: More grief. Van's in turmoil. But next she discovers a smoking - or dripping in this case - gun. Wilson once tweeted the quite reasonable views that water cannons be turned on Occupy deadbeats.)

Badham:

I'M just gonna keep retweeting THAT TWEET from Tim Wilson, appointed by Abbott, who says he advocates "free speech".

(Blair: This actually shows up Wilson as a weak moderate. A genuine conservative would have called for the deployment of Chewplosive acre-clearance detonation mints.)

Profiles of Badham:

THE Guardian online: Van Badham is a theatre-maker and novelist, occasional broadcaster and critic, feminist, bogan and trollfighter.

Wikipedia: At university, her growing political awareness flowered and she was drawn into ... student politics and left-wing activism.