Comment by Steve Painter
From a packed field, the Australian's Paddy McGuinness is rapidly emerging as Australia's leading crank columnist. In recent weeks, McGuinness has fearlessly taken on cyclists ("should be banned"), residents opposing Sydney's third runway ("backyard blackguards"), critics of the South Australian judge who says it's okay for husbands to rough up their wives ("instant lynch mob"), opponents of smoking in public places ("anti-smoking propagandists"), lawyers who defend boat people ("short-sighted, illogical and emotional bleeding hearts"), anthropologists who give evidence supporting Aboriginal land rights ("cannot be considered unbiased"), to name only a few.
Notice any pattern? That's right, the former Sydney University libertarian turned Thatcherite rarely misses an opportunity to bash minority viewpoints, or people with relatively little influence or power. Whenever there's a clash of views, you can rely on McGuinness to line up on the side of wealth and power: the motor car lobby, the tobacco companies, big business supporters of the third runway, anti-feminists, opponents of Aboriginal land rights. In parliamentary politics, over recent months his column has regularly offered advice to the Liberal Party on how to win the next elections.
Usually an extremely boring writer, McGuinness regularly tosses in liberal amounts of abuse to liven up his columns. Another frequent ploy is the time-honoured propaganda technique of inventing vague, anonymous enemies to blame for the problems of the world. Thus, "baby boomers", an over-used, largely meaningless term popular at the moment with lazy journalists, come in for a regular flogging from McGuinness. For him, this term appears to have a special definition: anyone born shortly after World War II who doesn't vote Liberal, or who had anything to do with the Whitlam government and hasn't since recanted. Another McGuinness favourite is the "chattering classes", apparently consisting of academics, journalists or experts of any kind who don't share his opinions.
McGuinness needs such categories because his role is to obscure the real causes of events and problems on which he offers his superficial commentary.
Thus a handful of cyclists who brave the city centre ("a legion" according to McGuinness) are to blame for the deplorable state of central Sydney, never mind the ever increasing volume of motor vehicle traffic, the air made toxic by exhaust fumes, the footpaths overcrowded because of the amount of street space turned over to king car, the many stalled building projects left high and dry by the retreat of the '80s boom, or any other of a host of problems affecting most big cities around the world.
Thus also, Greenpeace and other environmental groups come in for the occasional bashing, while McGuinness will rarely, if ever, put fingers he big environmental problems of our time.
What McGuinness is doing is nothing particularly new, nor is he alone in it. His type hunts in packs, and the right-wing crank pack is a big one at the moment, including such worthies as Gerard Henderson, John Stone, Greg Sheridan and a number of others who get paid for nothing more than airing their opinions in the Murdoch and Fairfax press. Usually they have little to say that hasn't come from a right-wing "think"-tank in the US or Britain.
But why cranks? Aren't they just right-wingers airing their opinions, and the opinions of their masters, the media owners, as generations of bought journalists have done before them? Yes, that's partly what's going, but perhaps there's something more at the moment, as well. McGuinness in particular appears to be lashing out more than usual at people with little power, seeking to lay blame where it clearly doesn't lie. In doing so, he becomes more and more a crank columnist, clearly out of touch with reality.
There's a good reason for this: McGuinness and the rest of the crank pack were responsible for pushing the theories of economic "rationalism" down our throats during the '80s. Now the failure of their theories is clearly evident in the economic disaster they've inflicted on the world. And who's to blame? Why, of course, it's the cyclists, the Aborigines, the feminists, people who don't want to live under airport flight paths, the bleeding hearts, the baby boomers, the chattering classes; certainly not Paddy McGuinness and the rest of the crank pack.