Of Bombers, Penguins and hypocrisy

Bomber Bradbury is all a-lather. He's blogged an open letter to the NZ Herald moaning about David "Cluster" Farrar being given a weekly column in that esteemed publication. He blogs:

Dear NZ Herald

Hi. How you doing?

Now I know in the past I've been a bit of a bitch about the NZ Herald.

I've teased you about your conservative bias, bullshit Journalism and the impression that Steven Joyce sub edits the entire newspaper for a very long time now, but being the largest daily newspaper in this country, you are all we have. You've been gracious enough in the past to print some of my letters and what you do sets the journalistic benchmark for the rest of the country, so I sincerely hope you listen to what I have to say, consider it and get back to us.

I'd like to question the appointment of the far right masquerading as right lite blogger David Farrar as your weekly columnist on politics. David Farrar is the unofficial mouth-piece of the National Party on-line and is a pollster for the bloody Government. Farrar has nothing more to add than massaged message points he's focus group tested on the National Party Research Unit!

That you want people with opinions is fantastic, and I applaud the widening of the political debate to include bloggers who are increasingly making their influence felt, but to hand a column over to the Government's number one propagandist without any balance whatsoever is just not acceptable from the largest daily Newspaper in the country.

We think Bomber doth protest too much. He seems to forget that his partner-in-crime on the hard left, Matt McCarten has been writing a column in the Herald on Sunday for like, well, ages! Of course Bradbury and McCarten have both been involved for some time in the formation of a new far-left party, which emerged last weekend, and is likely to vanish just as quickly.

So we'll cut Bradbury a little slack; he's obviously been far too busy unifying the forces of the extreme left to read McCarten's Sunday offering. We won't actually; we were being sarcastic!

Bradbury needs to drop the faux outrage. The left has any number of bloggers and commentators contributing to a range of publications. Two of those he mentions, Russel Brown and Chris Trotter are already published; by rivals of the Herald.

Bomber Bradbury is being a little bit hypocritical we reckon. He hasn't complained about the free rein that McCarten has been given to write provocative left-wing dogma, but now the arrival of The Penguin is just too much for him to bear. Harden up Bomber!