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Pell supporter Miranda Devine.

A Devine Irony As Miranda Rights A Wrong, Calls Time Out, Then Joins The Hunt

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By on Media & Culture

Never let it be said that conservatives haven’t been good for independent media. Who else would we laugh uproariously at?

Speaking of Miranda Devine, the Daily Telegraph’s favourite conservative columnist got busy making a goose of herself over the weekend, while engaging in her favourite pursuit – abusing lefties.

On this occasion, it was Brumbies star David Pocock, a favoured target of the right, given his progressive views and actions (which included ‘locking on’ to mining equipment in the Leard State Forest last year, in protest at plans to mine one of the last remaining stands of Box Gum Grassy Woodland).

What set Devine off? During a match against the Highlanders on Friday night, Pocock scored his third try – a hat-trick – and then celebrated in a way that was not to Devine’s liking.

 

 

Well, no. Pocock didn’t do ‘jazz hands’. He did something quite selfless and heart-warming… as lefties often do. A few hours later, Pocock responded. Oh, to be a fly on the wall in Devine’s boudoir when she read it.

 

 

Early the next morning, a sycophantic Anzac Day back-peddle was the order of the day.

 

 

Pocock would have been well within his rights to tell Devine to shove her apology up her arse… instead, he wrote this.

 

 

Which speaks some volumes about Pocock, and quite a bit about Devine as well. Particularly when you consider what she tweeted the following day, as the criticism kept coming.

 

 

As Darth Vader himself might say… the skin is thin with that one.

And thus, of course, it sparked a whole new round of tweets. In media management terms, we call this ‘pouring fuel on the fire’… we also call it ‘a very, very silly thing to do’.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Devine has developed a bit of a habit of shooting from the lip on Twitter. Here’s one from December last year, while defending conservative bedfellow, Andrew Bolt (in response to a discussion about the treatment of Muslims after the Sydney siege).

 

 

Well, no. Not really. @Boltcomments is not a “parody account”. It’s a literal republishing of the batshit craxy comments that routinely find a home on Bolt’s Herald Sun blog.

Ironic, isn’t it, that when it comes to vitriol, Devine can’t tell the real deal from the fakes.

But as Devine herself would say, it’s time to move on… and so we shall, to the second half of ‘Miranda’s Big Weekend On Twitter’, when she joined the celebration over the sacking of SBS journalist Scott McIntyre over a series of tweets he sent about Anzac Day.

In case you’ve been living under a rock, McIntyre had been tweeting about the brutality and lionization of war, and the truth about the behavior of some Australian diggers. In a level of media cowardice up there with the sacking of Mike Carlton, SBS gave him the punt.

Cue Devine, who just a day after demanding others ‘move on’ from her own mistake, was dancing the figurative jig over McIntyre’s public culling.

 

 

And again…

 

 

And again…

 

 

And again…

 

 

Four tweets later, Devine decided it was finally time to ‘move on’… which, surely, rules out a column from Devine this week about McIntyre? Guess we’ll have to see.

Either way, the irony should be lost on no-one who takes an interest in all things media. Devine still has a column to write this week because she still has a job, despite sending an abusive tweet based on her own complete ignorance.

McIntyre, by contrast, has no job to go to tomorrow, despite sending a series of largely factual tweets based on his honest opinion.

If that’s not reason enough to ‘move on’ from mainstream media, I don’t know what is.

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Launched in 2004, New Matilda is one of Australia's oldest online independent publications. It's focus is on investigative journalism and analysis, with occasional smart arsery thrown in for reasons of sanity. New Matilda is owned and edited by Walkley Award and Human Rights Award winning journalist Chris Graham.

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