Letters – September 2007
Kicks and kisses
Dear Editor,
In recent years, conservative commentators have taken to spraying insults at those with whom they disagree. Personal attacks now pose as rational discussion, particularly in the news media. Even so, I did not expect to see in ABR a personal assault disguised as a review of my book Allied and Addicted (July-August 2007).
What a great ad feminam title Michael Wesley chose: ‘Screeching to the converted’. Would he have used it about Clive Hamilton or Robert Manne or Julian Burnside? If not, he proves the truth of an argument in my book: that habits of mind have revived in Australia which we tried to abandon forty years ago. I had not expected one of Australia’s rising younger academics to exhibit them. But now, it seems, academics too resort to sexism and condescension, kissing up to the powerful and kicking down the powerless, just like our government.
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