The War in Iraq claims another contradiction. In a pointless attack on Andrew Leigh’s and Amy King’s study on beauty and electoral appeal, Andrew Bolt makes what he thinks is obviously a knock down argument, displaying all his knowledge of social science research methods:
The researchers chose precisely four judges, chosen to be ârepresentative of the Australian electorateâ?, although one turned out to be of Iraqi descent.
Good Lord, no! I mean Bob Katter is of Afghan descent. And Steve Bracks is of Lebanese descent. Are they unprepresentative?
It never quite makes sense, does it? Back when the war in Iraq wasn’t “going badly”, the Bolts of the world scorned “leftist opinion” for allegedly claiming that Iraqis weren’t “capable of democracy”. But when Iraqis are actually, um, Australians, …. Did Andrew and Amy administer the citizenship test to their raters? If not, why not? After all, “Leigh, the lead author of the study identifies himself as a Labor man”.
Ludicrous.
Andrew Leigh responds. Elsewhere: D.W. Griffiths takes a look at Bolt’s post too, over at Troppo.
As I said at Troppo, it was a characteristically gracious response by Andrew.
If there was any justice in the world, this sort of pontificating would really put an end to any credibility Bolt has in his frequent criticisms of ARC research grants.
But being part of the punditocracy means never having to say sorry, or that you were wrong or that you are utterly incompetent as a journalist.
Good lord, we know the whole “identity politics” thing has gone haywire when we read this doozey… “Palestinian Iraqi” descent! What the hell does THAT mean?
i think bush is a cold-hearted son of a bitch he’s so selfish until it’s not even funny troops are dying everyday because of this bulllshit