LEFTY BREAKS RANKS, LAWSUIT PENDING

When announcing the renaming of the Department of Immigration and Multicultural Affairs as the Department of Immigration and Citizenship the Prime Minster also said:

"The whole purpose of immigration is to recruit more people to the broader Australian family."

This seemingly innocent remark from Howard drawing a bitter reaction (make sure you read the comments, noting that many have been removed) from lefty wordsmith Kerryn Goldsworthy (she's gotta be good; she has two posts in Best Blog Posts 2006):

Oh, that's clever. Propose assimilation, a fundamentally racist policy that has been comprehensively and internationally outdated and discredited, and then dress it up with the 'family' reference, by which, as we all know, the PM means hubby, wife and 2.4 children, in that order. Two bits of reactionary rhetoric in one sentence.

This was too much for fellow lefty Steve Munn (Melaleuca), whose comments Goldsworthy removed, so he responded with a mildly worded post at his blog, eliciting this comment from Goldsworthy:

I have no idea what these unprovoked personal attacks you've been making on me lately are about, but I suggest you stop them, for your own good. My mate the lawyer is checking them out for me as we speak.

Munn's attack on Goldsworthy (a close Larvatus Prodeo ally) has upset dear old Mark Bahnisch:

Steve, I don’t see your campaign against Dr Cat as being polite, and I don’t want to link to it. I see your comments about her at multiple blogs - including this one - and the tone of them as being rather nasty and disturbing, quite frankly.

Don't get me wrong, I don't know the full background to this stoush so I'm not taking sides. I just enjoy watching the lefty hair-pulling. (The Munn versus Goldsworthy hilarity continues in comments at that last link above.)

Update: An unrelated Mark Bahnisch reaction to impoliteness:

I’m sorry, folks, I’m going to close off this thread if people (who presumably followed the link here from Tim Blair’s site) are going to post repulsive comments like this one:

i would not apologise to an abo… they are primitive, uncivilized,, look like shit, smell like shit, and they can go get fucked. they’re cunts… truly abysmal ppl.
p.s. you lefties can suck my dick

This sort of thing is absolutely unacceptable and unAustralian too. I am going out so don’t have time to stick around and moderate and sift through crap like this.

I can't recall any of Blair's minions sounding like that. If the comment is so offensive, why did Bahnisch post it?

Update II: Literary lefty Goldsworthy now says she never meant to suggest Howard is a racist, it's just that he favours assimilation which is racist. Weasel words are weasel words, even when all fancied up by a literary type.