JEREMY SEAR'S INSINCERE "APOLOGY"

Owing to some changes at work my afternoon into early evening blogging window is smaller than ever. It's fortunate then that all I need do is go to Pure Poison to find something to blog about -- the PP boyz are the gift that keeps on giving of Australian leftist blogs.

By now everyone with any sense -- left and right -- has realised Scott Bridges and Jeremy Sear are intellectually bankrupt, as well as sneaky and dishonest, so it's really pointless for me to keep making fun of them. The thing is, I owe these guys: on their fourth day online the now infamous Ant Rogenous (Sear and Bridges' good mate) included me in a scatter-gun attack, even attempting to intimidate an innocent bystander into removing me from her blogroll:

As far as bottom-feeders go, little-known blogger J.F. Beck was the most unctuous to weigh in to yesterday’s Pure Poison attack. Beck’s blog has for years been little more than an exercise in ingratiating himself to Tim Blair with creepy personal pot-shots Jeremy Sear and ham-fisted attacks on Antony Loewenstein. Not surprisingly for someone of Blair’s ego, it seems to have worked — the two exchange links (and cuddly emails) with almost the same loving frequency as Blair and Bolt.

I won’t bother posting a link to Beck’s site because it (like the man himself, who all those years ago stalked Jeremy until he’d uncovered his identity) truly is a steaming pile of shit. But if you really must have a look at it, you can find a link in Legal Eagle’s blogroll at (gasp!) anti-bullying-humour-authority Helen Dale’s site.

Now I couldn't care less what names the PP boyz call me but Rogenous told a whooping great lie in claiming I stalked Sear. Until that nasty slur is retracted I'll keep after them.

Today Jeremy posted another Pure Poison "apology", akin to the now removed almost-apology to Tim Blair. Let's take a close look at the blogging-barrister's overly-nuanced waffle.

Jeremy says:

Pure Poison sets itself up as a site to tackle intellectual dishonesty in the media. And we recognise that part of doing our job here is holding ourselves to the high standards we are trying to encourage in others.

There have been two unfortunate incidents here over the past few days for which we would like to apologise to our readers.

Glide past the first paragraph's "high standards" nonsense to the second paragraph's "two unfortunate incidents" crapola. That might as well read "two unlucky insignificant events". A real apology from Jeremy would refer to "my regrettable lapses in judgment". Jeremy clearly can't see that he screwed-up.

Jeremy continues to avoid taking responsibility:

The first was an incident on Friday, in which the post “Consent is not a furphy, Andrew” was taken down because we wanted to make very sure that no-one could conceivably draw implications from it that were not intended. It was amended and then reposted - unfortunately without an acknowledgement that changes had been made. This was not an attempt to conceal the changes (they were mentioned in the comments) but we agree that, as we’ve advocated to others, we should have made those changes clear on the post itself.

Jeremy refuses to admit to making a mistake in writing what he wrote; rather claiming he withdrew and rewrote the post so his readers wouldn't misread what he wrote. Jeremy's reposting without acknowledging changes wasn't "unfortunate"; that's how he operates: he refuses to accept reponsibility for his mistakes and errors in judgement.

Jeremy's responsibility avoiding non-apology continues:

The second was an incident yesterday morning, in which I posted on the subject of professional journalists using minor blog sites to do their attacks for them. On reflection, we decided that this post was too close to engaging in “blog wars” - mainly because the example used to illustrate the post was not exactly one in which I was a disinterested observer - and was therefore not appropriate for this site. We’re not interested in getting involved in those sorts of childish blog spats, and we doubt our readers are interested in reading about them, either. I therefore withdrew that post.

The withdrawn Pure Poison post linked to a Tim Blair post linking to me so Jeremy obviously thinks Tim Blair is attacking Pure Poison via me; imagining Blair is all worried by the rantings of a couple of fringe-leftists who deludedly see themselves as a major force in the Australian blogoshphere. In any event, Pure Poison's preoccupation with Bolt and Blair is all about "childish blog spats", as evidenced by ongoing whining about Bolt and Blair refusing to link to their PP nitpicking.

Jeremy's apology isn't sincere because he can't see where he went wrong: he just doesn't get it, and never will. His days as a pro-blogger are numbered.