If to read or listen to intelligent, thought provoking journalism in your view makes a person a member of the left wing glitterati then while you may be highly intelligent you are nonetheless a fool.

You have made no attempt to analyse the issues that arise from the publication of the fraud. To suggest in some way that Helen Demidenko’s fraud was better because it was still a literary peice of work shows you have lost the plot. Dimidenko’s story was hailed because it was thought to be true. She lied for financial gain (isn’t that a criminal offence - financial advantage by deception?) and was outed against her will.

Here the author has made no attempt at financial gain and has outed themselves. They have demonstrated that while Windschuttle will dig to the ends of the earth to cast doubt on anything with which he disagrees, he will not perform the most rudimentary checks on an article, or even the existence of its author, if it aligns with his way of thinking.

Further, it is not just the publication which has damaged Windschuttle and Quadrant - but the defence of Quadrant by many who say it is not the sort of publication where one would expect any due diligence or verification or articles ! If that is the case then I wll refile my Quadrants with the Womens’ Weekly and New Idea stories about royalty and movie stars and models - because Quadrant now has the same credibiity rating.

Next time I suggest you count to 10 before pressing the send button to contribute an article like this.

Cheers, Graham

However he mistakes the response of many. If a person is prepared to publish material damning others for sloppiness it is imperative that the same kind of sloppiness is not shown. Windschuttle is guilty of those crimes he suggests others have made in examining Aboriginal history. Whilst Peter Farris seems to believe that Windschuttle has proven that the stories of Aboriginal massacres are incorrect Windschuttle has perpetrated his own fraud as Professor John Quiggin has pointed out by failing to produce evidence of this in a second volume. Of course the first fraud is to say that if there is no written evidence then the events never happened.

As for Keith Windschuttle being an intellectual icon of the non-left, it must be a small pool indeed.

Why was Peter Faris granted space in Crikey yesterday for his pro-Windschuttle rant? It was predictable, unenlightened and unenlightening. Windschuttle has been exposed as a hypocrite, hopefully for the benefit of publishing. Faris’s piece belonged in the Comments section at best (the bin would have been more appropriate).

Further down, about 350 words into the first article you’ve written for Crikey in months, you argue that the matter is basically of no importance in any case.

Wow. Powerful advocacy skills. Remind us again what it is QCs get the big bucks for?

The truth is, you’re exactly of the Windschuttle type yourself - long haired fitzroy legal service founder, trekking through the political hinterland until you arrive at the point where you believe that Jews and Muslims should have their religion stamped in their passport.

People like you and Windschuttle don’t need sustained attack - you destroy yourselves with the slightest push, publishing the wrong article, coming out of the wrong doorway…

But please, keep the whole affair going with your inept defences….

“The answer is no, because the people who care about this are the same sort of people who did the fraud: namely, the left-wing glitterati who read Crikey, The Age and The SMH and watch and listen to the ABC. “

This is true, but do you really think the ‘average Australian’ knows about the Sokal Affair? Or reads Quadrant? The Windschuttle Affair appeals only to the intellectuals on the right and left. You can’t say it doesn’t matter to the Right, because both Crikey and the Oz have been filled with Op-Ed columns about how this all doesn’t matter right from the get go! Also going from the comments left on most Crikey stories, there are quite a few right-wingers and moderates who read Crikey to balance out the pernicious effect of the evil lefties.

Those sure are a lot of words wasted on something that doesn’t matter. Heh.

Strawman anyone? In fact are we sure the poster isn’t Windy himself, sees like a very pompous turn of phrase.

What thorough obfuscating dishonesty.

Faris’ central point is valid and not addressed.
Indeed all of Graham’s counter-arguments are utterly weak.
For example classifying Quadrant with Womens’ Weekly and New Idea on the basis that a shoestring budget operation must ipso facto mean it could not not be scholarly.

Answer Faris’ point Graham.

Windschuttle’s reputation as a scholarly intellectual unafraid to counter the prevailing politically interpreted suppositions and proclivities of the Left has not been challenged one jot by this infantile prank.

Well done Peter Faris for your discriminating critique of this vacuous response from and for the (almost invariably pseudo-) intellectual Left.