Christian Kerr, speak for yourself

Christian Kerr seems to be suffering a bit of the old Holt Street virus since making his recent move from Crikey to the opinion pages of The Australian.

The Holt Street virus can be quite debilitating and lead to narrowed vision, sweeping generalisations and a terribly inflated ego.

Recently, Mr Kerr had a wonderful old fashioned crack at those dastardly people who write blogs (without, mind you, naming any specific blog).

"Nuance is gone," he proclaims. "Instead, you enter the echo chamber where assertions are endlessly repeated. The talk in the new common rooms of the blogs is decidedly undergraduate intone."

That sounds remarkably similar to reading an opinion piece in The Australian doesn't it?

Today, he provides a less than nuanced piece having a go at the Senator Kim Carr speech which I gave a plug yesterday.

"KIM Carr has a beard just like Allen Ginsberg's. And the Industry, Innovation, Science and Research Minister appears to have been influenced by the beats in other ways," Kerr comically writes.

For the ex-Liberal Party political advisor, Christian Kerr probably prefers the world of Coalition front bench ranks greyed over by your compulsory degree in Commerce, Law or that other life killer - the MBA - than those with the streak of the humanities.

"Sound poets and performance artists rarely shape major government reports," Kerr groans on, "but yesterday's review of the national innovation system, the excitingly punctuated venturousaustralia, appears to have been written using the cut-up style popularised by William Burroughs."

No doubt, as an opinion writer for The Australian the shadow ministry in Canberra will no doubt take his cue just as they would have when he was working within their ranks and throw the Ginsberg line towards Carr.

Hopefully Carr will return the compliment to Kerr and the Coalition and describe them in a way that only Burroughs could;

"They tend to be suspicious, bristly, paranoid-type people with huge egos they push around like some elephantiasis victim with his distended testicles in a wheelbarrow terrified no doubt that some skulking ingrate of a clone student will sneak into his very brain and steal his genius work."

Give me a beat poet any day to a columnist in The Oz.