A bit of a laugh at “hurt feelings”

Auf Deutsch, we call it “Schadenfreude”. There isn’t a word for it in English, but a long one would be “laughing-at-hurt-feelings”. If your day has been a little dull, and if you find the idea that someone could have a legal right not to have their feelings hurt a little bit funny, have a listen to Patrick Cook on ABC Radio’s Counterpoint program on the recent Andrew Bolt case. Just remember, Cook is described on the ABC website as a “satririst, cartoonist, commentator”. That’s definitely the way I like my commentary: with several heaped spoonfuls of satire.

About Schütz

I am a PhD candidate & sessional academic at Australian Catholic University in Melbourne, Australia. After almost 10 years in ministry as a Lutheran pastor, I was received into the Catholic Church in 2003. I worked for the Archdiocese of Melbourne for 18 years in Ecumenism and Interfaith Relations. I have been editor of Gesher for the Council of Christians & Jews and am guest editor of the historical journal “Footprints”. I have a passion for pilgrimage and pioneered the MacKillop Woods Way.
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3 Responses to A bit of a laugh at “hurt feelings”

  1. Tony says:

    On the broader issue, there are many good articles about this judgement (eg http://www.abc.net.au/news/2011-09-29/holmes-bolt-bromberg-and-a-profoundly-disturbing-judgment/3038156) that don’t fall easily into a pro or anti Bolt rave.

    But Patrick Cook could have easily equated ‘hurt feeling’s with ‘my right to free speech’ in relation to Bolt’s reaction to the judgement. I think it would be hard to find another man in Australia who exercises a more unfettered (less fettered?) right of free speech. I guess the irony of his front page exit from the courthouse proclaiming that ‘This is a sad day’ needs no further massaging from a satarist or a cartoonist or a commentator (is there such a thing as an ‘ironisist’?).

    The more noise Bolt makes about such matters of principle though, does help to hide his own journalistic cardinal sins in relation to this issue: his very poor verification of matters of fact.

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