Schapelle who?
I was going to write an article about this newspaper article and a subsequent survey, but I don't think I can add anything to this excellent blog from Michelle ...
Michelle's blog/opinions-vary.html
Michelle's blog/opinions-vary.html
posted by True Blue at 1:03 pm
4 Comments:
Thank you for the comments True! When I get into blogging mode my mind races and I struggle to keep my thoughts together. In the end I just hope it makes sense!
Thank you for the link to Michelle's blog, True Blue. Like you I am proud of her and I have found it frustrating in the past not to be able to respond to her directly, since her blog does not allow comments by those of us without a blog of our own. Like Michelle I was recently honored and amazed to get a copy of Miss Schapelle's form letter in the mail, complete with a short personal note from the gallant and gentle one herself. I of course agree that the letters are not sent randomly to strangers, surely if they were then all the addresses would be in Australia and Michelle and I, as foreigners, ould never have received one. I did not find Miss Schapelle's tone to be desperate but rather upbeat and gracious, though justifiably bitter about her treatment in the media -- and the author of the article does not need to comment on that since IMHO he is part of the problem. Was this article occasioned by a "slow news day?" Maybe, but a simpler explanation is that of a lazy journalist. I actually scrolled up and down a few times looking for a link to the REST of the article -- the part that was not simply a compilation of quotes from Schapelle's form letter. A description of conditions inside Kerobokan would have been a useful background to why Miss Schapelle is "desperate," if she is. A quick recap of the lack of evidence against her and the low standards of the Indonesian justice system - essential to anyone's having an informed opinion about the case - would have been better still. The title of the article - describing the "nation" as indifferent, as if the author speaks for all Australia -- would have surprised me if I had not seen many other equally iresponsible claims in other articles about Schapelle. Unfortunately little in the press surprises me any more, though it still infuriates me since any objective look at the facts shows Miss Schapelle to be innocent, as many earlier posts in this blog demonstrate and as the reader can see just from comparing the moral and intellectual tone of the responses to to the article. The numbers may indeed be 50/50 on each side of Miss Schapelle's innocence, but that hardly makes them comparable. There simply is no comparison between the calm closely reasoned posts of Schapelle's defenders ( well exemplified both by Michelle's blog and ths one) and the strident, flippant, and simply uninformed posts made by her detractors. It reminds me of a (perhaps apocryphal) story about the first weeks after the raising of the Berlin wall. According to legend one group of apartment dwellers on the communist side packed a box with garbage and threw it over the wall to the free side using a rope. The next day the box was hurled back, filled with bread and sausages and good German beer along with a note, "Each gives what he has." Thanks, Michelle.
Firstly, I agree wholeheartedly with your comments and particularly your comment that "The numbers may indeed be 50/50 on each side of Miss Schapelle's innocence, but that hardly makes them comparable."
Secondly, Michelle's blog does now allow anonymous posting. I'm not sure if that has changed since your above comment, but in any case, you can select anonymous posting using the choices directly below the comment box, then post away. Please do. I'm sure Michelle would be thrilled to have such a thoughtful comment attached to her blog.
well hell..
schapelle
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