No, Jacqueline, a Muslim MP's icy windscreen in western Sydney isn't my proof One of the most critical failings of the media Left - one that particularly crippled the Gillard Government - is a tendency to see conservatives as caricatures. They are stupid. They are evil. They are narrow minded. This leads many Leftists to dismiss argument with abuse. In fact, it seems often to absolve them of any responsibility even to understand the arguments of conservatives. I am often astonished, for instance, how many journalists writing about global warming think climate sceptics "deny climate change" or "deny the science," when they don't deny the former at all and are more likely than warmists to cite data and studies. Part of this problem, I suspect, is that modern Leftists are in fact collectivists and tribalists at heart (which is why for so may what counts is not the principle but the side) and tend to dominate the media class, as surveys of journalists confirm. Leftists in the media class rarely have to debate conservatives, but conservatives in the media class always have to debate Leftists. Debating familiarises one with the arguments of the other. No debate can leave you clueless. All of which brings be to Jacqueline Maley of the Sydney Morning Herald. I had long suspected her of, yes, being of the Left, but at least being more thoughtful than many others of that class and of her paper. So reading her interview today of Ed Husic was a great disappointment. It seems my judgment was faulty, because Maley resorts to the crudest stereotypes, uninformed by any familiarity with the arguments she attempts to mock: A fortnight ago Ed Husic rose early on a frosty Sunday, scraped ice off the windscreen of his car, and drove to a television studio to do a live interview with controversial columnist Andrew Bolt, who has his own Sunday show. An audience with Bolt, who is very outspoken on the issues of Islamic extremism and Muslim migration, was an interesting choice for Husic, who is the nation's first Muslim MP. Husic had that week suffered vile and (of course) anonymous abuse from online trolls for being sworn into cabinet using the Koran. As it happened, Bolt didn't chip him for his religion. But he did pronounce that the icy weather disproved the crazy non-science of so-called global warming. I'm astonished. Does Maley seriously believe I'd "chip" a Muslim MP "for his religion"? My record suggests instead I'd do no such thing - and have instead strenuously defended Husic for proclaiming his own. Indeed, it was specifically because I'd defended Husic that he came on my show. And does Maley seriously believe I'd take icy weather in western Sydney as proof of the " crazy non-science of so-called global warming"? Who is this "Andrew Bolt" she purports to describe? He is a fiction of her ego and her imagination. I'm astonished that a woman I'd assumed to be thoughtful could be so thoughtless. Here is my interview with Husic: