Yesterday we brought you the news that conservative commentator Andrew Bolt claims he had bashed up a pair of protesters who set upon him outside a restaurant and doused him in glitter and a “sticky substance”. At the time, I said that the very limited CCTV footage did not substantiate Bolt’s claim that he gave them a solid knuckle sandwich.
Now the full footage has been released, and I have to say that I rate Bolt’s claim MOSTLY TRUE. He was definitely the victor here. A simple message for our would-be vigilantes: if you’re going to glitterbomb a 57-year-old bigot, you gotta be ready to back that shit up.
Leftist fascists attack conservative columnist Andrew Bolt. Pathetic thugs weren’t expecting him to fight back.????pic.twitter.com/HjGdhqR6KE
— Rita Panahi (@RitaPanahi) June 7, 2017
Look, it’s a bit rich for Bolt to call the blokes who set upon him ‘fascists’ considering he’s the one literally flirting with the concept of Muslim internment camps, but this was a failed attempt. Appreciate the effort, but it wasn’t good.
Let’s dive in.
Firstly, the hooded fella here appears to shove an old lady out of the way so he can clock Bolt in the back of the head. That’s not on. Going in for the coward punch via sending a pensioner sprawling isn’t the most virtuous of attacks. They lose points for this one.
Bolta responds by whirling around and landing a few glancing blows. Not great punches. They’re very much 57-year-old man punches. These are the kind of punches you throw while nine schoons deep at a pub in Fortitude Valley on Origin night while wearing your Blues jersey.
If the fight had ended here, Bolt wouldn’t look great.
BAM! Bolt hits the pole. Solid hit from the boys. Very John Woo. But he’s clearly still shook from having glitter chucked in his gob. The dragon has not awoken.
They chuck him across the table. Points for style here. At this point in the fight, no one but the most committed rightwing partisan would think Bolt was winning. Throwing someone across a table is probably one of the coolest moves you can do in a fight.
It’s controversial, but I reckon chucking someone into a stack of cardboard boxes which then go flying in every direction is marginally cooler. That said, the boys didn’t have that opportunity, so this works.
Now this bit is controversial. Allow me to turn your gaze to 11 seconds into the clip. It’s absolutely not conclusive, but it looks like Bolt might have gotten a solid nut shot into one of his attackers. You can’t see it, but I’m willing to accept the possibility that he landed one square in the cojones.
But wait. This was Bolt’s account of what went down, via his column in the Herald Sun.
Well, I resolved that if anyone was going to be humiliated, it was them. I hit the head of one so hard that my knuckles are still tender, and when he was down, legs sprawled apart, I kicked.
I get that in the heat of battle your mind can be a little clouded. But I’m going to have to dock points from Bolt on the basis of exaggerating the story. At no point in the footage can a man be seen being nailed in the nuts while he’s down.
This is where Bolt really brings it back. That is absolutely a solid punch, and the bloke probably deserves it for having the temerity to glitterbomb a rightwinger without fully planning either an escape route, or spending six months cloistered in a mountain redoubt studying ancient and forgotten martial arts techniques with a wizened and reclusive grandmaster.
Seriously, it’s a big one. Bolt would take it home purely on the basis of this punch.
Here’s the money shot. No longer just a vile commentator sitting atop a pathetic media pile of racists squeezing money from frightened Herald Sun readers, Bolt assumes his true form: Jean-Claude Van Damme with glitter around his mouth. He looks like a War Boy in Mad Max: Fury Road after they’ve just sprayed chrome over their chompers.
Again. Boys. You really needed to consider that this might have happened.
At this point, the cameraman legs it. Clearly he had been anticipating a repeat of the Rumble in the Jungle broadcast, but instead he got Drederick Tatum vs Homer Simpson. Can’t blame him for running, but I feel like it’s a choice all of them should have made approximately 18 seconds earlier.
Again. If you wanna pull off a glitterbomb, power to ya. You just gotta do it right. Don’t shove old ladies.
Source: Twitter.
