Only a few months back, when it became obvious media were being gagged by Gillard, an enraged Pickering started blogging. He was computer-illiterate but somehow figured it out.
In the space of a few months he was off and running with a following greater than he ever had in newspapers.
The Press stayed well clear of Gillard’s dubious past. There
were a few bloggers around but they were unsophisticated and without traction. Then Pickering gave the story some legs the media could no longer ignore.
His cartoons are rude and uncensored but he knows how to grab attention. He portrays Gillard with a sex aid. His whimsical stories on the Wilson/Gillard scandal immediately caught the attention of those who were previously unaware of it.
Predictably, those still supporting Gillard went on the attack lambasting Pickering with some pretty foul assertions, all of which he says are entirely expected. He flatly denies them as being typical of attacking the messenger.
“It’s all a nonsense”, says Pickering. “Bloody hell, I’m 70 and was happily retired on an aged pension finding it difficult to make ends meet. I simply wanted to play golf until I dropped dead of some exotic ailment. My days of cartooning and political comment were well over. But when someone f...ks with freedom of the Press, put me first in the queue to bump a few heads.”
The Prime Minister’s now infamous surprise press conference to answer questions on the scandal didn’t seem to answer anything, according to Pickering. But the vitriol she poured on him, and no-one else, indicated that he was the number one “culprit”.
So much so that others of the mostly Left persuasion in the media were distancing themselves from him in droves.
“That’s understandable and expected ”, he says. “I mean, that was the trouble in the first place. People in the media were too scared stiff to call Gillard out on this. She is involved in some pretty serious poo.
“If that bumbling Abbott is PM and involved in crap like this then people should be told. That’s the way it is! It’s not partisan politics. It’s that the media is broke and frightened of litigation and doesn’t know the first thing about on-line stuff. Weeks ago the internet was their enemy. Good accurate reporting is being legalled under the carpet!”
So why is Pickering Gillard’s main target? Delve into his social media and you come up with the reason why:
Facebook analytics shows he has a reach of 160,000.
Friends of fans, 1.5million.
Daily Emails, 10,000, immediately go viral.
The brand new Pickering Post, with AAP news, 52,000 hits in one day.
Pickering cartoons weblog we can’t be sure of, but has a following that has demanded a dedicated server.
All these have a viral component which is then compounded to create a massive coverage. It seems very few people don’t actually see Pickering via one means or another. His coverage is certainly more than a million, possibly two. He hasn’t had time to even consider Twitter and Instagram, yet.
And all in a few months from first emailing his stories and cartoons to a few mates. By this time next year it should be a quite a revelation.
His sites are continually under attack from hackers and DoS flooding. Incriminating material strangely disappears, all to no avail. He has set up other sites because he insists Facebook can’t be trusted. He and his administrators are continually blocked and banned. “The contingency plans we have in place should prevent us being shut down”, he says.
In comparison, “The Australian” newspaper has on-line subscriptions of 40,000, so they say.
Is it any wonder that Gillard chose to publicly attack Pickering for a full hour, exclusive of anyone else?
“It is impossible to read or monitor all the comments on threads but there is an incredible level anger out there. I have never seen such venom displayed in Australian politics before”, Pickering said. “I can’t delete them all.”
But Pickering is content to walk away once the media decides to do its job and follow this story, “as it bloody-well should have done in the first place”, says Pickering. “A Prime Minister blackmailing the Press in order to have a damaging story spiked is simply not acceptable in this country.”
The scandal now has traction and everyone in Australia knows about it. “People want answers and it won’t go away until they get them, or they get her”, Pickering said.
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