Dear Quadrant,
Did you know the Cold War is over? Anyhoo, when I heard Keith had taken your mast, I looked up an article by KP, who wrote:
If Windschuttle publishes a book, we get widespread media coverage of Windschuttle and his book. If Robert Manne or Stuart MacIntyre publishes a book, we get widespread media coverage of Windschuttle and his book… The sum total of academic response to his work has comprehensively destroyed the empirical foundations on which it is predicated [...yet this response is...] neutralised by its own lack of currency in the public sphere.
I could loftily state all reasons for this hoax, (purely personally, they amount to this:
And having despaired of ever
Making my obsessions intelligible
I am content at last to be
The sole clerk of my metamorphoses )
but they boil down to fairness, as well as larks in the Quadrant tradition. Your first editor, after all, was a tremendous hoaxer. Sadly I’m not as poetic as he, but in other ways, I’m hoping this prank might have trickle-down effects. You’ve always held faith in trickle-down culture, haven’t you, Quadrant?
Sincerely, xxxxxxxx
