Tim Blair has cancer, as fellow human being I sympathise with him and hope he gets better fast.

Many other bloggers both left and right feel the same way, but some feel it necessary to stoke his ego as well.

Suddenly everyone is his best friend. He is now not only the most popular blogger in Australia, but, “is hands down one of the best bloggers on the planet. His writing is concise, witty, and cuts like a knife. I always get a good chuckle — at the expense of lefties — when I read his stuff. I hope he gets well.”

And, “He is THE voice of reason in a crazy coldening world.” I thought the world was getting hotter…

And there’s more, “For those of you who don’t read him, he is brilliantly witty, and his comment section is hilarious. I’ve never registered to post over there, but I read it when I need a dose of glee.” So you never bothered to write anything about Tim Blair before, but now something has changed?

This downpour of sympathy is making me feel physically ill. Here is a few rules for those that wish to look genuinely sympathetic. Making up lies like you’re his best friend or saying he is the nicest, most talented person you have ever met just makes you look shallow. Try to think of things that are actually true. Such as, he actually responds to e-mails sent to him by readers of his blog. Or the fact that he has one of the highest comment counts then any other blog. Or that he has one of the oldest blogs around.

Remember cancer is one of the most common diseases. I have heard one in three people will suffer it in their lifetimes. Both my parents have had run-ins with this disease. Treatments are now overwhelmingly successful. He will get better and he will get back to blogging, so don’t break your back attempting to be the most sympathetic person in the southern hemisphere.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, January 15th, 2008 at 6:04 pm and is filed under Blogging, Medicine, Our sad culture. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.