Worse than Bikies, Fouler than Adelaide water

There are times when it's difficult to take the street theatre seriously, or wonder whether something's been lost when a raised eyebrow and ironic tone wasn't translated to cold dead newsprint. The online Adelaide Advertiser, still rapt in its embrace of the SA Attorney-General (yes, that one, positioning himself as the leader in the national war on outlaw motorcycle gangs and not averse to giving the SA Supreme Court a bit of biff), quotes Mr Atkinson as stating that he's more at risk from computer gamers than the likes of the Coffin Chasers, Bandidos and other OMGs.

Oh dear, the other OMG.

Mr Atkinson is quoted as saying -

I don't know who sends me this filthy material but I get my electorate office email spammed, about 2 o'clock in the morning I had a threatening note from a gamer shoved under my door ...

I feel that my family and I are more at risk from gamers than we are from outlaw motorcycle gangs, who also hate me and are running a candidate against me.

The outlaw motorcycle gangs haven't been hanging around my doorstep at 2am - a gamer has.

As yet I seem to be hated by neither gamers nor OMG members - please, please don't enlighten me - but I have noticed a possum hanging around my doorstep at 2am. (Like all good possums it has been known to burst into song, particularly when other possums or cats are in the vicinity, although somehow I doubt that it will get a gig at the SA Opera.)

The Minister can seek assistance from the SA Police, and indeed may already have done so, if the threats are serious. Public office is not a shield against any and all unpleasantness: getting the occasional nasty message from LAN kiddies is part of the job.

One might ask though whether the SA election campaign isn't getting a tad too emo ... the brave minister (presumably supported by all the "decent people", a category which seems to exclude major parts of the SA Bar and SA Supreme Court) beset on all sides by ghastliness - bikers, gamers, the "sewer" that's operated by News Corp (I'm referring of course to the Advertiser and its online presence, not Adelaide tap water) ...

Time to toughen up, princess, in the words of one of my students, and wind back the hyperbole?