Mates tell me I am foolishly resistant to social media. In having nothing to do with Twitter, they say, I make my life less interesting and stimulating. I am not so sure. My Speccie colleague Joan Collins once described it as ‘the most banal and boring pastime ever invented.’ One can follow the breaking news, current affairs and topical commentary without requiring instant and endless mobile updates, much of which is self-serving drivel and a source of pathetic distraction.

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Among the explanations for our poor performance in the Olympic pool, one stands out. Too many swimmers clearly believed their own publicity, but some still believe their disappointing results have nothing to do with social media. Take Emily Seebohm, a hot favourite for the 100-metres backstroke final. ‘I don’t think Twitter and Facebook cost me a gold medal,’ she insisted. ‘I think I was too nervous for my own good, and that just cost me.’ What kind of excuse is this? To say an Olympic swimmer is nervous before a final is like saying water is wet. What contributed to Seebohm’s defeat in an event for which she had broken the Olympic record in the qualifier? Was she mentally prepared? Or was she so distracted by all the tweets about herself beforehand that she could not focus on her race?

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It was said of Roger Bannister’s sub-four-minute mile in 1954 that the barrier to sporting success is more psychological than physical. As someone who once had delusions of Olympic grandeur, I believe that dictum remains true and that Twitter makes preparation for your big race all the more difficult. On day eight of the Games, Leigh Nugent warned: ‘Resist this temptation and focus on the Olympics. Social media can be draining and a distraction.’ Well, ‘doh!’ as they say in The Simpsons. If only the head of Australian swimming issued this edict before the Olympics. Perhaps London 2012 has been the failure our swimmers had to have: a lesson in not only the wisdom of modesty and dangers of hubris but also the perils of social media.

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The other night I switched from Nine to the ABC for something different. Now, I concede Liberal partisans sometimes overstate their case that Aunty is biased. The public broadcaster is home to some of the most fair-minded journalists in the land. Even still, it’s no wonder Lateline is often derided as Leftline. When Gore Vidal died last week, the ABC’s award-winning television show dedicated 20 minutes of its half-hour to his life and times. (For fair-and-balanced coverage, Fox News Special Report ran a 20-second segment!) Host Tony Jones went weak in the knees interviewing our foreign minister (Bob Carr) about the left-wing radical. Fair enough. I hardly agreed with a word Vidal said about politics and history, but his mastery of the English language marked him out as one of the most important literary talents of the modern era (though his thesis on American ‘imperialism’ is hardly in the same intellectual league as that of Charles Beard, William Appleman Williams or Chalmers Johnson).

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The problem, though, is that the ABC’s producers are selective about whom they lionise. This is the same Lateline that did not even dedicate a segment to Ronald Reagan when he died in June 2004. The same Tony Jones who interviewed another foreign minister (Alexander Downer) that week, not about the conservative icon’s role in destroying the Evil Empire but about Australia’s role in Abu Ghraib! It all fits a pattern: the tax-payer-funded behemoth lauded left-wing economist John Kenneth Galbraith on his passing in 2006; but virtually ignored the death of the Nobel laureate Milton Friedman a few months later. PM went gah-gah in early 2007 when JFK hagiographer Arthur Schlesinger Jr left us; but a year later hardly covered the passing of William F. Buckley Jr, the patron saint of American conservatism. Perhaps none of this matters, for as my old drinking companion Paddy McQuinness once remarked: ‘Lateline plays the role of a radio program of an earlier era which went out at about the same time of providing intelligent conversation to a tiny audience by that time too drunk or too stoned to make their own.’

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A non-drinking journo is a paradox: like a non-swimming fish. Even still, finding myself in an inner-city pub popular among media students, I was shocked to count the number of women drinking schooners of beer. Crikey: 15 out of 18! The story is much the same on Sydney’s lower north shore where I live. Why — at least from my observation — are far greater numbers of young ladies drinking copious amounts of lager? It did not happen 20 years ago when I was a uni student. How will Nicola Roxon’s health police combat this growing trend?

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I was recently invited to a Liberal party fundraiser for the federal candidate in a western Sydney seat. The star attraction was Hazem El Masri. I thought: Wow! Here’s a chance to meet the greatest point scorer in rugby league history. It is also a chance to welcome a high-profile Muslim Australian into the big tent of Menzian Liberalism. But then I was reminded this was the same Canterbury Bulldogs left-winger who declared at the 2007 election: ‘When John Howard is long gone from the scene, he will leave behind a terrible legacy. A disastrous period in history. A legacy of division and hate.’ Perhaps old Hazem, far from epitomising liberal values, is just an out-of-work footballer sniffing the political breeze. Better to boycott the event and barrack for my beloved bunnies.

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On 28 August, The Spectator Australia hosts a debate about Kevin Rudd’s return to Labor’s leadership. The latest joke about our former prime minister  is that his only public (domestic) appearance recently was at a Brisbane retirement home, where he asked an elderly woman if she knew who he was. ‘No, but if you check at the front desk, I’m sure they can help you,’ she replied.