Miranda Devine, gender politics redux, and a dash of hot chilli climate change to add a little spice ...

(Above: yes this week at the pond we're touting the Women's Weekly and if you rush off to their site you can get spiffing pictures of Julia Gillard and her most revealing interview yet, which is to say about as revealing as a woman in a burka).

What strange news to be reading in the middle of an election campaign.

World is 'unequivocally' getting hotter, says study.

That links from The Sydney Morning Herald. Now let me bring you the link from The Australian.

Wait a second, there doesn't seem to be anything on the digital front page. Might be in The World category. No, nothing there. Perhaps it's in Health and Science. No, sorry, doesn't seem to be anything there.

Guess we'll need to call together one hundred and fifty honest citizens to help The Australian discover the news, though perhaps that's the dumbest idea going around in federal politics. Either the notion that one hundred and fifty honest citizens could make sense of it all, or more to the point, that they could persuade the The Australian to take notice ...

Actually, I take all that back. The dumbest people discussing politics are the climate change deniers, not least and in no particular order, including but not limited to, Tim Blair, Janet Albrechtsen, Andrew the Melbourne Dolt, Miranda the Devine, and a whole gaggle and raft of correspondents for The Australian.

Meanwhile, if you head off to the Daily Terror in the UK, not the tragic imitation located in the antipodes, you get to read Met Office report: global warming evidence is 'unmistakeable'. And you cop a link to the Met Office here, which provides a summary, and a link to the actual annual report on the National Climatic Data Center here. Funny old parochial Brits, convinced that the Met is at the heart of things.

Never mind, I guess that 15,000 valiant Australian eco-green warriors will tour around Australia setting things right, restoring order, and making things safe for the planet.

Meanwhile, it's Miranda the Devine day, and naturally and conveniently, the climate isn't front and centre. No, she's drunk the same kool aid as Janet Albrechtsen, and her topic for the day involves gender studies, and Julia Gillard and it's all here in Impressive, but not a good look.

Oh dear lord, more blather about Gillard and kids and Abbott and kids and gender and women and men and worms and pink and blue and snails and puppy dog tails and ....

The Devine struggles to deal with the idea that Gillard has a picture spread in The Australian Women's Weekly - there's a slideshow here, and the interview is here and a behind the scenes, with a full 22 images, report here.

Ah yes, you can always rely on the Weekly for insights in to gender. But I digress. Having previously done her time as a prime candidate to become one of the 150 ordinary folk who need to find out about climate change, the Devine is now torn:

Julia Gillard's photos in The Australian Women's Weekly are beautiful. The soft cover image gives an impression of an attractive, warm and open person, with an appealing vulnerability the photographer says he detected during the shoot.

The 13-page spread for the Weekly's 2 million readers is electoral gold, especially when much is being made of the Opposition Leader, Tony Abbott's, supposed lack of appeal with female voters and reports of a "gender gap" in the polls, highlighted by Channel Nine's ridiculous pink "female" worm during the debate.

Well at least we know that the Devine is a rusted on Nine viewer, since the worm on Seven was also divided into pink and blue, and it provided an even clearer indication that women in the audience couldn't stand Abbott when he opened his mouth, as politicians are wont to do when caught in a debate in front of the cameras (Women's worm gives Gillard win).

Naturally there's a conspiracy at work:

So moronic were the kneejerk responses of the pink worm, one senior journalist confessed to shouting at his television: "How stupid are women?"

Well, we're not stupid, and the responses of the hand-picked market research audience that stacks Nine's Willoughby studios on such occasions do not represent the political views of women.

Which means I guess that a hand-picked market research audience also stacked Seven's studios to ensure that the women in both studios acted exactly the same, except in a more so way at Seven.

Which leads me to think that maybe women in general aren't stupid, but can the same be said about the Devine?

Thereafter the Devine burbles on in a standard way, typical of the commentariat, and dare we say, as if she'd had a copy of Albrechtsen's copy yesterday close to hand.

Indeedy, reading her riff induces a profound case of ennui and tedium, since the point of the exercise is to explain why everyone must bury this female Caesar, and embrace that very masculine man and his right-thinking ways. How did it go in Shakespeare?

I come to bury Gillard, not to praise her;

The evil that women do lives after them,

The good is oft interred with their bones,

So let it be with Gillard. The noble Abbott

Hath told you Gillard was ambitious:

If it were so, it was a grievous fault,

And grievously hath Gillard answered it ...

Suffering the indignities of a Weekly spread

Is just the start of it ...

Meanwhile it would be remiss of us, along with the Devine, not to mention Abbott's beautiful family, a great asset for a man tagged as having a problem appealing to women, though this is just the tag of a worm, and therefore not valid.

The gender gap in the polls, in any case, was less a reaction against Abbott than a rush of warm sisterly support for Gillard. Few women would not have appreciated the symbolism of Australia having its first female prime minister. But the novelty effect was only ever going to be short-lived.

Yep, so short lived that both the Devine and Albrechtsen feel the need to scribble about it within a day of each other, and brood about the perfidious role of The Australian Women's Weekly, and pray that gender won't have an influence on voting patterns, and rally to bury the ambitious Gillard and praise the noble Abbott.

Here's how that mantra runs:

While last week's Nielsen poll showed a significant percentage of women favouring Gillard, the Newspoll taken last weekend shows Labor's female primary vote dropped from 44 per cent to 40 per cent, while the Coalition's rose from 37 to 40. No doubt the questionable way in which Gillard rose to the top job has truncated her honeymoon with female voters.

And so on and on, at tedious, excruciating length, but let's cut to the chase and do a spoiler by revealing the end of the Devine's piece, and naturally it's the boys and unionists who are to blame:

The ALP-union boys club which runs the party are burning through Gillard on a punt. If she wins, they win. If she doesn't, she's finished - and that's all the better for Bill Shorten or whoever else among the ex-union heavies jostling to get to the top. They have put enormous pressure on the best female political operator in living memory. They have made her look insincere, superficial and scheming. She has lost the mantle of legitimacy and authority which, as the first woman leader, she especially needs to reassure voters.

Which is of course about as demeaning a view of Gillard as any man might manage. Because here's the thing. Nobody except Gillard in the end was responsible for her going in to tap former Chairman Rudd on the shoulder. She put up her hand and she did it herself. It's her choice, and she made no secret that at some time she wanted the top job, and then she moved when she thought the time was right.

To suggest she's just a patsy and it's all the fault of the boys is to demean her ability and skill as an operative, and her desire to run the show. Whether it works out in the long run, only time will tell. But to portray her as a patsy, and at the same time as the best female political operator in living memory, is so bizarrely stupid that ... that only Miranda the Devine could scribble it.

Of course all this is just a prelude for the Devine doing a mock turtle and blubbering about how sad it is that Abbott will bury Gillard:

The fate of the party is on her narrow shoulders. While she is valiantly battling through, something in Abbott's demeanour on debate night says he has her measure now, that his initial dismay at her ascension has dissipated. If Gillard fails she has gone down in everyone's estimation. She will be just another woman outsmarted. What a waste.

Remarkably the Devine is clearly out to prove that she can be as dumb as, or dumber than Janet Albrechtsen, with her vision of Gillard as just another woman outsmarted. Clearly she still thinks the gherkin of the week award for pathetic scribbling is still within her grasp.

Meanwhile, there's that business of climate change, and the notion that in due course the Devine will turn her attention away from gender, and on to actual issues. But then, if she pays attention to what actual scientists are saying, she might turn out to be just another woman outsmarted. What a waste.

Meanwhile, if we have another three weeks of blather and burble and bubble and blithering about gender in the election campaign, the odds are shortening that the pond will be shifting to the Arctic to join the poley bears in their fight against hot air ...

(Below: a couple of handy thumbnail Met graphs, sure to produce the next round of armchair denialists, busy doing field work from the comfort of their computer).