The pond always has its irony alert on - the ironograph works a bit like a seismograph - but by golly the needle went off the page at the sighting of Natasha Stott Despoja advising the Greens how to behave, in Party unity vital as Greens face their biggest test.
Not only silly but still sore after all these years, there's Stott Despoja bleating about the Greens reluctance to admit how much they owe the Democrats. What, acting like a leaderless rabble of sheep and falling apart in a screaming heap? Let's hope not.
Ah well, it's Saturday, the irony alert has subsided, and there's not much point wading through irrelevant blubbering about long-lost spilt milk.
Equally there's not much point wading through the interminable debate about Anders Behring Breivik, given yet another airing by Karen Kissane in Mad or bad? As if the world's binary, as the header proposes, and you can only be mad or bad, as opposed to mad and bad, or badly mad, or madly bad.
Please, if it's sane to randomly kill 77 people and injure another 151, strangers to you, can we have another definition of what constitutes sanity? Why does political ideology, or religious extremism get in the way? Sure Breivik was a right wing loon, but a loon's a loon anytime on the pond. On the other hand, I suppose Australia's had its professional killers in Afghanistan for a decade, beavering away alongside the United States' professionally trained killers, so maybe Breivik's sane in the way western civilisation routinely displays its sanity ...
But we're starting to ramble, just when we need a class loon to relieve the Saturday tedium. Oh come on down, Christopher Pearson.
Sure you're tucked away behind the paywall, but these days the pond is happy to incite readers to go behind it, by googling away, and reading the tidbits for free.
Sure you're tucked away behind the paywall, but these days the pond is happy to incite readers to go behind it, by googling away, and reading the tidbits for free.
So if you want to read Tony Abbott is not the messiah, he's a believer who stands by his sibling, try googling the title. Can you imagine the tears of blood Pearson shed typing that header. Tony Abbott is not the messiah ... (but don't go saying he's just a naughty boy).
Yes, it's surely a tidbit, the outpouring of a gnat so make sure you like aniseed before you bite into the lolly.
But if you do want a dose of Christian Abbott apologetics, Pearson's your go to Tony Abbott Latin mass loving Catholic conservative man.
So if the title doesn't get you to your destination, your google text for the day is:
The story of Abbott's gay sister and her partner, like the story of the lost son who turned out to have been fathered by someone else, won't do him any damage at all. On the contrary, I'm sure most people can empathise with him.
Indeed. Oh you poor dear, you poor ducky, you've got one of "them" in the family, have you? It must be so hard, such a burden. I really do empathise with you. Such suffering ...
If you have a fond relationship with a sibling, it's obvious you don't shut them out of your life at the time they most need emotional support just because they're same-sex attracted and have decided to do something about it.
Oh yes, you don't ban them or shun them or lock them out of the family for their sinfulness and depravity. This isn't the Amish!
Oh yes, you don't ban them or shun them or lock them out of the family for their sinfulness and depravity. This isn't the Amish!
But you might have to think long and hard about it, if they're same-sex attracted, and even worse if they've decided to do something about it.
They'll need emotional support - perhaps a short course in how to become heterosexual and if that fails, perhaps Pearson-style, they need to join the Catholic church and rabbit on about the Latin mass, and the immortal soul, and the way that deviants and perverts are destined to an eternity in hell ... if they decide to do something about it.
Better to do a Pearson:
Making a commitment to regular examination of conscience was unexpectedly therapeutic. It led me to trade in my double bed for something more austere, observe the Lenten fast and try, for the most part, to avoid low bars. I read again the Confessions of my patron saint, Augustine of Hippo, who had famously prayed: "Lord, make me chaste, but not yet", and knew how he felt. (here).
Waiter, bring single beds for everyone and perhaps a cilice as a chaser.
By golly, no wonder gay people need emotional support. Here they are off to a lifetime in hell for their lifestyle choice. Fair dinkum, that'll need therapy for the rest of their lives ...
If you've ever wondered what a modern equivalent to "quisling" might be, look no further than Pearson.
Deciding not to behave in a judgmental way in such circumstances doesn't mean that you're obliged to abandon a considered position on sexual ethics or on marriage, either as an institution or as a sacrament. Nor does it prove you're a hypocrite. It just means that the Christian imperative to love one another trumps all other considerations.
Oh yes, give us a dose of pious humbuggery and righteousness. we luvs ya, but did we ever mention how you're off to a lifetime in hell? But don't let that worry you, there are other considerations ... now how about another big smarmy slobbering condescending kiss? We promise not to flinch the way Tony Jones did when Tony Abbott so boldly touched him.
The funniest thing? Well the whole column is an attempt to establish that Abbott's a modern man, not stuck in the nineteen fifties, while slagging off Kerryn Phelps - she's a gay activist don't ya know - and triumphalist 80s feminism, yet it's done in the style, manner and attitude of a good old Catholic Pellist stuck in the nineteen fifties.
Yep, Abbott, Pearson and the other Pellists, still following Leviticus, which best guess reached its finished form 538-332 BC, but if you follow the fundies and the literalists, likely stretches back to 1400 B.C. and the time of Moses (here)
Of course, if he was a truly modern man, perhaps Abbott wouldn't need to resort to an attitude first enunciated thousands of years ago in the Book of Leviticus. (It's an abomination, don't you know?)
There's a really creepy, smarmy, uxorious Uriah Heep tone to Pearson when he gets on to scribbling about Tony Abbott. He's always on about his friendship in a way that produces a twinkling in dinted nostrils. Such a fervent form of man love, wrapped up with a truly spectacular rhetorical closer:
Hard as Phelps may find it to understand, most of us, rightly, expect political parties to honour their solemn pre-election undertakings.
What an absolute prat. Such unctuousness. As if that's an argument against allowing Liberals, ostensibly liberal, a conscience vote on the matter. And don't the Abbott-lovers get agitated when it's pointed out that a liberal Liberal like Malcolm Turnbull doesn't give a Pellist toss about gay marriage ...
While Abbott's stuck in Leviticus-land, presumably so he, and Pearson and the Pellists can trot off to heaven, redeemed, having suffered mightily and extended love, but not generosity, while others in the family head off to burn in hell?
By this time, the irony alert needle in the ironograph had somehow broken itself - the concept of Pearson and modern, as opposed to professional conservative curmudgeon - was too hard for the poor thing to cope with, so it's off to the irony shop for another machine.
Which means there's just time to note that yet another pundit has found something special in the Pellism on view last Monday - it's like the Magic Pudding, it just keeps on giving - and today it's Mike Carlton, reproducing a pompous Pellist moment.
Quick, with the machine gone, it's the rumble in the tummy, and the chortling in the throat that warns of an irony alert:
Tony Jones: … is it possible for an atheist to go to heaven?
George Pell: Well, it's not my business … .
Jones: You're the only authority we have here.
Pell: I would say certainly.
Jones: Yeah?
Pell: Certainly!
George Pell: Well, it's not my business … .
Jones: You're the only authority we have here.
Pell: I would say certainly.
Jones: Yeah?
Pell: Certainly!
Naturally Carlton saw the jugular and went for it:
Thus, with one small word but one grand gesture, Gorgeous George swept away the brilliant edifice of 2000 years not just of Catholic teaching, but of Christianity itself. You don't have to believe in God to make it past St Peter and in through the pearly gates. Still less do you need the encrusted paraphernalia of organised religion, the bells and smells and so on. You just have to be good.
I'm not sure he's right, though. Reluctant as I am to quote scripture to a prince of the church, this would seem to fly in the face of John 14.6: ''Jesus saith unto him, I am the Way, the Truth, and the Life: no man cometh unto the Father but by me.'' (here).
Oh dear, another hit at the goose that keeps on giving.
Where's Greg Sheridan blathering on about Pell as a gigantic intellectual edifice?
The anti-Pellists are gathering at the gates, and even making jokes about how She might let them into Heaven.
Lucky the pond is now deploying a new irony alert system, found elsewhere on the full to overflowing intertubes:
Loon is quite appropriate.
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