Speaking of men of culture, as you do ...

(Above: click to enlarge, still the best reason to subscribe to Crikey, more First Dog here and the guide a demonic Tony Abbott would use is down below).


It doesn't take much to set the pond brooding, and the recent ruckus about Tony Abbott and urban Aborigines and men of culture got the pond going.

It seems that the on-going foot in mouth disease that afflicts Abbott will never go away, not even if you tried plunge, shower or cage dipping (every farmer's handy choice here).

The man entirely lacks culture, or perhaps is infested with St. John's blight, and it's no surprise that Ken Wyatt felt the need to have a word or two (Ken Wyatt and Tony Abbott in Aboriginal authenticity rift).

It suggests that Abbott has been listening to the wrong cultural advisors, and followed along with the notion that you can only be authentically black if you live somewhere beyond the black stump, out woop woop way.

The pond is acutely aware of this riff because of its privileged and elevated position. By happenstance, the pond comes from out Tamworth way, which of course means Australian cranked up to eleven, the authentic ridgy didge real Australian you don't find growing elsewhere.

Beware fakes and imitations. Let's face it, Queenslanders aren't Australian, they're Queenslanders, and possibly even now mating with cane toads to become a race apart. And Tasmanians aren't Australian, they're aspirational Antarcticans.

And we could go through caricatures of every other state and inner urban elite, but let's just settle for the fact that you need to come from Tamworth to be authentic, and it's a dinkum fact that an urban white like Tony Abbott - a north shore white at that - doesn't have the first clue about being an Australian.

Unless of course you think this sort of idle prattle is meaningless judgemental sheep and bunny shit that says a lot about the man doing the judging and three fifths of a flying wombat about the object being judged (yes, yes, you would have said bullshit or horseshit and shown how desperately unTamworthian and unAustralian you are).

Now Abbott's had to go about the dreary business of explaining he didn't say what he said, or if he did say what he said, it wasn't what he meant, or even if he did mean it, it was mis-quoted and misconstrued.

In the pond's personal experience, there's nothing more guaranteed to rile Aboriginal people in big cities (or towns) than to suggest that somehow they're the lesser for it, and that you can only be truly black if you've yet to sight a white fella.

The ratbags at Stormfront, the white pride fascist front of Hitler lovers - Holocaust, what Holocaust? - took this latest mis-spoke as a sign that deep down Abbott was on the right black-bashing track. With friends like these, Abbott needs to take a look over his shoulder.

No doubt you've already added your thoughts to the twitter meme Things More Popular Than Abbott, but sorry, you can't use a colonoscopy, wearing socks with sandals, the carbon tax, Ten breakfast, the Catholic church, Genghis Khan and the Mongol horde, the Spanish inquisition, or urban Aborigines. It's already hit the mainstream media at the AFR, Twitter trouble for Abbott, Gillard -  and there's an equal opportunity site for Julia Gillard too.

But it's the Abbott who's done this stumble, and it led Bernard Keane to brood too:

... when Abbott is being Abbott, as he was yesterday, and saying ridiculous things that suggested Ken Wyatt somehow isn’t the real deal when it comes to Aboriginal politicians — core and non-core Aboriginal MPs, perhaps? — he starts to seem only one major gaffe away from becoming a figure of ridicule whom even News Ltd will start undermining. (here, inside the paywall)

What's even more amazing, he didn't do it to a greenie or to a unionist or a commie redheaded pervert atheist socialist, but to one of his own.

Sheesh ... he's like a dunny door flapping in a gale, or if you will, he's banging on like a dunny door in a cyclone (there, get some of that Tamworth class into you, you'll feel like a real Australian in no time at all).

As with fundamentalist Republicans in the mis-steps and the mis-quotes and the words - words that have meaning and are to be treasured for the concepts and the meanings they convey - you'll find the man and it isn't a pretty picture.

Speaking of which, is there any more bizarre, weird or anomalous sight than generally grumpy Paul "magic water and frothing stallions" Sheehan attempting to give schoolies an insight into life and a moral compass in Point schoolies to moral compass.

Right from the get go he sounds like a git. In his usual way it's a column borrowed and confected from another, a Michael Parker, who's published a book Ethics 101. And in the lazy Sheehan way, Sheehan gets a column from it by quoting from it extensively:

''If you are speaking more than your children, you are speaking too much. A conversation is not an opportunity for a lecture.''

Naturally Sheehan goes on to speak too much, way more than his readers, and instead of a conversation, delivers his usual lecture, which concludes that religious instruction and ethics were placed in opposition because the NSW Labor government, in one of its few sensible choices, allowed the teaching of ethics as an alternative to religious indoctrination and missionary work in public schools.

Anyhoo, it turns out that the entire piece is just a plug for Parker's book, and for a talk Parker and Sheehan will give at a gallery.

And there's your first ethics lesson for the day teens. Be shameless, and never turn down a free plug. And if it turns out to be magic water, take a really deep sip.

What else? Well in the same vein you could celebrate Sol Trujillo along with Elizbeth Knight in History may judge Trujillo more kindly, at least if you're the sort of history that celebrates looting and pillaging the Australian taxpayer.

Or perhaps you could disappear up your own exclusive crusading fundament, as The Australian is currently doing:

Screen cap, no links, you can find your own way to the trough.

Just remember that the rag is being run by a man who pursued Manning Clark for a covert Order of Lenin, a story which quickly fell apart under the weight of its own idiocy. 

Manning Clark was a strange man with a Dostoyevskian view of history, but up against Chris Mitchell and his minions, he appeared lucid and coherent and sane.

No such luck for Gillard, for the hacks will keep supping at this trough right up to the next election, and every denial or disremembering or doubt is front page grist for the crusading mill, and fruit for fresh charges and further allegations, which might then be doubted. And so on and on and on.

There's a country to be run and policy to be reported on? Did you hear how Manning Clark was a Soviet agent of influence?

Is there no respite?

Well today is Barnaby Joyce day, as only lucky Canberrans know, and here he is charting the prospects for the current Royal Commission:

At its worst the inquiry will turn into a partisan witch-hunt or, as equally noxious, an amorphous politically correct snow job. (here)

Oh he sees a best too, but doesn't it show he's a cunning Tamworth lad, always ready to make sure the downside is covered and prepare the turf for the blame game to follow. He got it from Hanrahan. We'll all be rooned, whether by fire or flood, don't ya know.

A genuine Australian politician.

Lastly an honourable mention to Chris Berg, a sublime modern French post-modernist relativist, who sees truth nowhere. Relax, he's from the Institute of Public Affairs, and he's here to guide you through the fog of unknowing in The art of telling the truth.

As the IPA is expert in the art of telling lies for its clients, he knows whereof he speaks ... and so the pond looks forward to the sequel The art of telling the lies ....

Because there are no knowable facts, just arguments and caveats and pure French mise-en-scène on which only specialists are able to rule. Call the IPA for a ruling today ...

And remember if you need a specialist expert to unpack a complicated issue, make sure you hire an unpacker from out west way. That's where you'll find people of culture ...

And how can you tell? Well happily the Bolter has made available his chart to First Dog. So handy in these difficult times ...

(Below: oh yes, oh yes, First Dog)