Bronwyn Bishop, Chairman Rudd given a thrashing for conjuring up a shitstorm, and the good old days of BBC comedy

(Above: the cheapskate Punch team use a YouTube clip of Chairman Rudd saying 'political shitstorm' on network Seven, remixed and hashed up, to illustrate Bronnie's piece, thereby ignoring the punchline to her political thesis. So here's her idol Jim Thacker doing his licks and chops).

One of the more splendid, wondrous sights of The Punch, Australia's most deviant cheap-arsed conversation, is the way you can spot politicians toiling in the field of words, so as to give Chairman Rupert a splendid new and inexpensive entree into the world of digital content.

And who better than Bronwyn Bishop, delivering a stout hearted impersonation of a dowager duchess in her cluckings in her latest effort, Our potty-mouthed PM.

Now there are some who say that the likes of Bronwyn are dinosaur-esses, way past their prime, and needing to be put out to pasture (along with the likes of Wilson 'Ironbar' Tuckey and that antediluvian Philip Ruddock). Why, there's even talk of a favourite for Brendan Nelson's seat being openly gay (Proud to be gay, the Liberal with an eye on the safest of seats).

Hold on, let's not rush things. Let's not get too modern too fast.

I say let the old guard nod drowsily in the sun, because once the sun has set it's a long time until the next dawn, and attention is paid. And attention must be paid.

Especially when Bronnie gets indignant, and draws herself up to her full outraged height.

So, “butter would not melt in his mouth”, Kevin apparently has a robust vocabulary when it comes to privately berating his factional colleagues including females.

Oh yes Bronnie, sock it to him.

Last week he and his cohorts used question time to plead the higher moral ground when it comes to allowing women parliamentarians to speak.

They complained mightily when the Leader of Opposition Business moved that “the speaker be no longer heard” when a female minister was droning on. But no such criticism for Kevin’s letting fly with the F word with female factional foes that had the temerity to disagree with his point of view.

Well fuck me dead, as the bandicoot said to the over-bearing badger, Chairman Rudd is inclined to swear in private. Lordy, each day I thank the good lord that's not me, as I find the time to swear in public as well as in private, and people just think it's some kind of ostentatious pretentious fucking affectation.

But isn't it good that there are some who still uphold the old Victorian standards of propriety.

Why I suddenly had an image of Bronnie making the PM take down his pants, bend over a chair, and receive a stout-hearted thrashing.

"You will not ... thwack ... swear before women ... thrash ... you vulgar young man ... thwack ... you will respect them and treat them as the sweet fragile innocent young flowers that they are ... thrash ... for fear of making them faint ... whack ... because they are unsoiled and keep their minds out of the gutter ... whack ... where you so clearly belong."

What fun to see his potty mouth given some potty training (yes young things, once upon a time there were potties which even old people might use in the middle of the night).

Oh what a sight it would be, and how just and right and fitting and proper. All done with the steely righteousness of a headmistress I once knew who mourned the loss of the cane as a way of keeping young girls on the straight and narrow, and ready for a career as check out chicks.

But wait, Bronnie isn't finished with the verbal dressing down:

Hypocrisy is the word that springs readily to mind but Mr Rudd’s justification for the swearing that this is just normal Labor behaviour adds arrogance and anger as apt descriptors.

Kevin took umbrage at Belinda Neal and her Iguana behaviour – perhaps he still has the name and number of the anger management counsellor he sent her to and should make an appointment for himself to keep the angry, arrogant hypocritical alter ego in check.

Oh well played, good show, that'll teach him and so forth and etcetera. Who'd be an airline hostess on a flight to hell with Chairman Rudd?

Hmm, what else from Bronnie? Oh yes, a sterling plea for funding from citizens to match the machinations of the unions, so we can go on hearing from her about the evils of swearing:

The reality is that if the Liberal Party cannot compete financially with the ALP/Union juggernaut we risk a one party state.

Democracy doesn’t come for free, it needs competition and it needs financial participation from its citizenry to survive.

A one party state! On the road to North Korea, or at least Pyongyang, with Chairman Rudd our very own Kim Il-sung. Or is that Kim Jong-il. Whatever, there's a Kim in there somewhere. Glenn Milne told me so.

And Bronnie rounds out her treatise with a ripper of a joke as she berates the state of hospitals in NSW:

Reminds one of the best Yes Minister episodes ever – the hospital that was a bureaucrat’s dream – no patients.

Though I think Sir Humphrey did it better:

Jim Hacker: "The National Health Service, Humphrey, is an advanced case of galloping bureaucracy."
Sir Humphrey: "Ooooh, certainly not galloping. A gentle canter at the most." (here).

Still, taking a pot shot at NSW Labor is like shooting at fish in a barrel, and Bronnie is a keen markswoman.

So there you have it. A muscular thrashing of that rodent Rudd, a heartfelt plea for money, and a return to the good old days of 1981 BBC comedy. And you rogues and charlatans say she's not carrying her weight anymore. Why she can load a truck with two hundred bags of chaff before you young whipper snippers are out of bed.

Go Bronnie, go.

And now join with me in remembering why attention must be paid, as detailed by Arthur Miller in Death of a Salesman:

Then make Charley your father, Biff. You can't do that, can you? I don't say he's a great man. Willy Loman never made a lot of money. His name was never in the paper. He's not the finest character that ever lived. But he's a human being, and a terrible thing is happening to him. So attention must be paid. He's not to be allowed to fall into his grave like an old dog. Attention, attention must finally be paid to such a person. You called him crazy... no, a lot of people think he's lost his... balance. But you don't have to be very smart to know what his trouble is. The man is exhausted. A small man can be just as exhausted as a great man. He works for a company thirty-six years this March, opens up unheard-of territories to their trademark, and now in his old age they take his salary away.

Are they any worse than his sons? When he brought them business, when he was young, they were glad to see him. But now his old friends, the old buyers that loved him so and always found some order to hand him in a pinch--they're all dead, retired. He used to be able to make six, seven calls a day in Boston. Now he takes his valises out of the car and puts them back and takes them out again and he's exhausted. Instead of walking he talks now. He drives seven hundred miles, and when he gets there no one knows him anymore, no one welcomes him. And what goes through a man's mind, driving seven hundred miles home without having earned a cent? Why shouldn't he talk to himself? Why? When he has to go to Charley and borrow fifty dollars a week and pretend to me that it's his pay? How long can that go on? How long? You see what I'm sitting here and waiting for? And you tell me he has no character? The man who never worked a day but for your benefit? When does he get the medal for that?

(Below: or swearing, you young insolent pup of a man!)