David Penberthy, the Punch, dropping your pants, teddy bears and ponce jokes, and abortion law reform in Queensland

(Above: what on earth does Scritti Politti have to do with anything? Well we're reading The Punch, so any hasty last minute image scrabbled from Google which fits a couple of words in a column is fair game, and so it is that Scritti Politti rise from the dead to walk again amongst images of humanity).

Come with me for a walk through the brain dead zombie laden world, as we make a last stand against the pandemic of zombie rampages.

Second thoughts, why not take a stroll through The Punch, allegedly Australia's best conversation, which is the kind of canard that makes me think of roasting and selling ducks.

Where to start? How about some in depth reporting by David Penberthy, under the header Libs disgusted with Tuckey over sick Belinda Neal joke?

Naturally Penbo can't resist re-telling the joke, sick as it is, and so neither can we, so at least you won't have to spend any worrying about how sick it really is. You see, Tuckey had a photograph:

The image focusses on a laundromat next door to Ms Neal’s office with a sign reading “Drop Your Pants Here” - which Tuckey was using as a comical reference to the recent admission of infidelity by Ms Neal’s husband, NSW State Labor MP and former NSW Labor secretary John Della Bosca.

At the end of Question Time, Tuckey placed the image inside an envelope and presented it to the Speaker, formally requesting an adjudication from him as to whether the photograph could be used in Parliament.

Hey ho, on we go, and after nobly berating Tuckey for wasting everyone's time, just as Penbo and now I have, what do we find but this from ... yes, none other than another David Penbery piece ... Teddy-hugging Liberal toffs have no place in Queensland.

Well it purports to be a comical piece, but it's really just Penbo channeling the spirit of Wilson Tuckey. First he re-runs the joke about a politician sniffing a chair (they do that sort of thing in WA, especially treasurers), and then he picks up on John-Paul Langbroek sounding surprisingly human and amusing in a fey indolent sort of way:

In a startling world exclusive in tomorrow’s edition of QWeekend in The Courier Mail, Langbroek reveals that while studying - you guessed it - law - he was faffing around at UQ with his cuddly bear under his arm.

Never mind the standard piece of News Corp cross promotion. You have to filter that out like all of those non-commercials on the non-commercial ABC, promoting commercial ABC product (naturally of a right wing conservative kind).

Of course Langbroek must be immediately punished for this teddy bear transgression by Penbo, putting on his best steel capped Bill Heffernan boots:

... his admission that he spent his university days ponsing around campus holding a teddy bear after the style of young Lord Sebastian Flyte from the effete period drama Brideshead Revisited is an irrecoverable clanger - especially in a state where haute cuisine means you’ve remembered to put the pineapple ring on top of the ham steak, or a vertical tasting refers to the first 10 Bundys of the evening.

Well never mind the ponsing - and the outraged indignation of all the Ponsing family members out there on the intertubes for being so vilely traduced. Let's just accept that he was a ponce, caught poncing about.

Naturally Penbo can't resist making as much hay as he can stand out of this.

Probably wearing a cricket jumper too, jauntily knotted over his polo shirt, as he lay back on the lawns outside the refectory listening to Scritti Politti or The Style Council on his Walkman.

Heroically he’s blamed it on his girlfriend, now wife, who he says urged her to carry the bear as his own Brideshead-inspired fashion statement.

Anna Bligh did her best impression of Peter Beattie in a dress yesterday, engaging in a bit of fnarr fnarr about the sexually-charged homoeroticism of the Brideshead set.

She described Lord Sebastian as “a charming but self-destructive and ultimately tragic fictional character’‘, and perhaps a harbinger of Mr Langbroek’s political career.

Naturally all these capers led to a response in kind by the opposition:

The Opposition responded to the Government's taunts by circulating a quote from the episode of Australian Story on Ms Bligh.

In the ABC TV program, former student union president Eugene O'Sullivan recalled the Premier's days in the union.

"Anna came from the five foot four feminist faction, who were a left wing, Marxist, feminist group ... fairly strident, hairy arm-pitted type women who were either lesbian separatists or running a fairly anti-bloke line,'' he told the program.

But Ms Bligh wasn't bothered by the anecdote.

"I think we're all young once and we do some silly things, and as I say, each to their own,'' she said. (here).

Oh and hear hear, and so say all of us.

But wait, is there anything truly scandalous and vile happening in Queensland at the moment? Well yes there is, but it's the matter of Tegan Leach and her boyfriend Sergie Brennan. To read about it, you'll have to leave The Punch and go to Richard Ackland's Terminations with prejudice.

Ackland presents the story with a wondering sense of irony at the passing strangeness that is Queensland.

You might think that instead of jokes about teddy bears and hairy feminists that The Punch might take at least an equal interest to Ackland in abortion law reform in Queensland. Nope.

Or perhaps Anna Bligh's response to the situation and the news that draft abortion law reform legislation had already been drafted? Nope.

Or the now old news that she was going to firmly sit on her hands and do nothing. Nope.

Yet here it is, the ongoing scandal, as I do a bit of cross-promotion for Chairman Rupert by referencing a News Corp story:

Ms Bligh yesterday reaffirmed her position that, while she would personally support legislation to decriminalise abortion, the government would put no such bill before parliament.

"I believe this is a private issue between a woman, her partner and her doctor," she said.

"While I support a relaxation to the law in Queensland, I have no intention of bringing the matter to parliament because I am unconvinced there is sufficient support in the house to achieve that change." (here).

Yep, there are scandals in Queensland, but they've got bugger all to do with teddy bears. Because you see Langbroek is just Anna Bligh in drag, and his response - when the doctors and medical staff got mad as hell and forced a clarifying bill through parliament - was just as obdurate as hers:

Mr Langbroek said the Opposition needed to ensure the amendment would not take the abortion issue further than to clarify the legal position of doctors.

"We need to make sure that the proposed laws will actually do what they're intended to do and that's what we're seeking reassurances about with a little more time," he said.

Mr Langbroek said the Opposition had no intention of using the debate to attempt to criminalise abortion.

"If there are no concerns about the provisions then I'm confident we can keep it to these matters," he said.

Liberal National Party (LNP) policy does not support the decriminalisation of abortion. (here).

And so it goes in Queensland, and so it goes in The Punch, Australia's dumbest, most irrelevant conversation when it comes to issues which are just a little too hard to handle, especially if you can't make a joke about teddy bears and Scritti Politti.

Now I happen to like Brideshead Revisited, but I also think it's beyond the right time for abortion law reform in Queensland and NSW, to match what the Victorians managed despite the festering opposition of Peter Costello's fundie mates.

What's the point about having a Labor government if they don't make use of their time in power to tackle the thorny issues, and show some personal guts? Well we know the answer in NSW, and we know Rees is going the same place as his latest variant on the monorail. Nowhere. Well maybe Rozelle. Or maybe not.

But Queensland? Especially when sixty four per cent of your constituents believe abortion should be decriminalized? (here).

Where's a hairy arm pit feminist when you need one?

Never mind, here's a snap of a teddy bear with a couple of effete ponces. Oh I say old chap, careful, the positioning of the hand in the teddy bear crutch is certain to cause ribald mirth amongst Penbo, Heffernan and Wilson Tuckey: