Miranda Devine, Boris Johnson, lycra clad louts, and where's an iron bar when you need one ...

So what are the decepticons up to today, and can they be any worse than a Michael Bay film at evoking the decline and fall of western civilization?

Well that's easy peasy for the likes of Miranda the Devine, the trollumnist from hell, sending out waves of negativity in the hope of getting waves of negativity back, like some dark mugwump in a swamp - but remember if you feed trolls the negative energy they crave, they only get bigger and greedier.

These days the Devine is getting as subtle in her trolling as a lightning rod in a thunderstorm, and never mind the contradictions, as she scribbles To play king of the middle ground. (oops, SMH currently playing funny buggers with link, hopefully they will get their act together. Sigh, if only 'page missing' meant the Devine had been banned).

As entree to her usual indigestible main course, she seizes on a recent incident wherein conservative mayor of London Boris Johnson chased away a gang of roughs, thereby helped out a besieged climate activist, Franny Armstrong, who thanked him and suggested that Boris was of more help in the situation than Ken Livingstone, his political rival, for whom she voted, and whom Boris beat in the mayoral race.

Well yes Ken was born in 1945, and as well as being of an age, he is notably unfit. On the other hand, Boris is a solid chappie born in 1964, and as a result of being a dedicated cyclist, is fitter than many. He also has an eccentric sense of humor and an appropriate discreet modesty in relation to the incident.

Not so the Devine.

And she made this telling observation: ''If you find yourself down a dark alleyway and in trouble I think Boris would be of more use than Ken.''

I would suggest that, when push comes to shove, it is muscular conservatives with the courage of their convictions, of either sex, who are of more use in dark alleys than wishy-washy leftists, or simply people who don't like to get their hands dirty, make a judgment call or risk unpopularity.

Well sucks boo to the decepticons, here's Miranda, and this week she's sounding tougher than Arnie as a terminator. So strident she makes a farmer calling in the cows for a milking sound like Joan Sutherland.

And it's all the more amusing, seeing as how this whole incident revolves around Boris being a bike rider, and remembering the Devine's strident rant of a week or so ago, when cyclists were scum of the earth and should be driven from the road - Roads are for cars, not Lyrca louts, she scribbled and fumed, not worrying that Boris Johnson would turn up in hero pose, while continuing his campaign to make London safe for cyclists.

Here he is launching his recent summer of cycling campaign:

Lout! Where's your lycra?

Summer? Never mind, it's London.

Moving along, in a just world, the Russian army would descend in force and beat the shit out of Miranda the Devine, before she can go on to rant even more about the cowardly left. Not that the Russian army is left, maybe it should be the Chinese army. Or the Venezuelan. Oh heck, anyone who wanted to play the game of my dick is bigger than yours (a tad hard for women, maybe it should be my boob job is bigger and better than yours?)

Sadly, it's not a just world, it's a world imperiled by decepticons:

If you are worried that someone might think you are a violent, chauvinistic bully if you chase the girl gang, you're no use. If you want to examine the motives of the assailants to establish beyond a shadow of a doubt that they mean Franny Armstrong harm, and aren't just asking her to admire their big iron bar, you're no use. If you are a peacenik who avoids all confrontation, you're no use. If you are a post-modernist who believes there are multiple truths, you will be too confused to be of any use.

Yep, bugger off Gandhi, it's Wilson, where's that ironbar, Tuckey time.

Lordy if there's ever justice in the world, please, someone put the Devine in a dark alley, and let's see how she goes in some gigantic octagon smack-down. She talks the talk, but will she walk the walk and deliver a tap out by choke hold?

Because of course, not content with being stupid, she's determined to be radical:

In this age of cowardly consensus, feigned reasonableness and radical tolerance, the middle ground has been sanctified, no matter how stark the choice between right and wrong. Few are willing to do the right thing because no one will agree what the right thing might be, because that would imply there is a wrong thing, which is supposedly the view only of right-wing extremists.

Me, I just laugh in her feckless black knight face, I blow my nose at her, and all her silly kanigget ideas, and tell her go boil her bottoms, and fart in her general direction, for truly there is evidence her mother was a hamster and her father smelt of elderberries.

But no, trapped like a wedding guest by an ancient mariner and her gnarled finger, I read on, and discover that the main course is just a standard rant about how wonderful John Howard is, and how bad Kevin Rudd is when it comes to asylum seekers:

Thus Kevin Rudd, the king of the middle ground, can hold two contrary ideas on asylum seekers, unpicking the allegedly heartless border-protection policies of the Howard government and replacing them with some sort of "tough and humane" apparatus that seems only to cause more suffering. His "Indonesian solution" of detaining Australia-bound asylum seekers in Indonesian camps will no doubt be harsher than keeping them in Australian-run centres in Nauru or Manus Island, and Australia will have less control over their living conditions.

Um, so he's actually being cruel and tough and heartless, unlike the kindly John Howard? Yes he is! But I thought we liked the cruel and the tough and the heartless, and the man with the iron bar determined to be harsh? No, no, we hate it:

But out of sight, out of mind, is a good way for the activists of the Howard era to avoid inconvenient truths.

Imagine if it were John Howard presiding over the stand-off with 78 Sri Lankan asylum seekers on the Oceanic Viking, the Australian Customs ship on which they have been languishing in Indonesian waters for three weeks, and counting. It would have been proof of his racist, xenophobic, inward-looking, 1950s-mired, white-picket-fence narrow-mindedness and meanness of spirit that had turned us into a pariah nation. As for Philip Ruddock, bring on the cadaver metaphors.

So Kevin Rudd is worse than John Howard and Philip Ruddock combined! He's not a softie, he's a truly ruly tough heartless bastard. Um, but wasn't that what we were celebrating a moment ago? The importance of being tough? You know, tough and fit like a lycra clad lout bicyclist?

Oh dear, not really and you haven't caught half the foaming and the frothing yet:

Imagine if Howard were prime minister last weekend when a boat of asylum seekers capsized near the Cocos Islands, drowning 12 people, including two teenage boys. It would have been SIEV X all over again. Blood on your hands, little Johnny. Crack journalistic investigative teams would be signing book contracts. Hannie Rayson would whip up another play applauded by chatterers and doctors' wives. The Refugee Action Coalition, Flotillas of Hope, Free the Refugees Campaign, Stop the War Coalition, North Shore Greens, Western Sydney Peace Group and North-West Friends of Refugees would be marching on Kirribilli House.

Yes, Kevin Rudd personally drowns young children, just like John Howard did! Out with the old tyrant, in with the new. Was it only a few days ago that Peter Costello wrote, in Be firm and clear: no access by boat:

It will be interesting to see whether the playwrights and journalists go to the same lengths to impugn the motives of the Rudd Government and blame ministers in this government for the most recent deaths off the Cocos Islands. I doubt they will - nor should they. It was a foul slur then, and it would be a foul slur now to suggest that any Australian minister would connive in such a tragedy.

Well I'll cheerfully call the Devine a deliverer of contemptible foul slurs, because she wants everybody to slur away:

And yet the criticism of the Rudd Government from our public moral guardians has been oh, so muted. Where are Julian Burnside, Tony Kevin, Malcolm Fraser and Phillip Adams with their fearless commentary? Tom Keneally and his taped mouth? Ian Macphee, Greg Barns, Richard Woolcott, Marcus Einfeld? Oh, I forgot. He's in jail.

Hey, it's a bitch from hell joke about a guy in jail. And can't you just imagine the cackle as the keyboard got pounded to deliver that one. Ho ho, and never mind a kick to the balls, it's all just jolly good fun.

Then there's time for a little historical revisionism, just to make sure everyone understands what a golden time it was under John Howard in relation to boat people, refugees asylum seekers, and such like:

Mandatory detention, it is worth pointing out at every opportunity, was introduced by Howard's Labor predecessor, with nary a murmur, even when about 350 children were locked up in 1993. It was Howard who ended the policy of detaining children.

But opportunists who despised Howard and the rednecks who voted for him used refugees as a political bludgeon, without any real attempt to help them. Those who once decried Howard's border protection policies, including the Pacific solution, which had asylum seekers processed in Nauru and on Manus Island, have a much more relaxed take on Rudd's Indonesian solution.

Strange how it became an election issue, and no doubt helped to defeat the Howard government, and caused an internal eruption, with saner people like Petro Georgiou within the Liberal Party urging a change of course. But of course there's no point actually debating an issue with a troll. Anything you say can and will be used against you.

Howard and Ruddock were demonised for their clear, firm stand in 2001 after the Tampa crisis. Yet the results were more humane in practice than the rhetoric might suggest. Boat arrivals all but stopped by 2002 as the criminal syndicates who run people-smuggling rackets got the message that there was no point risking people's lives in leaky boats. The drownings at sea stopped.

So it is all the fault of Chairman Rudd that people drowned? Siev X? What's that?

Rudd, on the other hand, adopted a soft-talking approach, repudiating Howard's border protection policies and pandering to the activist lobby while attempting to retain border control on the quiet.

In practice his policies may turn out be less humane than Howard's, not least because his rhetoric has offered asylum seekers false hope. But at least no one hates him.

Huh? Well clearly Miranda the Devine hates him, not to mention Janet Albrechtsen, Tim Blair and Andrew Bolt. What a stupid thing to say. Didn't she at least read her column before sending it in? Didn't she realize it's a hate-filled tirade? What planet is she on?

I know, I know, the planet Miranda, where insights into self are banned. And contradictions are cherished, especially if they send lefties and greenies into a tail spin. Sorry, my only tail spin is to chortle, and get on with the day, and never ever buy the SMH. Sorry guys, but even just the notion of a cent of mine hitting the Devine's paypacket guarantees you a lycra clad boycott.

In conclusion - I love to draw myself up to my full portentous height these days, and inspired by Daniel Pipes announce - in conclusion ... Boris Johnson is clearly a gentleman, but there's no evidence to hand that Miranda the Devine is a lady worthy of his rescue ...

(Below: is that Miranda the Devine behind the black helmet, taunting a pacifist monarch?)