Gerard Henderson, and the stuffing of minds with the musings of a desiccated coconut ...

I did my best, but I failed.

I tried to write about Gerard Henderson and his latest scribble, Labor's good intentions fail to guarantee jobs for youth, but it felt like I was stuffing my brain full of desiccated coconut.

It's all the fault of the Blessed Mary MacKillop of course. After she worked her miracle, and Henderson wrote an entire column without mentioning John Howard once, and we called off the betting ring on the number of times that political giant's name would turn up in a column, we lost all interest in Henderson.

Sure this week he's returned to standard form, with three mentions of John Howard in total, the first being in the third paragraph, but it's not the same. Once someone's pulled off a Fine Cotton sting, there can't be any trust left in the relationship.

Yes, there's the usual and expected stuff about the return of the Xmas strike, and the routine history lesson as he trawls back over past governments, merrily re-writing history as he goes, and then there's his standard routine about how these days kids aren't being groomed by small business to work in kebab houses and burger stores, combined with mild panic at the thought of all those unemployed, fractious, rioting, foreign youths roaming around the south west in their rice boy cars, but the man is so bloody boring, such a stuffed shirt, that without the tang and zest of a betting ring, it's impossible to get through his verbiage without dozing off.

Oh there is one little gem:

These days, there is little debate on such ABC-TV programs as The 7.30 Report and Lateline - significantly less than that found on Fox News.

That gave me a good cackle, well okay, it led to a rather cheap and vulgar guffaw, but frankly readership on these pages drops away any time Henderson is mentioned. People run from the place as if they've discovered a dusty vampire in a coffin in the cellar, and forgot to bring along a wooden stake, some holy oil and a couple of cloves of garlic.

You can almost feel the mind parasites clearing your brain as you read Henderson, who spends an inordinate amount of time pretending he's a serious independent balanced scribe just looking at the issues in an even handed way, when he's really just another propagandist of the Lord Haw-Haw kind. (oops, sorry, there's a dollar for the Godwin's Law jar). He's about as balanced as a weather vane permanently skewed to the right.

Oh, and there's another good moment at the end, as Henderson worries about all those unemployed youths:

However, despite good intentions, Labor is making it more difficult for businesses to employ young Australians who live in low socio-economic areas.

Arbib knows the problem but there is no evidence that he understands a possible solution.

Because it's a pot and kettle moment, since Henderson's column provides no evidence that he understands a possible solution either. Outside of getting the chicks behind the check out counter (until the new self checking regime kicks in) , and the boys into the burger flipping business, for as low a freelance hourly rate as Workchoices might allow.

At the time of writing, Henderson had only attracted a few comments, mostly negative, as if - like the Grinch who'd stolen Christmas - he'd managed to imbue the silly season with terminal ennui.

Still, if you want more of the beast, you can always head off to his Media Watch Dog, which spluttered its last on the 4th December here.

There you will find the lighter, bitchier side of the desiccated coconut. He's still an ABC bashing, Guardian on the Yarra hating, Catherine Deveny loathing, 7.30 Report and Kerry O'Brien despising, prejudiced dickhead sod, but at least the prejudices are naked, and stated with remarkable clarity:

Nancy is aware, from personal interaction, that most journalists vote Labor or Green. So she is always fixated on the advice which members of the Fourth Estate see fit to give to the Liberal Party - especially when the Liberals change their leadership.

Yes, what a prejudiced goose Nancy is. And what a stupid one. From personal interaction. Well that's scientific, ain't it. Where we come from, we call it personal prejudice, and let it go at that, since unless Nancy actually sits in the voting booth and watches where the "x's" go, (s)he doesn't have a clue. If journalists divide up like the rest of the community, there'll be plenty of swinging voters, plenty of eccentrics, and plenty swinging either way.

Only a deluded myopic could keep on trotting out the same standard line, but that's Henderson for you.

Well here at loon pond, we're aware, from personal interaction and by reading their tedious guff, that most commentariat columnists are up themselves ...

Enough said. We've done our duty, we've seen the emperor with his SMH clothes on, and we've seen him without his clothes, or at least deshabille, over at his doggy site, and it's more than a mortal mind can bear ...

(Below: while looking around for emperors without clothes, we came across this image. And somehow we were reminded of Gerard Henderson - artist's site here, and curiously he turns out to be a working Glaswegian).