Bronwyn Bishop, Tosca, blacks discussed in 'loo, and flailing away like a wet lettuce ...

Good old Bronnie. There's nothing like watching her hang herself out to dry, and then see the pundits whack into her as if she's an under-shampooed carpet full of dust and shedded skin.

It's one of the few joys of The Punch, though it means the tag "Australia's best conversation" has to be adjusted to 'Australia's best baseball bat slug fest'.

Bronnie comes out punching in Garrett sings from wrong song sheet on Copenhagen, but she shows her age, and the rope a dope trick might have worked for Ali, but sometimes just suggests there's a dope on the ropes.

Daring to talk outside her portfolio for the aged, Bronnie opines a daring opinion on the latest production of Tosca by Opera Australia:

There had been much anticipation, dare I say trepidation about this production and the Soprano engaged to sing the title role. The fact that our own home grown star Cheryl Barker had decided not to sing the role and that Tosca was to be sung by a young black American led to chat in the ladies’ loo prior to the performance that some may not stay past interval.

Not stay past interval? Because she's American, or she's too young, or she can't sing? Or because she's black?

Lordy, I'm so pleased never to have stumbled across Bronnie and her friends in the ladies 'loo prior to a performance.

But stay a little longer, because Bronnie has a keen eye for clever synopsising:

The tension between Takesha Meshe Kizart as Tosca and John Wegner as Baron Scarpia – surely the epitome of the evil bad guy (imagine the head of the K G B during the cold war) could have been cut with the knife Tosca stabs him with. And even the bullet in the head from one of Scarpia’s henchmen, instead of Tosca’s traditional suicidal leap from the parapet when she discovers her artist lover dead works!

The KGB in the cold war? Well I guess that's pretty close to the head of the secret police for the restored Bourbon monarchy in Italy, ever ready to tackle any signs of anti-royalist or Jacobin sentiment. Why next she'll be enraptured with Richard 111 being done in the style of the Nazis - oh enough already, I've paid my Godwin's Law swear jar subscription for the next month. (It seemed like a monthly subscription was the only way out of the pickle).

And soon enough will Gerard Henderson will be writing to tell us how security really matters, and how Scarpia's vital role in preserving the state has been constantly undermined by soft hearted liberals and wretched treacherous women?

Never mind, Bronnie is a fierce pitch merchant, and she knows how to sell the goods by understating their worth:

What unfolded was superb singing and drama. Even a small credibility problem for me with the Te deun sung by bingo players in the Church Hall did not really matter.

Well there's a small credibility spelling problem for me, because I think she means the 'Te deum', but hey in this modern intertubes age, anything goes with the spelling. Rush off and see the show, for the sake of Bronnie, or go play bingo in the church hall. Whatever. Just remember the show has a black singer! Talk can about it in the 'loo.

Meantime, what's happening elsewhere in the world? Well sadly Bronnie makes the mistake of speaking about actual politics, and her target is the shining pate of Peter Garrett.

First she tells us how she scalped him:

Well, I remember Peter Garrett running against me and others for the Senate as a Nuclear Disarmament Party candidate.

I was elected and he was not.

But somehow something terrible happened and the centre would not hold and the world fell apart. Because Garrett got into government, and she was booted out. He was elected to a ministry and she was not. She became a shadow of a minister, and he did not. He turned into an actual minister. Sob.

Now he is left to carry the can for the great big ETS tax on everything, estimated to cost households an additional $1100 a year, every year. He promises a compensation payment for some Australians but that is to be “a transitional payment”. In other words the compensation stops but the tax rolls on every year.

Poor Bronnie is left to carry the can for Tony Abbott, reciting in simple parrot style the Liberals' favourite attack line for the moment. And Bronnie makes a really good parrot:

Poor Peter not only has to defend the indefensible great big tax but he also has to explain the Labor Party’s failure to meet the expectations they built up prior to the 2007 election.

Well if I hear one more Liberal parrot say 'great big tax', I swear I'll break into song and perhaps even sing the lead in Tosca, and glass will shatter all over the world. Because when I screech, even the cockatoos go into hiding.

Now it's not within my heart to defend Peter Garrett - a few mad readers might recall that my favourite metaphor for him is the failed politician in the Boulting brothers' Fame is the Spur - who betrays his principles for power - but really when it comes to being insulted by Bronnie, it must be like being whipped with wet lettuce. Here's her borrowed best about the current whaling scandal:

... Indeed the Japanese whalers have showed complete disregard and indeed contempt for the flustering Australian response to the current season of whaling. A recent radio interview he gave was so bad that a subsequent talkback caller accused the radio host of having had the interview with a Garrett impersonator!

No wonder Peter is looking forward to returning to the stage and his old career as lead singer with Midnight Oil as part of the Rogues’ Gallery event at the Opera House.

Whack him with a borrowed lettuce leaf, and then give his show a plug!

Which, to borrow a segue, leads us back to the end of her column, wherein Bronnie speaks outside her portfolio about the y'arts, having spoken outside her portfolio about Copenhagen, even though it's more of a parrot job than actual original thinking:

And here’s a nice segue (the ABC’s favourite word). The first night audience of the Australian Opera, at the Opera House, is always a tough audience. Appreciative, but very reticent to leap to its feet in an overt display of enthusiasm.

However the opening night of a new production of “Tosca” last week was the exception – not only a standing ovation but boos from the dissenters

Huh? A standing ovation and booing? Ah well an audience full of Bronnies who talk about blacks in the toilet would be a tough audience indeed.

Well somehow the cheerful Bronnie style managed to get up the collective noses of the punters yet again. I particularly liked this opener, so I'll borrow it to keep the conversation going:

Rising belatedly from her uneasy slumbers, the Shadow Minster for Medicinal Uses of Kerosene fumbles for her well-thumbed script from the bed-side table, only to find that she’s lost her place over many days of sloth. “The $1100, now is that what we’re still claiming? Where did we get that?” she mutters irritably to herself. “Oh well, Tony said it, it must be right”

Well, yes he did but no it isn’t, Ms Bishop. Do try and keep up.

Oh dear, the plebians in the stalls are always a tough crowd, what with their jeering and their booing and their lacking in style. It was "slack effort" here, "regugitated vitriol" there, "nauseous crap", talk of trashing the coalition brand and "indecipherable" articles that "wouldn't pass muster in a year 8 essay competition".

There were a few valiant defenders of Bronnie, and one punter even brooded about the opera, talking of the picaune fashions of Sydeny opera-goers, thereby getting me incredibly anxious about the picayune fashions of Sydney lovers of spelling.

All in all, a good solid five minutes wasted in the morning, in the way you can also manage by teaching a parrot to talk, and then marvelling at the way they can mimic and speak.

But rather than doing a cheap joke about 'Bronnie wanting a cracker', or 'Bronnie hating the great big tax', how about we join with her in climactic song, as she wonders how long before the satanic Chairman Rudd is toppled, and his statue dragged away to the metal works so that it can be turned into useful items, such as a conductor's baton?

How long is this waiting!
Why are they still delaying? The sun already rises.
Why are they still delaying? It is only a comedy,
I know, but this anguish seems to last for ever!

Bronnie, you ask? Who is this person? You mean you've got this far, and you don't know about Bronwyn Bishop? Why she's as much fun as Wilson 'Ironbar' Tuckey, and one of the key reasons that Tony Abbott has a few dead sea-birds of albatross proportion strung around his neck.

Oh dear, I see we started with Tosca, and now we're ending with a reference to The Rime of the Ancient Mariner. What a fine cultural place Australia is ... go to any 'loo and listen to the talk about the blacks.

(Below: and why does Bronnie remind me of the albatross? Never mind, you can get Gustave Doré illustrated version of the poem here. Ain't the intertubes grand?)