Sophie Mirabella, Penn and Teller and a little bullshit goes a long way ...

(Above: Penn and Teller showing what could and should be done to politicians who talk about ethics).

Las Vegas being what it is, the town provides the perfect superannuation plan for aging performers.

Cue the likes of Wayne Newton, Cher, Donnie and Marie Osmond.

It therefore seemed wise to take in Penn and Teller, with Penn doing his standard libertarian routines, and Teller donning the guise of Harpo Marx, except when whispering instructions to audience members involved in the routines. They did the magic bullet trick, the sawing the lady in half trick, with splatter, and sundry routines, a few of which were ... quite magical. They also fronted the punters after the show for a photo opportunity.

No complaints there, and it does show how you can spend your time in an amusing way deep in the most surreal city in the world.

Alternatively, you can take a deep breath, and dive into the bowels of The Punch, Australia's most regressive conversation. And there you might find Sophie Mirabella writing about ethics under the header Ethics classes for Labor pollies and their appointees.

The header gets the themes right, because Mirabella doesn't take the high road - like talking about ethics classes for all politicians, and all appointees of government for jobs usually described as providing services to the public. Ethics for public servants 101 you could call it, remembering that politicians are after all supposed to be servants of the public that elects them.

Mirabella's notion of ethics is that it's simply a handy tool for bashing in the heads of opponents, a kind of philosophical ice pick, or jemmy, or piece of 4 x 2, or baseball bat.

Which makes this curious opener all the more poignant:

But the critical question is who determines what is ethical? Do we look at the conduct of public figures to create modern yardsticks of ethical behaviour? Do we look to our political leaders?

Indeed, and do we look to the scribblers in The Punch for special insight, for a special understanding of ethics and ethical behaviour? Do we look to our political leaders as they confuse ethics with the standard bout of eel-bashing and snake venom?

Nope, here's what you get instead:

It’s reasonable to question whether it is ethical for a Prime Minister to essentially bribe State Premiers with taxpayer funds in order to get them to agree to a deal that is all about improving his own political outcome for the coming election.

Reasonable? Essentially bribe? For doing what politicians do? On that basis, there isn't an ethical politicians in parliament. And so on:

The $2.4 billion “extra” that Kevin Rudd threw on the table at the very last minute to get his desired result comes directly from the pockets of tax payers. Is it ethical to spend someone else’s money in such a self-serving bribe in order to score a personal political win?

Dearie me, so now the money comes directly from the pockets of tax payers. Fancy that, and I imagined the money came from the government's ambitious plan to mine the blue cheese in the moon and ship it to Bolivia.

But since we must ask ethical questions, in relation to spending someone else's money in self-serving bribes, can we also ask an ethical question as to whether someone should be using taxpayers' money to pay the wages of a Senator intent on writing point-scoring drivel when the ostensible subject is ethics?

If I want that sort of drivel, I can always turn to the professionals, like Akker Dakker, who whips up yet another mashed potato rich with butter in How PM was saved by a perfect Storm.

Akker Dakker has mastered the art of conflating any current or passing crisis (this time Carl Williams and Melbourne Storm) with a more extended pursuit of Chairman Rudd and his follies.

At least Akker Dakker understands that there's no point in musing about ethics when going for the jugular. If it's a matter of knee capping, apply baseball bat to knee until knee is capped. Use magnum .44 in serious cases ... (or perhaps just visit the machine gun emporium in Vegas off the strip and let off a few rounds).

Only a fiendish automaton could surpass the relentless intensity of Akker Dakker's awesome predictability.

Except perhaps Sophie Mirabella. Her out on the question of politics?

Politics, by its very nature, is an ethical minefield.

Yep, politics, by its very nature, is a minefield of cliches and cack-arsed rhetoric.

Mirabella then spends the rest of her piece wielding the baseball bat, and thrashing Christine Nixon around the head in ways that Freddie Kreuger, Jason Voorhees, Michael Myers and the family behind the Texas Chainsaw Massacre would surely envy.

And then she has the cheek to end with this flourish:

Accountability and personal responsibility are at the core of ethical behaviour. If we are to set basic standards of what is ethical, they ought not be merely theoretical.

After all, our kids learn more by example than they do in a classroom.

So what do they learn from Mirabella's brand of political hackery and thuggery?

Kick the shit out of an opponent, especially when they're down, and never let up, never offer an out, never look at two sides, always look at one, and did I mention to make sure to kick the shit out of an opponent? Perhaps verbally for starters, but if you happen to find them in a dark alley by themselves with a cricket bat handy ....?

Who knows, that's a really interesting ethical question.

By the time I'd finished reading Mirabella, I realised with sickening finality that I was back in Australia, and now Penn and Teller were but a dream.

Ah well, I'm reminded of one of their early outings, Penn & Teller's Cruel Tricks for Dear Friends, in which they outline seven routines, tricks or swindles by which you can defraud or fool your friends and family or loved ones. Penn's opening lines set the tone:

"There are 5,380,000,000 people in this world. 4.71% of these live in the United States. Of those living in the United States, 60.3% own televisions. And of those owning televisions, only 27% own video recorders. That makes 38,705,057 of US, and 5,341,294,943 of THEM. That's 137.999 suckers for each one of us. *cash register sfx* Sucker-wise, it's an embarrassment of riches. If you follow our instructions closely, and have the money to fund your betting, you're gonna make money off us. Even if you paid as much as the full, list, retail price of $3.95 for this tape, you're gonna increase your money by an order of magnitude in less time than it takes to say 'knowing falsification of advertising claims resulting in irretrievable financial loss by the aggrieved party.'"

Looked at another way, there are some 22 million people in Australia, but all Sophie Mirabella has to do is convince fifty per cent of the 85,000 odd voters of the Victorian seat of Indi to vote for her, and then she can act like an indolent, insolent offensive gadfly in front of all Australians, while in the process being paid handsomely from taxpayers' tax money to blather on about ethics.

I always thought fondly of Wangaratta as "the big Wang" and know I know why.

So here's an ethical question for Mirabella. Is it ethical for an MP to boycott the apology to indigenous Australians and question whether any indigenous child in Victoria had truly been taken from the parents? (Outspoken Liberal MP defends apology boycott). Or just malicious and spiteful and hurtful?

Never mind. Penn as usual when not doing his ranting asides about libertarian issues (burning the American flag and then saluting it), also did his usual routines about mediums and psychics, which this quote from the TV show Bullshit sums up nicely:

Penn Jillette: (on the subject of talking to the dead) One of the weird things Houdini discovered is that some of these mediums actually slip into believing their own bullshit. They forget their own misses, or as John Edward, THE BIGGEST DOUCHE IN THE UNIVERSE, does, rewrite them as hits that we're just not able to recognize. Cold reading can be done accidently. That doesn't mean the psychic is a better person. Lying to themselves does not make lying to others ok. It can make intellectually lazy scumbags more convincing and dangerous. But even if these fucks know they're just making shit up and pushing people's buttons, they tell themselves, "At least I'm comforting the bereaved." WHO THE FUCK ARE THEY TO DECIDE THAT LYING ABOUT THE UNIVERSE AND A DEAD LOVED ONE IS WHAT THE BEREAVED NEEDS? That's condescending BULLSHIT!

Yep, and then there's Sophie Mirabella writing about ethics. And, then, forgive the caps, there's condescending BULLSHIT!

Oh and as to that use of offensive language, please forgive:

Penn Jillette: (Penn explains why there is so much vulgarity on the show) You'll notice more obscenity than we usually use. That's not just because it's on Showtime, and we want to get some attention. It's also a legal matter. If one calls people liars and quacks, one can be sued and lose a lot of one's money. But "motherfuckers" and "assholes" is pretty safe. If we said it was all scams, we could also be in trouble. But BULLSHIT, oddly, is safe. So forgive all the bullshit language. We're trying to talk about the truth without spending the rest of our lives in court because of litigious motherfuckers!

I think from here you can do the rest ...

(Below: Sophie Mirabella wearing a hat).