David Penberthy, and how a barren mind can produce a barren column full of double flips with pike ...

Over in the National Times Lawrence Money manages to ask a moronic question, even by his own fetchingly low standards.

Why do we hate our ex-PMs? he wonders:

Now the loathing of Rudd starts cranking up. ‘‘The daily spin, the half-truths, the backflips, the lack of purpose and direction along with the shambles of schemes implemented and not properly monitored,’’ writes Michael Forsyth of East Lindfield, ‘‘are all part of a very long list of the Rudd government’s many failings.’’

Strewth, it’s a wonder the good ship Oz is still afloat with such a long record of mismanagement.

Why Money had to go looking amongst his readers for fear and loathing will remain an eternal mystery, seeing as how he's spent the last three years bagging Rudd up and down dale in his columns. I'd cite examples, but that'd mean reading Money. There's duty to loon pond, and then there's jumping into a cess pit for no rational reason.

I guess if Money didn't exist, someone would have had to invent him, but it remains remarkable how this little corner of a long lost Toorak mentality can still get featured in the opinion pages. Tuck him down somewhere next to the men's room. And bring on Lillian Frank!

Meanwhile, good old Penbo, aka David Penberthy, shows Money how it should be done, which is in other words how to play the righteous card, complete with double standard pike, by raising issues, only to discount them, only to raise them again.

It's a complex, difficult routine. First you have to pretend that even though raising these issues - only to find them deplorable - is the difficult duty of an objective journalist, which then allows you - since you also have the fine sensitive nose of a journalist rifling through a garbage bag in the rear lane - to detect a whiff of trouble in the issues.

Here's how it's done. First Penberthy start with a header worthy of Bill Heffernan talking about a prize sow: Our childless, fruitless PM.

Well fruitless is so much more sensitive and delicate than barren.

With that kind of up front eye-grabber as his header, Penbo is then at liberty to trawl through past personal abuse aimed at Gillard. There's Tony Abbott's loaded, nudge-nudge-wink-wing observation that she's a one dimensional political animal, which Abbott attempted to retract, but which in any case found a natural home with the wretched George Brandis (Childless Julia Gillard can't understand parents on the issue of virginity: Brandis).

Naturally Penbo applauds the hard heads at The Bulletin for refusing to retract the Abbott quote - life doesn't come with a rewind button - and anyway it's open slather:

The public has every right to know what type of person they are electing (or not electing) to govern their lives, and Gillard has the confidence and the candour to deal with the questions as they come her way.

Presumably that includes the right to assert that women who don't have children are somehow less than human, or perhaps are sub-human.

No, no, no, you don't know how to play the game. Now you must recoil sympathetically, with a hint of feminism coursing through your body:

But having said that, there can be no doubt that some of the criticisms she has faced reflect an insecurity – a fairly pathetic male insecurity – about the way in which women should or shouldn’t behave.

The comments made by Heffernan about her choosing to be “barren” – horrible word that it is in any context – suggest that women have failed in their role in life if they refuse to have kids when able to do so.

Phew, that's a relief. Pathetic male insecurities are rampant on the pond, and horrible words can lead to an annus horribilis.

For a moment there I thought we wouldn't be able to get Bill "Barren" Heffernan into the column, but there he is, like a bright and sparkling bauble. How deplorable, and how men struggle to achieve a better understanding of dangerous women:

There’s also a sense that women are somehow less than complete if they choose not to get married, or that they’re even a little bit dangerous when, as has been the case in Gillard’s adult life, they have a few different partners over the years, but still never quite manage to walk down the aisle.

Why, it reminds me of how Tony Abbott found homosexuals a little bit threatening. And expressed with such a soulful sense of cliche - a few different partners, and they don't walk down the aisle, and they're somehow less than complete, and they're a little bit dangerous, and so never have the joy of hearing Mendelssohn's Wedding March in its proper context. Where will it all end? With Miles Franklin no doubt about it! Talk about a bolter instead of a goer ...

How to top this, while explaining the dreams of the everyday housewife?

A lot of blokes are probably a bit intimidated by the idea that a woman can be so self-contained, and derive so much satisfaction from her job, that she has neither the time nor inclination to stay at home rearranging the contents of the fruit bowl or getting all giddy flicking through copies of Bride To Be and fantasising about her special day.

A lot of blokes? Intimated? Fruit bowl?

Well I guess it would get in the way of the flow of the logic of the piece to say a lot of fuckwits. Since rearranging the contents of the fruit bowl and flicking through Bride to Be should be the lot of every woman. What's that? The magazine's got a staggering, awe inspiring circulation of 81,000 RMR March 2010 in a population over 21 million? Well I never ... Women of Australia, know your duty, get to your reading ...

Yep, Penbo achieves the elevated status of being able to write in the fluent stylings of a Glen Campbell song.

But of course once you've got it all out there - all the fears and the dangers and the worries and the concerns - it's time for that double flip with pike:

But regardless of whether such sentiments are logical or fair ...

You see, perhaps a Glen Campbell song isn't entirely fair about the dreams of the everyday housewife, never mind that we're still all living in 1968, when it was given an airing on Campbell's Wichita Lineman album.

What the hell, toujours gai. The backflip has been done with poise, and now having established that saucy nineteen fifties doubts and fears might not be entirely logical or fair, it's possible to insist that being barren remains an issue, albeit not in the blunt Bill "Barren" Heffernan style:

... they will still be an issue for Julia Gillard now that she has realised the greatest ambition of her working life. The ability of a politician to relate to other people – the very point Abbott was trying to make in his comments to Steve Lewis – is held in great store by the voting public.

You see! It's all true, and held in great store by the voting public. Julia Gillard is barely human, barely sub-human, perhaps not even a woman, at least a true everyday housewife woman, as every true man must yearn for, rearranging the fruit bowl and dreaming of that walk down the aisle, so that the one day of glory can be followed by a lifetime of ashes, dust, bitterness and despair, as she confronts the reality she's married a chauvinist dill and dipstick.

Yes, it's all totally true:

Talk to any parent about issues such as child abuse, or neighbourhood crime, or the cost of childcare, any issue which could affect the welfare of their own kids, and you tend to get a more impassioned and emphatic reaction than you do from adults who do not have children.

Yes, the sub-human walk amongst the normal, but they feel no pain, and they have no humanity. They don't care about neighbourhood crime - pshaw, my good man, break in that window and steal what you like, you junkie you, I see you're only robbing a breeder, which is to say a common sordid child rearing heterosexual - and they care not a whit about child abuse, reacting to any such outrage like a vicar offered tea without milk or sugar at the village fair.

Why your normal average child producing adult has a much more sensible and balanced response to crime and child abuse. Hang that junkie thief, castrate that pervert. You might think such impassioned and emphatic reactions might be a little overblown, but where we come from, extremism is all the go. How else is the Daily Telegraph going to achieve its daily sales?

By the way, have we ever mentioned that Adolf Hitler - apart from being a greenie vegetarian with a hostility to smoking and drinking - never had children? (We exclude the drama documentary The Boys from Brazil for lacking totally convincing proof, tempting though it is).

Well we're not trying to make too much of this, but Gillard's tendency towards Hitlerism in the matter of children could well become an issue with the electorate, seeing as how it's a little strange, weird, or dare we say it abnormal.

Steady, let's not get into whether Hitler was a vegetarian, or get too excited about Reductio ad Hitlerum arguments, when we can get by quite handily with the comfort food offered up by Bill "Barren" Heffernan. Yet you know, Hitler did manage to get the average German man and woman excited by the concept of lebensraum. Could there be something in this barren routine?

Ferrrget it. Instead let's finish with a rousing show stopper:

The challenge for Gillard is to show that she is tapped into the mainstream even if she’s not statistically part of it – which in the year 2010 she is under no obligation to be.

Now you see how it's done. You see in 2010 she is under no obligation to be a woman dreaming of re-arranging fruitbowls, and being a modern missy can quite rightly chose to be barren, and even be partnerless if that's her peculiar desire, and so put herself out way beyond the pale in some bizarre statistical no go surreal never never land of female independence, but having done that, having gone all Dali and Picasso on us, let's see how she appeals to the mainstream and taps into the average six pack Plumber Garage Mechanic Electrician Joe Blow's dream of a subservient woman re-arranging the fruit bowl.

QED, and a degree of difficulty of 0.01. Penbo scores an eleven, which is to say right up there with Spinal Tap.

Meanwhile, we can contemplate the mystery of how male politicians can represent women without knowing what it feels like to be a woman. Don't worry, I know a good surgeon down the road who can arrange a TS operation. Perhaps we can start with the entire Liberal party. Or how about Penbo? Seeing as he must presume he's scribbling for female readers and their vast array of fruit bowls ...

Then of course there's the question of how heterosexual politicians can be inclusive of homosexual issues. Oh wait, they don't count.

Well how about a Liberal party ex-merchant banker multi-millionaire coming to grips with life in Auburn and Sunshine? And so on and on.

Because it's simply impossible for any politician of a sub-human kind to show empathy and understanding of someone else of the same species, or perhaps, in an even more magnanimous way feel some concern for other species. Why next thing you know that'd make them a barren non-smoking tee totalling vegetarian with Hitler tendencies.

As always, I feel compelled to remind you that the sub-header for The Punch is Australia's best conversation. Which part don't you understand? The best bit, or the conversation.

If I called it Australia's most cretinous conversation, would the alliteration help?

And now here's a shout out for Penbo, as we track the hits and memories just for him, bringing him right back to his time in Adelaide, when popular music peered deep into the hearts, souls and psyches of ordinary housewives.

Warning: actually watching this song is dangerous to your mental health. You can take a song up tempo but you can't avoid the lyrics. Here's hoping that YouTube gets a take down notice, and the link stops working: