Piers Akerman, and the badger takes on the stoats and weasels ...

(Above: Piers Akerman, out of the bunker, and on the ABC. And no the header's not a typo, though it contains a typo. Sure, he's off, but they're all off in Q&A, and what's a stray apostrophe between chums when theyre planning the socialist revolution).

We've been noticing an eerie similarity recently between commentariat commentators and the animal kingdom of late.

First there was that strange one degree of separation between Tim Blair and a macaw, and then the unnerving insight that Miranda the Devine was likely a super marmot.

It got us to thinking about Piers Akerman, and if not Billy Bunter, then what kind of metaphor might he make, and all at once, it came in a blinding flash. A badger.

Not the kind understanding badger you might find in Kenneth Grahame's epic tale of class struggle The Wind in the Willows, as the middle and upper classes unite to defeat the surly efforts of stoats and weasels and foxes to undo the natural order of things, and impose the Cockney accent on the world. No, that noble badger is just intent on the quiet life:

The Badger simply beamed on him. 'That's exactly what I say,' he replied. 'There's no security, or peace and tranquillity, except underground. And then, if your ideas get larger and you want to expand--why, a dig and a scrape, and there you are! If you feel your house is a bit too big, you stop up a hole or two, and there you are again! No builders, no tradesmen, no remarks passed on you by fellows looking over your wall, and, above all, no WEATHER. Look at Rat, now. A couple of feet of flood water, and he's got to move into hired lodgings; uncomfortable, inconveniently situated, and horribly expensive. Take Toad. I say nothing against Toad Hall; quite the best house in these parts, AS a house. But supposing a fire breaks out--where's Toad? Supposing tiles are blown off, or walls sink or crack, or windows get broken--where's Toad? Supposing the rooms are draughty--I HATE a draught myself--where's Toad? No, up and out of doors is good enough to roam about and get one's living in; but underground to come back to at last--that's my idea of HOME'

You see how it all fits. Piers Akerman loves to live underground in the right wing bunker called his mind, and he does so love to dig and scrape. And it's his persistent badgering that brings to mind the feral badgers that have been of late so upsetting Welsh farmers (Badger cull warning as Royal Welsh Show opens in Powys).

Not that we'd ever endorse a badger cull, or ever contemplate culling such a resilient hectoring badgering badger as Piers "Akker Dakker" Akerman.

But the trouble is, Akker Dakker's such a pest, and he wants to cull the ABC, never mind that the ABC persists in having him on such shows as Q&A, and The Insiders, thereby ensuring that I never actually watch these shows.

If you search the ABC (the search results might replicate here), you see there's endless appearances for Akker Dakker, along with plugs for his Daily Terror blog. And last week he was on Q&A yet again - as you can discover, if you have a cast iron stomach - by watching the show here.

Yet because he's such a hopeless gherkin or should that be badger, and because he's an indifferent television performer and a useless debater, Akker Dakker always then takes to his blog to re-fight the debating points he lost on television, as he does here, in Here is today's news - an ABC of bias.

Now you might wonder why - if the ABC is so full of bias - that Akker Dakker demeans himself by going on their shows. You might wonder why he doesn't simply keep to Sky News and the commercial networks. Then again if you're asking that kind of question, you simply don't understand that Akker Dakker loves the sound of his own voice and the presumptuous imperatives of his cultural warrior conclusions.

You might ask why the ABC has to put this hidebound cultural warrior, or should that be badger, on its shows. Is it to make viewers suffer? Well yes, but also to show that it's fair and balanced, and so open to all kinds of eccentric views and stupidities, only of course then to be berated by the self-same elephantine badgers for bias:

In the tradition of State-run communications and propaganda operations such as those operated by the Soviet Union during the dark days of the Cold War, the ABC invariably holds tight to the party line.

When it does veer and nibble the hand that feeds it, it inevitably does so from the left, never from the right.

It is not a neutral voice of the people. It does not represent all Australians. It is not your ABC.

Rather, it is effectively owned and dominated by a small but entrenched leftist elite.

Indeed. I've always thought of Maurice Newman AC as the head of a small but entrenched leftist elite. And there's little doubt that Mr. Keith Windschuttle carries on the deep leftist thinking of his youth, acting as a kind of socialist mole, rather than a badger, within the Corporation's board.

Come to think of it, former chairman Donald McDonald was also a likely closet socialist, his personal friendship with John Howard a disturbing indication of dangerous agrarian socialist tendencies. His ten year reign fostered strident tendencies towards socialism, helped along by the appointment of the radical feminist Janet Albrechtsen to the board.

But enough of all this chatter about the lurch to the left by the monied ruling class, and commentariat commentators. You see, what's really the stone in Akker Dakker's kidney is that in the cut and thrust of the telly debate, he clearly thinks he didn't win. There was Tanya Libersek peddling lies about Tony Abbott's glorious time as health minister, and poor Akker Dakker was hapless and incapable of correcting or doing anything about it, so beset by Labor party stooges was he:

The ABC permits Labor’s lie to stand on its programs because it is happy to do so.

It is not just the blatant propaganda that the ABC is prepared to air that draws viewer attention.

It is also the softer Green messages with which its programs are laced and, as importantly, the items it decides not to pay attention to that serve the Labor Party’s cause.

Yes, you can invite Akker Dakker on to a program, but because he's so incoherent and incompetent - or is that simply froth and foam on the badger lips making it hard to hear what the badger's saying - the ABC allows the Labor party to lie, and not the Liberal party. Not that the Liberal party is at any time economical with the truth ...

Worse still, and even more of an indignity for the badger is the ABC's shameless bias against sound political opinions:

Two days ago former Labor leader Mark Latham damned Prime Minister Julia Gillard’s population policy as a “fraud of the worst order” and “an attempt to con the people of western Sydney”.

His views barely rated a mention.

Thankfully Akker Dakker dealt with Mark Latham way back when in Half wit wisdom of a failed intellect:

The great worry is that in his (Latham's) forced retirement to home parenting he may see personal publishing as a new career.

His collection of quotations looks like a self-aggrandising work from a vanity press - and reads like one too.

It might have been better if he had just put out the Collected Insults of Mark Latham and Other Boofheads, but his inclusion of historical quotes, possibly in an effort to display his own self-perceived erudition, removes it from that genre.

Let’s hope the stay-at-home father doesn’t follow this up with Mark Latham’s Best Recipes or Gardening Tips.

In 1990, Paul Keating famously accused Wilson Tuckey of being “a dog returning to its own vomit’’ when Tuckey reminded him of unpleasantness relating to a former fiancee.

Latham, writing about his own remarks, deserves the same comment.

But that's Akker Dakker, always ready to forget what he's scribbled, but never willing to forgive. Perhaps what we need now is an Akker Dakker campaign for the ABC and its commentators - bring back the vomit! Pay attention to the vomit! Mention the vomitous views of the vomiter!

But that's the way of the badger down in the bunker. Everything is propaganda, and unless it's propaganda done the right way, then it's clearly propaganda done the left way:

Had a former Liberal leader - say, Malcolm Fraser - said anything even a skerrick as inflammatory about Tony Abbott, it would have made every ABC news bulletin for the week and warranted discussion by every commentator.

When former Labor prime minister Bob Hawke and his former mistress, current wife and biographer Blanche d’Alpuget, were launching her latest hagiography, the 7.30 Report’s Kerry O’Brien had them on his program twice.

Uh huh, and even more shocking, Miranda the Devine only wrote about them once.

He didn’t have time, however, to tell his audience of the more relevant breaking news of Gillard’s reported broken deal with the man she executed, Kevin Rudd.

Had the Coalition axed a leader three weeks out from an election, it would have received blanket coverage, with every nuance interpreted as turmoil in the camp.

Uh huh, but what a pity Peter Costello never had the guts.

Never mind, it seems it's all been plain sailing:

Rudd’s dismissal has been papered over and presented as a seamless transition even when senior ministers have abandoned their posts and walked out of Cabinet weeks before the election.

Which clearly indicates Akker Dakker has paid no attention to 24/7/365/366 leap year/∞, with its opening day exclusive scoop that former Chairman Rudd was in dereliction of his duty to save the nation's security by attending important poo bah meetings, and instead sending a delegate, eventually picked up by the Herald and other rags in stories like Rudd tries to defend record on security, and 'Kevin Rudd turned up when it mattered'.

But that's the badger in his bunker at his finest. Never let observable facts get in the way of extreme prejudice.

It also helps to throw in a dash of bitterness and bile and resentment:

Surely a newsman on a $375,000-a-year contract (for a four-day week, usually with two months and school holidays off every year) would be desperate to investigate the infinitely more newsworthy new Kirribilli agreement, which would have been of far greater relevance to viewers in 2010 than the rehash of the life of a character from the ‘80s?

The ABC’s Four Corners program made a point of presenting the life of each of the three most recent Opposition leaders, Brendan Nelson, Malcolm Turnbull and Tony Abbott - presenting a particularly unflattering portrait of the latter by dwelling obsessively on his youthful exploration of his faith while totally ignoring his lengthy and continuing commitment to working to improve the lot of Aboriginal Australians.

Yes, and the lot of Aboriginal Australians has tremendously improved, as it did throughout the Howard years, no thanks in no small way to Akker Dakker's tremendous contributions to matters concerning Aboriginal Australians ...

Oops, I stumbled off into an alternate universe for a moment. Back to the real bizarro world:

There has not been and will not be a similar examination of Gillard’s long involvement as a key member of the extreme Left group, the Socialist Alliance formed by members of the old Communist Party of Australia.

Yes, indeed, nor has there been any explanation as to how Gillard seems to have abandoned climate change, like Tony Abbott, and stumbled towards Abbott's attitude on asylum seekers. This kind of outrageous right wing thinking might well see her ripe for a plum role on the ABC board in retirement ...

So what's the end result?

The public broadcaster once used to be known for its vigilance in not accepting political propaganda, but today the ABC acts as if it is happy to air it.

Hear hear, the sooner they get Akker Dakker off, the better. I've never heard so much gibberish and political propaganda on the ABC. At least with Tim Blair on the opening night of 24/7/∞, it was only mindless drivel. Alternatively, how about Akker Dakker take a manly stand and boycott the bastards. Either way, it'll be a win win for long suffering viewers ...

ABC chairman Maurice Newman is patently powerless and managing director Mark Scott is more interested in expanding his empire than demanding that the national broadcaster maintain any ethical standards of the controlling clique.

It is their ABC, not ours - and it is intent on growing its influence.

Yes, by including all those bloody chattering chardonnay sniffing commentariat commentators, out from their bunkers and bleating like the bloody propagandists they are ...

I know, I know, in its own way, it's a cunning plan to limit the reach and influence of the ABC.

If you listen too long to Akker Dakker badgering away, quite soon you'll go blind, or be dragged off to the asylum. And that means one less viewer, or two or a dozen, or soon enough five rating points.

But you see that's because we know the real truth, the truth Akker Dakker does not dare to tell.

It's their ABC, and his, not ours, and they're intent on growing their influence by penetrating ABC programs like a bunch of right wing propagandist cells ...

Strike that badger metaphor, think cockroaches ... doing the work of their controlling clique ...

(Below: a badger. You might think it cute enough for a children's book, but be warned, badgers can be short sighted, and combative, and emit a long-drawn scream, reason unknown - here).