Cardinal Pell, Wendy Francis, and onward Christian soldiers, lovers of watermelon and prejudice ...

(Above: eek, it's a photoshopped fake of Steve Fielding with a watermelon. What does it mean Cardinal Pell?)

(Above: eek, Wendy Francis. Here on the pond one day, gone forever on the next).

So is there any upside to my sudden awareness that Wendy Francis is standing for Family First in Queensland?

Well yes, I like to think there are a number of benefits.

For a start, it's not just good old Pellist heretic Cardinal George Pelll who's a silly old chook.

Pell, you might recall, tottered out into the world, or more particularly, into the bizarro world of News Ltd, to announce that the Greens were thoroughly anti-Christian. Keep that up as a selling point, and the Greens suddenly look tempting.

Anything but the Pellist heresy thank you very much ...

Showing that his grasp of metaphors is as feeble as his grasp of politics, Pell penned the following:

In his article, Cardinal Pell wrote the Greens' once claimed that humans are simply another smarter animal - an ethic designed to replace Judeo-Christianity.

He said some Greens are "like watermelons, green outside and red inside".

"A number were Stalinists, supporting Soviet oppression," he wrote. (Greens' policies more Christian than Cardinal George Pell, says Bob Brown).

In his usual inimitable way, it seems Pell has been reading Gerard Henderson smear of all Greens by association with Lee Rhiannon, a matter we dealt with here.

Well he would say that, wouldn't he, seeing as how he has such an intimate association with Tony Abbott, but is a green watermelon the best he's got as a metaphor? What a pathetic, tragic, out of date, out of touch, past his use by date goose.

As for calling the Greens in generality Stalinists and Stalin lovers, is he aware of the variant to Godwin's Law?

As time has passed I've noticed a tendency for 'Commie' to replace 'Fascist' as an ad hominem particularly on usenet. This could be a direct result of Godwin's law or a result of the increasing numbers the American public using the net. This suggests yet another Godwin corollary.
- As the probability of Godwin's Law being invoked approaches one the probability that 'Commie' will replace 'Nazi' also tend towards one.
Martin Spamer

Indeed. A dollar in the swear jar please Cardinal Pell. Or perhaps a dollar in the collection plate. Oh heck, why not just auction off your ritzy collection of fancy pants red robes, and send the money to the poor. You know, do a Jesus routine, instead of a watermelon Stalinist routine. After all, if you're red on the outside, chances are you're red on the inside.

But where were we with Wendy Francis, and her outing in Family First candidate Wendy Francis stands by gay slur on Twitter? (Beware, it's another of those damned forced video stories the Herald specialises in so if you're caught napping you have to watch another of their damned ads. Curse you Herald, curse you).

Ms Francis, Family First's lead Senate candidate in Queensland, said in a Twitter message yesterday: "Children in homosexual relationships are subject to emotional abuse. Legitimising gay marriage is like legalising child abuse."

Which makes me wonder. Is sending a child to a Catholic church like legalising child abuse, as the priests fiddle about with the altar boys back behind the vestry, like Uncle Ernie in that Who rock opera? Or is that illegal child abuse? And is Ms Francis as fired up about the Catholic church as she is about gays, since there's a heck of a lot more evidence of the church at fault than there is for her preposterous views about gays ...

Ain't it strange, nay weirdly wonderful, how stupid some Christians are ...

Ain't it grand to learn that Australia - well hopefully only the dark north, which is to say Queensland - has people as off as any the Americans can offer up ...

Of course Francis has followed the standard course of a minor politician suddenly dumped in the spotlight, caught saying silly things like a 'roo entranced by the glare. It was only going to be a dogwhistle, and then the media were all over it like a rash, because they love the loons as much as we love them here on the pond. Google her name, and you'll see what we mean.

But back to the fatal error of inexperienced candidates.

So you twitter away like a right royal twit, sending tweets into the ether like a goose:

Oops, then it's out in the ether, and someone grabs them, and then it's on.

What to do? Well delete the tweets, as any rabbit caught in the glare would do. But curse it, damn it, such is the full to overflowing nature of the intertubes that they just keep on caching and saving this kind of stuff.

So then explain that there's only a small number of people helping and it's all a bit overwhelming, and then explain how there are only 140 characters in a tweet, and this was just a headline, never mind that it's a profoundly offensive, in error headline, and then offer up the immortal phrase, the watermelon thinking in this case:

The gay slur thing; I am not homophobic.

Or I'm not hurling abuse at homosexuals. It's just being around them is a kind of emotional abuse.

Yes you are duckie, everything you said in the tweet and subsequently to the media in defence of the indefensible is precisely that. What else to make of this?

"What I'd say to [people opposing the view] is that the headline that has been generated probably really lost sight of what I was saying," she said.

"I was talking about emotional child abuse...

... Ms Francis went further, comparing the "parentless" generation with the "stolen generations".

"We had a stolen generation and we saw that that social experiment left children confused, they were without the right to have their mother and father and for me I think the right of the child is to have a mother and a father," she said.

Well that's a relief. It seems Ms. Francis actually believes there was a stolen generation.

So that's an upside.

As for the rest, I immediately rushed off to Enmore celebrity Antony Green's The Green Guide, and invoked his Senate Calculator for Queensland, and there were six candidates getting the nod, including three for the ALP, and three for the Liberal Nationals, including good old Barners. And there was Wendy Francis getting 2.33% votes, and carrying that albatross word "excluded".

"Excluded". Such a nice word.

Talk about an upside. There for fifteen minutes of fame, a veritable media celebrity, and then gone the next ...

Now if only Steve Fielding gets himself "excluded" ...

Yes, yes, Enmore celebrity Antony Green's Senator calculator suggests 2.56% and "excluded". No more brown bottles wandering around parliament.

This is surely the moment that Pooh talked about, the sweet moment before voting, or eating honey:

"Well," said Pooh, "what I like best -- " and then he had to stop and think. Because although Eating Honey was a very good thing to do, there was a moment just before you began to eat it which was better than when you were, but he didn't know what it was called.

And what a happy world it would be if somehow Cardinal Pell could find himself "excluded" too.

Or at least made to eat a watermelon a day, so he could find out what it's like to jaundiced on the inside, as well as prejudiced on the outside.

Oh if only Christ could return, that long absent fickle lord, and see the inheritors of his mantle at work ...

(Below: a man who loves his frocks, and nothing wrong with that, unless of course you take a dim view of men who love their frocks, and think other men shouldn't love their frocks, while loving your own, and worse than that, that it's better to be red on the outside, and bilious on the inside).

UPDATE: a larger image, in which it is clearly revealed that the long absent god has returned so that just in this moment of time of the snap being taken, a ghostly image of a dunce's hat is superimposed on Cardinal Pell's head. Having delivered this visual supernatural judgement, the photographer and the police and Pellists everywhere are now in search of the long absent god ...