Gerard Henderson, Chris Gardiner, and get out your Doc Martens, there's a stomping coming on ...

It turns out it's easier to put a bet on the Pakistan cricket team winning a game than on veteran scribbler Gerard Henderson getting furiously upset in his Tuesday column about the way the Greens and independents hold the balance of power.

I never did understand gambling or poker machines, except to know the house always holds the odds, and sure enough the bookies would have done their dough if they'd bet against Henderson getting agitated in Coalition can lay blame at its own door.

There's a herd mentality that naturally flows through commentariat columnists, like a pack of dogs or wolves, as they seize on a topic and worry it to death, the only difference being how they tack into the wind. Phew, now there's a mixed metaphor ...

Remember Stern who? Long gone, and today the subject is likely to be the fate of Jason Wood, eminently Green Liberal candidate for Latrobe, or some sundry other electoral battle as the duopoly wrestles for the soul of the wary voter, and satanic independents try to trick the mug punters into the pit of hellfire.

Henderson's angle is to shift from prattling Polonius to stern headmaster, and lay about with the cane at the failures in the Liberal campaign. Greens candidate Adam Bandt's win is the fault of the Liberal party, the failure to do a deal with the Greens regarding preferences is the fault of the Liberal party, attacking retiring Kay Hull's Riverina seat is the fault of the Liberal Party, while Mark Vaile and the National party buggered up, and let Rob Oakeshott in the door, and that's all their fault.

There's a "series of errors", "a number of self-inflicted errors", "the dumbest political strategy ever", "incompetent behaviour", a failure to "act professionally", a wasting of "time and money", "errors on the National Party side", and a need for "both the Liberals and Nationals" to examine "their acts of folly and self-indulgence" which cost a "clear, albeit narrow, victory."

By the time I reached the end of the piece, I realised that the country had just managed to save itself from a bungling, inept, slipshod, incompetent, hopeless reign by a pack of clowns in Liberal and National party dress who couldn't run a campaign or a circus, let alone a country. Give them the reins of government, and we'd find ourselves with Napoleon or Hitler in Russia ... or perhaps with the Americans in Afghanistan.

I'm not sure if the prattling Polonius quite understood the implications of his stern dressing down - you there, Abbott, yes you boy, you with the funny ears, you've totally fucked the campaign, now get on with it, and fuck over the country - but in its own desiccated way, it was fun to read. There's nothing like a conservative lashing the conservatives ...

That said, it lacked a little pizzaz, and after a couple of tablespoons of desiccated coconut, the taste buds tend to yearn for some fizzy soda water to wash it down. What better than the header for Chris Gardiner's Vote Independent? Not if you believe in democracy.

The sublime stupidity of that header lifted me enormously and will likely see me through the week, which is just as well given the state of finances after all the ten dollar bets on commentariat columnists. Memo to self, these must be limited to a dollar in the future.

Gardiner spends the rest of his column explaining how a belief in democracy means that the sheep can only rush through two gates on the way to get shorn - yes, it seems like the intertubes, voting and democracy can only be binary - and then he ends with a mixed metaphor of such astonishing fatuousness that I wept in awe and gave the game away. When you see a master of mangled thinking, it humbles your own attempts at mangling thoughts in a masticatory way:

Let me draw on two popular TV shows to make a final point. The attraction of characters like Dr Greg House in the series House, or Dr Martin Ellingham in the series Doc Martin, is that we all dream of being the person who can be unrestrained when dealing with everyone we see as fools. The occasional House of Doc Martin is tolerable only because of their brilliance. But we all know that a society would be very unpleasant and could not survive with lots of Houses or Ellinghams. I think a Parliament with a critical mass of independents would have similar problems (and it’s not clear that our independents have the brilliance that would justify tolerance of their orneriness).

What to say? Democracy and Australian politics reduced to a couple of American television shows, and yet no mention of My Favourite Martian, F-Troop, or I Dream of Jeannie!

Even worse, no explanation of how these two shows might provide excellent guest roles for the likes of that devil Bill Heffernan, the affable Alby Schultz, or the splendid Wilson Tuckey, who hung around so long that the final death scene devised to get rid of him from the long running series was one of the great moments in serial plotting.

We got to thinking how we might spin an episode about jolly Joe Hockey turning up in the sequel to Fargo to sell used cars, blessed of course with Trucoat:

Customer: We sat here right in this room and went over this and over this!
Jolly Joe: Yeah, but that TruCoat--
Customer: I sat right here and said I didn't want no TruCoat!
Jolly Joe: Yeah, but I'm sayin', that TruCoat, you don't get it and you get oxidization problems. It'll cost you a heck of lot more'n five hundred--
Customer: You're sittin' here, you're talkin' in circles! You're talkin' like we didn't go over this already!
Jolly Joe: Yeah, but this TruCoat--
Customer: We had us a deal here for nine-teen-five. You sat there and darned if you didn't tell me you'd get this car, these options, without the sealant, for nine-teen-five!
Jolly Joe: All right, I'm not sayin' I didn't--
Customer: You called me twenty minutes ago and said you had it! Ready to make delivery, ya says! Come on down and get it! And here ya are and you're wastin' my time and you're wastin' my wife's time and I'm payin' nineteen-five for this vehicle here!
Jolly Joe: All right. I'll talk to my boss Tony. See, they install that TruCoat at the factory, there's nothin' we can do, but I'll talk to my boss Tony.
[Jolly Joe leaves the room]
Customer: [to his wife] These guys here--these guys! It's always the same! It's always more!

Sorry, I got a little lost there, contemplating all the colourful rogues and charlatans in parliament - so many, so little time - and wondering in amazement at Gardiner's simple minded notion that independents are in sole possession of political orneriness.

Let's return to him for one more piece of fatuous analysis:

Our two-party political process in Australia, with its dialectic between the dominant western political traditions of liberal and social democracy, and its success in forging and holding our politicians closely to a majoritarian centre, was one of our great advantages in the 20th century.

Dialectical!? Is this man some kind of socialist?

Yes sheep, proceed directly to the gate marked according to your taste, dum or dee, and you'll find yourself transported to the heart of democracy.

What, you thought democracy was about diversity, independence, robust thinking, a capacity for complexity, and a willingness to explore beyond a cozy duopoly? Sorry, sheep, two gates are enough, and don't you worry about that. If it's good enough for computers, it's good enough for you. Remember two parties good, and anymore colourful personalities baaaad:

It’s not one I think we should naively undermine in a vicarious identification with the Houses and Doc Martins of Australian politics.

Phew, thank the lord that leaves us to vicariously identify with Bill Heffernan as he vicariously identifies himself with the devil.

Another day of political scribbling, and the only response I can muster is to put on my Doc Martens ... Now should I go punk, or should I go goth?