Gerard Henderson, Graham Richardson, and yet again ... sob ... those pesky feminists and inner city elites ...

(Above: dearie me, do the inner city types promoting futsal know the dangers of being part of an inner city elite?)

No doubt there are many amongst us who spend their idle moments wondering whether a soprano can shatter a glass, in the same way that the monotonous high pitched shrieking of commentariat commentators on the pond can burst an eardrum or cause nosebleed.

The good news is that sopranos (and other nicely pitched voices) can do the trick, though amplification is handy, and if that's all you have to worry about in your world, rush off to read Fact or Fiction?: An Opera Singer's Piercing Voice Can Shatter Glass in the Scientific American, or this treatise by Cecil, Can opera singers shatter glass with their high notes, or the BBC investigation Can sopranos shatter glass?

Alternatively, regular devotees will, Pavlovian doglike, salivate at the bell ringing news that its Tuesday, and so it's Gerard Henderson day, with punters agog at what the pompous prattling Polonius will make of the election result.

And as usual he leads with a first class piece of nonsense in Abbott's detractors must be in denial:

The Labor Party needs more Graham Richardsons and fewer Karl Bitars, irrespective of whether Julia Gillard or Tony Abbott is commissioned to form the next government.

Graham Richardson? That would be the same Graham Richardson whose wiki lists, among sundry other scandals:

In 2006, Richardson became embroiled in allegations of tax evasion involving the late Rene Rivkin. Federal Court Judge James Allsop released a document on 27 September 2006 showing that Richardson had an undeclared Swiss bank account containing $1.4 million.
He was one of the shareholders of the Offset Alpine Printing company.

In October 2008 he agreed to pay an undisclosed sum to end his ongoing A$2.3 million dispute with the Australian Taxation Office. The tax office took action against Mr Richardson in 2005 after the late stockbroker Rene Rivkin told Swiss investigators that he, businessman Trevor Kennedy and Mr Richardson were the secret owners of a $27 million stake in Offset Alpine. The Tax Office had sought $700,000 it claimed was owed in unpaid taxes, along with a $1.6 million interest and penalty payment.

Yep, in the usual rhetorical way of commentariat commentators, Henderson kicks the standard own goal. While the right wing media might have rehabilitated Richardson, and he now can turn up on Q & A showing the usual insouciance, there are many ordinary punters who remember, and know it's okay to maintain the rage.

Instead in his usual fatuous way, rather than the way that Richardson has been rehabilitated, and reinvented as an astute pundit who relishes a capacity for bastardy and doing whatever it takes, Henderson decides to get agitated by an off the cuff remark by Bitar.

How about that? The ALP national secretary's explanation for Labor's disastrous result is that voters supported the Coalition only because they thought Labor would win. Bitar told Oakes that "there's a lot of people waking up this morning thinking … 'Did I do the wrong thing yesterday?' "

How does he know this - especially since when he made the comment many Australians had not woken up for the day? He doesn't. Bitar just made it up.

This is a hanging offence. A wistful comment, as opposed to the way the actual way the actual campaign was run, like a dog's breakfast. Dear sweet absent lord, what do you give Henderson for his righteous moral cant, and can you slip a little Valium in occasionally?

Actually between making an off the cuff remark and running a Swiss bank account, if Bitar has avoided the latter I can live with a minor bit of rhetorical nonsense a lot more easily than Henderson endorsing secret Swiss bank accounts.

But Henderson compounds the felony, by refusing to restrict Richardson to the opening par. He goes on to report how Richardson has always been a supporter of Tony Abbott and thought of him as a bright guy. So a secret Swiss bank account kinda guy loves a Tony Abbott kinda guy?

And it seems there's wisdom in this assessment? What next, a character reference from Neddie Smith or Ned Kelly or any other neddy going around the track? (ah the neddies).

Yes the prattling Polonius is feeling his oats and in triumphalist mood, as Richardson is rampant and Abbott denialists are being lined up for the slaughter. Sssh, not a word about those watermelons increasing their vote and winning Melbourne and holding the balance of power in the Senate.

Instead as ever and as usual, it's all the fault of the feminists, who naturally are out of touch with the citizens of Rooty Hill:

Then there was Paul Murphy, a small businessman from Illawong. Responding to claims that Abbott worried feminists, Murphy wrote to the Herald about the young women he has employed for more than two decades. He said they were primarily "concerned with conceiving, managing work and kids and running households". Murphy wrote that most of the women in the outer suburbs of his acquaintance "have strong circles of friends and generally hold 'old-fashioned views' ".

Hah, as a Tamworth ratepayer, can I assure the prattling Polonius that he doesn't know anything about old-fashioned views until he's seen agrarian socialism at work in the next six months or so.

Naturally the dim-witted Henderson thinks women voted according to their old-fashioned views, which is as dim-witted as lefties who thought women would stand in a block and voted according to their gender.

Very early in life I began to understand the power of the secret ballot, when my mother discreetly hinted that she voted according to her conscience when confronted by pencil and slip of paper, and bugger what her husband thought on the matter. And that was a long time ago, before feminism was a glimmer in the singlet on Germaine Greer as she fronted the public bar for a beer.

The left-wing community action group Get Up! ran advertisements against Abbott advising women not to vote for the Coalition. Millions of women rejected this advice. And millions of men and women failed to respond to warnings from the likes of Professor Robert Manne and the author Paul Collins that Abbott did not deserve support because he is a conservative Catholic. This used to be called sectarianism.

What? Sectarianism has fallen out of use or is no longer a meaningful concept?

How about this?

... millions of men and women failed to respond to warnings from the likes of Gerard Henderson and right wing rat bags like Janet Albrechtsen that Abbott deserved support because he would do down feminists and the evil inner-city intelligentsia. This used to be called sectarianism.

You see, sectarianism as a brush involves painting a large area to get the right kind of smear:

Sectarianism, according to one definition, is bigotry, discrimination or hatred arising from attaching importance to perceived differences between subdivisions within a group, such as between different denominations of a religion or factions of a political movement.

What Henderson demonstrates in his usual way is a breath-taking intolerance, along with his smug triumphalism, and all this from an inner city elitist member of the highly paid and well off chattering classes kind.

The inner-city intelligentsia could not understand the Opposition Leader's appeal and the likes of Bitar believed what they wanted to believe. But whatever the outcome of the election, Abbott's achievement has been substantial.

Well there you have it. Whatever it takes and whatever the outcome of the election, and how about we tweak that sentence as well?

The inner-city conservative elite could not understand the Opposition Leader's lack of appeal and the likes of Henderson believed what they wanted to believe, and so they could never understand the appeal of the Greens as a protest vote against both houses. But whatever the outcome of the election, Bob Brown's achievement has been substantial.

Meanwhile, Graham Richardson threatens to become a serial pain and pest, aided and abetted by the likes of Henderson. If only someone could do a Latham for him so they could disappear over the horizon together - music by Morricone an optional bonus plus as the bad and the unfortunate are lost to view ...

So it goes. No soprano notes here, but rather a regular bass drone with about the pitch of a didgeridoo, but less range. After all, Sean O'Boyle has done a concerto for didgeridoo and orchestra, while all Henderson offers is his standard drone about feminists and inner city elitists ...

Here at the pond we have a simpler cry. Go Tamworth, teach those city slickers what for. Yee hah ...

Oops, sorry, non-sectarian service will resume shortly ...

Innocent blood had been split. What could atone for that? Ah! for that there was no atonement; but though forgiveness was impossible, forgetfulness was possible still, and he was determined to forget, to stamp the thing out, to crush it as one would crush the adder that had stung one.
- Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray Ch. 16

(Below: Bill Leak's 1995 portrait of Gra Gra, found here, as Richardson broods on the difference between moral and physical beauty, and the tendency of painters to deploy the Dorian Gray effect:

Richardson: "You will always see yourself as somewhat more handsome, more debonair and more dashing than perhaps the painter ... I thought no-one could be that ugly but maybe I was wrong.")