Janet Albrechtsen, death to Mahler and French clocks, and let's hear it for ugg boots ...

(Above: our favourite picture of our favourite gum chewing, chardonnay hating, ugg boot wearing, trackie loving, slipper endorsing, pj's embracing, polar fleece celebrating, elitist hating member of the media elite).

"Do I really have to do it?"

"Yes you do, you get over there and do it right away!!"

"I'll clean my teeth. And eat an apple. I'll polish my shoes."

"None of that impresses me. You do it right now, you hear?! Enough excuses. You're supposed to be running a loon pond blog. What better loon can you find?"

"But I don't feel like it, I don't want to. I can't be bothered, I just don't care."

"Huh:

Don't care was made to care,

Don't care was hung,

Don't care was put in a pot

And boiled till she was done." (here)

"Oh okay."

Deep sigh. Here's Janet Albrechtsen scribbling Elites just don't get Howard.

Yes, yes, yes, we know. It was those damn elites that voted out the Howard government. Making some fifty per cent plus of Australians part of the damn elites. How come it's possible to be part of such a broad based elite? Shouldn't elites be say one or two per cent of the population? You know, like columnists for The Australian capable of coherent thought? .000000000001 per cent of the population ...

As for the buggers in Bennelong that voted the man down and out, look around people. Fifty per cent or more of you are damned elitists. As Antony Green, local Enmore celebrity and ABC elitist reminds us, there were on a two party preferred result, some 44,685 elitists were to hand in Bennelong in the 2007 election as part of the process of selecting the elite to hie off to Canberra (here).

Will these damn elitists now line up for an elite professional tennis star or a former elitist ABC broadcaster? Damn, it's hard for elitists to work out which elite they should pick ...

Do we have a thing about the use of the word 'elite', one of the most abused and over-worked words in the vocabulary of brain dead commentariat commentators?

Yes, we surely do. Here's an example of it in action:

This recent sniffing by Fairfax media elites about the return of "Howardism" betrays one constancy: they just don't get John Winston Howard. And it's likely they never will. The reason is simple enough. If you don't understand mainstream Australia, then Howard is equally mystifying.

Actually what's mystifying is that a dunce could scribble this in 2010, with the 2007 election now a matter of history, and Howard done and dusted, and a feather duster like many another ex-politician, and not even able to score a gig on the ICC, with a wretched Kiwi, Alan Isaac, a bloody accountant no less, scoring the gig (Zac the accountant).

What's even more astonishing is the melancholic way that commentariat commentators pine for the past, and indeed like to live in it, and cannot bring themselves to admit that Howard lost the last election. Put it another way:

They cannot bring themselves to admit that Australia is quietly, comfortably conservative by nature. Not in that overtly American way of muscular individualism, flag-waving patriotism or screaming Tea Party opposition to big government. In Australia, public displays of philosophical affection give way to private pragmatism and common sense. Howard battlers are not pining for the past. They have always sought the leader and the government that best represents their values and aspirations.

What? Like Kevin Rudd? Is that why they voted in former Chairman Kev?

It's astounding, time is fleeting
Madness takes its toll
But listen closely, not for very much longer
I've got to keep control

I remember doing the Time Warp
Drinking those moments when
The blackness would hit me and the void would be calling
Let's do the time warp again...
Let's do the time warp again!

It's just a jump to the left
And then a step to the right
With your hands on your hips
You bring your knees in tight
But it's the pelvic thrust that really drives you insane,
Let's do the Time Warp again!

Oops, don't know where that editorial intervention came from.

Back to the doleful, soulful tune of the mindless:

That reality defeats even the better minds in the media. Take Leigh Sales of ABC1's Lateline. In the first week of the election campaign, the Friday night host wondered whether we should expect to see "John Howard wheeled out during the Liberal Party's election campaign, or will he be a bit too much of a reminder of Work Choices and that era?" Howard is invariably depicted as an embarrassingly dotty, dribbling old one-trick pony forever shamed from political life by the 2007 election loss. For them, Howard represents everything they, the educated classes, despise: flexible workplaces, strong border control, moderate climate change policies, indigenous intervention. And so on.

And so on and so on and so on. Only now it's not the elite. Somehow it's a shame, a disgrace to be educated. Yep, somehow we should despise education because then you might end up in the educated classes, scribbling tripe for The Australian.

Have you ever been trapped in a party with a Whitlam-ite, still trying to maintain the rage however many decades on it might be? Listening to Albrechtsen wax lyrical about John Howard has the same soporific effect. He lost, get over it, move on ...

Oh dear, she just won't let go, will she?

They failed to comprehend the differences between Howard's 2007 election loss and Paul Keating's drubbing in 1996. Mainstream Australians stood ready with baseball bats to boot Keating, his Italian suits, antique clocks and Mahler CDs out of office in 1996. Meanwhile, the educated classes cried into their chardonnay at the rise of a balding, nerdy chap in thick glasses who espoused family values and torpedoed political correctness.

Fuck me dead. This from a poncy fancy git of a one time lawyer, paid handsomely to be an elite natterer for The Australian, married into the elite banking class, blathering on about how she's at one with the people, in much the same way that John Howard no doubt enjoyed his cellar during his time in power.

Exercise. Compare and contrast John Howard's cellar, as outlined here and featuring these four chardonnays:

Geoff Weaver 1999 chardonnay
Brokenwood 2001 chardonnay
Giant Steps 2001 chardonnay

Cape Mentelle 2001 chardonnay

with former chairman Rudd's cellar, as outlined here (with pdf here, containing grog and price list, noting that the emphasis has swung to Pike & Joyce chardonnay 04, Toolangi chardonnay 06 and 07, Petaluma charonnay 07, and Eagle Vale chardonnay 04).

What's the betting that in the privacy of her own home Albrechtsen occasionally tipples a chardonnay?

The point? That pricelessly stupid cultural and social stereotypes reveal a pricelessly stupid mind.

The day we see Janet Albrechtsen wander in to the ABC studios dressed in bogan gear, chewing on gum, and purporting to be one of the great unwashed, instead of a twee, wound way too tight member of the upper middle classes is the day she gets divorced and runs away with a plumber to Penrith. Leaving behind whatever clocks her nice house contains ...

But wait, there's even more meandering into the fields of nonsense, explaining that Howard didn't lose, or if he did lose, it was only the fault of the educated classes and not that evil fifty per cent plus that actually voted him down:

In 2007, only the educated classes had their baseball bats at the ready for Howard. Most Australians did not harbour visceral hatred towards him. While Australia's second longest serving prime minister certainly overstepped the mark on Work Choices, his bigger problem was overstaying his time in office. After 11 years as PM, Australians gave the new guy pretending to be Howard-lite a go. When they worked out Kevin Rudd was conning them, the battlers turned away long enough and swift enough for Labor to switch to a new face.

Oh bugger me dead. Enough with the Balmain boys and the baseball bats and the educated classes. Since when has being educated been some kind of visceral slur? Isn't that why we actually have a bloody school system?

He lost, get over it, move on.

No, no, no. She can't give it up. She's obsessed with John Howard. Everybody's either a John Howard or a John Howard lite or a wannabe John Howard or busy adopting John Howard's policy, except the ICC, which appointed a New Zealander, and frankly I'd rather drink a New Zealand sav blanc to an Australian chardonnay.

Call me unpatriotic, or just call me John Howard lite:

Those who lay claim to reporting, analysing and explaining Australian politics need now only ask themselves one question: if Howard is such a fossil from the past why has Julia Gillard mimicked the former Liberal PM on the critical issues in this election campaign? When Gillard shelved the emissions trading system, she signalled she is browner than Howard. Likewise, Gillard copied Howard's strong borders policy by proposing offshore processing of illegal immigrants and echoed Howard's policies on Afghanistan and the US alliance. On ABC1's Q&A on Monday night, Gillard -- the architect of waste and mismanagement within the $42 billion schools building program -- continued the me-too caper she started early on in the campaign, lining herself as the natural heir to Howard's record of sound economic management.

Bugger me dead. So what's her problem, since a vote for Tony Abbott is a vote for John Howard and a vote for Julia Gillard is a vote for John Howard and a vote for former chairman Rudd is a vote for John Howard and a vote for Bob Brown is a vote for ...

Hang on, hang on, is Albrechtsen suggesting that the only way not to vote for John Howard is to vote Green?

Well surely that's her only explanation for blathering on about the Howard battlers, since as far as I know Howard isn't running in this election, and so Howard battlers will have a battle to find a Howard to battle for ... Unless everyone is John Howard, in one hue or shade or another ....

In other words, Gillard knows this election will be decided in the homes of Howard battlers. Issues that concern Australians in the sun-belt seats of Queensland and western Sydney are very different to the left-of-centre agendas pursued by those in inner-city seats where our media elites work, live and practise pilates.

Fuck me dead. There it is again with the elites and the crap about pilates.

But how does Albrechtsen know about such things? Is it because she's just another bloody member of the media elite, former member of the ABC board, one time lawyer and academic, and for all we know a lover of yoga?

Or perhaps instead of wandering through art galleries to be shocked by what she finds, she's a regular at the footie, lovers a meat pie with dead horse, and her house is full of furniture she salvaged from the local Vinnies?

But of course all this is a mere prelude to the sounding of victory drums:

Those who misread Howard and history misread Abbott.

And so on and on and on, in which Albrechtsen explains that Tony Abbott will win the election because he's really John Howard, never mind that John Howard lost the election because he was John Howard, because Kevin Rudd won that election because he was John Howard. And how if he doesn't win, it'll all be the fault of the media for failing to realise that Julia Gillard was actually just pretending to be John Howard, whereas Tony Abbott does a much better job:

For much of the media, the prospect of Abbott becoming prime minister on August 21 is as repugnant as Howard winning in 1996. Mesmerised by Labor's latest messiah, they speak about the "sparkle" in Gillard's eyes. For them, a secular Gillard who pretends to be a conservative is far more preferable to a Catholic Abbott who is the real thing.

And now for the obligatory call to arms:

The rest of Australia may beg to differ.

Or they may not. Who knows, but it brings us back to the lamentable state of the nation's wine cellars which prompted this powerful editorial in The Australian. We're not wine snobs, but ...

Just to be clear, we're not advocating an obscure wine list favoured by inner-city topers: we're not impressed by the elites who diss anyone ordering a merlot. But an educated approach to ensuring the national cellars reflect the diversity of our wines - as well as recognising international offerings - is surely in the national interest.

Oh dear, so now the inner city elites love chardonnay but hate merlot?

Who exactly are these fuckwits that write this kind of nonsense? As if an editorialist for The Australian is anything but a git and a ponce and an elitist snob ...

Yes, that scribble was all part of News Ltd's excitement over the state of the nation's wine cellar under Howard and Rudd, as you can read here in Sneak peek at Kirribilli, Lodge wine cellars and Howard left win to rot, PM's cellar boring as hell.

Well here's a thought for Janet Albrechtsen. You're no longer going to be on your own writing this kind of drivel. There's a new scribbler in Murdoch-land, and she's from the Fairfax media elite, and she's called Miranda the Devine, and she's as mad as hell, and ready to propose way more far-fetched nonsense, and a love of Penrith in ways not dreamt of in your comfortable, handsomely educated, elitist, spiffingly toffy middle class lifestyle ...

Yes, it's going to be a race to the bottom, as two pompous preening members of the middle class media elite establish once and for all how much they truly hate Mahler, chardonnay and French clocks, and pretend that they're not part of a media elite but are at one in body, soul and mind with the great uneducated unwashed ...

Who will emerge triumphant in this cat fight as they race to the bottom of the gutter?

Why surely the gutter, as logic and reason leave the field for a nice refreshing glass of sav blanc ...

"Finished. I've finished. Can I go out and play now?"

"Of course you can dear. Feeling better?"

"Way better. You were right. It's great to read media elites wanking on about media elites."

"Good girl. I know it's hard work, but you always feel better afterwards."

"Yes, when I grow up I'm going to like Mahler and French clocks and chardonnay, and not worry what other people might think. I think they're such an awful, dreary, mind deadening bunch of tossers."

"That's nice dear. At least it's better than ruining your life with screen culture. Now why don't you put on a song? Dance a little. You know you like to dance. Life is short. Have some fun ..."