Miranda Devine, and an hysterical overreach of an angst ridden conflationary kind ...

(Above: cat as angst ridden feminist, mouse played by Miranda the Devine).

There are alternatives to reading the commentariat commentators.

I was thinking this when I chanced on Annabel Crab's Tell it like it is: the fair-dinkum election, for the ABC's The Drum, in which she manages a fairly even handed swipe at both sides in relation to climate, industrial relations, family values, immigration and refugees, tax and fishing (you'll have to read it to see how fishing fits into the gag).

She followed that effort up with an explanation of how both parties are rorting the system to suck on the taxpayers' teats - so much for Tony Abbott being too busy to debate Gillard - in Footing the bills for the campaign trail.

It's all eminently sensible and informative stuff, with a dash of humour and cynicism, and utterly unlike the shock horror snout in trough hysteria of a Janet Albrechtsen.

But that's not our mission.

Our mission statement is to read palpable nonsense, in much the same way as hitting ourselves over the head with a saucepan or a frying pan, and wondering why the world looks askew and there's a ringing sound in our ears.

Day after day in the quest for surreal light entertainment we read drivel in the hope of getting a few cheap laughs. The cheerleaders are always the best fun, since they pretend to be objective, fair and balanced, but they're generally about as balanced as a meat pounder smoothing out a steak.

So okay which meat pounder is up for a workout today?

Happily it's Miranda the Devine, and she offers us expert guidance in a couple of key commentariat skills, especially conflation, misdirection and exaggeration, as shown proudly on parade in Nobody's died, so why is she demanding a king's ransom?

Here's how a skilled operative goes about her wordsmithing. First start with outrage and indignation:

Tony Abbott was right to be angry about the hysterical word-parsing generated by his ''no means no'' comment. ''I'm not going to cop this kind of vicious smear from the Labor Party,'' he said. ''I'm the father of three daughters. No one respects women more than I do.''

There, that's a good start. Hysterical is such a solid, grounded word. Of course the Devine can't take credit for "vicious smear", but can play little Miss Echo. Of course the Labor party denied being part of said "vicious smear", but what the hell, guilty by association.

In any case, it's always handy to add a few more examples, since good words always hunt in packs:

Only it wasn't just Labor on the smear. It was the Greens, the Twitterverse, and every angst-ridden feminist who had been waiting for an opportunity to pounce on the Opposition Leader from Testosterone City.

There you go. Smear, angst-ridden, feminist, pounce and testosterone add to the sense of a hysterical smear. Nothing like smearing all feminists as angst-ridden waiting to pounce like a cat at a mouse. Now crank up a few specific examples.

Kathleen Swinbourne of the Women's Electoral Lobby said Abbott was ''playing on the fact Julia Gillard is a woman and using a women's anti-violence slogan against her . . . He wouldn't say it to a man.''

Yes, as Joe Hockey points out, he says it to his children all the time. So why not say it to Gillard, seeing as how she's a child who happens to be childless.

Karen Willis of the NSW Rape Crisis Centre was outraged: ''This sort of phrase isn't a joke, it's really a very clear statement about people's rights to say no to sexual advances and sexual activity when that's what they choose.''

Oh dear, it's building up. The explosive hysterical pressure. Surely it's time for a capper from the Devine:

So now Abbott is no better than a rapist.

Huh, you say? Criticism of his use of a form of words turns in to an allegation that he's no better than a rapist?

If you don't get it, sorry, clearly you need to learn a lot more about misdirection and exaggeration.

And you should also remember that it's important to remember Humpty Dumpty's advice on words:

'The question is,' said Alice, 'whether you can make words mean so many different things.'

'The question is,' said Humpty Dumpty, 'which is to be master - - that's all.'

Alice was too much puzzled to say anything, so after a minute Humpty Dumpty began again. They've a temper, some of them -- particularly verbs, they're the proudest -- adjectives you can do anything with, but not verbs -- however, I can manage the whole of them! Impenetrability! That's what I say!'

'Would you tell me, please,' said Alice 'what that means?`

'Now you talk like a reasonable child,' said Humpty Dumpty, looking very much pleased. 'I meant by "impenetrability" that we've had enough of that subject, and it would be just as well if you'd mention what you mean to do next, as I suppose you don't mean to stop here all the rest of your life.'

'That's a great deal to make one word mean,' Alice said in a thoughtful tone.

'When I make a word do a lot of work like that,' said Humpty Dumpty, 'I always pay it extra.'

'Oh!' said Alice. She was too much puzzled to make any other remark.

'Ah, you should see `em come round me of a Saturday night,' Humpty Dumpty went on, wagging his head gravely from side to side: 'for to get their wages, you know.'

So how does the Devine follow Humpty Dumpty's advice? Why she reaches in to her pocket and pays the word 'hysterical' a little over time:

What an insult to a family man who is anything but anti-women. It is just this kind of hysterical overreach that is behind the $37 million sexual harassment lawsuit launched against David Jones by its former publicist, Kristy Fraser-Kirk, 27.

But don't let that hard working word 'hysterical' fool you. The words doing the really heavy lifting here are "It's just this kind of", with "hysterical overreach" just the follow up.

You see, in the art of conflation, where two totally unrelated issues, or casus belli, are thrown together, it's just this kind of wording that's crucial.

'In much the same way' is another happy phrase, especially if the things so co-joined aren't actually in much the same way, and might indeed have bugger all to do with each other.

Roll a phrase like 'in a similar way' around in the tongue, and let it loll there a moment, and see how you can manage this kind of sentence.

Thanks to sugar or artificial sweeteners lemonade in the mouth, the taste is sweet, but in much the same way, thanks to its acid quality, the juice of a lemon can taste sour.

You see, in one swift, epic conflationary move, you've established sweet is sour, and you can just as easily do sour is sweet.

Beware a few cavalier types who no doubt objected to Work Choices will probably brush the redback spiders out of their purse, and fork over a few coins so they can accuse you of "hysterical overreach", but that's a bonus result, since clearly they're the same kind of meanie employer of words as the Devine. Cheap skate and half assed.

Once she's made this epic conflationary move - which links Tony Abbott forever with the matter of sexual harassment at David Jones, though they have not a whit or jot in common, I must say I lost interest in the rest of the Devine's piece. Sure the Devine ensures feminism is given another going over:

By claiming that absurd amount, she has lost credibility. The sympathy and respect she earned from her initial dignified and private handling of the case flew out the window. She is no longer seen as a victim but as another litigious, gold-digging, high umbrage woman egged on by lawyers using feminism to advance a personal cause.

But really thereafter the outing is just a standard rote example of commentariat abuse:

Her press conference on Monday, surrounded by her parents, boyfriend and lurking publicists, would have been heart-rending - if someone had died.

It's actually utterly tedious and predictable, but it does at the end come good with another bonus payment for a wonderful hard working word:

Hysterical legal hyperbole does not help women of any age. Greedy lawsuits only damage women in the workplace by making male colleagues resentful and wary. In the real world, this is a severe handicap for women making their way on their own merits.

There, that's it, a golden trifecta for 'hysterical'. Match it with legal hyperbole and the job is well done. First kill all the hysterical lawyers, as Shakespeare was wont to say ...

What a splendid, solid, honest, 'toiling in the vineyards until sundown' word it is.

Of course you should be careful how you to deploy such lethal words. If I was in the movie game, and preparing a poster, here's how I'd use the words in her column:

Hysterical ... Abbott is no better than a rapist!!!

Miranda Devine

Coming to a theatre near you. And best of all you wouldn't have to pay the words a cent more, because you see it's just another hysterically over-exaggerating conflationay movie poster, indulging in a little non sequitur playfulness.

Of course if you were Sony, you'd pay online reviewers to write reviews so that you could extract the required poster words. Ah those were the days, remembered in Sony's Fake Critic Fallout.

Oh dear, I seem to have done the same damn conflationary thing. Moving from Miranda the Devine's heartfelt defence of Tony Abbott through Humpty Dumpty to Sony being contemptible in a very movie studio way ...

Never mind, conflation is as conflation does, and in much the same way, we're reminded that we all indulge in hysterical overreach.

What's that? That's the fifteenth or so time this page has used the word 'hysterical' in one form or another and the Devine only managed three?

Bugger and damn, and the bloody word's such a hysteria queen, a bolshie pinko socialist cardigan wearing pervert when it's not strutting about shouting that it's the child of hysteria. A damn unionist always on about overtime and triple time ...

The cash flow for the week is ruined, the pond is on the verge of bankruptcy.

What to do? Sorry, as a result of deeply agitated overreach and conflationary pressures, this piece is coming to a close ...

(Below: flag of the Lord Warden of the Cinque ports, an heraldic emblem which displays conflated or con-joined images, as shown in the wiki on conflation. Did you know that Robert Menzies was once the Lord Warden between 1966 and 1978, and he's a Liberal leader, and so is Tony Abbott? Which conclusively proves that Tony Abbott has English leanings and in much the same way that know means know when it comes to canny shopping and wise word purchases at David Jones).