Sophie Mirabella, and dopey Sophie goes up against foolya Joolia ...

(Above: it's a stretch to get from Noel Coward to dopey Sophie Mirabella, but we get there).

What's been great about this election campaign has been the high minded, articulate, insightful level of the discourse. The cut and thrust and parry. The wit and incisive explanations of where Australia should be going and how we might get there. The dedicated attention to policy, the resolute refusal to indulge in cheap shots and personal abuse.

The Punch, Australia's most retrograde conversation, has helped enormously by regurgitating the sublime thoughts of one Sophie Mirabella, who never descends to the playground or to childish invective, but always keeps her eye on policy matters of the most elevated kind.

Take Liberal diary: "Foolya Joolia" not all she seems. Yes, please take it.

What's that you say? "Foolya Joolia" seems a trifle coarse, perhaps not even secondary level sledging but more the kind of thing you might get in the playground of a badly run primary school, as young boys run about teasing redheads (yes you bastards you'll pay and pay).

Tush, shush now, that's just a playful subbie at work, demonstrating yet again that The Punch is home to playful wags with the minds of ten year old boys. Let's quickly scan the text to prove that they had no Mirabella basis for the header.

Oh dear:

“Foolya Joolia” decries negative campaigning while personally attacking Tony Abbott at every opportunity.
“Foolya Joolia” declares Rudd had lost his way to justify knifing him, but then sings his praises and asks for his help.
“Foolya Joolia” finds time for fashion shoots and guest editing women’s magazines, but couldn’t be bothered attending meetings of the National Security Committee.
“Foolya Joolia” justifies her Government’s flagrant waste and overspending with the hollow argument that our economy isn’t a basket-case (yet), even as she racks up $100 million every day.
“Foolya Joolia” prays while at the same time declaring herself an atheist.
“Foolya Joolia” cries “Yes we will” when her Labor Government did so very little (and what they did do was badly botched) during their first term.
There’s a lot about Labor’s campaign that has been smokescreen and subterfuge. It may get them across the line and further entrench the ‘detested caste of ruthless robotic machine men' who installed "Foolya Joolia".

Immediately we felt the need to join in the game at the same elevated, Shakespeherian rag, so elegant, so intelligent.

Ya ya dopey Sophie, mopey Sophie, Dirigibella fella dressed in yella.

Loopey Sophie, ya eat green custard. And so on and so forth.

I suppose the truly amazing thing is that Mirabella thinks playground taunting an effective political debating style. But mere idle abuse is merely idle ...

Instead of actually reading Mirabella, a torture at the best of times, I began to think of wordsmiths with genuine skill in delivering an insult:

When Shaw reportedly wrote, "I am enclosing two tickets to the first night of my new play, bring a friend ... if you have one," Churchill replied: "Cannot possibly attend first night, will attend second ... if there is one" - so creating the kind of rare badinage that is recounted gleefully by generations. (here).

Well we can gleefully note that Mirabella's rare kind of badinage will be recounted gleefully by cretins. It lacks even the crude vigour of the rough hewn sporting type, as also told in the same story:

Playground insults, then, are most effective: any taunts involving immediate family or partners, specifically the suggestion that you may have been intimate with them recently, should suffice; as should barbs based around physical, sexual or sporting prowess. The less convoluted and mature, the better: if in doubt, the phrase most likely to generate outrage is the universal "Your mum", which translates seamlessly across language barriers.

Cricket, though, is renowned for "sledging"; legendary tales abound of verbal skewering between players. When the Australian paceman Glenn McGrath lazily asked Zimbabwe's Eddo Brandes, "Why are you so fat?", Brandes swiftly riposted: "Because every time I shag your wife, she gives me a biscuit." Likewise, the former Australian wicketkeeper Rod Marsh once reportedly greeted Ian Botham on the pitch with the opener: "So how are your wife and my kids?"

By the time I'd discovered that sticks and stones has been around for a long time, since as early as 1872 (here):

Sticks and stones
May break my bones
But words will never hurt me.

which led me to playground songs, here, and 'one two, buckle my shoe, and knick-knack paddywhack, which led me to truce terms, here, I'd almost forgotten dopey Sophie.

I'd drifted off to a time when cowardly custard was all the rage, though it's alarming to discover that Noel Coward got into that game with Cowardy Custard.

And then I found that it turned up in 1899 as:

Cowardly, cowardly custard,
Eats his mother's mustard. (here).

It turns out that site has lots and lots of nursery rhymes and splendid riddles and if you're not singing London bridge, you can be discovering arch Victorian humour:

In Tamworth, if you're of a certain vintage, saying someone drank their bathwater was all the rage. I never understood what it meant, except that it seemed more like wise advice than abuse, because bath water tended to be full of dirt and soap and precious bodily fluids. Still it seemed more sophisticated than the invitation to shove a giant woolly Pioneer bus up my bum.

And then it came to me in a flash.

Dopey soapie Sophie drinks her bathwater.

Which reminded me that somewhere else in the full to overflowing intertubes dopey Sophie is still blathering on about "Foolya Joolia" thinking she's scoring political points when she's actually revealing herself to be a first class dill.

A diller, a dollar, a ten o'clock scholar!
What makes you come so soon?
You used to come at ten o'clock,
But now you come at noon.

Well I never understood what that meant either, but I reckon for lowering the tone of the debate to the level of ten year old boys, dopey Sophie makes a first class diller dollar ten o'clock scholar.

Is it any wonder, with the infantilisation of debate doing the rounds at the moment that the Gruen Ultimatum (or Transfer or Nation or whatever) and the Chaser lads are the only two bits of relief from the torture?

I see I haven't scribbled anything at all about dopey Sophie's actual words:

The real risk this Saturday is that the worst government in Australia’s history will get the second chance it does not deserve and we cannot afford.

The worst government in Australia's history? What a load of buttocks, what a load of rhetorical bunkum, futtocks to you dopey soapie Sophie.

How fucking stupid can you manage to sound in your bid to whip up alarm and panic and fear and loathing? You insult cretins and cretinism generally with your stupidities ...

The real risk this Saturday is that dumb fuck politicians will get voted back into office, and that's a second chance they don't deserve and we can't afford, but it's going to happen anyway.

Another three years of dopey Sophie punching us drunk in The Punch ...

Quick, I feel faint, more nursery rhymes please ...

Goosey, goosey, gander,
Whither shall I wander?
Upstairs, and downstairs,
And in my lady's chamber.
There I met a dopey soapie woman
Who kept on saying her prayers!
I took her by the left leg
And threw her down the stairs.