Christopher Pearson, and hell is Murdoch newspapers and television ...

(Above: nope, I can't get time wasted, or time misled out of those letters, but damn it, that means the letters are useless, and I've been misled and wasted my time).

With nobody actually watching SBS these days - even the multi-channels do better figures some nights - few probably notice or care that in one mind-numbing bit of strip programming, the network has been reduced to recreation for those who live on waiting room time.

That was the description A.A. Gill applied to Countdown, nee Des Chiffres et Des Lettres, now given an antipodean spawning as Letters and Numbers, featuring the hapless, wretched Richard Morecroft as front of house. Even commercial television at its most vacuous couldn't match this level of vacuity, and so two slots a day are eaten away by dross in its purest, cheapest form.

It's the sort of programming that makes you wonder why the government spends money on public television, the sort of programming you'd expect would make a commentariat commentator like Club Sensible, aka Christopher Pearson, seethe and writhe with indignation.

All the more so because the only beneficiary of this tripe is a private enterprise run by a Murdoch - one Elisabeth - whose production company Shine seems intent on lowering the standards of Australian television from the banal to the hideous. In one stroke, Murdoch has reduced the tone and level of SBS to that of the National Museum, and been paid by a government broadcaster for the pleasure of producing numbness in the land.

Oh wait, Christopher Pearson is on the board of SBS, the very same board that extended Shaun Brown's contract so that he could continue to run the brand into the ground. And lordy, he was a member of the Council of the National Museum of Australia.

Given that sort of deep enriching experience, no doubt he's well positioned to scribble Public service pays price for playing favourites.

Naturally the piece is an extended bout of Ken Henry, Treasury, public servant and Labor party bashing. It seems that Ken Henry first of all must assume responsibility for the decline and fall of the Howard government:

Perhaps the first sign of the problem was the leaking - by person or persons unknown - of an in-house speech by Ken Henry, the Treasury secretary, to The Australian Financial Review in early 2007. In it he criticised the Howard government for its plan to manage the waters of the Murray- Darling Basin, claiming only Treasury, which had been deliberately excluded from the arrangements, could ensure policy rigour and cost the proposals properly.

The leak was damaging to the government at a time Kevin Rudd was experiencing a surge in the polls.

That would sound terrible, except for this piece of pure comedy which leads off the Pearson prattle:

No one in the political class doubts that the Rudd and Gillard governments have exploited the advantages of incumbency more relentlessly than any of their predecessors. In the process, they've politicised the Treasury Department to the extent that what was once the most prestigious division of the public service is deeply compromised.

If only, in a quest for credibility, Pearson had scribbled that no one in the one eyed cheerleading class of loon clowns doubts that Rudd and Gillard have exploited the advantage of incumbency so relentlessly that they've ended up in a minority government.

In the end, reading Pearson is only useful to see what are the talking points for the attack dog agenda, what the hounds will be baying about this week. Along the way we can always count on a couple of gems, like this one:

Back in mid-2009 when Godwin Grech, a disaffected Treasury bureaucrat, leaked false information to the Coalition, he was identified at lightning speed by the Australian Federal Police.

When someone who clearly worked in Treasury or Swan's office leaked a costing of a Coalition policy during the election, the AFP had to be goaded into making inquiries and three weeks after polling day has yet to make an arrest.

Previously an apolitical Treasury would have gone to great lengths to protect its reputation. However inconvenient it might have been for the government of the day, the department would have insisted on a root-and-branch inquiry to clear its name.

Instead the same level of mistrust now applies to it as to the minister's office.

Only a paranoid ferret of the most loyal Tony Abbott kind could turn Malcolm Turnbull beavering away with Godwin Grech into a stick to beat Tony Abbott, and never no mind that Grech had been doing the dance with Turnbull and the opposition for an extended period without being discovered:

A report into the so-called ''Utegate'' affair outlines extensive links between Mr Grech and Mr Turnbull, John Howard's former chief of staff Arthur Sinodinos, and also John O'Sullivan, the head of investment banking at Credit Suisse and the husband of The Australian's Janet Albrechtsen. (Grech's torrent of gushing advice to Turnbull).

Ah memories - how nice to be able to work Dame Slap's name into a Pearson piece.

But back to the main game. Pearson's attack dog routine gives that poor bereft billionaire Twiggy Forrest a run, savages the independents, and then has a go at spin doctoring, apparently unaware that Pearson is spin doctoring like a spinning top on speed:

This provided Tony Abbott with not just a rationale but a good reason for not submitting his policies for costing as part of the Charter of Budget Honesty.

You see, because Treasury, being so partisan, would do them down, and never mind that the entire budget honesty procedure was set up by the Liberals to do the Labor party down, using the benefits of incumbency.

Instead of actually addressing the mumbo jumbo of the cosy dum and dee routines which drove the electorate towards independents and minor parties, and so saw Abbott incapable of achieving a decent swing, Club Sensible finds itself off in the ether of paranoia about the bureaucrats, complete with a rousing final question about the absence of frank and fearless advice.

What price frank and fearless advice then?

What hope of a paranoid giving frank and fearless advice to Abbott?

Is that why he failed to heed the need to be frank and fearless about his costings to the electorate, a game he could play only up to the point that the independents came into play, and remarkably found themselves in a position of power to call out his game playing, his ducking and weaving?

The rest, as they say, is history. Now if only someone could offer Shaun Brown some fearless advice about how he and his network programming totally sucks. Don't look to Club Sensible for that either.

All the same, reading Pearson sets the mood for the weekend, and reminds us of Jason Whittaker's tidy effort for Crikey under the header Gillard thanked us for being fair and balanced: The Oz editor.

It's fair to say that I cacked myself in a rural manner through the read, which mentions Laura Tingle's observation of the obvious - The Australian's vigorous attack dog attitude to the independents, the new 'rainbow' coalition, the Greens, and any number of issues, most obviously, but not limited to, the science of climate change.

Indeed such is the ferocious obsessiveness of The Australian's editorial line that they're reminiscent of Marlon Brando in The Wild One, tapping out a jazzy beat on the top of the jukebox:

"Hey editor of The Australian, what are you scribbling against?"

"What've you got?"

Now that's fair enough. If you're lickspittle lap dogs of Rupert Murdoch, you're paid to follow the house line, and thus far The Australian has managed only to be a pale imitation of Glenn Beck and Fox News. It's trying, and will no doubt do even better, but at the moment, it and its tabloid cousins are only trying ...

But when you try to claw your way back from a clear statement that the Greens should be destroyed at the ballot box, it's amazing how funny a soft shoe shuffle can be. While the average punter might find it hard to shy away from what they've actually scribbled in black and white, the arrogant Australian finds it's more a matter of doing a quick shimmy. Kazam, kaboom.

What's even more astonishing is Chris Mitchell's claim that Gillard had no problem with The Australian's coverage. This can only mean that Gillard is deluded. Or that she's decided to go quietly as she moves amongst the most vociferously squawking loons on the pond, having decided that they're the ones that are delusional.

The fuss even found a faint echo on Lateline, with Tingle turning up to state the bleeding obvious:

The News Limited tabloids have seemed to have escalated their sort of aggression towards the Labor Party during the election campaign, but I think it's really been the post-campaign push against the attacks on the credibility of a minority government as an idea, the attacks on the independents and the Greens which have made people think this isn't going to go away.

We're not quite sure why this is happening, but we've gotta decide whether we actually confront this or whether we just let it go through to the keeper.

And I suppose the interesting thing is I think there are interesting issues here for both News Limited and for the Government because there are all these commercial decisions that the Government will have to take which have a direct impact on News, and it's a very big elephant in the room and I think we don't really know how that's going to play out.

And it's also not just Labor; it's the Greens and the independents and we've got Bob Brown now talking about how he's had enough of the way News Limited has been behaving and he's not gonna cop it anymore.

Poor old George Mgalogenis, one of the more reasonable of the baying hounds, a kind of Shephard Smith in the stable, could only mutter, and deflect the conversation back to the safe time of the war with Rudd. It seems it's all the fault of the ABC:

The thing that really concerns Labor ministers from what I'm told by some of them is not what's in our paper but the fact that the ABC will take a cut and paste and broadcast our line across the rest of the country.

So now the ABC is a Murdoch clone? Can someone please tell the Murdoch press, so they can stop attacking their tame in house public broadcaster pet?

So, look, these debates are always very interesting for the aficionados, but I'm not sure they're on topic. Julia Gillard's got a lot more important things to worry about than what our editorial says.

Nice try George. But at least you made for funnier, more nuanced, soft shoe shuffle television than Letters and Numbers.

Meanwhile, if you missed the Crikey piece, and feel like hitting yourself in the face with a smelly wet sock in the name of comedy and Murdoch newspaper objectivity and fair and balanced coverage, go to it.

It's a hoot of a read, with appropriate links, and it's a nice relaxed way into the weekend.

What's that? You buy The Australian and think it's fair and balanced?

Great, could I interest you in an subscription to the Devil's Spawn? With bonus endless repeat viewings of Letters and Numbers, on a television set in a waiting room at the end of time.

We're thinking of doing our own show, calling it Huit Clos after Sartre, but amending his dialogue:

L'enfer, ce n'est pas les autres, c'est les journals et les télévision Murdoch.