Gretel Killeen, Jeremy Bass, and my my hey hey, it must be Sunday in the Herald ...

(Above: Nicholson in 2003. Same as it ever was).

Oh dear. In the long established tradition of preening ponces in charge of foreign affairs, step forward former chairman Rudd. The only question now is whether he'll sometimes don the fishnet stockings, Alexander Downer style.

As for Stephen Smith? Silly chappie, he should know the reward for doing a quietly spoken good job is punishment and banishment, so it's off to the graveyard of defence for him.

And Peter Garrett in charge of schools? Suffer the little children. No, not to come unto him, just to suffer.

Wrap it all up with a couple of areas of professional interest, Stephen Conroy still in charge of plans for his great big never to happen internet filter (Conroy's net filter still alive and kicking), and Simon Crean as the symbolic federal head of the arts, and here at the pond we feel comfortably numb. After one of the most impotent and useless arts ministers ever, it's suffer the little artists, no, not to come, just to wither away in a state of ennui and boredom ...

Oops, we're doing the job of the commentariat commentators, and the one good thing about the whole saga is that it will irritate the heck out of them.

It also seems to have irritated the heck out of Gretel Killeen, who pops up as lead columnist in today's Herald, offering up Pollies' marriage looks shaky already.

In their ongoing desperate endeavours to find a replacement for Miranda the Devine, it seems that in its infinite wisdom the Herald might be hoisting Killeen on the petard, making it Big Brother's big sister time.

In a series of thought bubbles, Killeen disposes of the menage a trois between the independents and the government as a vision thing which will lead to divorce, in much the same way as she once divorced Ray Martin, delivers a rant about Barangaroo which suddenly made me think my suspicions about the scheme might be misplaced - if Killeen hates it, surely it has some appeal - has a grouch about paying a fee for using a cab card - catch a bus darling, and you won't have to worry about the difficulties of getting to Belvoir Street - and delivers her judgement on former chairman Rudd's new role - "Yes, he'll be 'competent', but what does his ministership really tell the world about Australia?"

Indeed. Which leads one to ask "Yes, she can 'scribble', in a kind of theatrical, vivacious eastern suburbs showbiz bubbly sort of way, but what does her scribbling really tell the world about the Herald's new attitude to its columns pages?"

Could it be that Killeen's champagne (oops, sorry in the antipodes, sparkling wine) bubbles are the way forward? Should we from now on think in shorter paragraphs, delivering bon mots that make Oscar Wilde wince, as we range from taxi cards to foreign affairs, and dispose of the lot of them with a thin stemmed verbal flourish?

Well it certainly provides an ironic counterpoint to Philippe Mora brooding about Dark days as the media plug into a mob mentality, quoting H. L. Mencken praising knowledge and complexity and education, and damning invective and the mob:

Political correctness and ratings addiction has castrated the media to the point where imbeciles, ignorant buffoons and primates (as Mencken described them) get equal time on the television screen with rational people. Marshall McLuhan pointed out in the 1960s that the medium is the message, meaning to the uneducated viewer 10 minutes of a close-up of Charles Manson is of equal weight as 10 minutes of Mahatma Gandhi.

Can we work in a mention of 10 minutes of Gretel Killeen?

Invective sells, so some media, salivating for attention, rush to give cranks, racists, halfwits and criminals extensive coverage. Low IQ is in, as is mockery of the educated or sophisticated.

Which naturally brings us to Jeremy Bass's most excellent rant Foolish tweet pales in culture of hate.

Bass gets terribly agitated about people getting agitated about swimmer Stephanie Rice's use of the word faggot (who could object to the fine concept of suck?), deeming Rice's outing as a product of homophobia and fear, rather than hate.

But then he has a problem with the concept of homophobia, deeming a phobia about the meaning of homophobia entirely appropriate. Well actually he seems to have a problem about everything and everybody, and a giant sized chip on his shoulder, which leads him to this:

Her (Rice's) benign, if stupid, tweet pales against the fear and loathing spat forth daily across the media arena, mostly by people much more powerful, influential and better paid than she is.

Well since we're suddenly into the meaning of words, benign?

1. showing kindliness; genial
2. (of soil, climate, etc.) mild; gentle
3. favourable; propitious
4. (Medicine / Pathology) Pathol (of a tumour, etc.) not threatening to life or health; not malignant

Bugger me dead, it seems it was a kindly, genial, mild, tweet, perhaps even favourable or propitious, if at the same time, surprisingly a tad stupid. I guess suck on this faggots means she was sporting a big dick, and in a kindly benevolent way offering faggots sexual rewards.

And the meaning of language disappears up Bass's fundament.

But Bass has even bigger fish to fry:

So the ''phobia'' is there merely to disguise a hatred that dare not speak its name from the public rostrum. The forces of placation have remodelled it as fear to help the insulted feel better. How on earth did we come under the spell of such linguistic tyrannies? We can trace them back to the collapse of the 1960s protest movement, in the wake of the 1970 Kent State University anti-Vietnam riots in Ohio. That was the moment the romance of youth rebellion dissolved in a storm of gunfire from National Guardsmen sooled by authority on to its own children.

They killed four and ruined the revolution. In the words of protest leader-turned-sociologist Todd Gitlin, an extroverted counter-culture turned to introverted encounter-culture.

Kent State University produced the linguistic tyranny of Stephanie Rice tweeting, and urging faggots to suck on it?

By golly, Bass's effort is such a confused mass of unreconstructed bile, dishing it out to bile peddlers like Glenn Beck, and to all those on both the left and right of the culture wars, that I suddenly had a deep yearning to be back in Gretel Killeen's column:

Many of those shouting down Rice for mere lack of decorum might like to take a closer look at who's really peddling the hatred.

A mere lack of decorum?

Actually, the use of faggot, as also when shortened to fag, is a pejorative term, and a common homophobic slur. Like nigger, or in lesser ways, bitch or slut, it's a word that can be defiantly and proudly used within the culture, but when used carelessly and outside the fold, it's likely to lead to tears.

Bass seems to grasp this:

At its best, this culture has found expression in informal social incentive and formal - legislated - imperatives aimed at changing our behaviour and language in public in the name of respect. While we have much more freedom to vent our frustrations as grossly as we like in our private realm, a socially cohesive society needs mutual respect in the public domain.

Which is why Rice's dumb use of the word 'faggot' copped a pounding, along with my irritation when I hear someone say 'that's so gay' as a way of conjuring up the stupid, the negative and the girly. (As in my father Tony Abbott is a lame, gay, churchy loser. Golly the next thing you know poor Tony might end up feeling threatened by gays).

Here's the thing. If you're interested in language, you shouldn't let Rice off the hook just because there are many bigger badder ratbags in the world, nor is it an easier out to drag in standard references to victimhood, and obligatory obscure references to moral expansionism.

The smart money says Rice's use of the term ''faggot'' was born of neither fear nor hatred. The only thing that gained it any attention at all was that weird social anaphylaxis that allows anyone to call anyone a prick any time but draws gasps of horror at the use of the c-word.

Um, actually Jeremy, why not head off to a front bar, and call anyone you can find a prick. Perhaps a dickhead for variation. Smile when you say it, because chances are you'll find a few diggers ready to knock your bloody block off. Which would be a cunt of a thing.

You see, the perceptions of a word and the context are important, and swearing at individuals, and in public places or delivering up little faggot bombs by way of a tweet when a public figure cruising through life courtesy of sponsors is different to what you can do in your own home, and all that Rice has managed to discover is what dozens of others have discovered before her, and will discover after her. If you're a tweet twittering, and it's a public tweet, chances are you'll be revealed as a tweety twit.

Meanwhile, anyone who can manage to drag in the Kent State university killings as somehow related to or explaining linguistic tyrannies is culpable of massive moral expansionism to the point of verbal abuse and diarrohea. Or should that be diarrhea?

Bugger me dead, I've caught what from now on I'll call the Bass disease, and it's Killeen me.

Which is to say pretentious, portentous, and in the end, meaningless blather. Must be time for a Sunday song. No, not the obvious one from Neil Young, this one: