Janet Albrechtsen, and once more down the paranoid rabbit hole at News Corp ...

There's a wonderful irony at work in The Australian today, in the paranoid heart of the nation.

The Australian hates the NBN, and has been conducting a vigorous campaign against it. In what is now standard modus operandi for opinion dressed up as news, The Australian, in its digital edition, has put a story by Natasha Bita and Samantha Maiden, Web guru Graeme Wood joins attack on NBN, front and centre:
Note that Graeme Wood is a web guru, a successful dotcom entrepreneur, who founded an online travel booking service Wotif.com. Wood offers up the standard piety that the extra speed will only be used to download games and movies. So much for ruining the music industry. I keed, I keed, because who can be bothered dragging in education, health, etc etc, when confronted by banality simply and stupidly stated in such a succinct way.

Next drag in a billionaire Andrew 'the twig in search of a tree' Forrest to whine about a cost benefit analysis (refer to Cost Benefit delusions of the NBN for a succinct counter opinion), then drag in Tony Windsor from "earlier this month", then promote Tony Abbott and his "modest" broadband plan, and then most confusingly quote Wood in a different light:

Despite his criticism of the NBN, Mr Wood, who opened the World Computing Congress in Brisbane this week, yesterday criticised the Coalition's plans to demolish the government's broadband network. He noted that opposition spokesman on communications and broadband, millionaire Malcolm Turnbull, had made much of his fortune from the dotcom revolution.

Mr Wood said broadband would be "a great boon for businesses", and for educational and medical services. But he said the government needed a policy to encourage "more positive returns to society".

Yep, there's more skew and spin in this "news" story than a game of billiards.

So then drag in Dick Smith from "last month" and Michael Malone from "this month", and then without a blink of an idea, marvel and wonder at how Wood was pitching for tax breaks for internet innovation along the lines of the rorts that fuelled the Australian film industry in the "1990s". Actually those rorts were degutted with the establishment of the Film Finance Corporation in 1988 because ... well because 10BA and 10B were rorts that were rorted. But never mind. A sense of history isn't required ...

So here's a newspaper rabbiting on like a pompous bunch of prats about the failure of the NBN while urging on a set of tax breaks which will produce rorts. You can almost hear the finance sector slavering along with The Australian ...

Time then to mention James Spencely saying everyone should be content with a Commodore instead of a Ferrari - I immediately thought he should get on his dial-up bicycle and get the hell out of here - and then round it out with Wood having a go at Marius Kloppers over the mining tax and the emissions trading scheme. That's right: a "news" story which is "News" branded finds time to include these matters in a "story" about the NBN:

"So who's running the joint? Is it the bloody government running us or is it Marius Kloppers?"

Actually Mr. Wood, The Australian is running the agenda, and you've just provided a handy bunch of quotes with which the ongoing opposition to the NBN can be handsomely dressed in babysitting finery. Because you see what the header really means is that Web Guru Graeme Wood joins The Australian in its ongoing relentless attack on the NBN.

But where's the irony? Well of course today would be the day that Janet Albrechsten, fondly known in the pond as Dame Slap, goes into a full paranoid rage and sounds off in Left-wingers' sound and fury signify nothing:

Like taking a drag on a post-coital cigarette, after each election in recent years the political Left has a habit of letting off some steam after the big event. They reach for their keyboards or grab a microphone to take a swipe at the media. Make that the media with which they vehemently disagree.

Yep, it's Dame Slap at her finest. She's smoking, and she's letting off steam and she's mixing her metaphors, and she's shocked and outraged at the way the leftie ratbags have taken to The Australian:

This time left-leaning critics are busy scolding the news coverage and news analysis in The Australian with the same reckless disregard for facts. Same hypocrisy, too. Same Orwellian language about improving the national debate.

Oops, that means a dollar in the Orwellian swear jar. But what fun, on a day when The Australian provides such happy evidence of its bias in relation to the NBN, to revel in charges of hypocrisy. The poor old ABC would, of course, found it in a situation where balance and alternative perspectives were required, but happily The Australian has no need for such cardigan wearing perspectives or finery of balance.

Meanwhile, Dame Slap is still smoking, and naming names so that she can shame the shameful:

As media crimes go, the post-election accusers are guilty of committing the partisan offences they wrongly convict others of having committed. Travelling in an ideological pack, Malcolm Fraser, Bob Brown, ABC journalists at Media Watch, Insiders and Radio National, the echo chamber bloggers at Crikey and Laura Tingle in The Australian Financial Review assert The Australian has gone too far in scrutinising the record of the Rudd government and the anti-growth policies of the Greens, a party now part of the minority Gillard government. Add John Menadue to that list.

Oh what's a paranoid to do, with the whole world against it.

Well it's poor old John Menadue who cops the spray, perhaps because of his delicious evocative description of The Australian as the Mad Hatter's Tea Party. Which immediately raises the question of what seat Janet Albrechsen has at that table. I think we can rule out bossy Alice, which leaves you with the sleeping Dormouse, the Mad Hatter, or the March Hare.

Menadue is dismissed as a self-described "grumpy old man", and Dame Slap spends endless time defending The Australian's coverage of the schools building program, and then moves on to the NBN:

Menadue's spray continued: "And you watch them, [The Australian] will be doing the same thing on the NBN." Yes, The Australian will continue to report, analyse and editorialise about taxpayers getting value for money under the Gillard government's latest big spending initiative, the $43bn National Broadband Network. And unashamedly so.

Yep, a total lack of shame, and a willing cheerful acknowledgement that in The Oz, opinion is news and news is opinion, provided of course the opinion suits The Oz, so that then it can become news...

Next comes a hearty defence of Dennis Shanahan, a man whose scribbles contain more tilt than the Titanic in its final moments. And in the process, Dame Slap keeps on with the smoking metaphor:

Menadue was smoking some cigarette during last Wednesday morning's hissy fit. And so was ABC local radio host Deb Cameron. As Shanahan said in an email to Cameron, her failure to challenge Menadue about errors of basic facts suggested she was either ignorant about the election coverage or in complete agreement with Menadue's misinformation.

Ah I was wondering how long before it all became the fault of the ABC. But what is smoking Dame Slap smoking?

Proving that she knows how to hold a grudge, she berates Menadue for setting up New Matilda, a predictable genre of political whinge, and advises that Menadue is more Keynesian than Keynes and worked for the Whitlam government and that in 1975 he was more left than Jim Cairns. Or at least not Keynsian enough, and not willing to listen to the siren song of Milton Friedman ...

1975! Thus are the sins of the grandparents visited on their children, and lo and behold, so it will be unto judgment day.

Next she shames Menadue by noting that he opposed the Iraq war and was a signatory of the Gang of 43 letter. Shocking, and the Iraq war such a success, launched for such impecceable reasons, and perhaps only exceeded by the current success being experienced in Afghanistan ...

And so on and so forth, with the tirade of abuse culminating thus:

Menadue, like his progressive comrades, is entitled to his political positions.

Really? Really truly? Surely he's just a mole to be whacked?

But let's put those political views on the table in the interest of disclosing all relevant facts when assessing the cacophony of leftist claims that the media failed in its role at the last election.

Yes, and there you have it. The grandiloquent assumption that the media is Murdoch, and Murdoch is the media, or perhaps that The Australian is the media, and that it did a splendid, terrific, completely unbiassed job at the last election, and on any policy you care to name, whether it be the NBN (hiss boo) or climate change (boo hiss).

No need to navel gaze, when complete and utter infallibility of a papal kind is bestowed upon the blessed inhabiting the House of Murdoch ...

When the facts are known, it's clear enough that Menadue has not provided serious or independent analysis of the media's performance at the last election.

By which of course we all know that Dame Slap continues to insist that the media is Murdoch. How did Louis XIV put it?

L'État, c'est moi! Sorry Louis, it needs an update. L'media, c'est moi.

Indeed, his ill-informed tirade last week - and the gushing response from Cameron - exposes the consistently shabby state of the so-called intellectual Left. By all means let's have a debate about the media, but progressives will need to lift their game if they want to make a meaningful contribution to that debate.

By all means, let's have a debate? So that Dame Slap can launch an axe attack?

Heaven forfend that we dare to suggest that perhaps Dame Slap should lift her game, out of the abusive paranoid gutter of personal attack dog assaults.

A good start might be to simply admit that the House of Murdoch is comprehensively biased, prejudiced, and now routinely inclined to conflate news with its editorial line. And of course to acknowledge that as a well paid attendee at the Mad Hatter's tea party she is an exemplary example of the way outrage can be a fine substitute for coherent, thoughtful writing and analysis ...

But her scribble did remind me of the fun moments at the party when the Mad Hatter engages in rhetoric:

The Hatter opened his eyes very wide on hearing this; but all he said was, 'Why is a raven like a writing-desk?'

'Come, we shall have some fun now!' thought Alice. 'I'm glad they've begun asking riddles.--I believe I can guess that,' she added aloud.

'Do you mean that you think you can find out the answer to it?' said the March Hare.

'Exactly so,' said Alice.

'Then you should say what you mean,' the March Hare went on.

'I do,' Alice hastily replied; `at least--at least I mean what I say--that's the same thing, you know.'

'Not the same thing a bit!' said the Hatter. `You might just as well say that "I see what I eat" is the same thing as "I eat what I see"!'

'You might just as well say,' added the March Hare, 'that "I like what I get" is the same thing as "I get what I like"!'

'You might just as well say,' added the Dormouse, who seemed to be talking in his sleep, 'that "I breathe when I sleep" is the same thing as "I sleep when I breathe"!'

'You might just as well say,' added Janet Albrechtsen, who seemed to be talking through a haze of smoke, that "an analysis of the media" is an analysis of The Australian, and that an "analysis of The Australian" is an analysis of the media. (more Alice here).

And now the challenge: which character best reminds you of Janet Albrechtsen speaking those lines?