Morag Zwartz, and a most egregious, indecent, foul, startling, wondrous, offensive and marvellous message ...

What we treasure here at the pond most is genuine, heartfelt, passionate loonacy, and Morag Zwartz makes a splendid offering this Friday.

Remember no meat eating, only fish, as you wolf down Government's moral compass gone awry in tawdry, offensive ad campaign.

Morag is hopping mad and isn't going to take it anymore, and the object of her strenuous outrage is an advertisement for Tourism Victoria.

Now it's true that Tourism Victoria has made some of the most reviled and hated advertisements of all time. Who could forget poor gormless Rod Mullinar roaming around dressed as a butler in the Yarra valley? Who hasn't wanted to smash the screen as silly young things get lost chasing a ball of wool through the streets of Melbourne? Is this not a most irritating campaign, with its fey musical score, and worthy of an entire episode of the Gruen Transfer experts trashing it high and low throughout the land ...

Tourism Victoria specialises in irritating spots designed to provoke a certain magical fey charm. What a pity it might then lead you astray in the Docklands ...

Poor old Morag however takes indignation to a new level, suitable for the cherished partner of The Age's religious writer, Barney Zwartz, as she rounds on what is actually an extensive campaign and series of spots for Daylesford in Victoria, a town notorious for a delight in spring water and sapphic pleasures.

For a start there's that old gospel song Down to the River to Pray, as featured in the Coen Brothers' perverted O Brother, Where Art Thou? (in the Alison Krauss version, obviously too expensive for Tourism Victoria, who've got Paris Wells doing a precise cover):

The old gospel song rings out in a hauntingly evocative tone as we are seduced by Tourism Victoria's TV advertisement down, down to Daylesford Lake and the glamour and decadence of the sumptuous dining and lake views they want us to experience.

Fair enough, perhaps, but the title and tag line for this 90-second ad (made by premierofvictoria) is "Lead a double life", and the question is why our premier tourism body would want to entice us to picturesque Daylesford through deception and duplicity.

Actually, it wasn't made by 'premierofvictoria', but rather that's the tag for good old Bracksie as he - as Premier of Victoria - hosts a whole host of terrible Tourism Victoria ads on YouTube. If we have to blame someone ministerial, how about the Hon Tim Holding MP, to whom Tourism Victoria reports? The man who enticed me to the Docklands through deception and duplicity ...

I keed, I keed, back to Morag, because there's serious trouble brewing.

A double life? Somehow I have the idea that leading a double life brings hurt, humiliation and suffering to others. In recent weeks, The Age has reported in detail two significant cases of men leading a double life: Richard Pratt and Herman Rockefeller. There is not much appeal or style in people being robbed, cheated on, deceived or murdered.

Yep, like as not, if you wander off to Daylesford in search of a double life, you'll end up robbed, cheated on, deceived or murdered. I've generally found that to be the case with Victorians, especially Melburnians, and especially the relatives. Each time I escape, I check to make sure everything's still in place.

There's little doubt that Herman Rockefeller copped it after extensive viewing of Tourism Victoria advertisements (Sex romps and secrets: death of a millionaire) while Richard Pratt led a shocking double life. Sure there was the price mixing and the long term mistress and the impropriety, but most of all I blame Tourism Victoria for him accumulating a personal fortune that made him the fourth richest Australian in the year before his death after a reasonable knock of 74 years (here). That's the wages of sin ... billions and a mistress ...

But stay, let Morag evoke the subtle, appalling quality of the advertisements, with their insidious use of Christian lyrics:

There is nothing subtle in the ad; it portrays a young woman - virginal, without make-up, dressed in white, bare-footed, wandering country paths past odd Amish-like depictions of olden days as she approaches the lake.

Interspersed in this vignette is a parallel one with the same girl, now unabashedly seductive and glamorous (and drawn on down by the insistent call "O sisters let's go down … O fathers let's go down …O mothers let's go down … Down to the river to pray"). In contrast to open-faced sweetness and simplicity, we now have sultry, cool-as-ice class, high fashion, a banquet and tables laden with "decadent" (Tourism Victoria) foods, which she plucks at suggestively while firing seductive glances at a waiter. Simmering looks are reciprocated. In less time than it will take to read this sentence, we are made aware that the two, pointedly led by the girl, have cavorted into the lake and into a sexual encounter in the fields - this is where subtle meets subliminal, but the implication is unmistakeable.

Pleasure in food. A sensuous hint of sex. Virgins ready to get it on. Sultry simmering looks. Bill Henson. Dutch paintings. Oh humanity, the horror, the horror ....

Perverted filthy blackberries!

Oh no, and actual sex, and worse, for Daylesford, it seems that it's heterosexual! What will the Chill Out crowd think of that? Worse, the uncovered meat of the girl seems pointedly to lead to some kind of sexual encounter in the fields, rutting like common animals in an act which descends to a kind of hick farmyard bestiality. Wine and food and sex. Oh the filthy vile depraved Victorian perverts ...

Her double has meanwhile meandered into a church, her man now ready, waist deep in the baptismal font as she steps down to him and is baptised by him. She rises, drenched, to stare enigmatically, perhaps defiantly, at the camera. "Lead a double life" is the bold imperative - and conclusion.

Yes, a bold imperative! Who amongst us has the time to accumulate the billions - or the price fixing skills required - of a Richard Pratt.

Perhaps someone needs to talk to Tourism Victoria about the difference between sexy and sordid, because it is difficult to think of any situation in which the concept of a double life is a positive one, or where it would not involve a victim. Someone might also put it to them that this promotion is seriously distasteful, trampling community values and moral codes.

Indeed. I've always thought Tourism Victoria needs to be reminded of common decency. I once mooned the ball of wool advertisements in a public theatre, and narrowly escaped prosecution, so outraged was I at their reductionist moral code, which seemed to imply that a boy and a girl might have a good time in Melbourne. Second prize? A holiday in Philadelphia?

But hang on, back to Morag, because there's an even greater offence at work here:

But there is a greater offence here: a treachery the depth of which might only be appreciated by substituting a religion other than Christianity as the theme and backdrop for this ad. Imagine, if you dare, this same film sequence with a Buddhist nun, or a sweet young Muslim girl, or a Jewish boy - it would be unthinkable.

Unthinkable, I tells ya. For a start, you'd have to shift Daylesford to Caulfield (40%) or east St Kilda (26%) to make the Jewish angle work for the majority of Melbourne Jews. And there's no doubt that the idea of a Jewish boy making out with a shiksa is outrageous, shocking and frankly incredible (damn you, damn you Jewish boy, and your betrayals).

As for a sweet young Muslim girl, they'd have needed to be wrapped in a burqa to get rid of any hint of sexuality, while there's a clear parallel in the advertisement between Catholic nuns in all their virginal purity and Buddhist nuns, who also abhor sex and blackberries ...

But hang on, hang on, we're chortling, when this is serious. These advertisements are an invitation to murder:

Christianity is an old religion, and it is wise. It has learnt to cop ridicule and mockery. But in this instance, a tacit notion of decency and trust has been destroyed. A line has been crossed. There is arguably no other religion and no other context in which such blatant denigration of a section of society - or such deliberate subverting of its foundational ideas and values - would be tolerated. Would we ever see, for example, a fastidious murderer, replete with neatly wrapped body parts in his fridge, portrayed as a skilful surgeon in a public hospital? This is no less absurd or repugnant.

Uh huh. I've always thought that showing a Christian having sex is roughly equivalent to the most vile pornography I can imagine.

But sadly it's at this point - as a slow learner - that I began to understand that perhaps it was Morag being absurd, with a resolutely absurd seriousness.

But not repugnant. We love loonacy. Just bloody absurd, and pathetic, and playing the cross denominational card, and the whingeing Christian routine, and the noble martyred suffering tripe, and the fundamental subverting of foundational ideas and values rant, about what's just another bad Tourism Victoria angle looking for a way to dress up a country Victorian town as sexy and inviting ...

And in the process, and worst of all, imagining that it's main audience is a Christian demographic that needs to let down its hair and get out to Daylesford ... when the gays collared that market years ago ...

Never mind, time for Morag to climb into the magic faraway tree, and zoom off into a distant land of righteous indignation:

A double life and Christianity is a grotesque coupling. Not only does Christianity promulgate truth and honesty and transparency, it abhors duplicity, dishonesty and deception. These values are not to be sabotaged to promote the joys of leading a double life of greed and lasciviousness. Furthermore, water baptism is the public expression of identifying with Christ and his sacrificial death; it is a sacred rite in the Christian church and should not be subverted to endorse indulgence at Daylesford Lake.

Oh dear absent lord, why on earth did you give some a sense of humour, and yet deny it to others ...

Let's face it, baptism by the Catholic church is always invalid ... to the Mormons. And Mormon baptisms are are always invalid ... to the Catholics. And the Jehovah's Witnesses don't recognise any baptism occurring after 1914 as valid outside their fold ... (and here for a lot more jolly information on baptism). A sacred Christian rite? None of the various sects and cults and schismatics and heretics can agree on what the rite should be, or what it actually means ... You want Tourism Victoria to sign off on all this theological nonsense in a thirty second or a minute spot?

Oh dear. I think it's time for a final attack of the adjectives, a verbal flourish and stamping of the foot:

The advertisement is not merely a movie made by an individual as an artistic endeavour. The ad wears a stamp of authority. It comes from our state government, with a message that fouls the concept of a civilised and decent society, and offends in the most egregious way one of its oldest religious communities.

It should be withdrawn instantly and replaced with an apology.

Fouls, offends, decency, most egregious way. Harumph. Apology! Withdrawal method preferred ...

Well we demand instantly and without apology that the Fairfax media keep on supplying us with more Morag. We like humbug and denunciations and firm Christian principles and fire and brimstone and murder most foul and body parts wrapped in fridges, and we have merely attached a few YouTube advertisements by Tourism Victoria as illustrations of the decadence about which she scribbles.

We demand they be withdrawn, banished from YouTube, so that this blog is stripped of its foul egregious visual messages. The very idea of young heterosexuals frolicking in Daylesford is offensive and implausible. The very thought that Christians and sex and sensuality and a love of food and good wine should co-exist is even more startling and shocking ...

And the very thought that such a typically weak kneed Tourism Victoria campaign should cop such a peculiar blast is both wondrous and marvellous.

The lord does indeed, in a kind of long absent way, move in truly mysterious ways ...

And now, down below, here's a third snippet. Warning: if you watch it, this blog accepts no responsibility or liability for you turning into Richard Pratt, multi-billionaire, with loving wife and mistress, and a tendency to price fixing ... And if you form a liking for blackberries, the stained teeth are entirely your responsibility ...

Click through to get the full widescreen decadent effect. And then on YouTube in the suggestions column, you'll find a host of other Daylesford lead a double life spots, as promoted by 'premierofvictoria'. Before the dear lord smotes him mightily at the next election for his Errol Flynn-like wicked wicked ways ...