Sev Ozdowski, and learning universal truths, whether you like it or not ...

(Above: what? You want a picture of a rugby league footballer? Or perhaps Derryn Hinch?)

Only someone as inanely pompous and preening and pretentious as Derryn Hinch could imagine that he's starring in a re-make of The Castle.

And end his think piece I'd rather be treated like a criminal than protect them thus:

Who’s looking after the children?

Crusader Derryn Hinch and Helen Lovejoy together. What a nice couple they make. I can imagine them in bed together, newspapers scattered about in gay abandon, after a hot bout of fear mongering ...

Well Hinch eventually came to an understanding in It was wrong of me to oppose gay marriage, and perhaps some day he might come to understand that the persecution of people via shock jockery and naming names and righteous hysteria might generate ratings and sell newspapers, but it's not a path to justice so much as a path to the Salem witchcraft trials. And generally is about as useful as loon pond publishing a photo of a rugby league footballer making out with a dog ...

Though the idea of a rugby league footballer living next door is rather nauseating and creepy ...

I wonder if we could have some kind of iphone application indicating the exact location of each rugby league footballer in the state? As a way of avoiding having them as neighbours ...

But that's always the way of sanctimonious shock jocks. They confuse their right to score ratings with the right to indulge in vigilantism, and so compound the problems for a legal system forced to deal with difficult matters on a daily basis. After Hinch retires from the microphone for the day, all he's got to worry about is his health...

Still Hinch's readers came up with the right idea ... revive the notion of a leper colony and send pedophiles off to Lizard island. But why stop there? Why not revive the idea of gulags, or come to think of it, concentration camps, as Hinch preserves his right to name and shame and send the deviants off to a life in exile ...

By now you'll have gathered that I made the fatal Friday mistake of punching on with The Punch, Australia's most ham fisted attempt at a conversation.

It goes without saying that I immediately proceeded on to Sev Ozdowski's If we're going to teach ethics in schools, let's do it properly, wherein he cogently explains how, rather than teaching students to think for themselves, they need to be taught to think Seve Ozdowski's way.

Well actually it's more Ozdowski refracted through the 1948 United Nations's Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Not that we have any problems with its noble sentiments, but as always the devil is in the detail.

Is it offensive for Julia Gillard to swan about in a state of unmarried bliss, berated by humbugs like the Devine for doing so, but at the same time, deciding unilaterally that gays should continue to share her unmarried status?

Is it offensive for Australians to keep getting agitated about an influx of refugees while partaking in a post colonial bit of war mongering that's done more than its fair share generating said refugees?

Do we have to embark on a thousand page discourse on the notion of a just war? Is it simpler just to say thou shalt not kill? Excepting, and not limited to the following exclusions ... when it's a child molester or a rugby league footballer has moved in next door ...

Is there a balance to be maintained between the right of Derryn Hinch to generate righteous ratings, the need for the community to be protected, and the need to deal with criminals in a humane way that allows them to get on with life, once they've done their time, but in a way that avoids them re-offending ...

So many questions, so little time, but for Ozdowski, there's no talk of seeing the world through a glass darkly. It's all clear cut, and that's as clear as a mustard sandwich:

... it seems the Australian Curriculum, Assessment and Reporting Authority does not value the lessons learnt from Europe’s bloodstained history of wars and conflict.

Instead of proactively seeking to engage the Australian community with a set of unified ethics standards that encompass universal codes on human rights, it is sitting on its hands.

A set of unified ethics that encompass universal codes on human rights? Could I have some of that with pie in the by and by? Perhaps that's the reason the United States, which starts off its constitution and bill of rights quite grandly, nonetheless finds capital punishment a key way to ensure domestic tranquility, and so gets itself right up there with China in terms of state sanctioned killing fields.

According to Ozdowski, reconciling the tensions between religions, secularists, atheists and dolphins is a doddle:

It neglects the fact that these universal rights provide common ground to bridge the core values of different cultures and religions. They also do not compete with religious teaching, but instead help avoid a conflict about values in a globalised world.

Universal human rights that don't compete with religious teachings in a globalised world? Well perhaps up the magic faraway tree, in a faraway land ...

But do go on:

The overwhelming question remains- what will our ethics classes be teaching our children? Will the Authority choose the relativist option, and teach our leaders of tomorrow that morality is culturally relative, that there are no universal truths, and that all values are subjective? Or will they look to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and teach our children that no one can take away their freedom of thought, conscience and expression?

Uh huh. It's those evil relativists at work again. But surely morality is culturally relative? How else to explain that dog meat is considered a tasty snack in some places, but more an object of sexual yearning by rugby league footballers?

And if I chose to exercise my freedom of thought, conscience and expression, what to make of me if I turn to Sev Ozdowski and say with some force "bah, humbug".

Surely the first thing to do is to encourage young people to study the various moralities and posturings cultivated these last few thousand years in relation to "universal truths" and "subjective values" and learn to sort out proscriptive certainties for a more relative understanding that some people live their lives in certain prescribed ways, according to moral certainties and instilled values, and others agree to disagree and go their own way. And that perhaps the latter might be better than the proscriptive certainties of the former ...

A little relativism please, and to each his own, provided we can agree that dogs should be treated humanely. As for humans like Derryn Hinch? Meh ...

Naturally the punters had a field day with Ozdowski's fuzzy thinking, which mainly seemed motivated by peevishness because the Curriculum Authority couldn't be bothered turning up to the University of Western Sydney for a conference on human rights in education. Suddenly I realised why ...

Does Ozdowski really think it will be a doddle to embed the standards of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights into school curricula? Has he forgotten about the black helicopters, even now as I scribble buzzing over my roof and heading out to the western suburbs to sort him out ...

Yep, just another day punching on in The Punch, but I look on the bright side. Instead of Sophie Mirabella, Tony Abbott's to hand to blather on about better, more principled government while Garry Williams delivers the astonishing insight that no one individual, not even Don Bradman can embody the elusive Australian spirit ... whatever that might mean, and excluding Bundaberg Rum, a fine but definitely not elusive Australian spirit ...

It's at moments like these on a forlorn Friday that the pond's fragile grasp of sanity begins to grow feeble. Imagine thinking of yourself as a pond for starters, and soon enough thanks to The Punch you'll be plunging into a whirlpool of sloppy scribbling ...

Well we've published it before, but for benefit of Sev Ozdowski, we'll run it again:

LADY PRESENTER: Well, that's the end of the film. Now, here's the meaning of life. Thank you, Brigitte. M-hmm. Well, it's nothing very special. Uh, try and be nice to people, avoid eating fat, read a good book every now and then, get some walking in, and try and live together in peace and harmony with people of all creeds and nations, and, finally, here are some completely gratuitous pictures of penises to annoy the censors and to hopefully spark some sort of controversy, which, it seems, is the only way, these days, to get the jaded, video-sated public off their fucking arses and back in the sodding cinema. Family entertainment bollocks!! What they want is filth: people doing things to each other with chainsaws during tupperware parties, babysitters being stabbed with knitting needles by gay presidential candidates, vigilante groups strangling chickens, armed bands of theatre critics exterminating mutant goats... Where's the fun in pictures? Oh, well, there we are. Here's the theme music. Goodnight.

(Below: and of course whenever Derryn Hinch is mentioned on the pond, it is de rigeur for us to run our favourite portrait of the hairy fiend. Luckily it's usually a Hinch free zone, and while it's shocked people in the past, if just one new person sees it and turns from the path of Hinch, it will have done yeoman service in bringing universal human values a little closer to reality).