Christopher Pearson, Mark Latham, Michael Costa, and it isn't green, it's gold, gold, gold ...

(Above: a pictorial representation of the truth available to Christopher Pearson).

One of the truly remarkable things about Samoa is the number of churches on view on each of the main islands.

Any of the cults are welcome, and the villagers spend endless amounts of money erecting their shrines, never mind the circumstances of the villages and the villagers, the bigger the better and the closer you are to god. The routine with tithing is the same, as there's a kind of competition for status achieved by excessive donation. The result is an extremely conservative society dedicated to imported nonsense, either of the papist - given me a dozen graven vulgar images- kind, or the exotic American missionary kind, which results in assorted lost souls dressing in heavy formal wear in a hot, humid climate.

The Mormons in particular have erected a huge edifice in the capital Apia, and I was reminded once again of the bizarre claims of this cult when copy of The Book of Mormon turned up in our accommodation. The introduction claims:

The Book of Mormon is a volume of holy scripture comparable to the Bible. It is a record of God's dealings with the ancient inhabitants of the Americas and contains, as does the bible, the fulness of the everlasting gospel.

The book was written by many ancient prophets by the spirit of prophecy and revelation. Their words, written on gold plates, were quoted and abridged by a prophet-historian named Mormon. The record gives an account of two great civilisations ... After thousands of years all were destroyed except the Lamanites, and they were the principal ancestors of the American Indians ...

After Mormon completed his writings he delivered the account to his son Moroni, who added a few words of his own and hid up the plates in the hill Cumorah. On September 21, 1823, the same Mornoni, then a glorified, resurrected being, appeared to the Prophet Joseph Smith and instructed him relative to the ancient record and its destined translation into the English language.

And so on and so forth, including the heretical claim that the resulting book is a better guide to getting closer to god than any other book, including the bible ... and suggesting why the tooth fairy and Santa Claus are such an easy sell to children. If adults can be persuaded to believe this kind of hokey nonsense about gold plates and Jesus in America, no wonder some think the moon is made of green cheese ...

Well that's a roundabout introduction to the absurdities and wonders to be found everywhere in the world, but it naturally brings us to the eternally reliable Christopher Pearson, who this morning in his continuing desire to bash the Greens and so bash Julia Gillard, makes an endearing claim in Home truths from former Labor heavyweights:

Most thought I was overstating the case and that she had no better option than to make common cause with Adam Bandt and Bob Brown. Michael Costa's remarkable essay on Wednesday in The Australian Literary Review makes it clear that the sensible centre of caucus opinion increasingly shares my view.

Michael Costa, the embittered failed former Treasurer of NSW in the currently long running failed NSW government circus as "the sensible centre of caucus opinion"? A remarkable scribbler, and not in the Johnsonian sense?

Oh roll me about in a barrel and toss me over Niagara falls, and mark down Pearson as a candidate for conversion to Mormonism.

Well I guess it makes for an easy column, as Pearson proceeds to spend much of his time quoting the eternal wisdom of Costa, which seems to bear all the hallmarks of having been written down in gold plates and buried in a hill outside Cessnock.

Costa is of course congenitally incapable of removing the mote from his own eye, but spends plenty of time examining the mote in others, and so - thanks to Pearson channelling Costa in a way worthy of the Enmore Spiritualist Church, even if it has fallen on hard times - we learn how everything wrong with Labor and the Greens is everyone else's fault, including Mark Arbib and Karl Bitar.

To round out his tour of gold plated rogues and ne'er do wells, Pearson turns to Mark Latham, scribbling for the AFR, and naturally Latham is down on everyone, and hailing the return of emeritus numbers man Graham Richardson as spokesman for good sense. Yep, old Gra Gra is back from his Swiss bank account days, in much the same way as a little matter between Paul Hogan and the tax man needn't stand between Dundee doing his thing for the campaign to get world soccer to the land of Oz. What's that you say? The time honoured cliche of Hoges and a kangaroo and we lost in the first round with one vote ... Well I never ...

But back to Pearson channelling Latham, and the extraordinary insight that Chris Bowen, the "dry, technocratic former mayor of Lindfield" was prime leadership material, and thereby Prime Minister material. Look ... over there ... squirrel ... or was it a tooth fairy? Quoth Pearson:

Latham's analysis of the process by which the faction destabilises and destroys leaders is convincing and he says it has begun already, with criticism of Gillard's staff functioning as a proxy attack on her leadership. The only surprising element in the piece is the conclusion that Bowen will probably have to wait until late in 2012 for the keys to the Lodge.

Already begun? It never ended, what with all the embittered braying and barking of dogs as the caravans move on - did I mention all the street dogs hunting in packs in Samoa - led by the likes of Latham and Costa, who with nothing to do but settle old scores, scribble furiously for various rags, and then see their thoughts picked up by the commentariat as a kind of bludgeon for any player currently in power ...

Of course such channelling requires selective vision and skilful editing. For example, you need to turn to chapter and verse of gold-plated Costa to learn how unstable things are with the Greens, along with his many splendored account of his diagnoses for Labor's many ills, but then you need to ignore Mark Latham scribbling No Exit for The Monthly (my copy thanks to the Virgin lounge, small compensation for being bussed all over New Zelund to catch a flight):

... burning conundrum of the climate change debate: affluent nations do not want to weaken their carbon-based affluence, while poor nations aspire to their fair share of industrialisation. Copenhagen is the inevitable result. Eventually, nature will win this battle, forcing the death of capitalism and its attendant values of materialism and consumerism. I never thought I would write this, but logically I must: the future lies with the green movement, not the Labor movement.

I guess Pearson never thought anyone would bother to go behind the paywall to read it, but the editors of The Monthly thought it so grand a thought that they put it on the front cover as a bold selling tag. Personally as soon as I see a magazine touting a piece by Mark Latham, I want to know how I can get it for free, because free's the only acceptable price point ...

But that's how it goes. There's Michael Costa slagging off the Greens, and how Gillard's exceptionally poor judgment would see the decision dog her for the rest of her career - when she should have just folded her tent and handed the keys to Tony Abott - while Mark Latham brays about Gillard's many failures, and how the Greens are the way forward, and the sublime Pearson trots out the pair of them as a kind of political Mormonism, the truth revealed on gold plates ... so that he can catch Gillard and the Greens coming, while ignoring Gillard and the Greens going, and never mind any subtlety, nuance or actual insight ...

I guess it's all we can expect confronted by someone parroting with child-like faith the insights and ideas of Mark Latham and Michael Costa ...

Both Costa and Latham like to strut around, pretending that they're keepers of the flame, heads turned towards the light on the hill, and they always seed their pieces with stories of the good old days and Labor glories (passing over their own humble contributions), but here's the truth from the good old days.

With the odd exception like that veteran pugilist Billy Hughes, who'd switch sides at the drop of a hat, most old politicians in the good old days, had the grace and modesty to shuffle off to Buffalo and let the ones in the ring keep on with the fighting ...

These days we get more retired politicians scribbling furiously about this, that and the other than the number of Samoan hounds you could find indulging in a bit of street dog brawling ...

The rags love it, of course, and it sends the blood surging through the arteries of the ex-pollies, who manage to display an infinite wisdom which amazingly they never displayed while in some kind of power, and the likes of Pearson love it, because they're drawn to any kind of dog fight involving Labor blood.

Sad to say, in reality, it's a tad tiresome, much heat and noise and thunder and lightning, and personality and faction-laden conflict, and it leads to this kind of short-hand bitchiness, as displayed by Mark Latham:

Ultimately, this radical centre is too radical for modern Labor. Its union and factional leaders have become part of the establishment, actively socialising with Australia's media and business elites. One has even gone so far as to marry into the family of a Tory millionaire and then of the governor general - evidence of how the grand old workers movement has changed.

Miaow - did I mention that everywhere you go in Apia there are cats as well as dogs?

Yes and what Latham failed to note in that sideswipe at Bill Shorten is that one has even gone so far as to become part of the media elite by scribbling for that eastern suburbs institution Fairfax, and another has become part of the media elite by scribbling for the Murdoch press, and both have gone so far as to be approvingly quoted by arch conservative Christopher Pearson, utterly convincing evidence of how the grand old workers' movement has changed.

Sigh. Excuse me, if you don't mind, I think I'll go back to reading The Book of Mormon ... it's so much more reality based ...

(Below: excuse me a little more as I get dressed for the read. Yum, so sexy).