Paul Sheehan, and another bout of bah humbug hypocrisy ...

(Above: what a quaint and fetching contrast in the digital edition of the Herald, with Sheehan trumping Carlton, or at least squatting above him).

Mike Carlton, in Spare us this disgusting hypocrisy, for The Sydney Morning Herald:

There were corpses still floating below the cliffs of Christmas Island on Wednesday when the blame game began. Fangs bared, the blogging rat pack of the loony right went for the jugular. With political points to be scored, decency was trampled in the rush. The tragedy was all the government's fault.

Paul Sheehan, this Monday morn, in A diminished Gillard caught in a storm of her own making:

It is impossible to exaggerate the failure of Gillard and her government in their policies towards boat people. She was the principle author of a policy paper, Protecting Australia, Protecting the Australian Way, which became Labor policy. This policy has managed to create the worst of both worlds: cruel yet ineffective. And ludicrously expensive, like almost everything else this government does.

Carlton's object of ire was the likes of Andrew Bolt and Tim Blair. Of course he never scribbles furiously about the likes of Paul Sheehan. There's a rule, what's written in the stable stays in the stable, and you never cross the line. And I guess the work of cleaning out such an Augean stable would be immense, given the size and quantity of Sheehan's droppings, but what a worthwhile task ...

Long gone from Sheehan's contemptible hypocrisy is any memory of SIEV X, which saw some 353 people die. Those refugees had the good taste to die in international waters during the Howard era, thus sparing the contemptible hypocrites the unpleasant duty of wringing their hands about Howard era policies.

Long gone are memories of the Children Overboard Affair, and the sordid exploitation of unfortunate people for political purposes. Long gone are memories of the Tampa affair and the cynical exploitation of Afghans in August 2001 for domestic political purposes.

The righteous Mike Carlton:

The selective cynicism is despicable, the hypocrisy disgusting. It doesn't get much nastier than to employ the death of innocents as a political weapon.

Note that these tabloid dog-whistlers and their radio shock jock mates never remind us of the systemic cruelty of the Howard years, when hundreds of children were left to rot behind the razor wire, and legitimate Australian residents were banged away on the whim of minor immigration officials.

Paul Sheehan, his broadsheet stable mate, doing his best to emulate tabloid dog-whistlers and their radio shock jock mates:

The vast majority of those arriving by boat are being granted residency. The approval rate is roughly twice that of applicants processed by the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR). This is a green light to the people-smuggling trade ...

...Almost 200 boatloads have arrived since Labor came to government. The people-smuggling trade is thriving. The budget for handling the refugee intake has blown out. Expensive charter flights are shuffling asylum seekers around the country. Children have drowned. Families have been separated.

And so on and on and on, proving that there's no distinction between tabloid and broadsheet in the digital age of sanctimonious claptrap and pious hypocrisy.

Here's Carlton again:

Nor do they ever accuse John Howard of bloody hands from the loss of some 353 people in the Siev X catastrophe of 2001. We can expect a lot more nastiness when the immediate horror of Christmas Island fades. Soon enough the opposition will return to its well-worn canard, that Labor has opened the refugee floodgates. Tony Abbott will once again bluster that a Coalition government would turn back the boats, without ever explaining how. Should the navy just shoot them up if they keep on coming, Tony? He won't say, because he can't say.

But for every card Carlton offers, Sheehan has a vile trump or a Joker to play.

I searched hard through Paul Sheehan's piece for some historical perspective, for some balance, for some measured understanding of the predicaments both sides of politics have faced in the matter of refugees, perhaps an indication of the scale of the issue in relation to other forms of entry into Australia, perhaps even some measure of reflection on the Iraq war and its capacity to produce people fleeing the scene even though it's now allegedly over, perhaps some reflection on Iran, and why people flee that country.

But then Sheehan is all huff and puff when it comes to such matters, as when he predicted back in November 2008 that within the year Israel would bomb Iran (Israeli hawks ready to fly on Iran).

And he's all huff and puff when it comes to the current tragedy. Instead what Sheehan does is spend the first two lengthy pars lining up Gillard with a one iron and producing a skanky snarky shank shot. Consider this line:

Australia's first woman Prime Minister was clearly shaken from having just emerged from a terrible election campaign.

Oh okay, it's just a rhetorical device on one level, but on another the bile is embedded deep. It makes as much sense to scribble a sentence like Australia's twenty fifth male prime minister John Howard was clearly shaken having just emerged from a terrible election campaign and lost his own seat. (and here's a list of PM's since 1901).

What difference does it make if male or female when it comes to policy, but it's why it's hard to take anything Sheehan says seriously, because even the simplest rhetorical trick shows a recalcitrant misogynist at work.

So Sheehan's consideration of boat people and policy is prefaced by a pale and nervous Gillard, PM by a political fluke, a statistical improbability, and the moral gymnastics of two rank opportunists (Oakeshott and Windsor).

And so Gillard becomes the architect of all the problems. It's all her fault, everything, and the whole refugee crisis seems to have sprung to life, full blown, during her time in power.

Sheehan compiles a list of odious accusations, about every bit of policy he can get his hands on (if there'd been an issue about kitchen sinks in detention centres, that too would have got a run), but then, having sunk in the boot, and torn out his hair at some great length, lifts himself up on his high heels for an air of studied disdain:

Even so, none of this is an excuse for the odious accusations that have been assiduously constructed by refugee advocates that the Gillard government, specifically the navy, was partly culpable for the drowning deaths of 30 asylum seekers at Christmas Island on Wednesday.

Ah yes, the Gillard government is wrong in everything, except when it comes to the navy, which is right in everything. Yeh hah, goodies and baddies out on the plain or riding the range.

The moral chain in this matter is not complex. The people who sold places on the boat, and bought places on the boat, were assiduous in avoiding the process of legal arrival and safe passage. The protection of the state does not extend to illegal entry through ocean storms.

Uh huh. But what about the moral chain in the matter where things are complex?

Where people sensibly flee from countries where things are awry - in Iraq and Afghanistan, with Australia's compliance? How about this for an analysis?

Iraq is a disaster zone, exactly the opposite of what the Bush Administration intended when it invaded the country in 2003. Iran, emboldened by the American failure, has become a centre of instability.

Afghanistan, as usual, is a quagmire for the West and Pakistan, with its 170 million people, the largest Muslim nation in the Middle East, is potentially the most worrisome of all...

...This region has proved a graveyard for Western vanities. (here)

Yep, a graveyard, and a rich source for people fleeing the storm, sadly to end up in a different kind of storm off Christmas Island. And done by Sheehan.

But that was Sheehan scribbling way back when, and as for Sheehan now?

The moral chain isn't complex? Would that be the simple moral chain that leads back to the enthusiasts for the Iraq and Afghanistan adventures, and the consequences of their mindless enthusiasm?

In a tabloid, you quickly come to expect the simple minded denunciations, and the disgusting hypocrisies and the easy analysis, which always comes out "Tony Abbott good, Julia Gillard baaad."

And in a broadsheet?

Well one that offers Paul Sheehan as a columnist is going to produce the same simple minded denunciations, the disgusting hypocrisies, and sometimes on matters much more serious than magic water, and the easy analysis, which always comes out "Julia Gillard baaaad."

But then this is a man capable of celebrating the victory of the United States in the Vietnam war. Historical revisionism knows no bounds when a dedicated revisionist is at work. That's how you get Truth still the casualty of a just war.

Strange that even to this day my eyes still fill with tears as I recall the noble sight of the Stars and Stripes being erected above the palace in Hanoi as Australian cameraman Neil Davis stood by, ready to capture the image for posterity ... in that other dimension of time known only to Paul Sheehan and Michael Jeffery ...

Did Sheehan ever consider where South East Asia's first boat people came from? His just war in Vietnam ...

When a humbug is busy at this kind of scribbling, what can you say, except bah, humbug.

(Below: some artwork from the film of a book which always springs to mind when reading Sheehan).