Paul Sheehan, and relax, Captain Grumpy does this thing, and the world reverts to the usual tilt ...

The world of commentariat commentators, or at least the pond devoted to them, is in existential crisis.

First came Miranda the Devine, lining up in support of Julian Assange, followed by news that Angela Shanahan was lining up four square, shoulder to shoulder, with sneering inner suburban hoity toity sophisticates, and then the world trembled and threatened to veer completely off its axis, as the once reliable Institute of Public Affairs dude, Chris Berg, decided he too would line up behind the anarcho-Marxist Assange with The weight of the word.

To oppose WikiLeaks is to be against press freedom and free speech, the bold one liner designed for people too busy to read on trumpeted, but with a sinking heart, we read on:

Strip away Assange's revolutionary libertarian rhetoric and inflated sense of self, and what we have is a media outlet that's innovative but is not really doing much different from what the press has been doing for centuries.

Berg the revolutionary supporter of anarcho-Marxists!! On and on he rants - it's too disturbing to summarise - until he reaches a triumphantly ironic conclusion:

... the battle between governments and the press is an old one. In a moment of well-timed irony, this week the US Department of State announced it would be hosting World Press Freedom Day in 2011.

No matter how new the medium, or how irresponsible its publisher, it is an absolute and fundamental infringement of free speech when a government tries to gag a media outlet it doesn't like.

Here at the pond things were getting desperate, the sand of the desert was sodden red, red with the wreck of a square that broke, the gatling jammed and the colonel dead, and the regiment blind with dust and smoke, and all around the voices rallied the ranks, play up, play up, play the game, and fall into line with the newly anarcho-Marxist commentariat ...

Who could break the impasse, who could remain an impenetrable curmudgeon, and do his usual grumpy routine, and so save the pond?

Phew, it's Monday, and so it's Paul Sheehan day, and what a relief, there he is with Let's vote Kevin off the island, and it's down to his usual standard.

Right out of the gate, he starts by calling on Mark Latham's The Latham Diaries, the bible of bile, so naturally where better for the deeply bilious Sheehan to frolic, than down amongst the bile ..

Next it turns out there was no need for WikiLeaks, no need for Wikileaks at all.

Why everything's already been covered by everyone, though most notably by the wondrous Paul Sheehan, and all the shock horror is entirely irrelevant:

What the WikiLeaks cascade of diplomatic cables also reveals is that the West was already well served by its news media. Most of what are deemed revelations in the diplomatic channels were merely confirmation of what had already been revealed by journalists.

Back in your boxes, defender of anarcho-Marxists, it turns out that Sheehan himself is a veritable font of leaks, a gusher of insights, a fountain of revelations.

And a dab hand with a piece of four be two, or a baseball bat, or deploying his special steel toe capped industrial boots.

You see, the abusive ratfucker Rudd, grabbing for international grandiosity, is full of condescension, the kind you expect from from a brow-beating condescending control freak driving hapless bureaucrats mad with a hyperacitve flurry, badly damaging the credibility of said bureaucrats, a worse than Whitlam prime minister, a rhetorical drone, who still somehow managed to be in manic overdrive, and alienate people - well at least that epic drone Paul Sheehan - and now for some inexplicable reason Julia Gillard has given this mistrusted, accident-prone figure the job as Foreign Minister, when we all know Alexander Downer was a splendid chappie, and absolutely without peer when sighted in a fetching pair of fishnet stockings ...

Not that Sheehan himself is anything like Rudd, a man devoid of charisma, with a chronic deficit of trust.

No, Sheehan is more the kind for a dash of hubris, and preening self-importance, because you see he's more the kind of man who saw the train wreck coming, and warned the world endlessly, and now we have to sit through his gloating, bilious "I tolds ya so" column with a mounting sense of irritation, perhaps worse than the irritation Rudd managed to generate in Beijing:

I came to the certainty that Rudd was a problem as a leader after having lunch with the Chinese ambassador to Canberra, Zhang Junsai (who is just completing his posting here). The lunch was off the record, so I cannot quote him, but I can convey his puzzlement at both the style and substance of Rudd's handling of the relationship. His irritation reflected the view held in Beijing.

It was off the record so I cannot quote him, but stay just a moment, let me quote him by conveying his puzzlement and irritation?

Uh huh, I guess it's sort of up there with the devastating insights offered into the world of diplomatic gossip by WikiLeaks, but perhaps we need a little more evidence that Sheehan is genuinely a font, a gusher, a cascading flood of water ...

All the elements that had soured so many relationships were hiding in plain sight. We never needed WikiLeaks to work out that a train wreck was unfolding. As such, I'd like to revisit several columns:

We didn't need WikiLeaks because we had Paul Sheehan? Choke on entrails, or at least on the spleen ...

Revisit several columns? You mean contemplate the soggy tea leaves, poke through the chicken livers?

Oh no, not that, anything but that, not a tour through the entrails, not a summary of various Sheehan columns by Sheehan himself, dripping with curmudgeonly bile and unseemly self-satisfaction and righteous indignation as he indulges in one person character assassination of a kind he only ever seems to reserve for one side of politics (imagine a similar litany of columns abusing Tony Abbott? You can? You have a splendid, rich imagination).

Well no matter, you can read Sheehan's Napoleonic musings about Rudd's Napoleonic compulsions if you like, but here at the pond it mainly evoked sweet memories of Alan Ramsey:

In 2004, Labor MP Michael Danby dubbed him "Alan Scissorhands" for his habit of filling his columns with slabs of quotes from speeches, press conferences and other people's articles. (here)

And Ramsey was quoting other people, not himself. What to make of Sheehan quoting himself at righteous, unseemly length? "Paul wankerhands"?

Poor old Alan got a toasting from members of the commentariat:

Among his fellow columnists, Gerard Henderson and Paddy McGuinness described him as "lazy", Andrew Bolt as "bile-bloated" and Piers Akerman as "sad" and "dyspeptic".

I guess that's on the principle that it takes a pot to know that the kettle is definitely black. And I guess Sheehan would use "the Ramsey defence":

He (Ramsey) defended his chronic quoting, saying that if readers didn't read a significant piece of journalism or a press conference transcript in his column "they weren't going to read it anywhere else". Although possessed by politics (that and fishing), Ramsey frequently expressed exasperation with it. He ended a February column with the expostulation: "Politics is an appalling business."

But that defence applies to quoting others, not to lazy, bile-bloated, sad and dyspeptic Sheehan quoting of self.

Never mind, Sheehan has saved the day for the pond, and for that, as the world reverts to its axis, we must be eternally grateful.

Now for a final word:

The man carries excess baggage, yet remains the ultimate traveller. Is this the person the Gillard government should be offering as Australia's principle representative to the world?

Uh huh. But actually former chairman Rudd was one of the few Labor party politicians to display moderation, reasonableness, and understanding in the face of the WikiLeaks hysteria, even as he copped a bucketing.

Naturally, and in the usual way, he's copped it coming, as well as going, as you might guess in from the snide headers Kevin Rudd defends Assange's rights and promises him a laptop, and Rudd offers Assange a laptop.

Lordy, he's dared offer the deviant a laptop ...

But elsewhere Rudd has managed to be on the front foot, unlike the back foot behaviour of that complete goose, Robert McClelland, in Rudd admits Afghanistan war grim and bloody, and so on.

Could it be that this terminal bore has more wit and capacity for magnanimity than the bilious, ponderous, grumpy, curmudgeonly world view to be seen in the scribbles of Paul Sheehan?

Once upon a time, it would have been hard to imagine, but Sheehan has brought the day closer with this column's effort, because amongst the traits of the magnanimous is a capacity to rise above revenge, and disdain injustice and meanness ...

Apparently Democritus once said that "magnanimity consists in enduring tactlessness with mildness".

Yep, any day anyone reads a Paul Sheehan column and doesn't run out into the street shouting that they're as mad as hell and they're not going to take it any more, from this day forth, they get a special "magnanimity" elephant stamp ...

(Below: the magnanimity of Alexander towards the captive Porus, a contrast to the magnanimity of the scribbler Sheehan towards the politician Rudd).