Gerard Henderson, and sorry, in the interests of courteous discourse we can no longer call the dull, whining big sook a prattling Polonius ...

(Above: let's face it, the ABC went to the dogs the day they let those bloody sheilas read the news. Margaret Doyle, the ABC's first woman news reader - ruining the ABC in 1941! - and more on the ABC's history here).

The gun laws of the United States - or their almost complete absence in certain states - are remarkable, and Arizona in recent times has led the way by example.

In Arizona it's possible for anyone to carry a concealed weapon without a permit if over the age of twenty one, and getting hold of a Glock 9mm with a 30 shot clip is a doddle. It's an assault weapon, a common police weapon, and it's designed not so much for hunting but for killing ...

Mention the state of gun laws in the United States, and you'll get a parade of fundamentalist paranoia, which in turn has seen much of the country turned into an armed camp:

As secretary of the nearly 4,000-member Arizona Citizens Defense League, a gun rights group, Heller carries at least two handguns with him at all times. He carries a third gun in the door of his car, more in the gun safe and vault bolted into his trunk.

"More laws equal more restrictions on people's ability to defend themselves," Heller said.

Heller said he saw expanding the mental health records used for federal background checks and reinstating the assault-weapons ban as threats on the right to bear arms.

"What happened at the Safeway plaza shows why it's so important for people to be armed," he said, "because evil is out there." (here)

Very few can get it into their heads that the evil is out there because the NRA and gun manufacturers deem it important that paranoid vigilantes and anyone else in need of a firefight can get their hands on guns ...

Then there are other contributions to recent hothouse debates in the United States.

Take this one from Republican representative Trent Franks of Arizona:

Obama's first act as president of any consequence, in the middle of a financial meltdown, was to send taxpayers' money overseas to pay for the killing of unborn children in other countries...there's almost nothing that you should be surprised at after that. We shouldn't be shocked that he does all these other insane things. A president that has lost his way that badly, that has no ability to see the image of God in these little fellow human beings, if he can't do that right, then he has no place in any station of government and we need to realize that he is an enemy of humanity.

An enemy of humanity, as well as a illegal Kenyan Muslim who's stolen the presidency via a fraudulent birth certificate?

You might think that amongst the ongoing speculation about the assassin Jared Lee Loughner, his motives and his political beliefs (as you can find here in Loughner's Politics: Chaos. Pure Chaos) there's a few issues a chastened United States might like to consider ...

But of course you'll have entirely missed the point. The problem is the ABC.

No, not the American Broadcasting Company, which in the usual way tends to be geo limited online in Australia, thereby depriving us of an instant General Hospital fix, but the Australian Broadcasting Corporation.

Yep, it's time for prattling Polonius, and surely even by his own august standards, Gerard Henderson today delivers a doozy in ABC needs to rein in the rise of abuse posing as analysis.

What better time to go into bat in a batty analysis of what's wrong with the ABC than after the Tucson slaughter?

Naturally Henderson isn't at all persuaded by left wing attempts to link the Tea Party and Sarah Palin and others to the shootings, though whether Pima County sheriff Clarence Dupnik can be considered a left winger isn't quite clear, though he is a member of the Democratic party, and therefore might be held by some as belonging to an earthly branch of satanism ...

But let's not brood about the rush to judgement by Dupnik, when he talked of the hatred, the anger and the bigotry which goes on in the United States - a rush Henderson excuses - because how much more fun it is to focus on the shocking signs of outrageous analysis on the ABC, where according to Henderson there's been an unholy rush to judgement:

This became evident in the segment reviewing the morning newspapers shortly before the 7am news bulletin. The guest commentator was the academic and Herald Sun columnist Jill Singer. It was one of those ABC discussions where everyone essentially agrees with everyone else.

Eventually Gearin put the leading question: "Can we blame Sarah Palin?" Singer had a bit each way and concluded: "I don't know."

The proper answer was - wait for the evidence.

It's been a depressing couple of days, what with the people killed and the damage done and the floods rampant and ongoing suffering in many parts of the world, but I have to say that Henderson's prim pert pomposity produced a howl of relieving laughter.

The proper answer was "wait for the evidence", as opposed to the simple statement "I don't know"?

Well if nothing else, it shows what a fine Jesuitical hair splitting world wherein Henderson resides. And finally there's an explanation as to why Henderson doesn't get invited on to the ABC ... because if you can't say "I don't know", which in a full and complete way means "I don't know", what on earth can you say?

Then it's on to further crimes by the ABC:

Later in the program both Gearin and Aly acknowledged that all theories about Loughner's motives were speculative.

Shocking. But it gets worse:

On ABC metropolitan radio Philip Clark expressed concern about the "extreme opinion" in the US political debate by what he termed the extreme right-wing. He mentioned Fox's Glenn Beck. And a listener phoned in criticising, you've guessed it, Israel.

Certainly both News Breakfast and metropolitan radio did hear alternative views. Yet the message of the presenters was to condemn shrillness in political debate. If ABC presenters are going to proclaim the need for high standards - and if the ABC managing director, Mark Scott, intends to continue delivering speeches about journalism - the public broadcaster should examine its own performance.

Uh huh. The ABC's responsible for the views of its listeners. So god help Glenn Beck and Rupert Murdoch.

But you can see where this is heading. Knowing no shame, Henderson is going to use the recent events in Tucson, Arizona as a springboard to lambast the ABC, and in particular Bob Ellis.

It's hardly surprising. It's well known that Henderson has a been in his bonnet about the ABC - Aunty to review complaints process, but not for Gerard Henderson was just one instance a couple of years ago in an ongoing saga, while his ongoing war with Ellis might be amusing to insiders, but tends to get tedious and laboured.

Over at Media Watch Dog, Henderson tends to be a little more fancy free with his abuse, referring to Ellis as the False Prophet, as in this snippet:

Meanwhile, the big news is that Bob Ellis - the False Prophet of Palm Beach - has written yet another book. This one titled And So It Went: Night Thoughts in A Year of Change will be published on Monday. MWD much valued some of your man Ellis’ previous work. Especially his 2002 gem Goodbye Babylon which changed our knowledge of modern history. One of Ellis’ scoops revealed that Winston Churchill (1874-1965) was still alive in 1974. Go on.

Ellis also expanded our knowledge of the art of drinking - by revealing that he (the False Prophet) and the one-time New Zealand Labour prime minister Mike Moore drank a butcher’s dozen of bottled wine in just a few hours while attending the 1998 Constitutional Convention in Canberra. How about that? A full 13 bottles of plonk in just on, say, three hours - or over two bottles an hour each for three hours in a row. And they lived to tell this (improbable) story. Or so it (Ellis’ story) goes. Or so it (Ellis’ story) went.

Henderson rather cheekily suggests that the False Prophet is inclined to write his pieces while on the Guinness or perhaps 13 bottles of something stronger, at least when explaining the Irish economy.

Well never mind, there have been plenty of people - me included - who've called Bob Ellis a prattling, delusional, drunken, egg spattered muppet in ongoing need of a shower but in the midst of such friendly jocularity and banter, we seem to have moved away from the events in Tucson.

Not so, insists our prattling Polonius, and it seems that in the future reference to Henderson as a prattling Polonius might be something of a hideous thought crime. But at least it doesn't appear on The Drum, home to hideous thought crimes:

In recent times the ABC has used some of its taxpayer funding to move into opinion writing, which was once the preserve of newspapers and such online commercial publications as Crikey. Under Scott's management, ABC online publishes The Drum (for in-house journalists) and The Drum Unleashed (for outside contributors, many of whom are paid a fee).

Yes indeed, we've always been astonished that the ABC decided to abandon AM radio and the carrier pigeon, and use these new fangled devices - a bit like the tremor of horror when the wretches decided to deploy television as a way of communicating with the public, and in the process abandoned the full dinner suit that was de rigueur for readers of the news.

And we're exceptionally pleased by Gerard Henderson's desire to preserve a space for Crikey, and especially for First Dog on the Moon, who puts together modest cartoons in the interest of stoking public debate (see below), which no doubt have Henderson and his keen sensa huma chortling away on a daily basis.

A pity the same can't be said for the ABC, and its love of the Guinness addled false prophet:

On January 3 The Drum Unleashed ran a piece by Bob Ellis about NSW politics in which he predicted a Labor victory in March. Fair enough. Ellis is entitled to his opinion. What was unacceptable in his comment piece turned on the author's use of personal invective and sectarianism.

Indeed, in the interests of avoiding personal invective and sectarianism, let's not quote the false prophet. Let's just quote Henderson:

In a tirade of abuse, Ellis described Opposition Leader Barry O'Farrell as "a serial fatty with an Irish name", depicted former Liberal leader John Brogden as "a suicide" and claimed that deputy Liberal leader Jillian Skinner "looks like a long-detested nagging landlady with four dead husbands and hairy shoulders".

Eer, isn't it a tad insensitive to repeat such insensitive remarks in print, and so give them much wider currency and circulation?

Dearie me no, not if you want people to appreciate the horror. The best way to ensure a defamation is truly defamatory is to reproduce it and circulate it as widely as possible.

That way you can see why the ever vigilant Henderson is always ready for a stoush with the false prophet.

No, not with Ellis, but with Mark Scott, the managing director of the ABC, whom he expects to act like some kind of censor in chief:

In personal correspondence with me, Scott supported The Drum Unleashed's decision to publish Ellis's abuse-as-analysis. According to the ABC managing director, Ellis's article was "colourful" and "particularly robust". Moreover, it generated "more than 800 comments". Scott declined to reply as to whether he would have published such vindictive material if he were still a senior editorial executive at the Herald.

Yes what we need is a return to the war years, when censorship was a way of life, and perhaps we might even return responsibility for content on the ABC over to the Government's Department of Information. There, see how Ellis would like that ...

You know, I've never much thought about Scott and his clap happy ways, but all of a sudden, a vast and all consuming sympathy overwhelmed me, as I realised his daily tasks must include dealing with the ABC's staff, the ABC board, politicians, the odd demented member the public, and above all, with Gerard Henderson ...

Presumably Scott would also defend The Drum Unleashed's decision to run an Ellis article on August 5 last year in which he asserted that Julia Gillard "has a merry laugh that has no equivalent in human behaviour, like a dead rabbit out of a threadbare hat, and moves not a few of us to nausea".

Oh for the dear absent lord enough already, the comedy stylings of Henderson are too much. Is this the most scurrilous thing Henderson can dig up from the false prophet? Why, he doesn't even mention the size of Gillard's bum or speculate whether she uses hair colouring ... most unusual for Ellis ...

In September the ABC did remove from The Drum Unleashed website an article by ABC favourite Marieke Hardy which described Liberal frontbencher Christopher Pyne as "a douchebag". But it left untouched Hardy's earlier reference to Tony Abbott as a "lunatic".

Hmmm, and I thought truth was a defence. Never mind, hey nonny no, it's on to a rousing finale:

The advent of the internet age has encouraged the rise of abuse as analysis. This is engaged in by the extremes of both sides of the political debate. Scott cannot change the culture of language. But he can lead by example. And ABC presenters can desist from criticising the language of others while the public broadcaster runs such abuse on its own website.

Actually Henderson could desist from criticising the abuse run on the ABC so long as he persists in running healthy hearty abuse of others on his Media Watch Dog page.

Go to Issue 80 here for sensitive references to lapsed Rockchoppers, sheila's business, The Guardian on the Yarra, a hearty defence of tea partiers and Fox News, a mini war with Mark Colvin over the Andrew Olle Media Lecture, and bizarrely the notion that he and Phillip Adams are old chums once given to the idea of "joshing along" ...

Some might take it all in the spirit of robust engagement, but not Henderson, who cheerfully dishes it out but simply can't abide that there might be alternative venues for alternative thoughts ...

These days Henderson, the dullest, most feeble, righteous, and complaining columnist doing the rounds has no capacity at all for joshing along, and doesn't seem to realise just how far Australia is from the joshing along in the United States fashion ... which apart from talk of enemies of humanity, includes easy access to assault Glocks ...

When Bob Ellis takes a shower and dons a Glock, we perhaps might be worried (though notoriously Ellis is about as technically adept as an Australian plumber).

In the meantime, perhaps Henderson should take a shower, and save Mark Scott and the Herald's readers endless, tedious, and, in the end, unnecessary suffering. Happily in Australia we can still make a joke about 'oh the humanity' ... in the United States, it really is 'oh the humanity' ...

(Below: First Dog in Crikey, here, showing way more regard for Gerard Henderson's delicate sensibilities than the fiends on the ABC's The Drum.

Would it be wrong to suggest Mr. Henderson should harden up? Can cardboard actually harden up anyway? What about desiccated coconut?)