Christopher Pearson, Graham Young, and Cardinal Pell a late starter but tries hard to be trying ...

(Above: click on for larger image).

Good morrow Caroline. Why, what's the matter,

That you have such a February face,

So full of frost, of storm and cloudiness?

With apologies to Much Ado About Nothing.

Yes, we're slow to catch up with things on the pond, but what joy to see Much Ado (about nothing) which turned up on Caroline Overington's blog in a moment of random lack of empathy, only to suddenly disappear, and then to re-emerge and sprout like mushrooms all over the web. You can read about it here, at Kirstyn McDermott's Online Integrity: Edits and Updates.

So The Australian shoots and scores an own goal ... again. No wonder the Socceros have troubles. Memo to The Australian ... nothing dies on the full to overflowing intertubes, or gets brushed under the carpet. We first came across it on Crikey ... because reading Caroline Overington is a really low priority ... but a quick google and the gory details came rushing in ...

As for pretending the post was much ado about something, please, please, use honest quotations. The play's called Much Ado About Nothing, and that's the gist of Overington's stumble ...

The pond's excuse for being a laggard? Well everyone except Roger Ailes and Rupert Murdoch seems to have noticed that Glenn Beck is in urgent need of medication for paranoid fantasies about a world caliphate based on Babylon, spared bombing because G. W. Bush was in on the global conspiracy.

You can read about it here, with video clip, in Glenn Beck Digs Himself Deeper in the Hole With His Conspiracy Theories, and it's a handy reminder why I refuse to pay for any News Corp product while Beck is allowed to strut the airwaves (please don't ask me how I get to see Fox movies).

Meanwhile, speaking of blogs, it's Saturday, and to our shock horror and dismay, Christopher Pearson has descended into the blogosphere, in Oversensitivity can only compromise debate.

It seems hapless Graham Young - I'd describe him as belonging in the centre of the political spectrum, perhaps tending to mild conservatism - has lost a couple of advertisers, namely the ANZ Bank and IBM, because he published a piece by Bill Muehlenberg on gay marriage.

The hapless Young - we'd prefer to describe him as a former vice-president and campaign chairman of the Queensland Liberal Party, instead of dissembling about him being a centrist - runs On Line opinion, and you can read his extended whinge about the matter in Human Rights Awards, Chris Sidote, Pauline Hanson and On Line Opinion.

We reason that it is better to get opinions out in the open and discussed than to allow them to fester in private and eventually explode. We also figure that with enough argument and discussion opinions will change.

We won’t publish everything but we do publish widely within the law.

Uh huh, so then he ups and publishes Bill Muehlenberg delivering his standard rant about homosexuality and gay marriage with Dismantling a homosexual marriage, which opens with;

A so-called conservative writer parroted some silly arguments for same-sex marriage in the Sunday Age recently. He finishes by saying that marriage is a good thing (which it is), so it should be available for homosexuals as well. He is wrong big time here.

First of all, it is heterosexual marriage which is good for couples, not any old relationship. The wonderful interaction of a man and a woman in the complementarity of heterosexual marriage is what makes it so special and beneficial. This is not true of other types of live-in situations.

The condescension and arrogance and hostility goes rapidly downhill from there, and it seems remarkable that a "centrist" - in the guise of lancing boils and airing prejudice - couldn't see that this was just a way of beginning a flame war.

It's not as if you have to look far for Bill Muehlenberg's fundamentalist Christian theology. You can find a gaggle of older pieces here, including this typical bit of nonsense about Darwin in A Church Apology to Darwin? Which blames Darwin for Hitler:

"Darwinian terminology and rhetoric pervaded Hitler's writings and speeches, and no one to my knowledge has ever even questioned the common assertion by scholars that Hitler was a social Darwinist. It is too obvious to deny."

In the light of all of Darwin's bad ideas, why in the world do some in the Christian church feel compelled to apologise to him?

Yes, yes, yes, and we can blame god for Darwin, and so for Hitler, so when are we going to get a church apology for god?

If you want more nonsense, the prolific Muehlenberg has his own site here, bravely entitled CultureWatch, but then again you might have better things to do with your time. Like watching an egg boil until it's well and truly hard ...

Meanwhile, the "centrist" Young, who thinks consorting with fundies, on the principle that you always print the controversy - you know in the way that intelligent design and climate denialism are all just healthy parts of a debate - has copped a little collateral damage, and now Christopher P has taken up arms in his cause.

When I spoke to him on Wednesday, Young said it wasn't the first time advertisers had made life hard. A group called Ethical Investments had objected after their ads sometimes appeared on pages alongside articles questioning anthropogenic global warming.

Dear sweet absent lord, how unfair of them, what spoil sports, what cads and rotters.

Or what bunkum. Naturally the first thought of the congenial conciliatory centrist Pearson is to call in the law:

Courts might construe that as the result of an indiscriminate secondary boycott, in contravention of the Trade Practices Act.

That's because Young and a group of other political sites have formed a network called The Domain, to bundle up their readers as a more attractive package for advertisers. The sites are very diverse in terms of ideology, from the ultra-leftist John Passant, to the more mainstream centre-Left Larvatus Prodeo, Club Troppo, Andrew Bartlett, skepticlawyer and the likes of Henry Thornton and Jennifer Marohasy.

Actually the Domain, which you can find here, as Australia's National Forum, is a secondary waste of time, typical of most bundling efforts, and little better than an elaborate blog roll, but asking for a buck a week from supporters ...

But since they ask whether we know of a good blog, can we suggest they include Bill Muehlenberg's site, which isn't so hard to find, here. Then Graham Young won't have to publish his pieces, and Pearson won't have to indulge in specious posturing about free speech.

Obviously I don't agree with much of what some of them say and the tone of some is more virulent than you'd find in the letters page of The Australian. But clearly they have a right to exist and issues of principle are at stake here that go to the freedom of political debate in this country and the character of our civilisation.

I share the view most editors and journalists once took for granted. Almost any rational argument, no matter how abhorrent, deserves a run.

Actually, you see, Bill Muehlenberg is doing quite well running his opinions, without the help of Andrew Young. As to whether his opinions constitute rational argument ...

Aside from advocating terrorism, the only exceptions that come to mind are pieces casting doubts on the existence of the Holocaust and apologias for legalising sex with children or animals.

If anyone is proposing to compromise the freedom of political debate on Australian blogs, it shouldn't happen without a full debate and, like most people, I'd rather it weren't big corporations making the decisions.

Actually, there's no attempt to compromise the freedom of political debate on Australian blogs. No advertiser has recently contacted loon pond to advise that advertising is being withdrawn because of the loonishness of views therein.

What we're talking about here is a commercial arrangement, and the right of advertisers to place their dosh where it most suits them. And if they have certain views on global warming or gay marriage, or value gay clients, they might take a view on their ads turning up next to specious claptrap designed as a kind of high class, up market trolling ...

Naturally Pearson ends with his usual huffing and puffing:

Apart from making hay with the issue of free speech, I expect the other blogs will kick up a huge fuss, online and in court, about being incidental victims of a secondary boycott. Skepticlawyer blog's Helen Dale, with expertise at the bar and a gift for self-promotion, should have a field day.

A huge fuss? About the right of people not to just publish bilious views, but to have advertisers support such bilious views?

Memo to "centrist" Graham Young. If you think having Christopher Pearson on your side in any crusade against evil advertisers, and corporate giants indulging in censorship is going to help, think again.

And if you think through the fuzzy logic of giving any idea a run on the full to overflowing intertubes because it's some kind of freedom to speak, think again.

And if you think publishing Bill Muehlenberg is a way of shaking the jelly, stirring the tree tops and generating hits, remember he who lives by the controversy can also die by the controversy ...

Now with that minor ugliness in a remote corner of the intertubes out of the way, I see that the NAB's flash ad turns up alongside Angela Shanahan's Fate of Copts ignored by the secular West, published this day in The Australian, wherein she scribbles:

... the Islamisation in many urban areas of Australia, such as Sydney's southwest, is slowly proceeding.

Lebanese Muslims in particular have a fertility rate four times the average.

Yes, the Islamists are winning the breeding wars. Quick Christians, start breeding now, don't wait, get fucking. Fuck for Jesus, and bring forth babies. Angela can't do it all on her own ...

Oh be afraid Christians, an alarming, terrifying 1.71% of the total Australian population identified as Muslim in the 2006 census, which is to say approximately 340, 392 people, and who knows, since then it might have escalated to a truly shocking, frightening, fearful 2%. (Islam in Australia). We're all doomed ...

By the way NAB, is it wrong of me to call for a secondary boycott by a major bank, instead of seeing it supporting risible tosh by turning up on the same page? Or should I just boycott you?

Never mind, I think I'll just stick with my primary boycott of News Corp products, and they can have the odd click on a page, seeing as how it never helps with CTR, and the contribution to CPM is worth diddly squat ...

Meanwhile, to end on a high note, there's Mike Carlton flailing away at everybody in sight in Flat-earthers, it's time for a cold shower, from global warming denialists through the verballing of Bob Brown to Tony Abbott, Lord Monckton, the infallibly fat-headed George Pell on climate change, tabloid media pundits, Bill O'Reilly, Glenn Beck, Mubarak, the belly-aching hypocrisy of Peter Costello, and the inordinate stupidity and silliness of Kristina Keneally ....

By golly, he's an honorary sage of the pond for that effort. We could never go to bed, and outbreed the Islamist horde, we'd be too busy agreeing with each other. What a pity the accompanying flash ad promotes Qantas, currently in receipt of a boycott by the pond because of their maintenance policies.

So it goes, such are the days of our lives, like sands through the hourglass.

As for Pell, you can read him here, in The Year That Ended:

A month or so ago the global warmers were announcing 2010 as one of the hottest years on record. Then a colossal freeze descended on Europe and more recently on the east coast of North America. Nothing so delicious has happened since President Obama had to leave the global warming summit in Copenhagen a day early, so that his aircraft would not be snowed in. No doubt they will claim it is only a flesh wound.

Nothing so delicious? Tell that to the dozens who died in the North American winter storm.

Hottest year on record? Oops, better wait next time until the data arrives, as it did in 2010 the hottest year on record. Oh okay, it was only a tie, but this goose is spiritual advisor to Tony Abbott. Let's hope it excludes temporal advice ...

(Below: and now we feel like looking at a man in a frock, and nothing wrong with that. Oh lordy it looks so ...

Okay, centrist Graham Young, how about a piece on cross dressing in the Catholic church, and the strange hostility to cross dressing in the gay community?)