Paul Sheehan, and a goose is a goose, unless scientifically proven to be a wild eyed Captain Grumpy deployer of steaming rhetoric ...

(Above: Kings Cross in the good old days. More here).

Paul Sheehan scribbles so many stupid things in his piece A state's addiction to crime that it's hard to know where to begin.

For starters, a film critic he's not. Animal Kingdom is a "superbly crafted" Australian drama, which nonetheless has a "hole in its heart". And what hole might that be, pray tell?

The hole in the heart of Animal Kingdom is its script, where the drama is created by violence, not by depth or originality of the characters. It is same hole in the heart of Australian cinema generally, where the local production line of world-class actors, directors and cinematographers has never been matched by a comparable stream of world-class scripts.

Uh huh. Let's see how that works with a couple of American scripts.

The hole in the heart of Apocalypse Now is its script, where the drama is created by violence, not by depth or originality of the characters. Francis Ford Coppola mangles a bit of Conrad to produce his script, evoking the same hole in the heart of American cinema generally where there has never been a steam of world-class scripts ...

Or how about:

The hole in the heart of Goodfellas (or Taxi Driver etc etc etc) is its script, where the drama is created by violence, not by depth or originality of the characters.

Put it another way. Stupid is as stupid scribbles. Naturally Sheehan then makes an imaginative leap into the void:

This reflects the Australian film world, like the tax-subsidised Australian arts world in general, being a preachy monoculture that conforms to the safety of well-worn ruts. Animal Kingdom is no exception. The opening scene is a normal-looking suburban mother slumped on a couch. These are the first lines of dialogue:

Paramedic: ''What's she taken?''

Young man: ''Heroin.''

Uh huh. How about?

Goodfellas (or The Hangover or any American film which conforms to the time honoured standards and qualities of genre) reflects the American film world, like the capitalist 'appeal to the consumer' American arts world in general, resulting in a relentless monoculture that conforms to the safety of well-worn ruts.

Stupid is as stupid scribbles. When you write all embracing nonsense, all you get is all embracing gibberish ...

For the umpteenth time, an Australian film has trawled the criminal underclass for colour while portraying elements of the police as murderers with no honour code, unlike the crims they chase.

For the umpteenth time, a critic of the Australian film industry has trawled through simplistic verbiage to arrive at an ill-considered opinion of one of the few films in recent times to do nicely at the box office, as well as scoring kind reviews and the odd trinket to hang on the mantelpiece. What Sheehan thinks of Tomorrow, When the World Began's homage to Red Dawn thankfully remains an unknown unknown ...

Naturally, at this point Sheehan cranks up the rhetoric.

As it happens, I've been thinking a great deal about the way NSW has taken on some of the flavour of a police state.

Yes, somehow, a film shot in Victoria, and loosely inspired by real events involving Victorians (the Pettingill family, and the Walsh Street police shootings and other stories only too happy to jump on the bandwagon, The real animal kingdom) becomes a rhetorical metaphor for NSW turning into a police state.

This is roughly equivalent to me scribbling, on the basis of Sheehan's petty minded, mean spirited knocking of Animal Kingdom, something like As it happens, I've been thinking a great deal about the way Paul Sheehan has taken on some of the flavour of a far right fascist scribbler ...

Not to worry. It's just the set up for the usual moan and groan and gripe of a Captain Grumpy going about his Monday work, and the heart of it is this:

In NSW, we have the worst of both worlds, where the cops and the government are tough on hundreds of thousands of non-criminals going about their daily lives, while giving a free pass to real criminals.

Yes innocent motorists are persecuted while the junkies of Kings Cross roam free. But in turn this leads to another remarkable statement:

Look at Kings Cross. It used to be one of Australia's most sophisticated, cosmopolitan and pleasant precincts.

Roll that around on your tongue, and relish it. Dear lord knows which phantom Kings Cross Captain Grumpy has in his fevered imagination, but it can't be the one that I saw - while working as a very innocent, very young thing fresh from the country - in the Cross in the early seventies, in the days of Vietnam and R and R.

In those days, you could even see a crim nonchalantly hand over a brown paper bag in plain sight to a copper, and think nothing of it.

It was of course demonised by the Captain Grumpy conservatives of the day, but I remember it as a fine place, full of hippies, soldiers, and hookers and rampant organised crime, though you only got into trouble if you became involved in turf wars. For the most part, all the crims wanted to do was sell drugs or sex and tend their brothels and real estate developments. (A time evoked by Rennie Ellis's photos, as noted here).

I had an aunt who lived there, and she'd made a living in the SP game, and she could point you to the illegal casinos, where Kerry Packer loved to play, and the brothels, and even in passing had met Mr. Sin himself, Abe Saffron.

To call all this part of a sophisticated, cosmopolitan and pleasant precinct should see Sheehan hauled up to some court for abusing the English language. These are not words you can use about Abe Saffron and his dark grip on the Cross, nor perhaps did Juanita Nielsen think it was quite a pleasant village when she was done down. There was nothing particularly wrong with Les Girls, or the nightclubs, or the hookers, but the tackiness and the seaminess was part of the charm ...

And if you go further back, before my time, you'll find that Tilly Devine, the Queen of the 'Loo, set up her brothel shop in Woolloomooloo, while her arch rival Kate Leigh worked out of Surry Hills, and they both had a hand in the Cross. In those days, cocaine was the drug of choice, and cut-throat razors a handy slashing weapon ...

Truth is, Kings Cross has long had a sleazy side, helped first by serving seamen and the navy and cops and the military and boys from the bush after bright lights, and it's long been a home for alternative lifestyles, from trannies to junkies, a trend that began to crank up in the nineteen sixties ...

I remember once looking at a flat just off the main strip, but I just couldn't cop the mirror on the ceiling and the mirrors on the wall, and the bright neon orange and brown shag carpet, and I dare say, the gentleman callers who would have kept turning up with a hopeful knock on the door and yearning eyes and quite possibly a few quid in the hand ...

So what's the forgetful Sheehan make of the actual history of the Cross?

Now it is a bogan paradise, a cathedral to bad taste, a product of the power of the alcohol, heroin and poker machine industries that have enjoyed unprecedented power or tolerance for 16 years under the Labor patronage machine and pork factory.

Uh huh. From the paradise of Elysian fields to a cathedral of bad taste in a mere sixteen years. Put it another way ... a goose is a goose is a goose ...

Swept from memory is the famously corrupt Sir Robert "Robin" William Askin:

In the week of Askin’s funeral, under the heading `Askin: Friend to Organised Crime’, the National Times published the first of a series of articles by Hickie that accused Askin of wide-ranging corruption. Hickie was to expand on his claims in a book, The Prince and the Premier (1985). One of the most serious accusations, attributed to an `impeccable’ source, was that over the last seven years of Askin’s premiership, Perce Galea, head of an illegal gambling empire, had paid him $100,000 a year in bribes. Another was that Sydney bookmakers had given Askin $55,000 on the eve of his retirement as a reward for his not doubling their turnover tax, a payment Askin described unapologetically as `a gratuity from some members of the racing fraternity’. A third focused on the claim that businessmen had been buying knight-hoods from Askin for $20,000 to $60,000 each. (and plenty more on Askin here)

Now I don't mind if people want to argue over Askin's level of corruption - though even the Tax Office took a view on his undisclosed income, here - but it was during Askin's reign that Saffron and the Cross particularly flourished in their bent ways.

And it really is derelict of Sheehan to sweep the glorious history of Kings Cross under the carpet, all so he can slag off the current Labor government, and naturally the Kings Cross injecting room.

And when you come to this kind of rhetoric, what can you say?

The argument justifying the centre is that has cleaned up the drug trade and saved ''hundreds'' of lives. This is propaganda worthy of North Korea.

Yep, that's scribbling worthy of a conservative with fascist tendencies ...

There's plenty more abuse from Sheehan about the usefulness of the injecting room, along with a further reference to the non-North Korean view, which is in its own way fairly relevant to his own non-Adolf Hitler views ...

But it takes a quite peculiar mentality to be able to roam all over the place, from Animal Kingdom to Kings Cross to a police state to North Korea to speed traps to the injecting room and make a hash of all of them.

For all that life in Sydney has its moments, talk of police states and North Korea is simply absurd rhetoric of a demeaning, vicious and meaningless kind.

You have to wonder at the mental state of someone who can see all manner of evil in a single injecting room, up against what actually goes down across the state.

But that's the conservative commentariat way, blind, blinkered, and unhappy.

And forgetful ... and if Sheehan thinks getting rid of the injecting room will help in any way shape or form to solve the problems of junkies, or the community in dealing with junkies, he's off in la la land, with the bikies ...

Used to be a sophisticated, cosmopolitan and pleasant precinct?

What, in 1821?

What a complete and utter goose. Anything Sheehan has to say on anything must be marked as automatically suspect, and likely to be wrong, unless proved otherwise by stringent scientific testing ...

If there's a hole in the heart of Animal Kingdom, how big the hole in the head of Sheehan?

(Below: a couple more from the nineteen seventies of that sophisticated, cosmopolitan and pleasant precinct. Oh the nostalgia and the charm. More here).