At last, the pond discovers a new rule for rich people ...

(Above: a rich person mouthing off.

Below: there, that's how it's done, softly, softly, sweetly whispering into the ear of the beloved).

Thank the lord it's now official.

Rich people should keep their traps shut, stay out of the kitchen, avoid any policy flames in their vicinity, and just go quietly about the business of looting the countryside and increasing their riches.

This might seem a tad unfair to Gina Rinehardt, who is beyond filthy rich, and who has bought into shares in Fairfax and the Ten Network just so the media does take notice of her voice, but there you go, what's good for a latte sipping culture vulture or two should surely be good for her as well.

We look forward to Barners denouncing Rinehardt - or even giving her a good mole whacking - the next time she pops her head above the surface, and complains about things like the mining tax.

Luckily the pond even has a prepared script for him, ready and raring to go:

"I think that Gina Rinehart is a marvellous miner, a beautiful person and a wonderful Australian, but the relationship between that and a person who is, unfortunately, is already doing it tough in their life, who's under the pump already because they can't afford their power bill... what do they get from her campaign against a mining tax?

"Gina, we can't support you on this one, this is wrong because you're really going to hurt people Gina, you really are." (and here's where we borrowed the idea for the script).

The naked stupidity of Barners and the minions of Murdoch who ran with that line fell apart pretty quickly, and there was scattered return of fire from various quarters as people explained that rich people had a right to participate in public debates, so the next spin from those gate keepers came with a slightly better based attack ... on the quality of the advertisement.

There's a sample of that tack here in Shoot the messengers, and send them to Bonnie Doon, courtesy of punch-drunk Anthony Sharwood, as he explains how he would have done the ad and defends his fellow minions:

The stars of the ad, and its makers, are today arguing that Rupert Murdoch’s evil foot soldiers are attacking the ad as a kind of gratuitous blood sport. No. The papers aren’t spinning bullshit. But they happen to be very, very good at detecting it.

Except, it seems, in the case of free flowing Sharwood-style bullshit, or the bullshit flowering in the Murdoch rags and which flows as freely as the bullshit that flows from the more rustic class-minded members of the National Party.

Sharwood's solution to the mining tax in the very same breath-taking article?

And to those who kicked up the same sort of stink that Big Mining kicked up when the Mining Tax was being kicked around, Gillard might have cited last week’s figures, showing Australia now has more billionaires than ever before, 35 to be precise, the bulk in the resources sector.

Um Anthony, the people who were kicking up the shit storm over the Big Mining tax were very rich people, and the minions of Murdoch and Dr. No.

Still, I like the idea, I like the notion that rich people should simply shut the fuck up.

Sorry big Mal, we were counting on you for some policy ideas up against the populist policy vacuum known as Dr. No, but rules is rules.

And while we're at it, what a jolly clever way the Queensland government has hit upon to silence any uppity blacks. Whack them with a media ban! That should make them STFU.

Back at the time Lex Wotton was sent down, and then given parole for his role in the Palm Island riots - concerning the way an unfortunate copper simply stumbled over a prone man and somehow managed to do him in - Wotton was handed various parole conditions, including a ban on speaking to the media.

Back then the typical comments from the white shoe brigade focussed on how he'd been let out early, and how nobody did their time these days and how unfair it was that the blacks should be restless (Palm Island riot ringleader Lex Wotton set free but banned form speaking to media).

They sure are funny in Queensland, what with the notion of free speech seeming but a mere passing whim or fancy, and with the notion that Wotton seemed up there on a par with David Hicks, and so deserved a media ban.

Unhappily, Wotton has decided to challenge the media gag, by taking an appeal to the High Court. (Palm Island ringleader appeals against media ban).

This is most unseemly and unfortunate and flies right in the face of all that the Murdoch media desires of people who might want to express a point of view. What on earth could Wotton have to say to the media, and why on earth should he be allowed to say it? Shocking ... shouldn't he just STFU?

Yep, so we're back with our new theme song.

Why don't they just all shut the fuck up, and leaving things to the Murdoch media and Dr. No? Then all would be silent, so that Anthony Sharwood could just rant on and on about the one-eyed loudmouth organised Left, and the lack of nuance in their predictable rants.

Sharwood himself is utterly unpredictable. Who would guess how he'd deal with the left?

Because the Left was spawned, and often still dwells, on university campuses, it habitually laments the lack of proper dialogue in public debate, the fact that no one reads anymore. The masses are belittled as unthinking, and desperately in need of guidance beyond the daily sound bite.

Does Sharwood have the first clue just how fuckwitted that sounds?

What a caricature, what a stereotype, how very anon edit in The Australian, how very Gerard Henderson in Fairfax he sounds.

Does he think half the population which voted for the ALP and/or the Greens, and so spawned a minority government dwell on university campuses, and everybody in the 'masses' are desperately in guidance from the Daily Terror and the HUN, anything but the filthy university lefties lurking on campus?

Could anybody reduce the debate to a lower level of predictability?

It's such lazy, stereotypical writing that the only thing that astonishes and produces unpredictability is that Sharwood failed to mention lattes and chardonnay.

Presumably he exhausted that line of whittery when he twitteried "Everyone knows that people who eat poached eggs are the new latte wankers" (here), as a feed to another column.

(Above: a screen cap of a twitter).

Well others who are better placed than me have observed the confected outrage and hypocrisy of the minions of Murdoch, who now run a party line more watertight than Tony Abbott can manage with his recalcitrant front bench (and you can pursue this further with Bernard Keane in 'Carbon Cate' and the confected outrage of News Limited, wherein he ticks off various boxes, including the one about rich people needing to shut the fuck up, most notably Rupert 'please shut the fuck up' Murdoch, who by any comparison with Cate Blanchett has surely far less idea of the suffering of Joe Blow in the 'burbs).

All this is most burdensome for the pond, since Cate Blanchett and her film roles normally produces a sturdy and toxic reaction.

But the sheer irrational hatred and class bitterness and attitude to interfering arty wankers is really something to see.

And the funniest thing in all this?

The likes of Barners and Anthony Sharwood pretending this is all about the suburbs, and invoking class war as some kind of basis for the discussion (though strangely eighty per cent of the punters who voted in the utterly unscientific Fairfax poll attached to Blanchett exposed for the 'crime' of speaking up thought she had a right to express her point of view).

Like Dr. John Hewson speaking out, though who knows how rich he is these days ... did he cross the line into 'shut the fuck up' territory, and should we feel appropriate envy and anger?

And the saddest contribution of all?

Dick Smith, who squibbed turning up in the ad because he feared an assault by the minions of Murdoch, and who in his contrition dared to suggest the minions might be sending out mixed messages.

Mr Smith earlier said that while Mr Murdoch believed climate change should be addressed, the views of the many papers he owned were contradictory.

"In their editorials they say they accept that human-induced climate change is a real danger ... yet their news pages and opinion pieces are full of endless attacks on politicians and others who support putting a price on carbon," he said. (I was gutless over climate ads: Dick Smith).

Dick, Dick, you did fine.

You did what we all now expect of rich people.

You shut the fuck up ...

Now for the lord's sake, if only we can persuade Rupert Murdoch to shut the fuck up, and so stop another rich person telling us what to think and how to think ...

(Below: that's right Dick, stick to selling dinkum food, and otherwise STFU).