In which everyone from Paul Sheehan through Rowan Dean to Roy Williams cops an unseemly amount of distilled pond mud ...

(Above: ever feel like splattering a blonde thinker with grubby atheist mud?)

Having only a few weeks ago advised that the NSW state Liberal government was doomed because it was soft on liberal Liberals and liberal lobbyists, Paul Sheehan waxes lyrical and disappears up an uxorious fundament as he urges an unremitting assault by Barry O'Farrell on fat cat public sector workers, the Industrial Relations Commission, and its "precious" president Roger Boland.

It's all here in Wounded bloat people in a state of indignation, but truth to tell, it will only be of interest to fat cat public servants, devotees of Sheehan's constant bitter revenge motif, worthy of Wagner, and readers who love navel gazing in search of navel lint (which you might know as navel fluff, belly button stuff, and so on, and which amazingly has its own wiki here under the header Navel lint).

We're still waiting a piece from Sheehan noting the departure of lobbyist Michael Photios from the Liberal party's vice-presidency, and - since he apparently loathes factionalism in the Liberal party - deploring the promotion of that hard-right factional enemy of Photios, David Clarke, to parliamentary secretary of justice.

But don't hold your breath, because when there's fat cat public service kicking to be done, who on earth would kick kindly David Clarke as he rakes in another 17k or so to go about his factional and fundamentalist business? (and for a whiff of the paranoia that brings, head off to the inner urban elites in Beware a new police state in NSW).

Anyway, enough of lint fluff, because the pond was inspired by a piece today from Rowan Dean, under the header No smoke and mirrors just plain truth in pitch from Big Tobacco.

Now let's not get things wrong here. Dean is a reformed smoker, and utterly dismissive of pathetic addicts who say it's too hard to give up, and he has absolutely no sympathy whatsoever for the supposed plight of Big Tobacco, as the government rightly seeks ways to dissuade people from engaging in the vile habit.

Sure at one point, he was a tempter, writing cigarette ads, but now he's completely reformed, rolling his eyes heavenward at the advertising campaign against plain packaging (in a doom-laden voice evoking an apocalyptic vision of evil Triads perverting youth with smuggled goods), and he hated David Crow's tortuous and hypocritical and nauseating logic as he explained he feared the plain packaging legislation would lead to more smoking.

Softened up enough yet? Utterly convinced?

By now surely you must have the impression that Dean is spotless, dressed all in white, as if from that pure Blonde land Brewtopia, a place of Utopia far purer than yours, as he fights the evil trucker smokers and their fiendish plans (and if you want more about the Brewtopia campaign, as usual the Inspiration room is all too inspiring).

But you see that's all part of the pitch. Once you've set up the mug punter, you need to pull a switcheroo, a bait and switch, so you can hit them with the real message.

Oh the poor brands, won't someone think of the pitiful innocent brands, and the waste and suffering and the humanity and the loss, oh the tragedy, oh the humanity, the humanity, as Dean confronts the stark evil truth of the government's fiendish scheme, and the industry strikes back with an utterly convincing campaign:

... I couldn't believe my eyes. "What company would stand for this?" asked the headline, above a blank olive green fizzy drink can with the unbranded word ''Cola'' on it. The legislation will "destroy brands that are worth millions if not billions of dollars", the ad informed us. And "no company would stand for having its brands taken away".

Visions of the dull grey green world of old Soviet Russia, the evil empire, floated before my eyes, as the wretched socialists conspired to do evil worthy of Darth Vader:

By all means, make smoking illegal. You'll get no complaints from me. But if the government is not prepared to go down that path, then it has no right to wantonly destroy brands that abide by the law. And the companies and shareholders of those brands have every right to fight for their survival. For once, my sympathy lies entirely with the tobacco companies.

It's amazing how powerful truth in advertising can be.

Yes once again advertising has saved the day, and shown the light, and smote the evil doers. Who needs Spiderman when you've got Advertisingman?

Sure the government has the right to protect children from pornography, violent entertainment, and other dangerous activities - perhaps even smoking - but hands off the precious brands Señor and Señorita politicians, or the magnificent seven advertising companies will destroy you.

For truly whimsical and wonderful comedy stylings, it doesn't get better than this, and I thank the tag for reminding me that Rowan Dean is a regular panellist on that comedy show The Gruen Transfer.

Now he's valiantly fighting for the right of kids to think that they're cool by smoking Kool, or whatever Kool cigarette is currently doing the rounds in its brand new branding ... while shedding a tear for all those precious hours spent conniving in a conspiratorial way to design brands to deceive, such that the fate of Marlboro Man becomes a truly pitiful parable for our times.

Never mind, three of the men who played the Marlboro Man part might have died of lung cancer, but when there's a clear-cut choice between saving someone from acquiring lung cancer and saving the brands the decision for any right-thinking advertising man is clear-cut. Go with the brands ... and to hell with the kids.

Why, once the chortling's done, there's barely eough time to note the splendid piece by Roy Williams in The Punch - sure sign of pure blonde brewtopia - dubbed Atheists shouldn't damn the Bible with faint praise, in which he complains that a love of the bible as literature is, well frankly, at best jejune, and at worst misplaced and insincere, and treating the King James bible as a sort of elite cultural icon (perhaps enjoyed by early morning inner urban latte sippers over a coffee, with chardonnay chaser).

Williams babbles and blathers on in a charming way that suggests he understands little of art or authorship, or complexity of response to a text - it's as if you can only read Hamlet if you swallow Hamlet's philosophical line on everything - and to prove his deep seated philistinism, in the end disavows the King James Version almost entirely and the team who put it together:

Those redoubtable men would surely rejoice, however, that there are billions of Christians in the world today. And they’d not care, I wager, that most Christians no longer use the KJV.

We now have even more accurate translations. None may be as beautiful as the KJV, but they are readily accessible to the modern reader. And that’s the main game.

Yes, forget art, literature, and poetry, dumbing down and conversion is the name of the game. Ready accessibility, and perhaps the bible as a truly accessible online video game is what the world needs. What a splendidly myopic Christian ...

And that barely allows time to mention a most whimsical talk by A. C. Grayling on his own version of the Good Book, which you can still catch on Radio National, here, as the station records the 2011 Sydney Writers' Festival. There's more wit and fun in five minutes of Grayling - and a nice discussion of the King James Version as literature - than can be found in a year of reading The Punch.

And so, since somehow we've been returned to religion, a final word on the rapture.

I was reminded by Rachel Maddow of the best way to confront the end of the world, with her segment on how make a Last Word cocktail suitable for the occasion (video here).

It reminded me of the splendid bit of end of world nonsense conjured up by Stephen Colbert sending up Glenn Beck's hysterical, apocalyptic, gold-selling and end of world 'get your seeds and bunkers now' flogging for his sponsors and survivalist true believers, as week in week out he peddles conspiracy theories and paranoid nonsense (videos here).

Amazingly Beck, after years of selling this kind of delusional rubbish, had the cheek to send up the hapless bunch of most recent millenarian tossers (Glenn Beck makes fun of apocalypse warnings -- because they're not his).

Which in turn reminded me of how much Rupert Murdoch makes out of peddling such Beckian crap, with a a "no care, no responsibility" editorial policy ...

And that in turn reminded me of an excellent piece by Jacob Weisberg, Fantasy Island Are Republicans losing their grip on reality?, wherein he contemplated a number of current Republican absurdities, including "evolution versus creationism", balancing the US Federal budget and conducting government business at a feasible level without raising taxes, climate change, birtherism, and so on, constituting a kind of impossible mental White Queen Shangri-La stream of ratbag claptrap, driven by a fundamentalist fringe to which moderates must cede ground:

The GOP rank and file is in desperate need of a cold shower, a slap in the face, a wake-up call. But instead of telling the base to get a grip on reality, the party's leaders are chasing after the delusional mob. To get to the front of the line in 2012, Republican candidates must pretend to believe a lot of nonsense than isn't so. Or do they actually believe it?

Who knows, but there a lot of people happy to cultivate the delusions and use them to turn the sheep their way. Just like Family Radio ...

The way that Republicans are searching around frantically for somebody, anybody, other than Sarah Palin to head up the team in 2012 - she can see Alaska from her window - suggests the hole they've dug for themselves.

Which in turn reminded me of the one sensible response to all this, following on from Maddow, and that's the stand that the impossibly suave and elegant George Sanders took in Cecil B. DeMille's 1949 sword and sandal pic Samson and Delilah.

When that triple decked smoked ham roll known as Victor Mature at last succeeds in toppling the pagan temple, aided and abetted by Hedy Lamarr, George as the Saran of Gaza, simply lifts his glass and toasts Delilah, before disappearing beneath the masonry.

Would that we could all confront the end with such elegant style.

Sadly of course the real George killed himself with nembutal at the age of 65, leaving behind a note:

Dear World, I am leaving because I am bored. I feel I have lived long enough. I am leaving you with your worries in this sweet cesspool. Good luck.

Sad really, but after reading all this blather on a Monday, I'm beginning to understand where he's coming from.

Waiter, bring me that Maddow cocktail. Between supposedly reformed smokers, Christians renouncing the King James version because it's inaccessible and too poetic, Sarah Palin, Victor Mature and George Sanders, I vote for a suave response to the divine comedy ...

(Below: and here's how George drank his cocktail, and if you're too miserly to spring for a dvd, and need some retro kitsch, the whole show is currently up on YouTube, starting here. Intellectual property rights? Talk to the hand).