In which the pond considers the total uselessness of an Australian perspective, and the utter uselessness of The Australian ...

(Above: as the conspiracy theories start to roll out, we'd like to file a bug report in advance, or at least remind you that xkcd is here).

In the old days, visitors to Australia's shores were usually asked by media representatives - preferably within three minutes of landing - what they thought of Australia/Sydney/ Melbourne/ the beaches/the lifestyle/the country/the people/the barbeques - and by golly, the visitor better deliver with some flattering thoughts, or they'd be dismissed as toffy nosed snobs, with the wrong attitude to the dinkum chosen land and its people, which in a modest and under-stated way, just happens to be paradise on earth.

It was charmingly parochial, but these days, the meme has taken on new life, with a fresh zingy lemonade twist.

It now behooves media representatives to ask Australian politicians how much they knew about the scheme to kill Bin Laden, when they were first informed, why weren't they told when it was happening, why weren't they involved in the plot months ago, were Australian security or intelligence officers involved, and so on and so forth, in a desperate flourishing of parochialism, as they attempt to find some or any link with the great deed, and if not a link, then surely to discover a great slight, because we've been shut in the broom closet and treated like mushrooms yet again, despite our being such loyal allies.

Are we safe, is the alliance secure, do the Americans still love us, why weren't we told, and so on and on, yadda yadda, Seinfeld style ...

It was the bloody Australian perspective gone bloody, irritatingly mad, and mostly it was about nothing.

As if the United States was going to go around the world announcing that it was about to top the head terrorist to any stray government official who might care to listen in on the plot ...

Such are the days of our media lives in a small, parochial country served by a small, incestuous and parochial mob of reporters who should know better when it comes to devising intelligent questions.

Fortunately Pakistan being kept in the broom closet has now taken over as a story, but if I hear one more reporter go on a fishing expedition searching for an Australian connection, I swear to god I'll send Jason Bourne after them to teach them a lesson.

To be fair, we're not the only bunch of parochial gits, as you can tell if you troop off to the Daily Express to Is swoop on Bin Laden the reason why Prince William and Kate delayed their honeymoon?

Yes, of course, the royal couple were absolutely shattered not to be spending their time in their home away from home Abbottabad, after receiving firm warnings from MI5 to abandon their plans.

Of course the naughty palace tried to hose down the speculation, by saying Kate and William had made up their minds, made their "personal decision" to stay in country, weeks before the wedding.

As if anyone would believe that kind of dissembling, especially if it stopped an honest story using an honest question mark in the header from linking the wedding and the honeymoon with the Pakistan killing to ensure a double bunger page stopper.

You know how this technique works: Will assassination of bin Laden stop the pond from visiting New York and watching The Book of Mormon?

So it's drag in a couple of "experts", give the flight of honeymoon failure a surge of speculative "security" energy, and round out the piece with a re-hash of where the royal couple might eventually spend their honeymoon. Look out Lizard island!

Desperate times for desperate journo folks ...

Meanwhile, the loons went immediately into full squawking and flapping flight (Osama conspiracy theorists find a home on the web) which leads to the bizarre scenario of revenge terrorist attacks for a death that apparently never happened (Taliban promises revenge attacks for bin Laden's death). Only in America, where the visceral hatred of self takes on a weird bizarro dimension ...

And to be fair, in Australia as well, because as usual Punch-drunk David Penberthy jumps the shark in The deserved demise of the man who changed us all, by elevating bin Laden, and putting him alongside Hitler and Stalin.

But then Penberthy jumps so many sharks and nukes so many fridges - it's the price of a tabloid mind - that it's a wonder he didn't link bin Laden with Satan. Oh wait, he gets there in the end:

The idea of bin Laden arriving in the hereafter to learn that he’s been sold a pup, that there are no virgins but just a burning, eternal hell, is quite a pleasing one.

Well if bin Laden's been sold a pup, what about all the other mug punters clutching at their various mugs and pups?

As it is, the pond is also guaranteed a place in burning eternal hell, thanks to the Catholic church, and a willingness to think outside the square, rather like a Toowoomba bishop ... No big deal. I guess if there's no virgins, there's also likely to be no eternal rounds of eighteen holes of golf. Suddenly roasting chestnuts or marshmallows in hellfire mightn't be so bad ...

The point of Penberthy's thesis is, never mind the body count, look at the way the world has changed, which is just as well, because bin Laden inspired terrorists can't manage a reign of terror remotely up there with what people do to each other with motor cars (let alone the sixty odd million knocked over in World War 11 with the help of Hitler, Stalin, and the allies).

Rather bin Laden's up there in the galaxy of superstar madmen because he's changed us all.

You see, there's a direct equivalence between going through the irritation of a security check at an airport and checking into a gas chamber to cop a dose of zyklon B, or perhaps living through the fire bombing of Dresden or the nuking of Hiroshima or the devastation of Coventry.

There are so many stupid people in the world, so please explain why so many of them work for Rupert Murdoch.

And let's not forget Time magazine, because in a piece of hasty sensationalist market-driven venality, this week the rag will hand bin Laden a cover which puts him in the company of Hitler, further debasing the idea because such covers were also offered to tin pot dictator Saddam Hussein and Iraq Al Qaeda leader Abu Musab al-Zarqawi. It's tough times in the magazine game.

The western media is surely the best friend the terrorists have, what with their incessant clucking, tut tutting and fear mongering, 24/7, 365/12, navel gazing and obsessing over a small band of fanatics. Only the navel gazers in news organisations think this is what people need in their lives ...

You can't find a better example of this anywhere up against the sanctimonious righteous piece by the anonymous editorialist in The Australian, which takes the assassination as another moment to poke at the ABC with a stick, in News never seems easy at ABC.

The anon edit's piece is so far up itself that the anon edit is able to see light at the end of the tunnel:

Given News Limited's corporate investment in the successful Sky News channel (which went to the bin Laden story 20 minutes before the ABC's 24-hour news channel) it would perhaps be in The Australian's commercial interests to leave the ABC to its lumbering ways. But we are fiercely concerned about the stewardship of taxpayers' money and the ABC's ability to perform its proper duty in the national interest.

Twenty minutes! Now what could the ordinary average man manage in twenty minutes? Oh okay, ten. Oh alright, five.

No wonder The Australian and its minions hate the notion of the NBN, because anyone with an interest in world events will have discovered the bin Laden news breaking faster on the full to overflowing intertubes than on Sky or ABC 24, and with much more direct relevance to the story.

The tubes is where I got all my coverage from, and it was more than enough, since it allowed me to go to the source of most of the information, which was Washington D.C.

As for the rest of the anon edit's ranting, wouldn't you know it, but they complete the virtuous circle with this pathetic observation:

It says a lot about the ABC that on Monday, when one of the biggest news stories of the decade was breaking, its primary television station first continued to broadcast Monarch of the Glen and then, when it was the last network to go to coverage of Osama bin Laden's death, it switched to Qatar-based broadcaster, al-Jazeera. So much for an Australian perspective.

You dim witted twit. First of all there's nothing wrong with al-Jazeera, unless you adopt the standard racist tone that it's a funny kind of middle eastern Arab outfit, and possibly associated with terrorists.

And second it's been the bloody Australian perspective that's been so bloody exasperating, with a bunch of 'experts' talking from their armchairs miles from the action or the power base which made the events unfold. But now we no longer need to worry about recycled hackery in Australia when the intertubes will take us elsewhere. Roll on the NBN ...

The Oz goes on to talk about the ABC's coverage as an epic failure, and to deliver a lecture on how to conduct appropriate hysterical coverage, News Corp style, and it reminded me that it'll be a cold day in hell, roasting chestnuts and chatting with bin Laden, before I shell out a cent for News Corp product ...

(Below: the pond's conspiracy theory for the day. The ABC has planted a double agent in the editorial rooms of The Australian, so that each day a ludicrous editorial can be written by an anonymous editorialist in a way that makes the ABC look good, and the Murdoch press a preening cockerel with its beak up its bum).