Of Tim Blair, Kevin Donnelly, motor cars, the bible and all the usual stuff from half-baked commentariat scribblers who think they're today's Ciceros

(Above: dubbed by Tim Blair The single greatest item in the history of clothing, here. What a sick, tortured, perverted mind he has, and don't worry, he's so sick, tortured and perverted, he'd take those adjectives as compliments, the twisted fucker. Remember, he only does it to tease, and to dog whistle, and lordy does he have plenty of dumb hounds to whistle to).

Speaking of urban myths, a few days ago, the Sydney Morning Herald's Column 8 ran this little bit of Nostradamus-like commentary, attributing it to Cicero writing in 55BC:

The budget should be balanced, the treasury should be refilled, public debt should be reduced, the arrogance of officialdom should be tempered and controlled, and the assistance to foreign lands should be curtailed lest Rome become bankrupt. People must again learn to work, instead of living on public assistance.

Cicero as a wise old ancient Tea Partier? The Romans ahead of their times, and the font of Judeo-Christian civilisation, and never mind the pagan gods?

Too cute? Too pat? Of course it is, and if you google the phrase, you'll discover it's either (a) part of a much reduced actual quotation (b) sourced from a historical novel featuring Cicero or (c) nothing to do with Cicero at all.

The Herald palmed responsibility for the gobbet off on its contributing reader - without explaining why it didn't thank him for sending in an emyth - and relax, I didn't pay for this misinformation, I picked the rag up for free while on the way to Mahler's Ninth (and a fine Ninth it was too, thanks Maestro and the SSO).

But it's a reminder that while reading papers these days, and the commentariat, distortions, misinformation, and downright deceptions are all grist to the mill, and that opinion pieces are merely opinion, an untimely mix of hot air, blather, and bullshit. The Ciceros of our times.

Like this little effort from Tim Blair in David E. Davis:

I’d developed an appreciation for Davis’s work beyond any connection to O’Rourke. He was an automotive advocate, who saw in cars the meaning of a free people. (here)

It's part of a heartfelt obituary for Davis, involving P. J. O'Rourke and Davis rolling an MG and scraping his face, some kind of unique automotive achievement and party anecdote, but let's flip that a little:

I’d developed an appreciation for Blanchett’s work beyond any connection to Utpon. She was a theatre advocate, who saw in the stage the meaning of a free people.

Yes, it's complete Cicero wankerdom, and you can imagine if your average hippy led with that kind of rhetorical claptrap, the kind of serve they'd get from a Blair or a Bolt for being wankers.

Blair is a mystical worshipper at the shrine of the motor car, and as deluded as the followers of Harold Camping. Is it possible, in a Freudian way, that his relentless, monotonous, completely unscientific opposition to climate science is due to the threat it poses to the oil industry, and thereby to the eight cylinder automobile, now with extra baboon grunt?

Is that why the industry dragged Allan Moffat out of the boondocks to sell the supercharged Boss 335 GT in a brand spanking new campaign, which I momentarily spotted in a momentary visit to free to air television (Allan Moffat turns up the volume on the supercharged Boss 335 GT in new campaign).

Yep, the boofheads are still out there, even if they now have to drag out a superannuated touring car driver to deliver the pitch.

It helps explain how Joe Hockey could think that this metaphor would work for his chosen demographic:

"We've said that we will deliver a national broadband policy," he said.
"Today the Government is rolling out a Bentley to every Australian. We believe that we can as a nation only afford a Commodore at the moment.
"But from our perspective, it does a very similar job." (here).

Hey Joe, haven't you heard? The idea's to get a huge level of performance in a family sized Australian sedan, so you can obliterate the local opposition and make life tough for Euro hot rods at twice the price, and all for a humble $75k. Remember, being a modded Ford makes all the difference ...

Still the question remains Joe, regarding your class-based metaphor. Instead of talking Bentley, are we just talking a crappy Commodore that will expire in a couple of years, as wireless disappears up its over-crowded fundament, or are we talking a decent supercharger with serious low down grunt? Or is your current broadband policy just half-baked and half-arsed?

Speaking of jolly Joe, what fun to learn today that there are tensions between him and Tony Abbott, as reported in You left me swinging: Joe to Tony. Sadly it's only about family trusts, and Warren Truss and the Nationals and agrarian socialists looking at ways of avoiding paying taxes, so the question remains when the Liberal moderates will realise that they need to cobble together better alternative policies in relation to broadband and climate change, if they're to appeal to swinging motors like me. (Sorry ... voters).

Or end up sounding like Tim Blair on valium, or a car with the grunt of a three cylinder Suzuki.

Hurry Joe, big Mal is on the prowl with a loose mouth, and the precious is rightly yours ...

Sorry about all those car metaphors, but it makes a change from talking about end of world religious loons.

Speaking of religious loons, it's got so that it's impossible to go anywhere near the ABC - it's your ABC, not mine - such is the toxic degradation of the brand currently in progress.

The current affairs slot at 7.30 pm is much diminished, a fatally flawed re-badging with inept interviewers at the helm, the likes of Q&A merely serves for rabble rousing, but nowhere is the rabble more roused than online at The Drum, which manages to make The Punch look like a seemly bunch of intellectuals just escaped from a bout of coffee drinking in the inner west.

Evidence? Look no further than Kevin Donnelly's curious rant, All cultures and religions are not created equal. It's a few days old now, which is a tad troubling because it reads like a bunch of fish heads left over from the culture wars, and instead of being turned into an elegant soup, it now stinks to high heaven.

Of course in the online world it delivers what matters, which is over four hundred hits and counting.

That it also delivers bile, prejudice and little sense doesn't count at all.

Donnelly's thesis is the usual nonsense about Christians being good and Islamics being bad, because after all Islam is prone to violence, and so we must be very careful about allowing any study of Islam in schools:

Ignored is what some see as the inherently violent nature of the Koran, where devout Muslims are called on to carry out Jihad and to convert non-believers, and the destructive nature of what is termed dhimmis – where non-believers are forced to accept punitive taxation laws.

You have to wonder where gherkins like Donnelly were, blathering about the inherently violent nature of the Koran, when two world wars broke out last century.

The first world war was a tribute to the inherently violent nature of European countries, long dubbed Christian, and long inclined to imperial and colonial adventures. Germany, home of the Protestant reformation, might cop the blame, but all of them were in on it, in an arms race and a 'paint the world map your favourite colour' routine that suggests the inherently violent nature of Christian countries.

Ditto the second world war, where Germany cops the blame, but let's not let off the hook that inherently violent papist country Italy, or any of the other inherently Christian countries that joined in, and gleefully participated in the extermination of Jews. Okay, the blame game can be shared around with communists and Stalinists and such like, and the Japanese, inclined to a peculiar mix of ancestor worship, Buddhism and Shintoism, but where pray tell, are the inherently violent Koranists in all this? (The best you can say about the Asian sub-continent's contribution to the second world war was that it was half-hearted and mixed up with anti-colonial endeavours ...)

And where were the Islamics during the series of Crusades during the medieval ages which saw the Europeans bung on a series of dos because fighting the Islamics was the done thing? Fighting back, but long gone the plans to shift from Spain and take over the rest of Europe (I was recently re-reading Steven Runciman's History of the Crusades and it's still a mighty fine read for the lay reader. If you want to get a whiff of Runicman's style, there's a neat excerpt here describing the 1212 The Children's Crusades).

Of course the easy way to have a go at Donnelly would be to recite all the various acts detailed in the bible, performed by god against humanity, with god's full approval, ranging from a holocaust to sundry wars and whimsical forms of persecution (watch out for the shellfish folks). Not to mention the deeds done in god's name by acolytes of god, performed against various tribes, peoples, nations, women and homosexuals.

But we haven't got all year, let alone all day, so let's just take that as read.

It would in fact do the world of good for students to be given a course in comparative religions, and thereby study the various absurdities as well as the various noble arguments of the major religions, and so notice the eerie similarities of the pitch to the mug punters.

After all, stripped of his metaphysical and mystical elements, Christ isn't a bad subject for an ethics 101 course, as suggested by Thomas Jefferson when he stripped out all the miracles in his version of the bible, and turned it into The Life and Morals of Jesus of Nazareth.

With a bit of luck, by the end of such a course, a student might come to the closer in Donnelly's piece and realise what a ratbag he is, as he blathers on about Christians, Muslims, quotes George Pell approvingly, and berates the notion of multicultural teaching explained in a booklet Learning From One Another: Brining Muslim Perspectives into Australian Schools:

The statement in the book that, “Students will come to appreciate that there are many valid worldviews and perspectives” ignores the reality that some worldviews are preferable to others and some religious and cultural practices are un-Australian.

Un-Australian?

The most odious and un-Australian concept in the dictionary, and so we dub Kevin Donnelly completely and utterly un-Australian for his use of the word "un-Australian" as a way of explaining how others are more "un-Australian" than he is ...

Why he even manages to make Tim Blair and motor cars sound respectably Australian ...

As for the pond, if belief in Donnelly and the Pellist heresy and the follies of Christianity is what makes you Australian, we are of course proudly Un-Australian ...

(Below: Leunig on the anthem, click to enlarge, and a little memory of the joys of being an Australian in a beach riot).