Christopher Pearson, the anon edit at The Australian, and eek, watch out, the inner city trendies are ruining the world yet again ...

(Above: the drink of choice for inner city elites, also commonly known as the spawn of Satan).

It's been noted and agreed by many that being a member of the chattering commentariat class, blathering away in the media, is not so bad as being a real life serial killer.

Metaphorical killing with words, like killing with kindness or being struck dumb by stupidity, isn't quite as problematic as actual killing.

Which brings us neatly to Christopher Pearson and Abbott opens new front against tax, wherein Pearson manages to contemplate climate change science without once mentioning the science, instead spending all his time on the politics, and so in quite a casual way, kills the concept of meaningful debate.

I take that back.

There is one key reference, to "catastrophic predictions of global warming", and it follows this paragraph:

Coronation Hill was a cultural fraud based on a 1970s reinvention of Jawoyn mythography, which claimed that the implacable spirit Bula would blight the land and its people if hitherto unobjectionable mining activity resumed.

From a dreaming myth to climate science is a logical step in the fevered brow of Pearson, because the next sentence is:

The similarities with catastrophic predictions of global warming are clear enough.

Yes, the similarities between the Aboriginal dreaming and climate science are utterly clear ... if you happen to be a doofus of the first water, and a climate denialist prone to killing concepts with outrageous metaphors.

Contrary to Pearson's claims, and irrespective of the mythology of the "sickness country", the sky didn't fall in simply because Kakadu National Park was expanded in a way that precluded mining at Guratba (beware indigenous words, they can shock and kill), though Bob Hawke later believed his decision to stand with indigenous people was a turning point in his career. (And some would argue this is as delusional as Hawke's inability to understand Keating's feral ambitions and over-estimate his ability to control them).

A better test of the result of Hawke's decision might be to take a trip to Kakadu and see how much better the place feels as a tourist destination without mining scarring the landscape, whether or not Bula was used to achieve that end.

The rest of Pearson's piece is standard cheerleading for Tony Abbott and his current bout of negativity. Apart from the lengthy sideswipe at Hawke's recent step up to the plate, there's a side swipe at garrulous Gough, and then a querulous question.

How many under thirties will Bob reach in his recent return to the podium to endorse Gillard?

Indeed. About as many as Christopher Pearson's columns, which is to say three fifths of fuck all ...

So when you read Pearson blathering on about Tim Flannery and the 'climate change cheer squad' and a very late breaking arrival at the scene of the crime of Cate Blanchett, we're deep in the heart of irrelevancy:

They're celebrities with big incomes and carbon footprints to match. When the sharp end of the carbon tax debate is about cost-of-living pressures and jobs, why would you expect anyone to pay much attention to either of them?

Indeed. In much the same way as I wouldn't expect anyone to pay much attention to the self-serving, self-regarding blathering of a gay and climate change denialist, Cardinal Pell-fellow travelling, Ian Plimer celebrating, Catholic conservative Pearson.

That's how easy it is with Pearson.

Just return fire in the same style, and never mind that the result's as light and as useful as stuffing ping pong balls in the mouths of the Laughing Clowns at the show. At best you get to win a plaster of paris statue.

So when addressing Garnaut's latest report, never mind the contents, concentrate on the style:

Of Ross Garnaut's performance in handing over his last report, perhaps the less said the better. Once again, the lack of someone able to persuade him to tone down his gushing enthusiasm for Labor's policy deprived his endorsement of most of its force.

How about a peer review? Nope, gushing enthusiasm is the killer diller.

So what's left in the read? Well there's a celebration of Abbott touring mining and manufacturing electorates to fear monger, with the "we're all doomed I tells ya" routine seen as very effective. And sure to do wonders for Australia and the world if climate science turns out to be even half right ...

And then there's a little fear mongering by Pearson himself, as he takes up 'discussion' on an internet site that China is trying to reduce its reliance on Australian iron ore, and instead is looking to cheap deposits in New Guinea and West Africa ... and never mind that Australian miners have also been looking to exploit such deposits.

Yep, it's another variant that the sky is falling in, the mining boom is temporary, and unless we vote in Dr. No, all will be lost.

So it's just as well that climate science is as fraudulent as Aboriginal dreaming mythology ... and we can get down to the serious business of digging up the entire country and shipping it to China, and without any nasty taxes that might reduce the incentive of Gina and Twiggy to get even more filthy rich ...

But here's the thing.

Besides assuring us that the economy will be ruined and the sky will fall in, what will Abbott do by way of policy in relation to climate science if indeed the sky does begin to fall in, and food shortages and higher food prices begin to produce the instability recently seen in the middle east? (Climate change will cause food insecurity). His current proposal for big government direct action intervention is unsustainable and he knows it. Why will no one talk about the elephant in the conservative free market room? Except for Malcolm Turnbull ...

The only thing constant is change, and the only thing the conservative mind seems incapable of handling is the notion of perpetual change, necessary even if all you want is to keep things the same, and so we have the bizarre sight of conservatives who believe in free markets celebrating a policy which involves heavy handed government intervention ... if you can spot it hiding amongst the fear mongering, 'the sky is falling down' campaigning ...

Which naturally brings us to the anonymous editorialist at The Australian and the new mantra of the commentariat.

I swear the anon edit only does it to generate more hair on the palms, or to drive readers insane.

Only a few days after David McKnight scribbled Role reversal as Liberals belt Labor with class war rhetoric, and observed the tendency of the commentariat to blather on about inner city elites as shadowy, all-purpose targets of hate, the anon edit shows how it's done:

Labor has become disconnected from the suburban, aspirational, working families who hold the key, not just to political success, but to the wellbeing of the nation. Ms Gillard and her coterie must do more than pay lip service to Labor's traditional base. Since the Gough Whitlam years, Labor has deliberately appealed to both the suburbanites and the inner-city trendies. But during the high point of post-war Labor, the Hawke-Keating era, nobody was in any doubt that mainstream Australia provided Labor's ballast. There was no sense of the party abandoning its base until Paul Keating lost his way after 1993 and voters turned on him. The "working families" and economic conservative rhetoric of "Kevin07" paid homage to the suburbs and reaped the dividends, but the story since then has been desultory.

On the face of it, or just below the surface, or deep down in a coal mine, this sort of rhetoric is so utterly stupid that it beggars belief that a rag destined to be read by the AB demographic - or OG1s if you will - could be bothered to peddle it as a serious observation of Australia's recent political history.

But wait there's more, and of course it's all to do with the nanny state:

Shrill campaigns against poker machines, alcopops and cigarette packaging, and against sexist interjections in parliament, share the condescending tone of a pious political class telling mainstream Australians what's good for them.

Could any of these campaigns be as shrill as the pompous jerk who scribbles the anonymous editorials for The Australian, and who seems contrariwise to think that ...

... poker machines flooding the country and destroying compulsive gambling lives are a jolly good thing, as are alcopops ruining the minds of the young and generating street violence, as is cigarette addiction killing people and overloading the health system, as are sexist interjections reducing the level of parliamentary and public debate to a mooh cow in a mooh farm.

Well miaow to that load of fruitloopery, bias and prejudice ...

Now the sixty four dollar question. How long before socialist George Orwell's name is used in vain?

This hectoring tone pervades the entire Labor agenda. It can been seen in the Orwellian overreach of a national internet filter and even in the reregulation of the labour market, which is based on the assumption that individuals cannot be trusted to strike their own bargains. This posturing runs the risk of setting Labor at war with its base.

Okay, okay, perhaps Senator Conroy is Orwellian, but you see, if you think that, by definition you must be one of the inner city trendies who want to see pornography saturate the intertubes and ruin western civilisation as we know it.

Suburbanites by definition are as pure as the blondes in Brewtopia, land of perfectly chilled beer, free of pornography, and home to sweet Ayran souls chanting funky hymns to Jesus at Hillsong ...

Yes there's nothing like windblown stereotypes freshly picked and scattered like hay in the morning wind.

There's plenty more as the anon edit goes wild cat feral bashing Gillard in After almost a year, the real Julia is a mystery, but take a strong stomach with you.

By the end of it, where does it get us?

Well we have to revert to Ms Gillard's maiden speech, and we thank the anon edit for reminding us of her reflections on what reading too much of the Murdoch press can do to a sometimes fragile grasp on reality:

Perhaps Ms Gillard encapsulated the dilemma best in her maiden speech to parliament on Remembrance Day 1998: "The end result of this journalistic cycle is a weary people who no longer believe what journalists scribble and who think the journalists scribbling it do not even believe it themselves."

Quite, anon edit, quite.

Thanks to you we know it's not the international bankers or the Jews we should fear, it's the inner city trendies.

(Below: oh just give me some ping pong balls, or perhaps keep on shoving tripe down the throats of a richly deserving inner city elite readership).