Gerard Henderson, and the Lone Ranger's thoughts on a clumsy pedant ...

(Above: links to the Tom Tomorrow archives - oh the good old days of the Bush years - here).

A week or so ago the pond came across this poignant analysis:

I worry about Gerard Henderson, really. He has a chronic case of corresponditis -- the inability, at the end of a protracted exchange of letters, to allow his correspondent to have the last word. Whenever clinicians consider this affliction they go straight to the Sydney Institute’s Media Watch Dog website. It is a case study in fanaticism, always a worrying state-of-mind in public life.

It is said that the definition of a fanatic is someone who redoubles his efforts when all is lost. This captures the Henderson method. Even when he is hopelessly wrong, he keeps churning out correspondence. Write a letter raising the slightest hint of criticism and he will send you a post office-full of replies. Al Gore might have invented the internet but by sheer weight of emails, Gerard is close to busting it.

Al Gore? Didn't he invent global warming too?

But back to our correspondent, who after listing assorted Henderson errors, and making nefarious suggestions of Sydney Institute ghost writing, comes to this problematic conclusion:

The other inconsistency in Henderson’s work is ideological. As a conservative he should respect freedom of expression in civil society. On June 2, on Sky News’ The Nation, however, he argued that Cate Blanchett, Tim Flannery and Tim Costello should not publicly support the introduction of a carbon tax because they use carbon-reliant aeroplanes. As an extension of this logic, it would be hypocritical for someone living comfortably on Sydney's lower north shore, rubbing shoulders with Australia's business and political elites in a corporate-subsidised job, to have spent the past 25 years advocating labour market deregulation and lower wages for Australia’s working poor. But that’s Gerard Henderson (aka Viren Nathoo) for you.

Oh dear, who could this masked outrageous literary bandit be?

Tear off the mask, and you'll find it's none other than that Lone Ranger, Mark Latham, scribbling furiously in Crikey, but sadly behind the paywall, with Latham: Gerard Henderson suffers from chronic corresponditis.

Well as a respecter of intellectual property rights, we won't be printing all the thoughts of a man comfortable mangling the arms of taxi drivers and the contradictory hypocritical thinking of Gerard Henderson - Henderson probably thinks of Latham as water off a loon's back - but it does set a nice tone as we contemplate Henderson's latest offering, A time for Australia's consolidation, not isolation, on carbon emissions.

Yep, it's more of the repetitive same, how Australia is setting off at the head of the pack, and will surely come to irreparable harm in the matter of tackling climate change issues. And with it comes some startling insights:

As followers of the US media know, there is almost no debate on climate change there.

Hang on, hang on, isn't Al Gore the anti-christ? Didn't he win an Oscar for being the anti-christ?

Wouldn't a better phrasing have been: As followers of the US media know, there is almost no debate on climate change amongst the chattering US political class, because with the economy down the tube, most of them, Obama included, have put it into the too hard basket, while most Republicans are still enthusiastic about the Rapture as the solution to the planet's problems.

You can of course find plenty of debate on climate change, but as if in a surreal dream, Henderson manages to wipe away poor old Mitt Romney's acknowledgment of climate change as real and likely humans having something to do with it.

As a result of Romney's indiscretion, the conservative commentariat went into a frenzy, and Romney will no doubt keep on copping a bucketing, as this prediction of the GOP debate suggests:

Mitt Romney is the closest thing this race has to a front-runner, and the best way for everyone else to get some attention is to attack him. And he's easy to attack! He invented Obamacare, used to be pro-choice, and recently acted very proud of himself for still believing in climate change. He's also terribly unctuous and phony.

Uh huh. How pleasing that there's almost no debate on climate change in the United States, except when it comes to bashing Al Gore ... and Mitt Romney, currently in the lead in polls in the GOP candidate race (and The Book of Mormon has won nine Tony Awards - could this be the start of a Mormon trend? What a fun show it was ...)

Well without wanting to sound like Mark Latham - though I wouldn't mind breaking the odd Sydney taxi driver's arm, if only in a metaphorical way - you can read the rest of Henderson's piece, and come up with your own favourite bit of dissembling, and distortion of the truth.

For the most part, Henderson's keenly interested in proving that the Productivity Commission doesn't know what it's talking about - no mandate, problematic findings - as opposed to Gerard Henderson, who of course - it almost goes without saying - does.

Somehow along the way we return to the matter of debate:

There is intensive debate over climate change but insufficient attention is focused on the implications for Australia of real events on the international and domestic stage.

Uh huh. So there's almost no debate, but at the same time there's an intensive - or even intense - debate over climate change in Australia, but quite possibly only because domestic debate in Australia is surprisingly insular. As opposed to insular American debate about poor old Mitt Romney. And as one of Australia's leading insular debaters, Gerard Henderson surely knows what he's talking about ...

As insularity exhibit A, Henderson spends most of his column establishing that no one's doing anything, no one's really worried, and therefore there's simply no point doing anything. In an astonishing feat he even manages to draw the middle east into the debate, along with the Islamist Muslim brotherhood:

Third, the Middle East remains in disarray with evident civil insurrections in Libya and Syria. Egypt remains the leading Arab nation and no one knows where it will end up after the coming election. It's possible that a genuine democratic government will emerge. But it's also possible that the Islamist Muslim Brotherhood will increase its influence.

Yes, you bleeding hearts, the Islamist Muslim Brotherhood might be on the rise. Now where does that leave your silly concern with climate change science.

And then comes a classic Henderson as victim phrase:

It is unfashionable to say this ...

Of course when you read the remark that's supposedly unfashionable, it turns out to be remarkably banal, to the point of fatuity ...

... but Israel and, to a lesser extent, Iraq are the only two democracies in the Middle East. Continuing instability in the region could lead to continuing high oil prices which will have a deleterious effect on the US economy.

Yes, it might be unfashionable to carry on interminably repeating over and over again conservative commentariat talking points, but of course for the paranoid commentariat, it's a badge of honour to be unfashionable and monotonously repetitive.

Naturally Henderson also manages to work in an alarum about Fair Work Australia and the re-regulation of the economy and a decline in full-time employment and the two speed economy ... and did I mention we're all doomed, doomed, I tells ya, so let's forget all that hysteria by climate warmistas because all they can lead as an argument is that we're all doomed, doomed I tells ya ...

It all builds to a final par of special pleading:

The times indicate a need for consolidation. But, instead, Labor, with the encouragement of the Greens and some independents, plans to introduce a carbon tax that would impose a greater burden on Australian businesses in relation to most of our competitors and some of our trading partners. It doesn't make sense.

Uh huh. Here's a couple of questions I'd love Gerard Henderson to answer in a couple of words in a column. Of course it'll never happen, and certainly not in a couple of words, as opposed to dissembling, evasive, equivocating words of a humbugging kind.

First, does the weight of evidence support current thinking in climate science by the majority of scientists?

If so, should Australia be seen to be doing something about it? Would that advantage future generations in an already very dry continent/island, call it what you will, surrounded by sea, and already inclined to extreme weather events?

If you answer in the affirmative - as Tony Abbott seemingly answers - that the weight of evidence suggests the climate needs a break, is Abbott's solution - a big government intervention - the best one?

Why, after contemplating the entirety of the Productivity Commission report, does Henderson refuse to mention whether a market based solution is a better device than the current Leninist proposals of the Liberal party?

Is he at one with Guy Rundle when he asks Are the Liberals right?

Bizarrely, it is something like the Coalition's Direct Action plan, with its proposals for state action on a grand scale that would be closer to the mark - if there was any action in it, such as winding down the coal industry.

State action on a grand scale? Is that Henderson's idea of a decent policy?

Of course Rundle hastily ends his sojourn in to heresy:

Absent of such, it is the opposite: the age old technique of the right - leaving profits in private hands and transferring the costs to the public.

Of course you'll not get in depth consideration of Abbott's alternative plans from Henderson because they simply don't stack up. Should Abbott get into office, it's likely he'll either (a) do nothing, or (b) be persuaded to revert to a market-based solution by colleagues. For the moment, it's just a show of heat, with bugger all light ...

The Liberal party's current policies could only be conceived on the basis that tokenism is sufficient for a problem that doesn't really exist, and isn't a concern to Australia or Australians, not while we can keep digging the country up and shipping it to China ...

Ah well, Latham had a remedy, and I feel with a few touch ups, it could be made to apply to Sydney taxi drivers and to Gerard Henderson:

I have consulted experts across the globe about this affliction. They say there is only one remedy for corresponditis and columnitis. Henderson needs to write less. Brevity will deliver greater accuracy and less hypocrisy in his work. So Gerard, old chum, put away your stamps and envelopes, your letter-file is full, as are your fawning columns designed for special pleading rather than providing a rigorous examination of policies which allows the chips to fall where they may ... and where even the Productivity Commission might have a few more insights than are allowed for in your philosophies Polonius (oh dear, putting words in the mouth of Mark Latham? Does this mean I owe him an apology? An apology to Mark Latham? Eek?)

Ah well, just to play fair, let's leave the last word to a dinkum Latham quote:

He certainly knows how to make errors. For every mistake he identifies in the work of his political targets, he makes one himself -- the mother of all hypocrisy. His standing in Australian public life is unique, as a clumsy pedant. This shortcoming runs deep, with scores of stuff-ups pinned to Henderson’s file.

A clumsy pedant? Why that makes the pond's talk of desiccated coconut seem positively kind.

Meanwhile, can we add as a shortcoming Henderson's claim that no one in the United States is debating climate change? Including the feral denialists that saturate the web like a virus? No one can shut the yammering up ...

(Below: the pond's kind of society).