In which Godwin's Law is breached, and the minions of Murdoch get to rabbit on about baloney in a hollow kind of way ...

(Above: a sample panel from a First Dog cartoon. More First Dog here, though this cartoon is for the moment behind the paywall).

It's always good to honour Godwin's Law and Geoff Russell, in his passionate Slaughterhouse live: Our bloody cattle exports, shows how it's done, as he contemplated Four Corners' footage on Monday night:

All I could think of was my student days studying the history of Germany during the 1930s and the rise of Nazism. The acquiescence that allowed the Holocaust to happen was on display during interviews with Australian cattle producers who were appalled by the slaughter conditions while perfectly happy to bank the money.

Yes, the first thought of anyone contemplating Holocaust footage should be cattle metaphors, unless of course you happen to be a resident troll at The Punch, and then your first thought is to evoke brown Islamic people.

Still, it looked like the ritual slaughtering and disembowelling of Cate Blanchett might have been shuffled off the news cycle, but then you'd be reckoning without Sophie Mirabella turning up in The Punch yet again, with A carbon price? Tell 'em they're dreaming.

Mirabella conducts her usual level of elevated discourse by dropping in early a reference to the "lobotomized zombies" of the Labor Party.

You should of course understand that the use of inverted commas means that Sophie Mirabella is being light-hearted and not serious, in her quoting of Tony Abbott quoting Senator Cameron, and if you don't get it, well pardon me, you "lobotomized zombie" you ...

Now we've established Mirabella's "lobotomized zombie" sense of wit and decorum, it turns out that the image of Australia as a land of dole bludgers, welfare moochers, ne'er do wells and criminals deserving extra tough mandatory sentencing is entirely misplaced:

Yes, Australians are optimists. Yes, we’re go-getters. But yes-men? I don’t think so. In my experience, Australians are more likely to ask “Why would you bloody do that?” when confronted with an idea that just doesn’t make sense.

It's a question my partner often asks. You read bloody Sophie Mirabella? Why would you bloody do that? Are you some sort of masochist or pervert?

Indeed. Because of course the entire Mirabella screed is a thought-free and policy-free zone, as befits a column for The Punch, but it does contain a plentiful amount of hearty abuse, and the usual ritual recitation of why we should have had an election yesterday, and elevated Dr. No to the throne.

Somehow in a discussion of climate change, we end up with the referendum on the republic, pink batts, BER, Grocery and Fuel watch, and so on.

A consideration of the implications of the report by Garnaut, and a detailed explanation by Mirabella of how the Liberal party's direct action, big government directed policies will be cheaper and more effective, both points denied by Garnaut?

Well in the usual way Mirabella ends her thought free zombie piece by invoking The Castle, and the line "tell 'em they're dreaming", and if you expect anything other than "Tony Abbott good, Liberal party good, blood sucking vampire zombie Labor party bad" then you also are undoubtedly dreaming ...

But it's all part of The Punch being a zone for trolls and hysteria generated by unpaid pieces, as it attempts to celebrate its second birthday, as if a cupcake is a suitable symbol for substance ...

That's how you end up with Joe Hildebrande producing a piece like Veni vidi vici Vo Vo*. Why Rudd, seeing former chairman Rudd as a modern day Caesar.

Hildebrande compares the actual assassination of Julius Caesar to the knifing of Kevin Rudd, which has seen Kev tour the world as Foreign Minister, on a kind of perpetual junket of extreme portentousness. Caesar should have been so lucky.

I know, I know, it's Hildebrande attempting to be funny, but then at the end, he turns serious and sees the decline and fall of young Kev as the "perfect recipe for tyranny." It's such a perfectly hapless zombie piece that The Punch adds a tag "For those confused by Joe Hildebrand, we're sorry. There's no explanation for him."

It's a point my partner often makes. You read bloody Joe Hildebrand? Why would you bloody do that? There's simply no explanation for him.

Point taken, so I headed off to read Janet Albrechtsen and It's a serious debate about free speech, only to discover that Dame Slap has been out of country for some time, and so belatedly has revived the debate around a tweet by Dr. Larissa Behrendt back in the middle of April.

Albrechtsen takes an Olympian view, by talking of the "cultural landscape these past few months", and explaining how "a particularly moribund mosaic emerges from those claiming to be left-wing intellectuals", but truth to tell, it all seems somehow empty and hollow, as if the holidays had stripped Dame Slap of her mojo.

It's as if she spent all her time out of country ignoring what was going down, and now belatedly she's catching up in her reading, and we must suffer along with her.

Even the final declamatory incantation sounds a bit like a priest at the end of a mass trying to rush through the concluding rites so he can get out to the game of golf on time. Go in peace, thanks be to god, and all that stuff, and look out for lobotomized zombies on the left:

The next time you hear the phrase left-wing intellectual, think back to the last few months of left-wing baloney.

So often hypocrisy rings truer than any claim to intellect.

This is the kind of cupcake cookie cutter approach to rhetoric that's actually more worthy of a Sophie Mirabella, or a leftie, because it's so easy to flip, so that instead of sunny side up, you get the standard 'over easy' serve:

The next time you hear the phrase right-wing intellectual, think back to the last few months of right-wing baloney.

So often hypocrisy rings truer than any claim to intellect.

Indeed. It's a point my partner often makes. You read hypocritical Janet Albrechtsen? Why would you bloody do that? There's simply no explanation for her addiction to baloney.

It's gormless and pathetic, and as hollow as the hollow people in a T. S. Eliot poem. How did Eliot put it, after his whimsical note about Mistah Kurtz - he dead and an offer of a penny for the Old Guy?

We are the hollow women
We are the stuffed women
Leaning together
Headpiece filled with straw. Alas!
Our dried voices, when
We whisper together
Are quiet and meaningless
As wind in dry grass
Or rats’ feet over broken glass
In our dry cellar

Shape without form, shade without colour,
Paralysed force, gesture without motion;

Those who have crossed
With direct eyes, to death’s other Kingdom
Remember us—if at all—not as lost
Violent souls, but only
As the hollow women
The stuffed women.

Apologies to Eliot, I think he had men in mind, back in the days when 'men' stood in as a term for humanity, but the pond is an equal opportunity site, and after Mirabella and Albrechtsen getting lumped together the same day, The Hollow Women it is.

Meanwhile, for the record, we note that SBS tried to catch up with the science debate by presenting a talk by Stephen Schneider in front of a bunch of climate sceptics, recorded last June. Schneider died of a heart attack in July last year, so I guess it's SBS's way of helping Albrechtsen seem up to date. What a tragic irrelevancy the network has become thanks to the John Howard appointed board. (Oh and the first comment off the block refers to 'global worming', an entirely new danger for cats and dogs).

Meanwhile, in this hodge podge day, it would be remiss not to note the splendid contribution of the anonymous editorialist in The Australian, who while praising Ross Garnaut shows every sign of not having heard a single thing he said. (National interest must inform carbon tax plan).

In particular the anon edit runs the line yet again that Australia should not be a leader in doing anything about climate change, and in passing gets terribly upset by Garnaut daring to suggest that Australia shouldn't be a pissant country.

The Australian of course expects, demands, that Australia act as a pissant country, but either way, the noble derivation of pissant from pismire and the smell of formic acid that ants secrete shouldn't be ignored. That's not a crude riposte, that's a term rich in Middle English and Scandinavian language ...

As for Australia going boldly out in front, charting uncharted paths, Garnaut had a note on that:

Garnaut mocks the idea that Australia is moving ahead of others and brands this aspect of the current debate as "extraordinary". He says: "When you next hear someone say that he is worried that Australia might get ahead of the rest of the world in reducing greenhouse gases, take him by the hand and reassure him that he has no reason for fear." (quoted by Paul Kelly getting terribly agitated as he discovers Garnaut is proposing a conservative market based solution, as opposed to Tony Abbott's Leninist Marxist big government solution, in Clash of cultures, economics and ideology).

Uh huh. Can someone take the anon edit by the hand and reassure him or her that the bankruptcy and utter ruination of pioneering Australia has been postponed until at least the weekend, and admire how in the last par he or she manages to gasp out that Garnaut's report provides a plausible path forward for Julia Gillard.

Sheesh, that must have hurt ...

And ain't it a funny old world where Tony Abbott can propose a government driven Marxist Leninist solution to climate change, and Janet Albrechtsen can berate the left for baloney ... as if there's anything wrong with a decent bologna sausage or even the fritz so loved in Adeeeylaide ...

It's a point my partner often makes. You eat bloody fritz? Why would you bloody do that? There's simply no explanation for fritz ...

(Below: bunging on a fritz do, found here).