The anonymous editorialist at The Australian, Christopher Pearson, and yet another dose of Uriah Heep humbuggery ...

(Above: mmm, a bit too thin to be played by Christopher Pearson?)

Unctuous, pious, mealy mouthed hypocrisy always makes for great fun and a great read.

Who can forget Uriah Heep, the villain of David Copperfield, wandering around proclaiming how he's so very 'umble and how he lives in a numble abode, cracking his knuckles, plotting and scheming, with a way of writhing when he wanted to express enthusiasm which was very ugly.

It's impossible to resist the comparison when reading the anonymous editorialist in The Australian. Take this defensive, paranoid outburst today in Lifting the quality of debate:

Ross Garnaut, the Gillard government's former climate change adviser, is entitled to his view that News Limited newspapers, including this one, have fallen short in reporting such a complex, controversial issue.

With due respect to the good professor, we beg to disagree. If, however, the charge is that we have published views at odds with Professor Garnaut's, we proudly plead guilty since good public policy relies on covering all aspects of the debate and keeping the circle of discussion as wide as possible.

Really, the only way that Uriah Heep could have done better was to scribble With due respect to the good professor, we 'umbly beg to disagree.

The rest is however reliably the work of an expert in tosh and humbuggery and the defence is the same as that which leads to the teaching of creationism in schools:

Ironically, Professor Garnaut was speaking at the two-day Economic and Social Outlook conference in Melbourne, a high-level economic and social policy forum sponsored by The Australian and the Melbourne Institute. Professor Garnaut lamented that the media's reporting of climate change was inferior to the coverage of the major economic reforms of the 1980s. But unlike the broad consensus back then, the climate change debate involves a greater divergence of political, business and academic opinion, so the coverage reflects this.

Yep, it's the old always 'print the controversy and never mind the truth of it' routine, and then the anon editorialist has the cheek to end his piece thus:

Good debate, however, is hampered when major players show their glass jaws.

Since The Australian and its correspondents - from Greg Sheridan to Janet Albrechtsen to who else have you got - regularly show a paranoid, defensive glass jaw, especially when a derisive comment involves the ABC, cardigan wearers, the Fairfax press, greenies, tree huggers, world weary inner urban elites, chardonnay and latte swillers, and the like, the remark is the kind of sheer unmitigated gall and humbug worthy of a Heep.

You can almost imagine the anonymous scribbler cracking his knuckles, saying might I suggest good sirs and ladies, in a most 'umble way, that excellent debate is 'ampered when 'igh and mighty players show their glass jaws.

"'When I was quite a young boy,' said Uriah, 'I got to know what umbleness did, and I took to it. I ate umble pie with an appetite. I stopped at the umble point of my learning, and says I, "Hard hard!" When you offered to teach me Latin, I knew better. "People like to be above you," says father, "keep yourself down." I am very umble to the present moment, Master Copperfield, but I've got a little power!'"

With the utmost great respect, good scribbler, could this be a case of physician heal thyself? Since you've got a little power ...

Truth to tell, the debate about climate change in the Murdoch press is abysmal, and for all that the rag regularly touts itself as a true believer in a market based response to climate science, its prominently featured columnists routinely tell us otherwise.

That's how you can get the dreary Christopher Pearson spouting away in Fading public support spells doom for carbon tax, and starting off by quoting that expert in everything, Alan Jones.

That's right, the same Alan Jones who featured in the 'part interrogation, part harangue' worthy of a minor bureaucrat in China detailed at length by Media Watch here, with failed statistics and failed intelligence fully on display.

The same ratbag who in one outburst referred to Garnaut as a galoot (Media Watch, Balancing a hot debate), which all of a sudden made me nostalgic for Tamworth and the playground wherein 'galoot' had much currency. Let's turn to that eminent Christian Kel Richards for advice on the word:

The Macquarie Dictionary defines a “galoot” as “an awkward, silly person.” With most dictionaries noting that it’s often used affectionately, as in “You’re making a galoot of yourself.” And a listener asks where the word comes from...

...perhaps the disrespectful version was a twist on the military meaning...

...Well, since all of the experts say “origin unknown” the answer is not easy to find. We do know it began life as America slang, and is first recorded in 1866. Jonathan Green suggests that somewhere in the background of “galoot” there might be a Scottish source word, since a “lout” (a stupid or uncouth young man) was called a “loot” in Scottish.

The other possible source is a version of the same word (“galoot”) but with a different meaning. Earlier in the 19th century “galoot” was used to mean “a soldier” or “a marine.” So perhaps the disrespectful version was a twist on the military meaning. (here).

And in the Tamworth playground, it meant a lumpenproletariat larrikin twit of a boy kind. A bit like Alan Jones ...

Bugger me dead, I've completely forgotten about Christopher Pearson. Never mind, his piece - completely boring in its predictability - is all about how Pearson hates Julia Gillard, who tells lies, and who advocates a carbon tax for a problem that doesn't exist, and so on and so forth, all in the name of The Australian publishing a range of views, including those of a Catholic conservative who doesn't have the first clue about the science involved (not unless it involves the mystical transformation of wine into actual blood and bread into actual flesh, and then he's a scientific whizz).

Pearson labours his way through opinion polls and possible alternative policies, without explaining in any detail that he thinks climate science as currently constructed is a load of tosh. Pearson always prefers the opinion polls to actual science, because that way there be dragons.

Come to think of it, he wouldn't be so bad playing Uriah Heep in any BBC adaptation ...

Meanwhile, it would be remiss not to note the anon edit's other contribution to the debate in A postmodernist parliament:

If that was the new paradigm, we must now have entered the postmodern paradigm.

After an unproductive 10 months relying on the support of independents and a Greens MP to form government in the lower house, Labor now faces a Senate where the Greens have the balance of power in their own right. With a postmodern disrespect for the notion of objective truth, parliament has become an unpredictable body where each party deals only in its own perceived version of reality when it comes to weighty issues such as promises, responsibilities and mandates. We jest, in part, but the ability of our politicians to deal seriously with these new arrangements is yet to be seen.

Apart from showing a post-post-modernist misunderstanding of the meaning of post-modernism, who else but Uriah Heep could scribble "we jest in part" in the laborious way we came to expect of Heep whenever he attempted a joke?

The glass jawed Australian is of course writhing under the label of hate media, and so routinely seizes any chance it can to confirm its hatred of greenies, tree huggers and Bob Brown, with the punch line this time the indications are they'll (the Greens) pass up that chance (to move to the mainstream) and, as Labor is wont to do, abandon the mainstream to Tony Abbott.

You might, if you read that, forget that Labor is currently in power - how mainstream can you get - aided and assisted by the Greens, who control the balance of power.

Suck it up, hate media. Jest away ...

The good news is that The Australian thinks Tony Abbott is the mainstream.

Should Abbott by chance or mischance win the next election, the pond gives him twelve months in power, before the scheming and ambitious cohorts lurking behind him sink the knife into his back as he reveals that stripped of his role as Dr. No, king of negativity, he actually has to supervise the implementation of meaningful policies.

Wide, large scale direct government intervention in the economy to reduce carbon emissions is just one of the higher and more expensive stupidities in Abbott's misere hand of policy initiatives ...

Others are noting the Abbott follies, which are of a kind equal to the Gillard follies, except Abbott has the benefit of standing on the sidelines, shrieking 'neigh, neigh', as shown by Peter van Onselen in Tony Abbott sniffs the wind and muzzles his front bench.

Okay, it's a piece published in The Australian, but all that shows is that a broken watch and Uriah Heep get things right at least twice a day ...

(Below: the pond turns on the anon edit at The Australian in true Dickensian style:

"Approach me again, you — you — you heep of infamy," gasped Mr. Micawber, "and if your head is human, I'll break it. Come on, come on!" [to Uriah Heep.] 1870s. Illustration by Fred Barnard for the Household Edition of David Copperfield - Chapter LII, "I Assist at an Explosion," p. 353 - Found here).