Rupert Murdoch, Gay Sex, John Pasquarelli, Piers 'Akker Dakker' Akkerman and Orwellian visions of the future ...

(Above: the first Orwellian edition).

Amongst the many anecdotes to resurface as the grubby scandal surrounding David Cameron, Rupert Murdoch and the soon to be extinct News of the World masthead continues to erupt like a volcano determined to disprove climate science, this is a pond favourite, as detailed in How Cameron cosied up to Murdoch & Son:

Four years ago, when David Cameron did not have an experienced tabloid operator like Coulson to advise him, it nearly went horribly wrong. When the raw and newly elected Tory leader first met News International's patriarch Rupert Murdoch, he was intent on projecting himself as a socially tolerant leader with modern ideas who would shake up an outdated Tory Party. In his anxiety to be modern, Cameron described with great enthusiasm how he had enjoyed the new US blockbuster film Brokeback Mountain. Far from being impressed, the ageing Murdoch was appalled that a would-be prime minister should be watching a film containing graphic scenes of gay sex.

Socially tolerant? Modern ideas? Shake up an outdated Tory party? Anxious to be modern?Gadzooks sir, think of what you're saying. Why that flies against all the most precious values of the Murdochians, and their worship of outer suburbs - well not so outer as to be rural, but dammit, not so inner as to be on the total outer.

Damned inner urban elites and their fancy ways - well you don't get any more inner urban elite than number 10 Downing Street ...

Meanwhile, everything continues as it ever was at The Australian, with this day yet again seeing another piece published by John Pasquarelli, and as usual bashing the Greens, in Labor and Liberals both to blame for the meteoric rise of the Greens.

Naturally the story involves those hapless pawns and dupes, inner city dwellers:

Years of disillusionment with the sameness and the backbiting of the main parties won Green votes from the young and older inner-city brigades who were attracted by the Greens' concern for animals and the environment.

Sheesh, both the young and the old latte sippers, and how shocking to be concerned for animals and the environment. The shame list goes on and on. Lake Pedder, Kakadu National Park ... Where will this slippery slope lead us?

Well apart from the underlying totalitarian values espoused by the watermelons, the Greens of course envisage ...

... a brave new world where George Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four becomes a reality. Are there any silly Liberals still out there who want to preference the Greens?

Put it another way. Is there any newspaper editor in Australia silly enough to keep on running pieces by John Pasquarelli, advisor to Pauline Hanson, and unapologetic supporter of One Nation policies?

Why of course, Chris Mitchell's his name, and you can take a nostalgic walk down memory lane with Pasquarelli in One Nation voters can look to Joyce in the very same rag. Ah Barners, proud inheritor of the One Nation/Pauline Hanson hopes, dreams and desires ...

Will the day ever come that The Australian publishes a column, front and centre, headed Dreams and desires of an ordinary inner urban latte sipper?

In your dreams. Get back to that chardonnay sipping, you wretched destroyer of western civilisation as we know it today, and go about the business of making George Orwell's Ninety Eighty-Four come true. Yes, you, the one with the head in the book, the one that thinks that phone tapping everybody and anybody within ear shot is the best way to make Ninety Eighty-Four a reality ...

There was of course no way of knowing whether you were being watched at any given moment. How often, or on what system, the Thought Police plugged in on any individual wire was guesswork. It was even conceivable that they watched everybody all the time. But at any rate they could plug in your wire whenever they wanted to. You had to live—did live, from habit that became instinct—in the assumption that every sound you made was overheard, and, except in darkness, every movement scrutinized.

Yes, Uncle Rupe and his minions might be listening right now. Be afraid, correct your latte sipping ways. And as for those hapless, wretched delusionary inner city urban elites, what a fate awaits them as they surrender their thoughts to kind old Uncle Rupe:

We are not content with negative obedience, nor even with the most abject submission. When finally you surrender to us, it must be of your own free will. We do not destroy the heretic because he resists us; so long as he resists us we never destroy him. We convert him, we capture his inner mind, we reshape him. We burn all evil and all illusion out of him; we bring him over to our side, not in appearance, but genuinely, heart and soul. We make him one of ourselves before we kill him. It is intolerable to us that an erroneous thought should exist anywhere in the world, however secret and powerless it may be. Even in the instance of death we cannot permit any deviation . . . we make the brain perfect before we blow it out.

Oh dear, thanks to John Pasquarelli, the pond has broken Godwin's Law, sub-section 101 Orwellian references with gay abandon:

I propose, "the [n]th rule of cynicism:"
As a political conversation progresses, the chances someone brings up 1984, Brave New World, or some other dystopic novel, approaches one. (here).

Actually can we propose an alternative law?

As The Australian daily progresses the political conversation, the chances of one of its columnist breaching Godwin's Law or bringing up some dystopic novel or otherwise ignoring the guano in its own nest approaches infinity, thereby either proving Hilbert's paradox of the Grand Hotel - yep, there's always room for another stupid guest columnist - or Zeno's paradoxes - yep, the slowest and dumbest tortoise will always win the race.

Now how else can the Murdoch hacks amuse and distract? Well of course there's always Piers "Akker Dakker" Akerman, fat owl of the remove, standing by to deliver ABC's Leftist views at odds with the public.

Yes, whenever a branch of the empire - and we're not just talking about the departed Glenn Beck - is revealed to be a suppurating core of rottenness, filth and vile behaviour, what better time to attack the ABC?

The future of the politically-driven ABC, the audio-visual arm of the extreme Green Left, needs to be reviewed. It has abused its charter.

It does not contribute to a sense of national identity, inform or entertain as its charter decrees.

Bugger me dead, if contributing to a sense of national identity, informing or entertaining was part of the Daily Terror's charter, Akker Dakker would be cast out to a remote tropical island, there to eke out his remaining years eating coconuts and brooding about the rising tides.

What's even more amazing is that Akker Dakker has turned feminist and takes a swipe at Bob Ellis, and his uninspiring sludge. I guess it takes a master sludge meister to spot another sludge meister.

But what's sparked the predictable Akker Dakker outrage? Well of course it's a single program, last night's airing of a single show, Leaky Boat, and as a result the whole organisation stands condemned.

Happily we can apply the same logic to News Corp such that News of the World stands for the whole festering, rotten leaky media boat run by gay sex-fearing Uncle Rupe (we like to think of him as Unca Rupe in the same way as the comrades fondly remember Unca Joe).

Akker Dakker is outraged that his happy childhood memories must now forever be tainted:

Throughout, the narrator - former Play School host Noni Hazlehurst - refers to "our" reaction as if she and the ABC are "us" the mainstream.

Naturally he's outraged at being included in any mainstream that might involve cardigan wearing:

"Our" reaction, as reflected in the polls, was not that of the ABC staff or its fans. The polls show that the majority of the Australian people applauded the decisive action the Howard government took.

Uh huh. And Akker Dakker's programming solution to the problem, the one show that will bring us all into line with his own inimitable brand of thought policing?

Australians should retake their ABC and hold it to its charter. If it wished to unite the nation it might run a documentary on the Howard years with the title "Real government and sound policy".

What, with the 2007 election as the culminating highlight, featuring the real guv'nor soundly losing his seat?

Really there's profound stupidity, and then there's Akker Dakker, and then there's the rest of the Murdoch hacks, and at times the desire to brood about Orwell becomes irresistible.

Now that James Murdoch has carried out his master's bidding and chopped off one festering arm, let's hope that the festering arm keeps on attracting detailed inspection.

But don't get excited. Sadly, the notion that other festering arms might be chopped off is, I'm afraid, just an Orwellian dream ...

(Below: a handy guide. Click on to enlarge, or you can find it at The Guardian here in pdf form).


(And here's a bonus cartoon, provenance uncertain, showing how everything turned out jolly hockey sticks well).