Janet Albrechtsen, Tony Abbott, and years more blather to endure ...

There's something sublimely stupid about The Australian's header Tony Abbott avoids a repeat of placard problems at an anti-carbon tax rally, which immediately follows the image above, showing Tony Abbott perched in an eerie above a coffin saying "Our democracy is dead".

WTF? Doesn't a coffin saying "Our Democracy is Dead" count as a really stupid placard that any self-respecting politician standing in front of the national parliament might disavow? Okay, the last election might have been a bit muddled, with a muddied result, but suddenly democracy is dead, according to a few thousand ratbags who gathered together in a democratic way to celebrate the death of democracy?

Forget the presence of Pauline Hanson and Angry Anderson and assorted other loons as Golem chases the precioussss, but democracy is dead?

Yep, democracy is dead, and Julia Gillard is on a casket, and Tony Abbott is somehow avoiding placard trouble, at least according to the lizard Oz.

Perhaps two more years of the Abbott energizer bunny demanding an election now. When do we want it ... now! Can the spirit endure? Democracy is dead. Tony Abbott is democracy. Eyeless in Gaza ...

Meanwhile, you have to admire Fairfax for somehow scoring this snap (let's hope Ms Photoshop wasn't involved), and featuring it in Abbott stars at anti-carbon tax rally - warning, forced video at link's end).

Another witch sign to add to my collection!

Abbott can blather disingenuously about agreeing with some signs and disagreeing with others, but what a coarse, crude, relentless, battery powered, vulgar politician he is, and amazingly, such is their hunger of power, the gentry have gone along for the tea party ride ...

Still, the best circus was over at the marriage rally, with Barnaby Joyce scoring a splendid goal:

Nationals Senate leader Barnaby Joyce told the rally his four daughters would be affected if same-sex marriage was allowed.

"We know that the best protection for those girls is that they get themselves into a secure relationship with a loving husband, and I want that to happen for them. (here).

Yep, teh gays are ruining marriage for Barners' spawn. Oh the poor possums ...

For the love of the absent lord Barners, you had a Tamworth education. Just harden yourself and your daughters the fuck up, gay marriage hasn't ruined New York, and it won't ruin the right of your daughters to get a divorce or to give marriage as many goes as they like ...

Talk about preciousss ... (Anger over rally to ridicule gay marriage).

But in a cavalcade of stupidity, surely Bob Katter scored best of all, as he moved from quoting Alexander Pope and The Rape of the Lock, to talk about how gay marriage should be laughed at and ridiculed, and to invoke spectres.

Which presumably means he won't have a problem with people laughing at or ridiculing his self-satisifed, smug, boofhead speech (how to be kind to school bullies and rustic thugs wanting to use denigrating laughter and snide ridicule as a tactic?).

And people can also laugh at and ridicule the the fear-mongering nonsense that surrounded it, ranging from Barners blathering on about horses and camels to Rebecca Hagelin proposing that same sex marriage would led to weddings between children and paedophiles, when we know that the Catholic church has for years insisted that only de facto relationships are required for priests and children.

Amazingly, that gin-soused cocktail, The Punch managed to run a couple of articles suggesting that the whole day was a kind of Carbon freak show, and an Attack of the Clones.

The funny thing is, the more the dinosaurs roar (you had to pay $30 to be a dinosaur with the likes of Kevin Andrews, John Murphy, boofhead Katter and Barners 'won't someone think of my daughters' Joyce), the more they do a disservice for their cause, as they come across like a bunch of half-assed, retrograde, fundie conservatives of the poofter-bashing kind.

But steady on, all this fuss, all this dinosaur roaring has distracted us from our usual treat of the day. Yep, it's Janet Albrechtsen's time to soar close to the sun, and as usual the bees wax on view in Can we have some diversity of opinion at their ABC shows every sign of melting ...

Like a late-arriving dinosaur, Albrechtsen is determined to use the London riots to flay the intellectual class in the antipodes.

Now it's true that "the intellectual class" is a demographic entirely of Albrechtsen's own making, and indeed a perverted thinker might think a former laywer married to a high flying banker, living in style and scribbling columns for The Australian might belong to such a weird class, but of course that's entirely beside Albrechtsen's point (presumably she gave up chardonnay and lattes long ago as a way of disqualifying herself).

Last week's coverage of the London riots by our national broadcaster provides yet more evidence of the deep and damaging divide between mainstream Australian and the so-called intellectual class. The term "so-called intellectual class" is deliberate. Many of its apparently well-educated members are more ideologically blinded than they are intellectually curious.

Now you might retort that as a well-educated member of the class, Albrechtsen is more ideologically blinded than intellectually curious, especially as she goes on to show the herd instinct and group think of the commentariat response to the London riots, faithfully reproducing all the standard talking points about the welfare state and broken families, and faithfully excluding any alternative talking points.

But then you'd miss the whole point of the exercise, which is to bash the ABC.

Take PM, the ABC radio's premier political program. The program was abuzz with talk about the causes of the criminal mayhem, except the causes that fall outside the bounds of respectable Left-liberal orthodoxy.

We are used to being intellectually underwhelmed in Sydney by ABC local radio's Deborah Cameron. Her constant lightweight crusades are just that: they represent the unthinking Left.

Whereas Alan Jones just represents the unthinking.

The funny thing of course is when a blinkered ideologue presents a plea for diversity of opinion (as if diversity of opinion was somehow a valid response to explaining riotous behaviour when it's only a diversity of opinion, or to put it another way, a lot of wankers clouding the atmosphere with hot air).

So who does Albrechtsen want the ABC to talk to? Frank Furedi and Brendan O'Neill for starters, to name just a few who have provided thoughtful analysis that challenges leftist sacred cows.

Uh huh. Just another few bricks in the monolithic wall of group think as Frank and Brendan leave the battlements of The Australian's opinion pages to storm the ABC.

And if you want another example of the rock solid herd instinct of the right to group and cluster and think the same un-diverse thoughts, why you can take a gin-sozzled tour at The Punch with Kevin 'no matter that the polls say a majority support gay marriage, I say only a minority does' Andrews scribbling Why Britain is broken, and how it might be fixed.

Sorry, by this point, I'd rather do a Jimi Hendrix, choke in my vomit and die, but feel free to explore the deeper recesses of Andrews' dark portals.

What's also amusing and amazing is the way that the commentariat reveal that they devoutly listen to the ABC. Gerard Henderson must spend his entire days tuned to Aunty to pick up the smallest signs of heresy and deviation, and leftist tendencies, and it seems that Albrechtsen - long after her ABC board duties have expired - spends the same amount of time devouring ABC broadcasts.

There is of course a simple solution, one I routinely exercise with both Alan Jones and Deborah Cameron. Turn them off, don't listen to them, do something else, take a walk in the park.

Never mind, there's a lot more blather in Albrechtsen and we commend you to it, but beware, there's plenty of humour in her comedy stylings:

Instead of using the riots to attack capitalism, we could relearn some basic economic lessons too. As Irving Kristol once said, it's true that a market economy creates inequalities of income and wealth but "there is simply no alternative to 'trickle-down economics' which is just another name for growth economics".

As Kristol said: "The world has yet to see a successful version of 'trickle-up economics', an egalitarian society in which the state ensures the fruits of economic growth are universally and equally shared" because this socialist ideal has never produced the fruits in the first place.

Put that another way:

"The world has yet to see a successful version of 'trickle-down economics', an egalitarian society in which capitalists and the rich ensure the fruits of economic growth are universally and equally shared" because this capitalist rhetoric has always made sure the fruits are locked up in a Swiss bank account.

Okay, okay, the only point being that meaningless mealy-mouthed rhetorical sound bites deserve a response in kind.

It gets even more bizarre when Albrechtsen starts quoting the fictional Democrat president Josh 'Jed' Bartlet in The West Wing on the matter of personal responsibility.

If personal responsibility were all the go, we wouldn't have all these pesky cops roaming around the streets giving lauran order such a hard time ... and outraged conservatives demanding that lauran order be maintained by the fuzz at vast expense to government ...

But it did remind me of a few West Wing quotes:

Bartlet: What's on your mind?
Toby: The era of big government is over.
Bartlet: You want to cut the line?
Toby: I want to change the sentiment. [pause] We're running away from ourselves and I know we can score points that way, I was a principle architect of that campaign strategy right along with you, Josh. But we're here now, tomorrow night we do an immense thing; we have to say what we feel, that government, no matter what its failures in the past and in times to come for that matter, government can be a place where people come together and where no one gets left behind. No one...gets left behind. An instrument of good.

Well it's nice to dream, and George Bush certainly left no one behind. Or in front. And how about this one?

Bartlet: I like your show. I like how you call homosexuality an abomination.
Dr. Jenna Jacobs: I don't say homosexuality is an abomination, Mr. President. The Bible does.
President Josiah Bartlet: Yes it does. Leviticus.
Dr. Jenna Jacobs: 18:22.
President Josiah Bartlet: Chapter and verse. I wanted to ask you a couple of questions while I have you here. I'm interested in selling my youngest daughter into slavery as sanctioned in Exodus 21:7. She's a Georgetown sophomore, speaks fluent Italian, always cleared the table when it was her turn. What would a good price for her be? While thinking about that, can I ask another? My Chief of Staff Leo McGarry insists on working on the Sabbath. Exodus 35:2 clearly says he should be put to death. Am I morally obligated to kill him myself or is it okay to call the police? Here's one that's really important because we've got a lot of sports fans in this town: touching the skin of a dead pig makes one unclean. Leviticus 11:7. If they promise to wear gloves, can the Washington Redskins still play football? Can Notre Dame? Can West Point? Does the whole town really have to be together to stone my brother John for planting different crops side by side? Can I burn my mother in a small family gathering for wearing garments made from two different threads? Think about those questions, would you? One last thing: while you may be mistaking this for your monthly meeting of the Ignorant Tight-Ass Club, in this building, when the President stands, nobody sits.

And then I'd like to imagine this one taking place between Jed Bartlet and Janet Albrechtsen:

Bartlet: We agree on nothing, Janet.
Albrechtsen: Yes, sir.
Bartlet: Education, guns, drugs, school prayer, gays, defense spending, taxes - you name it, we disagree.
Albrechtsen: You know why?
Bartlet: Because I'm a lily-livered, bleeding-heart, liberal, egghead communist.
Albrechtsen: Yes, sir. And I'm a gun-toting, redneck son-of-a-bitch.
Bartlet: Yes, you are.
Albrechtsen: We agree about that.

Sorry, but it makes for more fun than blathering on about Albrechtsen blathering on about diversity from the rigid monocular viewpoint of a one-eyed ideologue, and from the chair and keyboard of a nicely well-off, well-paid, complacent fat cat ideologue at that ...

Oh okay, if you've got this far, you'll be up for another one:

Sam: Oratory should raise your heart rate. Oratory should blow the doors off the place. We should be talking about not being satisfied with past solutions. We should be talking about a permanent revolution.
Toby: Where have I heard that?
Sam: Permanent Revolution?
Toby: Yeah.
Sam: I got it from a book.
Toby: What book?
Sam: The Little Red Book
Toby: You think we should quote Mao Tse-tung?
Sam: We do need a permanent revolution.
Toby: Still, I think we'll stay away from quoting Communists.
Sam: You think a Communist never wrote an elegant phrase? How do you think they got everyone to be Communist? (and plenty more quotes here).

(Below: a cartoon celebrating Janet Albrechtsen's preferred form of radio. Well anything but the cardigan wearers at the ABC).

And if only this was the fate of all energizer bunnies (more First Dog here).