Preeesenting Mr. Brendan O'Neill and Mr. Theodore Dalrymple in an Amy Winehouse welfare state battle of the octagon ...

Okay it's shoot out time in the pond.

On the leftish, or in a libertarian, feel free to call it what you like, corner of the octagon, strutting his fists of fury, or perhaps with his trusty six-shooter is Brendan O'Neill, valiantly extolling the virtues of Amy Winehouse in Addicted to the rehab cure-all:

Anger management is a flourishing industry in the Western world, where the aim seems to be to tame people's passions, to rehabilitate them as calm, sedate people who never get "intermittently explosive" about anything. It's a modern, politically correct, less intrusive version of the lobotomy.

In these circumstances, Winehouse's hymn to self-reliance - "Yes I've been black, but then I came back" - is an act of brilliant artistic heresy, a lyrical kick against the pricks who would have us believe none of us can cope without their guiding hand.

Like the brilliant if tragic Winehouse, we should also respond to the know-it-alls who want to remake us in their image with the words: "No, no, no."

Wow. That bit about anger management in the UK is prescient, but enough already, Mr. O'Neill, you've had your turn, now it's the turn of Theodore Dalrymple in British rioters the spawn of a bankrupt ruling elite as he explains how Amy Winehouse and her pop culture led to the current riots:

Perhaps Amy Winehouse was its finest flower and its truest representative in her militant and ideological vulgarity, her stupid taste, her vile personal conduct and preposterous self-pity.

Her sordid life was a long bath in vomitus, literal and metaphorical, for which the exercise of her very minor talent was no excuse or explanation. Yet not a peep of dissent from our intelllectual class was heard after her near canonisation after her death, that class having long had the backbone of a mollusc.

Oh dear, Mr. Dalrymple, the judges have determined that suggesting Mr. O'Neill has the backbone of a mollusc is below the belt.

Non-peeping non-dissenting failed contrarian Mr. O'Neill, do you have any response?

That five-letter word, rehab, is the main motif of our illiberal times. It speaks to the now widespread notion that individuals are fundamentally incapable of taking command of their lives and thus they must occasionally be remade by external experts.

Once, the word rehabilitate was used mainly to describe the attempt to give criminals a moral makeover. These days, all of us are seen as damaged goods in need of rehabilitation, physical, mental or moral, from Those Who Know Better.

Uh huh. Mr. Dalrymple, as one of Those Who Clearly Know Better, do you have a response?

The riots in London and elsewhere in Britain are a backhanded tribute to the long-term intellectual torpor, moral cowardice, incompetence and careerist opportunism of the British political and intellectual class.

They have somehow managed not to notice what has long been apparent to anyone who has taken a short walk with his eyes open down any frequented British street: that a considerable proportion of the country's young population (a proportion that is declining) is ugly, aggressive, vicious, badly educated, uncouth and criminally inclined.

Oh really Mr. Dalrymple, the judges are getting very close to a disqualification.

Calling Mr. O'Neill a moral coward is simply not acceptable.

Is there any way we can get these two fine gentlemen to agree on anything?

What's that you say? We should look more closely at Mr. O'Neill's Less political rebellion, more mollycoddled mob:

The political context is not the cuts or racist policing, it is the welfare state, which has nurtured a generation that has no sense of community spirit or social solidarity.

What do you say, Mr. Dalrymple? Fair point?

British youth leads the Western world in almost all aspects of social pathology, from teenage pregnancy to drug taking, from drunkenness to violent criminality. There is no form of bad behaviour that our version of the welfare state has not sought out and subsidised.

Thank the absent lord, at last we have agreement. Mr. Dalrymple?

Of course, none of this reduces the personal responsibility of the rioters. But the riots are a manifestation of a society in full decomposition, of a people with neither leaders nor followers but composed only of egotists, and followers of Amy Winehouse, including Brendan O'Neill.

Sheesh, this might be hard. No wonder the British are at each others' throats. Mr. O'Neill?

... this street violence was largely ignited by the excesses of the welfare state and intensified by the discombobulation of the police state but not by Amy Winehouse's refusal to go to rehab, no no no. The riots tell a very interesting story about modern Britain.

Enough gentlemen, put away your small disagreement over Amy Winehouse, shake hands, and let's call it a draw. After all, you both agree that it's all the fault of the welfare state and spineless intellectuals and the elites, and we all know that any intellectual writing a column for that elitist rag (AB demographic, please enter via the club door) The Australian is full of spine ...

Hang on, hang on, the judges have decided there has to be a winner, and the prize goes to ...

Mr. Dalrymple, for proposing with equanimity the following sentence:

By the age of 12, an ordinary slum-dweller has learned he has nothing to fear from the law and the only people to fear are those who are stronger or more ruthless than he.

The ordinary slum-dweller!

This is of course in stark contrast to the extraordinary or perhaps the unordinary slum-dweller, a much rarer fish.

The judges have added a special additional gold bar to Mr. Dalrymple's prize for allowing an intense dislike of Amy Winehouse to help explain the riots.

They patiently await Mr. Dalrymple's explanation of how Jimi Hendrix's death (18th September 1970) led to the establishment of the page 3 girl in The Sun (17th November 1970), and how the death of Jim Morrison led to an increase in British troops in Northern Ireland ...

No doubt wicked pop culture causes all sorts of bizarre flow ons, eh Mr. O'Neill, and your fatuous special pleading for Amy Winehouse has caused a breach in the commentariat consensus. Now off to rehab with you, quik stix, yes, yes, yes, and learn to deal with that anger management ...

Meanwhile, the learned judges have determined that inventing this new demographic in the UK puts Mr. Dalrymple right up there with Marie "Let them eat cake" Antoinette, though full credit for that phrase should really go to Jean-Jacques Rousseau:

Enfin je me rappelai le pis-aller d’une grande princesse à qui l’on disait que les paysans n’avaient pas de pain, et qui répondit : Qu’ils mangent de la brioche.

Or put it another way:

Finally I recalled the stopgap solution of a great princess who was told that the peasants had way too much welfare state, way too many electronic goods, and who responded: "Let them eat popular culture and Amy Winehouse and see how far that gets them in competing with polite well-spoken Polish workers."

So there you go. Please no restlessness as you leave the octagon, faces battered, bruised and bloodied.

Put it another way. If it wasn't such a serious matter, you'd have to laugh rather than cry, but if you want to discover what a full flowering of hostility, contempt, disdain, fear and loathing is like, why you couldn't do much better read Messrs. Dalrymple and O'Neill, with one invoking the name of Lenin and the other the name of Marx!

Just another day frolicking through the opinion pages of The Australian, and never mind the size of the contradictions, feel the mass of the rage ...