Janet Albrechtsen, and the commentariat bears off on another freedom fries picnic ...

(Above: we liked the header so well, we wanted to preserve it, like a mosquito carrying dinosaur DNA might be preserved in amber).

It's one of the funnier, post modern, post ironic headers of the past week, and you can find it atop Janet Albrechtsen's The friction of freedom comes with open debate.

Readers of Margaret Simons' The Oz bows out of Manne debate will wonder where the open debate retired to. Perhaps to contemplate its navel? Perhaps to add more fortifications to the castle on the right wing? Perhaps to demolish the left wing of the castle entirely?

Who knows, but the openly debating Oz seems to have gone to water on the matter of Manne, with Paul Kelly putting in a no show for a booked out forum happening tonight at the Wheeler centre:

Kelly emailed Wheeler Centre director Michael Williams yesterday morning informing him that, after reflection, he had decided not to front at the event and The Oz would not be participating. Williams’ attempts to find someone else from the national broadsheet to debate Manne were unsuccessful. Kelly has not responded to requests for comment from Crikey this morning, and his personal assistant said he was unlikely to do so.

Yep, there's the friction of freedom at work, though it's unlikely to produce a fire in the way rubbing two sticks (or cojoined flesh) together might ...

So okay, Kelly might not have felt like it, but no one else was up to the job? It's a closed shop, union style, the shutters have gone up, the fortifications in place?

Is the Wheeler centre such a terrifying place, especially as the editor of Crikey Sophie Black, has now been dragooned in to challenge Manne, instead of moderating? The alternates can just have a love-in, without contention or disagreement from the bee hive, group mind thinkers? Just what is this dastardly place?

A Victorian Government initiative and the centrepiece of Melbourne’s designation as a UNESCO City of Literature.

UNESCO? Say no more. Can't be too careful of the black helicopters, the lefties and the greenies, and their international scientific conspiracy in the matter of climate science ...

Of course it gets funnier as you get down towards the end of Albrechtsen's rant, as she defends The Australian's all out 'nuke the bastard' weekend assault on the hapless Manne, who dared to publish an essay criticising the rag:

Alas, freedom doesn't count for much in certain left-wing salons. And that's why The Australian's weekend analysis of Robert Manne's Quarterly Essay is so important. Some have asked why this newspaper devoted so much space and so many words to challenge one Melbourne intellectual mostly unknown outside inner-city circles. In fact, contesting Manne's claims of bias against The Australian is an efficient way of contesting a broader leftist mindset long opposed to free debate.

Uh huh. So contesting a broader leftist mindset opposed to free debate is not to show up to the debate? And using a hammer to crack one dissenting voice is not showing an 'everything is nails and we're on an anti-nail crusade' mindset?

(Above: apply twice daily and the freedom friction will go away).

But wait, there's more and you can get a free set of debating steak knives as a bonus:

That's why contesting Manne's criticism matters.

Perhaps what Albrechtsen meant to say here was that's why a salvo of shells from the twelve inch guns of a dreadnought should be considered a contest?

Second thoughts, the nuke option remains the best metaphor, or perhaps the Animal Farm one, with all the sheep lined up in a row defending their turf, and showing all the mindset required of Winston by big brother ...

Oh wait, that's borrowing a 1984 debating trick from the Oz's anonymous editorialist.

Truly, there's nothing and no one so delusional as the righteous, especially when someone has done a little coppertone wedgie on them:

And Manne and his illiberal comrades are not short on hypocrisy. Those calling for a purge of conservatives were not long ago complaining that Howard had stifled dissent within the media. Howard stifling dissent? No, what the stifling dissent crowd object to is the friction of freedom. Whereas previously people such as Manne had largely dominated the intellectual conversation in this country, the emergence of new voices means they have to share the stage with irritating opinions and analysis that challenge their views.

Indeed, and Albrechtsen and her illiberal comrades are not short on hypocrisy if they fear to beard the elephant Manne in a building in Little Lonsdale street in Melbourne. Are the denizens of Melbourne, routinely dressed in black, so fearsome? Can writers for The Australian only feel comfortable in Penrith? Or perhaps Dandenong?

Naturally Albrechtsen employs what we like to call the Brendan O'Neill strategy of silly argumentation:

There are some long faces lamenting Conroy's inquiry will not go far enough. Take Laura Tingle in The Australian Financial Review: "The government has neutered any chance of a decent policy review." In fact, anyone genuinely concerned with open debate ought to be lamenting the Gillard government's eagerness to regulate newspapers. After all, if you don't like a newspaper, you don't have to buy it. And if you want to start up your own, feel free to do so.

The irony here of course, is that Rupert Murdoch didn't start off his career with the pesky business of setting up his own newspaper. Like most proprietors of that era, he inherited a rag from his dad Sir Keith Murdoch, the sadly unlamented The News, the last metropolitan afternoon tabloid in the nation when son Murdoch shuttered it in March 1992.

Whenever someone delivers that kind of saw - if you don't like it, go start your own - you know you're in the land of strict parents delivering really stupid censorious remarks. You know, like if you don't like the way this household is run, you can go to your room.

But Albrechtsen is right on one point, if you don't like a rag, you certainly don't have to buy it, and on that point the pond is assiduous. Role on the paywall in October, so we don't have to buy into that too.

One thing's certain. Albrechtsen keeps on rabbiting on about the virtues of business and capitalist acumen, but she clearly doesn't have the first clue about branding, mastheads, or the way established brands provide a focus that cuts through the vast amount of white noise to be found on the intertubes.

You can tweet, blog, start up your own online newspaper with little cost.

And of course with little impact, reach, readership, effectiveness or a monetary model. But that's Albrechtsen for you, ever ready with suggestions on how to go bankrupt, while raking in the moola from kind uncle Rupert.

And then of course she delivers the darkest of dire warnings:

Unless the Gillard government decides that regulation is needed to protect readers from activities at the heart of a modern liberal society. And how terribly illiberal that would be.

Oh noes, not the bloggers, not the heart of a modern liberal society.

Hang on, hang on, I thought The Australian was the heart of the nation, and what a dried up desiccated prune of a heart it is too ...

Could it be that the truly megalomaniac Albrechtsen believes that the activities of the conservative commentariat are somehow at the heart of a modern liberal society, as if the current ratbags in the antipodean Murdoch empire are the chosen ones, destined to lead us into a land of blissful information freedom, without bias, skew, spin, or the eight ball in the back pocket?

A bit like the wretched vision we saw at the end of that godawful Proyas' movie Knowing?

Well there's plenty of other rich pickings in the Albrechtsen piece, all full of magnificent delusion, grandiloquent paranoia, and startling hypocritical condescension. Take this one:

Expecting the media to echo your political agendas, and getting angry when they don't, is rather fascist.

Let's just rephrase that shall we?

Expecting Robert Manne to echo your political agendas, and getting angry when he doesn't, is rather fascist.

Alas freedom doesn't count for much in certain right-wing beehive think tanks, or amongst the commentariat, because if you think differently you must be beaten down, or shunned in a good Amish-style shunning, or somehow deprived of oxygen, which is why for all the blather by Albrechtsen about starting a blog, we hark back to the response bloggers got from John Hartigan when he thought that bloggers might pose a threat to the empire (Journalism, not the limited intellectual value of blogs, is the future of the web). That was before the empire realised that tabloid blogging could deliver hits online, and help secure the brand against intruders ...

Still not satisfied at the level of humbuggery?

Well there's even more because the point of the Albrechtsen piece is to invoke the Gipper's name and skills as a politician (hallowed be his name) and offer a refresher course on Freedom 101, which is of course a course on how to make sure kindly uncle Rupert keeps on making money. Well let's hope his television, cable and film interests keep making a motza, because the future sure ain't in fish and chip wrappings ...

And of course it's also to issue a dire warning about the federal government's inquiry into the media, because it's just sordid attempt at revenge on News Limited.

This is, as much as anything, a grossly defamatory approach to the two bods appointed to conduct the inquiry, former federal court justice Ray Finkelstein QC and Dr Matthew Ricketson, professor of journalism at Canberra university (Government announces Independent Media Inquiry).

Who knows where their inquiry will lead them, and who knows what the terms of reference will produce? Albrechtsen, in the spirit of freedom, doesn't want to know. She just wants to launch a pre-emptive strike, and knee cap the inquirers ...

Yep, the one sure way to foster the friction of freedom, and open debate is to shut down any inquiry into the media, before we have even the first clue of what it might canvas, who it might consult, or what conclusions it might reach.

Want some freedom fries with that?

Yes, it's a funny old concept of freedom, the stifling of dissent, and alternative opinions, but perhaps the funniest is the suggestion that the Greens should just lie back, take the odd kick in the guts and king hit in good spirits, and do nothing, preferably with one hand tied behind the back.

Now where on earth would the Greens have got the idea that the Murdoch press is 'hate media'?

We wear Senator Brown's criticism with pride. We believe he and his Green colleagues are hypocrites; that they are bad for the nation; and that they should be destroyed at the ballot box. (here at the lizard Oz)

Oh dear, that sound a little old testament:

Go up, my warriors, against the land of the Greenies and against the people of Brown. Yes, march against Babylon (and pockets of Tasmania, wherein they prevent the proper consumption of old growth forests), the land of rebels (yea verily including Luke Skywalker), a land that I will judge! Pursue, kill, and completely destroy them, as I have commanded you," says the Lord. "Let the battle cry be heard in the land, a shout of great destruction". (Jeremiah 50:21-22)

Or some such thing.

It's a proud boast of the pond to have been labelled a scab and been blackballed by a union as a line crosser and a strike breaker, and to have been called at various times in a sordid career a representative of 'the man', dedicated to the pursuit and destruction of the little person seeking a living ...

But however you cut it, the amount of sheer twaddle, hypocrisy, umbrage, and nonsense spouted by the commentariat - at the sight of a dissenting voice whom Albrechtsen disparages as a virtually unknown Melbourne academic - which makes these activities seem like venial sins.

The problem for the likes of Albrechtsen is that if everyone in the world thought, acted, wrote and believed like she - and collectively they - did, what a dull, hideous, frozen, conformist, bleak, black ugly beehive of a world it would be ...

Come to think of it, I get that feeling most days I look at the opinion pages and the editorials in The Australian, and the other rags in the empire. Has there ever been such a unanimous voice, such a single shrieking, such an abject conformity, such a bunch of commentariat sheeple all singing from the same sheet?

The Australian as a forum for diversity and freedom of opinion? Would you like a Krispy Kreme doughtnut with your kool aid?

Free exchange of views? Debate? The friction of freedom in the room?

Bah humbug, they can't even turn up for a chat with the elephant Manne, while there he is as bold as brass, standing right there in the room ...

(Below: yes, it's Albrechtsen land, where never a discouraging different alternative word was heard.

Beneath the trees where nobody sees

they'll agree to agree as long as they please
'cause that's the way the commentariat bears have their picnic).