The Australian, the elephant Manne, and a weekend frothing and foaming ...

And so we come to the most curious case of the blind men and the elephant. The digital banner fires the first shot across the bows:

Click on the banner and you're immediately transported to the underworld, with a picture of the vexatious Satanist, perhaps even the anti-Christ himself, lolling at a desk with an insolent stare at the camera. The fiend!

And down below?

Well down below there are a full eight wise dissembling, self-defensive, self-justifying, self-excusing, alibi-providing, exculpatory, fortifying the castle, soaked in paranoia explanations of why the elephant Manne is wrong, and the wise men and The Australian are wonderfully right, in all essential matters.

Screen caps, so no links, but by their deeds shall ye find them. Never has there been so much unanimity since Uncle Joe Stalin ruled Russia. Oh dear, oh dear, a mean blow, but we take the rag's style, noted below as a precedent ...

Now you might wonder if thinking of Manne as an elephant is the correct note to strike, but really he so befuddles the scribes into flights of rhetorical rage, what else might he be?

I suppose we could have resorted to Rudyard Kipling and How the Camel Got His Hump, but truth to tell, we were tired of writing, and just wanted to read into the visual record the full blown fury of a newspaper crossed, a newspaper tired and exasperated by the bed bugs that bite, a noble lion tormented by idle mosquitoes, or perhaps a thorn in the paw ...

Meanwhile, along with the rest, comes this witty retort from poor old leaky Bill Leak:

Strike me lucky, that's as funny as a fart in a gentleman's club, or perhaps the G-G's mansion.

And naturally we shouldn't overlook the withering anonymous editorialist, as he or she draws him or herself up to her full sneering height to deliver the wuthering denunciation, The bad news on good faith, in which it is explained how Robert Manne fails the test of fair play and good journalism.

You know, because a picture of a Manne taking a crap is fair play and good journalism, right up there with the best logical argumentation you might expect of a Walkley winner ...

Naturally the anon edit jumps the shark and offers up as his or closing line "For a fuller picture (of Manne's alternative nation), we recommend George Orwell's 1984."

Does the rag understand at all just how much its rage and fury proves Manne's point, of a paranoid bully out of control?

Do they really think breaching one of Godwin's Laws corollaries is a way to demonstrate fair play and good journalism?

As a political conversation progresses, the chances someone brings up 1984, Brave New World, or some other dystopic novel, approaches one.

Just as thinking of The Australian is so reminiscent of Pravda in the good old days.

You see, The Australian long ago overtook one, and nuked the fridge in the process, and what the anon edit thinks is a punchline - 1984 - is right up there with the most demeaning blogosphere tea party name-calling rage.

Silly and childish. Okay for loon pond, but for the alleged heart of the nation? Stop it, or you'll go blind ...

Meanwhile, as if to prove the point, The Australian today published Frank Furedi on climate science, with Possibilities for fear remain endless, in which the fearless Frank explains how climate science is really all scare-mongering, moral panic, existential insecurity and so on and so forth.

As usual, Furedi manages not to dwell on actual climate science or its implications, but instead whips himself up into a lather, and gets seriously alarmed about alarmist language.

The one puzzle is why the elephant Manne thought the leopard could be persuaded to change its spots.

Oh okay, time enough to stop, for fear that in this climate of insecurity, we can sometimes lose confidence in our capacity to control our destiny.

What a pity Furedi wasn't around at the time of the alarmist panic mounted by scientists about CFCs and the ozone layer, since it seems it's well-established these days that human activity can in no way have any affect on the world or its atmosphere or its climate. We can just go on looting and pillaging until the end of time, which after all is a very long time, right near the twelfth of never, or at least until the rapture (offer of rapture void if not allowed by state law or consumer fails religious test).

Yep, it's the same old lizard Oz, and it'll be the same the next day and the next, with its crappy jokes and noisome farting commentariat, and each time you buy it, you just egg them on, leaving a manne or a womanne wondering what must be done to introduce some common sense into the world ...

What's that you say? Those puns are exceptionally tired? Well we're just taking inspiration from leaky old Bill Leak who might shortly end up like Patrick Cook rabbiting on once a month about the evils of the world on Counterpoint, a tragic figure without humour or relevance ...

So it goes, as Bob Ellis still says, long after his borrowing from Kurt Vonnegut was noted ...

(Below: no need to ask where The Australian stands on climate science. Over there to the right with the smoke stacks, Frank Furedi and Dr. No. Oh sure there's the odd righteous editorial from the anon edit, but don't think they do as they say, watch how they do as they do doooh doooh ...).

And now as Henry Gibson might say, a poem:

It was eight men of The Australian
To learning much inclined,
Who went to argue with the elephant Manne
(Though all of them were blind),
That each by argumentation
Might satisfy his mind.

The First approach'd the Elephant Manne,
And happening to fall
Against his broad and sturdy anti-journalism academic side,
At once began to bawl:
"God bless me! but the Elephant Manne
Is very like a wall!"

The Second, feeling of the tusk,
Cried, -"Ho! what have we here
So very round and smooth and sharp?
To me 'tis mighty clear
This wonder of an Elephant Manne
Is very like a an anti-continental spear!"

The Third approached the animal,
And happening to take
The squirming trunk within his hands,
Thus boldly up and spake:
"I see," quoth he, "the Elephant Manne
Is very like a rule-denying snake!"

The Fourth reached out his eager hand,
And felt about the knee.
"What most this wondrous beast is like
Is mighty plain," quoth he,
"'Tis clear enough the Elephant Manne
Is very like a morally posturing wilfully blind tree!"

The Fifth, who chanced to touch the ear,
Said: "E'en the blindest man
Can tell what this resembles most;
Deny the fact who can,
This marvel of an Elephant Manne
Is very like a nasty, wilfully misrepresentative fan!"

The Sixth no sooner had begun
About the beast to grope,
Then, seizing on the swinging tail
That fell within his scope,
"I see," quoth he, "the Elephant Manne
Is very like a pre-emptively striking rope!"

And so these men of The Australian
Disputed loud and long,
Each in his own opinion
Exceeding stiff and strong,
Though each was partly in the right,
And all were in the wrong!

MORAL.

So oft in theologic and newspaper wars,
The disputants, I ween,
Rail on in utter ignorance
Of what each other mean,
And prate about an Elephant manne
Not one of them has read and understood

in any meaningful way!

(apologies to John Godfrey Saxe)