Paul Sheehan, and yet more croaking of 'Nevermore' from above the Fairfax door ...

(Above: a chance to start off the week with some high class references to Gorgons and the abuse of women, thanks to the always feminist Paul Sheehan).


The point about being a member of the commentariat is that you must learn to be a very flexible parrot, mix and match your messages, and give song constantly, whatever the contradictions and hypocrisies involved.

Devoted readers of Paul Sheehan, for example, might like to frolic back in the days of Why the West is riding for a fall, to discover:

Cultural amnesia, excess consumption and environmental decline are more dangerous than terrorism, but we are so awash with propaganda we don't even notice. Or care.

That was when Sheehan was in his Diamond/Huntington phase, about the time he was also in his portly concern for the fat chicks of Australia phase, and promising in Affluenza is a big weight on our mind, too that There is a cure for affluenza.

Who knows what that cure might be, because at that point Sheehan stopped his scribbling.

Perhaps the answer lies in muscular Christianity, because here's Sheehan praising away in Flexing muscles in religion's battle:

Muscular Christians are making their presence felt in improbable places. Such as Gibson in Hollywood. Or Guy Sebastian on Australian Idol. Despite being a creation of the Ten Network, Sebastian is not simply an idol of consumerism. He sings in praise of God, he is a virgin, a committed Christian, and someone who sounds as if he knows that self and money are not enough.

Yep, mere money and consumerism aren't enough, though they might get you a decent sourdough.

Praise the lord (and someone pass the ammunition).

Perhaps you're not satisfied with the muscular Xian thing, and so plunged back into the archives to discover that Australia is a Continent at risk of a dry tsunami:

The chilling question is, if Peter Andrews is right about his own part of the country, what if he is right about the big picture? We've basically got one generation to stabilise the dry tsunami or we may be remembered as the wealthiest generation that ever lived here, and the idiot-consumers who fiddled while Australia burned.

Sheehan is a big Peter Andrews fan, and has dedicated a number of columns to his thoughts, including Floods steal precious topsoil - and future goes down the drain:

We changed the landscape, and so changed the weather. Then we blamed it on ''drought''. It wasn't drought. It was much worse.
It was ignorance.

But that was yesterday, and yesterday's an easy game to play, and there's really no need to believe in yesterday, when all our troubles seemed like they were here to stay week after week in Sheehan's world.

You might even begin to yearn for yesterday, but here we are and it's today (unless you happen to read this tomorrow or the day after that), and what troubles the concerned, troubled by materialism and consumerism Sheehan?

Well if you read Nothing fair about these acts of bastardry, it's union bastardy, and that goes hand in hand with the federal Labor government. It seems we can't rip Australia's resources out of the ground and ship them to Asia fast enough.

Sheehan is awed by the size of the unfortunately named Gorgon LNG project in WA:

The Gorgon project has scary dimensions: it will cost an estimated $43 billion, and will deliver, by Chevron's estimate, $64 billion to the Australian economy over the next 30 years. It has gas reserves big enough to supply the energy needs of Sydney for the next 200 years.

Roll on consumerism, but as for Sydney's energy needs, please to remember that the project's main customers at the moment happen to be China, India, Japan and South Korea (here).

Chevron itself is fond of throwing around arbitrary statistics, pointing out that the project will be extracting 40 trillion cubic feet of LNG - enough to power a city of 1 million people for 800 years (here).

It just so happens at last count China had 10 cities with a population of four million or over, 23 between 2 and 4 million, 279 between 500,000 and 1 million, and 171 between 200k and 500k. (here's a handy list). Throw in India, and you might be hinting that there's enough gas for 800 cities for one year.

But no doubt it's a big deal, and it's handsome that some of the LNG - a smidgin, a dash, a dollop - is being reserved for the domestic system, but what truly boggles the mind is the way that Sheehan manages to leap from the details of this project - inked under the federal Labor government's aegis - to a standard fulminating diatribe about the Labor government, the need for increased productivity, the need for growth, the need for progress, and all the standard rhetorical flourishes of big business.

Where's Peter Andrews when you need him? Gone out the window and flown far away ...

Instead, according to the Fairfax oracle of doom and gloom, the federal industrial relations legislation is a disaster, the unions are on the march, and there are significant obstacles to digging up Australian and shipping it all to Asia, and like as not Gorgon will fail and fall because of unions and their bastardry.

To save you the full detailing of all the doom and gloom, let's cut to the final par, skipping over the demise of small business by COB Friday, the high cost of private school fees (oh the suffering of the eastern and northern suburbs), and the rapid increase in energy costs which means the 24/7/365 environmentally 'controlled' mansion and swimming pool are proving a tad expensive to run:

... the actions of the federal government - by re-empowering its union base through the Fair Work Act, by appeasing its de facto coalition partner, the Greens, via the pending carbon tax, and by its aura of instability caused by having to cling to power by one increasingly disreputable vote - are contributing to the increase in unemployment and underemployment in Australia.

Uh huh. Tell that tale about unemployment to the mining industry hunting for labour.

But what do we get from this standard bit of Labor and union bashing?

Well you might think that Sheehan is something of a schizophrenic, or a dab hand at mixed messages, on the one hand deploring growth and rampant consumerism, and warning, Jared Diamond-like of the ruin facing the west, and the destruction of the soil, when we all know the answer lies in the soil ...

And on the other hand, getting agitated that Australian citizens might hold out a paw and demand their share of the gruel.

But the pond prefers to think of Sheehan not as a mixed message parrot, so much as a raven, perched for some inexplicable reason at the top of the Fairfax entry, solemnly intoning intimations of doom each week.

It doesn't matter which brand of doom, any doom will do, though doom involving unions, the Labor party, migrants, refugees, boat people will do best of all.

It turns out that buying a Fairfax rag is roughly equivalent to opening a shutter in saintly days of yore, as Edgar Allan Poe once explained in The Raven:

Open here I flung the shutter, when, with many a flirt and flutter,
In there stepped a stately raven of the saintly days of yore.
Not the least obeisance made he; not a minute stopped or stayed he;
But, with mien of lord or lady, perched above my chamber door -
Perched upon a bust of Pallas just above my chamber door -
Perched, and sat, and nothing more.

Then this ebony bird beguiling my sad fancy into smiling,
By the grave and stern decorum of the countenance it wore,
'Though thy crest be shorn and shaven, thou,' I said, 'art sure no craven.
Ghastly grim and ancient raven wandering from the nightly shore -
Tell me what thy lordly name is on the Night's Plutonian shore!'
Quoth the raven, 'Nevermore.'

Much I marvelled this ungainly fowl to hear discourse so plainly,
Though its answer little meaning - little relevancy bore;
For we cannot help agreeing that no living human being
Ever yet was blessed with seeing bird above his chamber door -
Bird or beast above the sculptured bust above his chamber door,
With such name as 'Nevermore.'

But the raven, sitting lonely on the placid bust, spoke only,
That one word, as if his soul in that one word he did outpour.
Nothing further then he uttered - not a feather then he fluttered -
Till I scarcely more than muttered 'Other friends have flown before -
On the morrow he will leave me, as my hopes have flown before.'
Then the bird said, 'Nevermore.'

Startled at the stillness broken by reply so aptly spoken,
'Doubtless,' said I, `what it utters is its only stock and store,
Caught from some unhappy master whom unmerciful disaster
Followed fast and followed faster till his songs one burden bore -
Till the dirges of his hope that melancholy burden bore
Of "Never-nevermore."'

But the raven still beguiling all my sad soul into smiling,
Straight I wheeled a cushioned seat in front of bird and bust and door;
Then, upon the velvet sinking, I betook myself to linking
Fancy unto fancy, thinking what this ominous bird of yore -
What this grim, ungainly, ghastly, gaunt, and ominous bird of yore
Meant in croaking 'Nevermore.'

Now if we can just get Sheehan down to his proper ravenish dimensions, and his croaking column of doom deduced to one word a week, what joy there'd be in the world.

Why that would leave us to shed bitter tears about the pitiful poverty of the likes of the long suffering Chevron, or even Gina Rinehart, and her family wars and blues ...

(Below: Paul Sheehan as a figure in a Gustave Dore illustration - more with poem and heavy metal music here - or the Simpsons' sitcom? Being fair and balanced, we let you decide).