Janet Albrechtsen, and a mangled message that oozes an illiberal air of group think ...

(Above: now that's not incoherence, that's sharp logic and philosophy at work).

When you put on the blinkers, ranting comes easy:

The Tea Party has become the mosh pit of right-wing incoherence for those wishing to vent and rant about anything that bothers them. While it's tempting to see the partiers as a harmless and humorous last gasp of the Right, the risk is that their grapeshot grievances will be pocketed for political purposes by those wielding power. If that happens, the present global economic pain will only grow worse and last longer.

UIh huh. Shocking ideological stuff, ignoring the aspirations and indignations of millions, possibly scribbled by some armchair commentariat pundit lolling in a nice leather chair.

Let's see how Janet "Dame Slap" Albrechtsen shows a more fair and balanced approach in Krugman's army stirs up bulldust on Wall Street:

New York's Zuccotti Park has become the mosh pit of left-wing incoherence for those wishing to vent and rant about anything that bothers them. While it's tempting to see the occupiers as a harmless and humorous last gasp of the Left, the risk is that their grapeshot grievances will be pocketed for political purposes by those wielding power. If that happens, the present global economic pain will only grow worse and last longer.

It turns out that the chaotic and confused messages of the Tea Party - make government smaller, cut my taxes, but whatever you do, don't cut my medical benefits - are in fact a model of clarity:

... you can see why those on the Left find the OWS protesters so useful. Unlike the Tea Party, which had a distinct and very clear message, and if you didn't agree with smaller government, lower taxes and fidelity to the US Constitution, then the Tea Party really wasn't for you, the jumbled messages of the OWS protests are putty in the hands of so-called progressives.

Uh huh. A very clear and distinct message. Like I'm so angry I wrote a sign.

But that's probably because in fact the Tea Party's grapeshot grievances were pocketed for political purposes by those aspiring to wield power, in much the same way as in Australia the grapeshot grievances of a motley group of truckies and older, plumper white folk were quickly pocketed for political purposes ....

It's just that those doing the pocketing happen to sit in the right side of the billiard table pocket, right alongside the right-thinking Albrechtsen ...

Well as the ruling chattering elites established a long time ago, you can always have your cake and eat it too, and so in the matter of the current round of protests, Albrechtsen is in a dire and dark mood.

For a start, there are hapless smiling hippies with long hair and spectacles holding up incoherent signs, or another impertinent wretch demanding that his college fees be paid, as if there's anything like a free lunch, and as if Gough Whitlam hadn't been banished from the world (free lunches in board rooms herein and hereafter specifically excluded, and allowed for as a necessity of doing business, free lunch understood to include free dinners, free breakfasts, and associated perks and indulgences, preferably in appropriately lavish accommodation, and none of that bloody salary man nonsense please).

Naturally Dame Slap is outraged that the New York Times has got involved, unlike say the Fox News network, which has never allowed bias to creep into its coverage of events.

And naturally Dame Slap is appalled at the way the rabble have been dubbed "Krugman's Army" in honour of the Times resident lefty economist, who by merely winning a Nobel prize in the dismal art offended all of Albrechtsen's superior understandings of how the world of economics works ...

The result?

Decked out in Nike shoes, sipping Starbucks coffee, hoeing into a Macca and networking on their iPhones, iPads and Macbooks, unacknowledged irony flows as freely as their anti-capitalist messages against big, evil corporations.

This ugly world is in sharp contradiction to the Calvinist life of the commentariat, who naturally favour Dunlop sandshoes, instant coffee of the home brand kind (no milk or cream or sugar please), shop at K Mart and demand plain, ugly frumpy PCs with no networking capacity whatsoever, since there's never really been a reason to upgrade from MS-DOS ... and all this can be written with unacknowledged irony, since pro-capitalist messages earnestly in favour of big happy cheerful corporations can easily lead you to become a minion of Rupert Murdoch, and make out like a bandit ...

Naturally it wouldn't be a proper parade of insults if the UN were to be left out:

The OWS protests resemble a UN-style sleep-out, with talk about general assemblies, communiques and consensus, endless platitudes about utopia, meaningless diatribes and no clear aims. For all their talk about democracy, their mangled messages ooze an illiberal air of group think.

And naturally the Greens are somehow involved:

And as for the copycat occupiers in Sydney, Melbourne and Brisbane, no doubt the Greens will support their inchoate grievances as a sign of mainstream discontent validating the need for Greens policies. Voters, on the other hand, know better. With Greens policies such as a carbon tax already stamped on the Australian landscape, the ragtag protesters and their far-left supporters are a reminder that adding incoherence to incoherence equals more incoherence.

Even more shocking, it seems the White House is involved, and as a result, the US economy will suffer mightily, unlike the glory days when Tea Party hero George W. Bush ran a most successful economy ...

Talk about a reminder that adding incoherence to incoherence equals incoherence tripled and quadrupled.

Now all this talk of incoherence is jolly enough, because who hasn't had a snide chortle at the likes of Joe the Plumber delivering a mangled message oozing an illiberal air of group think. Who hasn't had fun with the sillier tea partiers, and their silly conflicting, confused, incoherent messages ...

But surely that's the point at which Albrechtsen, in the usual way of a heavily imbalanced, lopsided member of the commentariat, jumps the shark.

The point about rage and anger and political impotence is that it tends to involve incoherence, and to pretend that the right wing rage manifested of late is somehow superior to the newly visible and apparently left wing rage - since it seems to embrace 99% of the population - is pure tosh, drivel of the whitest snow kind ... (Who'd have thunk that 99% of the population had a lefty thing about the 1% who control the show?)

It flies in the face of the inspiration of the pond, and the holy prophet of all incoherent protestors:

I don't have to tell you things are bad. Everybody knows things are bad. It's a depression. Everybody's out of work or scared of losing their job. The dollar buys a nickel's worth, banks are going bust, shopkeepers keep a gun under the counter. Punks are running wild in the street and there's nobody anywhere who seems to know what to do, and there's no end to it. We know the air is unfit to breathe and our food is unfit to eat, and we sit watching our TV's while some local newscaster tells us that today we had fifteen homicides and sixty-three violent crimes, as if that's the way it's supposed to be. We know things are bad - worse than bad. They're crazy. It's like everything everywhere is going crazy, so we don't go out anymore. We sit in the house, and slowly the world we are living in is getting smaller, and all we say is, 'Please, at least leave us alone in our living rooms. Let me have my toaster and my TV and my steel-belted radials and I won't say anything. Just leave us alone.' Well, I'm not gonna leave you alone. I want you to get mad! I don't want you to protest. I don't want you to riot - I don't want you to write to your congressman because I wouldn't know what to tell you to write. I don't know what to do about the depression and the inflation and the Russians and the crime in the street. All I know is that first you've got to get mad. You've got to say, 'I'm a HUMAN BEING, God damn it! My life has VALUE!' So I want you to get up now. I want all of you to get up out of your chairs. I want you to get up right now and go to the window. Open it, and stick your head out, and yell, 'I'M AS MAD AS HELL, AND I'M NOT GOING TO TAKE THIS ANYMORE!' I want you to get up right now, sit up, go to your windows, open them and stick your head out and yell - 'I'm as mad as hell and I'm not going to take this anymore!' Things have got to change. But first, you've gotta get mad!... You've got to say, 'I'm as mad as hell, and I'm not going to take this anymore!' Then we'll figure out what to do about the depression and the inflation and the oil crisis. But first get up out of your chairs, open the window, stick your head out, and yell, and say it: "I'M AS MAD AS HELL, AND I'M NOT GOING TO TAKE THIS ANYMORE!"

Good old Paddy Chayefsky, a liberal left-leaning New York Jew, predicting the rise of Fox News, the workings of News Corp and its minions, and associated squawkers ... long ago in 1976, like the prophet he was.

Well reading Paddy makes for more fun than reading Janet Albrechtsen, who is altogether lavish with the stereotypes and the cliches:

Just as Twitter and Facebook helped build the Occupy Wall Street protests and its offshoots in Australia, so too YouTube and the internet helpfully exposes the inane nature of these protests. It's all there. The ravings of young people who feel they missed out on the protests of the 1960s, ageing hippies wanting to relive those halcyon years, unhappy college kids, the unemployed and a range of loitering performance art protesters who don't want to miss out on a free feed -- one guy who's been there for 12 days put on about 2kg ("I'm eating better than I do at home") -- not to mention the daily meditation sessions and rollicking singalongs.

Uh huh. Poor old hippies. Inane protests, in stark contrast to utterly ane tea partiers.

Imagine the cheek of actually enjoying a rollicking singalong, when all Calvinists know pop music should be banned, and as for feeling at peace and at one with the world, or daring to enjoy a pizza, or being interested in art or attending college ... Did Dame Slap ever tell you her hard early years, down in coal mine from before dawn to earn enough to eat cat food? (Did she write the script for Four Yorkshiremen?)

As for the intertubes and digital devices, would that be the same way that they've helped expose the purest drivel from Allan Jones, fed to his tribe as they assembled to protest in Canberra?

You know the tribe full of elderly plumpish white folk eating the wrong food, getting fat and unhappy and unable to understand that the world is moving on, and leaving them behind, perhaps in a London toilet, wondering why it all went wrong. Wrong!

Wrong at the top of his voice, and you can watch it on the internet as it helpfully exposes the inane nature of those protests ...

Uh oh. Suddenly the pond is sounding like Dame Slap, purest stereotypes and cliches seeking to demean people, some of whom might be suffering in a tough world.

But it surely helps, if you intend to be satirical about protests and protestors, to make sure that the pot you're pointing to is slightly different to the steaming kettle of nonsense you value so highly ...

Unlike the Tea Party, which had a distinct and very clear message ...

Pure comedy genius, and a great way to start the day with a totally excellent laugh ... and just the sort of silliness you can expect from the commentariat in The Australian ... roll on that paywall, and please, put Dame Slap behind it. Make people pay and pay to read her, and then brood about how they pay to suffer ...

Never mind. How about this for a variation?

Unlike Pauline Hanson, always on view in the Canberra protests, who had a distinct and very clear message, Janet Albrechtsen is so intent on belabouring the left she doesn't realise she's actually cudgelling her own common sense into submission ... reminding us that far right cheerleaders will always add incoherence to silliness to produce even grander visions of incoherence, including but not limited to the diverse array of incoherent religionistas and ratbags that make up the current crop of Republican contenders for the US Presidency ...

Whatever. Must go get that really nice latte and, speaking of constant incoherence, check Miranda the Devine's latest twittering tweet ... because you can rely on the intertubes to expose the follies of the minions of Murdoch.

(Below: Oh heck, since we're speaking of coherence, surely there's room for another Sarah Palin cartoon).