On the utility and futility of satire, and the urgent need for Stewart and Colbert to travel down under ...

The pond is all in favour of a satirical magazine in the antipodes of the Private Eye kind, as proposed by Richard Ackland in A Private Eye helps the search for truth, though as Private Eye rather pre-emptively pointed out in its 5oth anniversary celebration cover, satire is completely and utterly useless ...

But you have to wonder which planet Ackland has been living on:

Australia is a weird place with lots of amusing possibilities. There is plenty to satirise. Slowly people are beginning to realise that someone like Alan Jones is a brilliant comic having a huge lend of us every morning. If only we could mainstream a sort of local Private Eye, it might ensure that we don't become too dull a lot.

Ye ancient cats and dogs, people are slowly beginning to realise ....??

People have been sending up the pompous prat ever since he was dubbed the parrot, and he's been celebrated for his squawking for what now seems like eternity:

People have been parroting on about the parrot, and the parrot's keeper John "life's a rort" Singleton for years (Does Alan Jones deserve a place in our licensed radio community?), but in terms of hide, Jones is more elephant or rare white rhino than parrot:

Happily Alan Jones is now just an aging parrot with a croaky voice, and his participation in the Convoy of No Confidence to Canberra, and his bizarre claims thereto showed he was out of his depth in the federal scene. (Police baffled by Jones' blockage claims).

Even Tony Abbott begins checking the time when Jones starts speaking:

Yes Tony, it's way past time to enliven Australia Day in your own inimitable, puggish, verbally thuggish and aggressive way.

That gaggle of tents might be an eyesore to the bourgeois mind, always intent on the neat and the tidy, but really, it's outside old parliament house, and only the caretakers, the tourists and the burghers of Canberra noticed it ... until you stepped in and promoted it to the front page, by offering up your very own brand of Telephone, Chinese Whispers or Gossip (How to Play the Repeat Game). On Oorrstralia Day, you bloody beaut ...

Meanwhile, if the pond has its druthers, it would rather see a Jon Stewart or a Stephen Colbert liven up the political scene in Australia.

The coverage of the Republican primaries by the indomitable duo is of a kind and quality that suggests satire might, in some locales, have a visceral, discernible impact on the electorate, at least when it comes to the absurdity of Super PACs.

Instead what we get is a sitcom like At Home with Julia which has as its only claim to fame a feeble sex scene.

Amazingly Tony Abbott confessed to having a good belly laugh, which perhaps explains why humour and satire struggle in the antipodes ...

Colbert and Stewart would have had a field day today, and they possibly would have started with the wild coverage of yesterday's events, with the Daily Terror leading the way:

Say what? Bodyguard ready to take bullet for Julia? What bullet, where?

It seems Paul Whittaker might be safe at the Terror, which surely must be the most depressing story to emerge this Australia Day season, not the rampaging mob ...

Naturally the Bolter was there to savage the mob, in his usual pompous, overblown, over the top, hysterical, alarmist way.

There's never any shame for the day of shamers.

Ah yes it's payback time black people. Which is why you can find Piers 'Akker Dakker' Akerman brooding yet again about the Orwellian ways of the world in Second-class meddling is selfish, deceitful, and the dreadful, shocking treatment of the Bolter along with the dreadful shocking treatment of the language:

... the Orwellian newspeak of the politically correct "indigenous" does not mean born in Australia. It means Aborigine as in Australian Aborigine, a definition that is also becoming increasingly fluid.

Indeed. No doubt Akker Dakker yearns for the days when Aborigines were defined as part of the fauna, and so could be classified as truly indigenous:

indigenous - originating where it is found; "the autochthonal fauna of Australia includes the kangaroo"; "autochthonous rocks and people and folktales"; "endemic folkways"; "the Ainu are indigenous to the northernmost islands of Japan" ...

And the Veddoid Australoids are indigenous to Australia ...

Meanwhile, the HUN took a surprisingly sotto voce whimsical approach to the clash:

But if you've got the Bolter in full indignant apocalyptic war cry, you can afford a little perspective and slipper sinking in the news section.

UPDATE: well the slipper whimsy didn't last long, as the HUN provided an update full of shock and horror.
Yes, it's one thing to make fun of princess Gillard and her slipper, but quite another thing when valiant indigenous leaders jump to the defence of Tony Abbott.

Now who's going to explain to Akker Dakker that the Herald Sun is in the grip of Orwellian indigenous language? Oh you Murdochian big brother fiends, not you too. It's a Herculean task for Akker Dakker to clean out his very own Augean stables ...

So there you go Ackland. Wrong magazine, wrong request.

What we need is a Jon Stewart doing over the latest grandiosity from the grandiose Gingrinch, like his discovery that there's a war against religion even fiercer than his war on marriage. (here). And what we need is someone to dismantle Hulu so the pond can embed a clip of Stewart in full flight.

And what we need is Colbert doing over Rick Santorum, even if it doesn't mention Santorum saying that rape victims should accept their babies as gifts from God.

Say what? Rapists are acting on God's orders, and seeding babies like Santa coming down the chimney?

... I believe and I think the right approach is to accept this horribly created -- in the sense of rape -- but nevertheless a gift in a very broken way, the gift of human life, and accept what God has given to you. (here)

So there you have it. God works his magic through rapists ...

No wonder Santorum is the gift that keeps on giving to US comedians, and would that we had comedians that could do the same for the Abbotts and the Gillards here, instead of having to rely on Anthony Albanese ripping off a speech from The American President.

Is there a speech in an American movie about the urgent need for a second airport in Sydney? Bet Albo doesn't rip that one off ...

Take it away Colbert, embedded from another source - damn you Hulu, damn you to hell - but ain't it grand to spoof Comedy Central and score a direct hit to the veins in the eyeball from the dynamic duo.

Not that satire would make a jot or whit of difference to Tony Abbott ...