Another day sucking on humbugs ...

(Above: it's Martin Rowson day at the pond, more here).

So there was Doug Cameron on the radio this very morning explaining how he was gob-smacked, bemused and outraged by the Enterprise Migration Agreement involving Gina Rinehart ... in his broad, lovingly retained Scots accent.

Happily it seems that there's been no need in recent years for the importation of skilled unionists and parliamentarians who can kick the Chinese worker can that's been kicked by the Labor party since the nineteenth century. Chinese workers, you see, cockroaches that they are, will work in the most appalling conditions.

All that was needed was for Paul Sheehan to chime in and explain how lazy Celts had ruined Britain. (Yes, yes, Sheehan's not just agitated by lazy Greeks, he's got a thing about the lazy Celts).

So how did The Australian provide a twist to the fuss in its own inimitable, sordid way?

(It's just a screen cap, no links, in much the same way as the pond doesn't usually link to sewage farms).

Yep, it's the classic 'when did you stop beating your wife' routine whereby anything can be turned to maintaining the class warfare rage. If you do something that undermines the class war you're waging, why you can't conduct a class war with class. But if you conduct a class war with class, why then you're conducting an unclassy class war.

This is the sort of routine you might expect of a sociopath roaming the streets muttering under his or her breath about class warfare ...

But wait, there's even more high comedy, and we don't even have to get past The Australian's rotating splash:

(It's a screen cap, no link, just as the pond expects you to find your own lolly shop supplier of humbugs and fairy floss).

An angry mob? You mean the Murdochian rioters armed with pitch flares and forks and baseball bats roaming the print media ...

Yes here's one of them:

(It's a screen cap, no link, if you want to get your treasures from the garbage dump, find your own way there).

The obvious retort to Pearson is of course to note that it requires no imagination at all to recall what a piece of work Pearson was when he was running the Adelaide Review like a petty gauleiter. Oh okay, there's ten cents for the Godwin's Law swear jar, but the pond pleads exceptional provocation.

This is the sort of defamatory gunk that litters the page of the Oz on a daily basis:

I imagine she must have been a real piece of work in the playground at Unley High and in student politics at the University of Adelaide, burnishing by turns, as circumstances demanded, her working-class and her feminist credentials but prepared to allow boys and men to do much of the heavy lifting as long as she was allowed to take most of the credit.

In short, simply vile and contemptible, managing to conflate a hatred of women and a hatred of Gillard with a hatred of feminists.

The rest of the piece can be summarised in equally short form: Tony Abbott wondrous, John Howard good, Gillard wretched.

It elevates smarmy toadiness to a new high, but the killer is that bit of bile about the Unley High playground. Ah well, there's not much point going over old ground ... oh heck why not:

During his university days, he [Pearson] also voted for the ALP at state elections, marched in the anti-Vietnam moratoriums, and registered as a conscientious objector – all common political activities for students in the 1970s (here).

Of course in those days it was important to have feminists hang around so they could prepare the coffee or the tea that would send the men out on the important business of protesting, leaving the women to prepare an evening meal after the day's onerous political business was done by the men.

Though perhaps not in the case of Pearson. Still, what a relief he avoided 'Nam, fine and honourable and useful war that it was ... what a piece of work, eh.

It's always strange how the extreme left and the extreme right are interchangeable.

Now you might tut tut and cluck cluck and wonder how talking about the way Pearson was a rabid leftist in his student days - check up on his love of Asian communist dictatorships - has got anything to do with what Pearson has become, and we'll readily agree, as soon as you can explain how Pearson slurring Gillard's school days has got anything to do with anything, except Pearson's capacity for fear and loathing ...

Is there any sign of genuine balance at The Australian?

(It's a cap, no link, find your own delusional moderate and feed them on fizzy sticks).

Actually George we might have provided a link if only your splash had read:

Tony Abbott is taking the least honourable path to power, aided and abetted by the least honourable journalism from myrmidon Murdochians the country has seen in decades.

Or some such thing.

You see George you're on the same revolving splash as Pearson, and that means the jig is up.

Is there any upside?

Well yes, if you read the latest hi jinks at the Leveson inquiry. How long before Hunt falls, and how long before News Corp hives off its rags to concentrate on the money-making business of television? And how long before those ripples reach the antipodes?

What a piece of hacking and slashing and burning work is News Limited down under ... and yet there are still people happy to get their limited news from them ...

(Below: Martin Rowson on Hunt's appearance at the Leveson inquiry, here).