In which the pond breaks consecrated bread with Catholics and smells the stink of Pickering on assorted hands ...

(Above: the pond goes off with the pigs today, so this just sets the tone).

One of the more amusing performances in larrikin John Gorton's career as PM came when he advised the cameras and reporters he couldn't stop for questions, he had to rush home to watch Countdown. (watch it live on YouTube here, a pond link for nostalgia freaks).

What's this got to with anything? Nothing much, except to prove Gorton had a sense of humour, which no doubt came in handy during his extensive wartime adventures as a fighter pilot.

It's also an alternative kind of history, since today the prattling Polonius, aka Gerard Henderson, drones on and on delivering yet another history lesson, and completely without humour, as he pontificates in The lessons of Goulburn resonate in schools 50 years later.

That anybody could think the kind of education offered rural folks in the early nineteen sixties is something to celebrate - damn you Dominican nuns - is bizarrely funny, but let's skip the history lesson, and yet more adoring tales of Ming the Merciless, and cut to the chase.

Here's where prattling Polonius thinks we should be headed:

In the United States, Britain and now Western Australia, governments are establishing ''charter'' or ''free'' schools, which are publicly funded but operate independently from the education bureaucracy. The Coalition, led by Christopher Pyne on this issue, is beginning to embrace this initiative.

The funny thing is that Polonius thinks Gillard light on educational issues, while presenting this kind of superficial piety about charter or free schools, as if proposing that somehow they're free of "education bureaucracy" is enough, and all will be well.

Would it be too bold, too brave, to suggest that Polonius do some reading, not necessarily to do with what happened in Goulburn in 1962, which was in fact a form of strike action (ain't it funny how it's okay to go on strike if you happen to be a tyke - yes that's an intentional rhyme, apologies).

A stiff chaser of Diane Ravitch always comes in handy. Why not start with The Myth of Charter Schools (outside the NYRB paywall), and then why not follow it up with Do Our Public Schools Threaten National Security? And there's also The Miseducation of Mitt Romney. (both also happily outside the paywall)

Over in the UK, following the splendid effort of G4S at the Olympics, they're keen to allow "free" schools to generate a profit. (For-profit schools would be no more virtuous than other private-sector firms).

And recently Doonesbury has been having an inordinate amount of fun with the 'for profit' tertiary sector in the United States, which is now irredeemably corrupt as it chases the buck rather than service students and their education.

(Click to enlarge, more here).

Enough already. We already know the purpose to private education - to turn out cogs in the giant Ponzi wheel of institutions like the Catholic church.

Some students blessed by an education at Jesuit Xavier College in Melbourne even turn out like Gerard Henderson and spend the rest of their lives regurgitating Catholic propaganda and conservative twaddle and perhaps saw attending university as a chance to run the DLP club ...

Say no more. But speaking of fundamentalist Catholics, as we were, the chattering classes are all agog over the clanger dropped by Todd Akin on the matter of "legitimate" rape and the strange way that nature manages to shut down rapist sperm to prevent pregnancy and the need for an abortion.

Naturally a few people started to connect the dots:

"When you look at who Akin's partner was on all the anti-choice legislation, it was Paul Ryan"

Yep, Ryan was just as rabid and hard-line as Akin when it came to providing an abortion to a woman who was raped. Another hard-line conservative Catholic.

Which means it's not just "only in Missouri", it's "only in America".

As the Republican party maintains its hatred, fear and loathing of the right of women to control their bodies, the thing that perplexes the pond is why they ever decided to pick a fight with the Taliban. On the matter of women and their rights, the Republican party and the Taliban are soul buddies. Never forget that your average conservative Catholic shares a lot of attitudes with your average conservative Islamic.

Which is why the pond was grateful to astute readers for pointing out Greg Craven's extensive whinge in The Australian, with Religious reporting really has gone to the dogs (inside the paywall, but easy to google if you want to waste your life).

After giving secularists and unbelievers a hard time for a thousand years - on my parents shifting me from a Catholic to a state school to get a decent education, we were all consigned to hell by the local church leadership - it turns out that Catholics like Greg Craven really can't handle the heat in the kitchen.

The funniest thing? Craven getting agitated about a delusional ceremony involving transubstantiation.

That's a fancy way of describing a ritual in which people are persuaded to imagine that they're cannibals, scoffing real flesh and sipping real blood:

You would anticipate that just as a football writer would know that Buddy Franklin breaking a leg is a bad news story, Zwartz would dimly discern that desecration of the holiest Catholic rite requires a piece of some seriousness.

So there you go. Craven is such a dimwit Victorian, he thinks a football analogy is the only serious way to explain the desecration of the host.

Sheesh, he makes Barney Zwartz sound like a solemn, caring genius. You could have endless fun with this as a party game:

You would anticipate that just as a football writer would know that Collingwood losing on Sunday is a bad news story, Zwartz would dimly discern that the crucifixion of Christ is a piece of some seriousness.

Seriously, is he serious?

Sadly, it's the pond's old mate, Barney Zwartz, in trouble once again with the tykes, and the cheeky Craven doesn't even provide a link to Barners' story, so here it is: Dissidents preach a new breed of Catholicism.

Barners knows how to leap high and take a mark in the sky, so he starts off his story with a dog eating a bit of consecrated bread. And the silly pooch probably didn't even realise he was getting a tasty meat tid bit.

Gays, women, outsiders, pooches all feature in Barner's piece ... so of course Craven's going to get agitated.

What would Jesus do? Probably hang around with the outsiders and avoid pompous prats like Craven.

Which leaves just enough time to note that the scurrilous vile rag The Australian - why are you still buying it, have you no shame - is maintaining the rage in its pursuit of Gillard.

No links, the pond doesn't peddle tobacco or filth, but it does raise a philosophical question.

Can vileness be exclusive? (Lately Crikey's been having a running joke about the war of "exclusives" between The Australian and the AFR).

There's been a little push back to the "exclusive" vileness.

Over at Crikey, Bernard Keane made the point This is what the Right is expert at: smearing. (may be paywall affected, but doesn't the absence of trust in the Australian media make for jim dandy reading here).

And yesterday Michael Pascoe lashed out in fine style at one of the chief sources of the rumours in Larry Pickering - the conman stalking Gillard. The pond usually refuses to mention Pickering, since there are already enough sexist pigs in the trough, but it's worth noting that even now The Australian still carries a gallery of his cartoons.

Anyhoo, after accusing Pickering of being:

an inveterate liar, a bankrupt conman with a seedy history of fleecing the gullible of millions of dollars while not paying his own bills

Pascoe clarifies his attitude a little more:

With various failed business ventures and numerous personal relationships of equal standard, for decades he has plied a grubby trade behind sundry stooges and partners, assisted by the odd sharp lawyer and hapless corporate and consumer regulators. He is not a nice man.

Pascoe concludes by mentioning what he considers a government policy failure in the matter of unions, as opposed to the current Gillard witch hunt:

That was a dire prime ministerial failure, but it's a long bow that stretches from there to feeding the public's more scurrilous instincts with concocted details of an old affair. The stink of Pickering remains on the hands of those passing his material on.

The stink of Pickering. Now that's a lovely phrase. Which makes it all the more piquant this morning to read in Fairfax Phillip Coorey sounding as righteous and dung-filled as a hack in search of a gig at Murdoch land, with Saga of the PM's job at Slater Gordon: how serious is it?

As you can see from the header Coorey is just asking questions, and asking for matters to be cleared up. Coorey's last sentence is a doozy, as he demands that questions asked should be answered:

She has a trust problem with the electorate and even if as she, the law firm and the lawyers who took on Mr Wilson attest, she did nothing wrong, it will continue to fuel the negative perceptions that already exist.

Yes, even if she's done nothing wrong, Phillip Coorey will continue to fuel the negative perceptions of her, by recycling one more time the matter in which nobody is able to produce any evidence she's done anything wrong.

And what was outside in the gutter is now picked up, dusted off and brought inside the house, the stench and the pong filling every room, no matter what air freshener you use, courtesy of Murdoch, and now Fairfax hacks. (Jennifer Hewett did her bit to embrace the stink of Pickering for the AFR with Old ghost is Gillard's recurring nightmare).

And so the war on women in Australian politics continues.

And Phillip Coorey? He has the stink, the stench, the smell of Pickering on his hands ...

Which brings us to a final, ultimate mystery. Why is it that a few Liberal leaders, like John Gorton, could show a little humanity in the job? And why do others only discover themselves after they've left the gig?

There's John Howson whipping up a storm of comments and sounding quite concerned about rights in Australian Government MIA in Assange case (joining Malcolm Fraser in being a stirrer).

Will Tony Abbott, the stench, the stink, the smell of Pickering on his hands, change after he's left the job? Will he discover his Christian principles and start writing solemn opinion pieces for various rags?

That's after he's restored the golden age of John Howard and been unceremoniously dumped like John Howard ...

Who knows, but what an excellent chance to remember the golden era of Howard with an excellent First Dog. You won't find Gerard Henderson remembering the lessons of history in quite the same way ...

(Below: click to enlarge, more First Dog here. It will slip outside the paywall very soon, perhaps today, but yes the pond subscribes, if only to help keep the Dog in business. He can't live on consecrated bread alone you know).