Let's all blame handbags, or Tony Abbott, or Christopher Pearson or Bazza or Nick or Quentin ...

(Above: apparently this was by Mark Knight in the HUN, but it's behind the failed, flailing paywall, so no link).


While one arm of the Liberal party has been roaming around talking of handbag hit squads and the handbag mafia in relation to female politicians of an alternative stripe, the other arm of of the Liberal party is busy assuring the world they don't have a problem with uppity women of any kind.

Sometimes the discourse is so schizophrenic it can be united in one person. Come on down Kelly O'Dwyer, show us how it's done:

... we're seeing gender be used as a political weapon against Tony Abbott. What has been a very vicious and very personal attack waged by members of the frontbench team. What I have coined as the handbag hit squad ....

A very vicious and personal attack on women playing at being politicians, the uppity dears, so do go on ...

... and I think that that is a real low for us. Margie Abbott today came out in defence of her husband Tony because of this very gendered war that's being waged as part of a political strategy. (here)

Yes, the Liberal party doesn't have a problem with women, it's just at war with women wielding handbags.

What next? High heeled hardliners? The libellous lipstick crew? The false eyelash liars? The sanitary pad slanderers and panderers?

And then O'Dwyer compounded the problem with preposterous denialism when it came to the 'ditch the witch' posters that set the game running:

KELLY O'DWYER: Tony didn't know those signs were being held up and he repudiated that immediately when he was told that those signs were held up in front of him, I think to try and draw ... EMMA ALBERICI: They were right behind him, he must have seen them there, to say that he didn't know that they were there when they were right behind him is a little disingenuous surely? 

A little disingenuous? That's the fanciest term the pond has yet heard for completely silly:

And Citizen Kane had no idea he was standing in front of a large photo of himself.

KELLY O'DWYER: Emma ... well you don't have eyes in the back of your head, I think it would be sort of a preposterous suggestion to think that Tony could actually you know have eyes in the back of his head ... 
 EMMA ALBERICI: And they were all throughout the crowd to.

Of course they were, and the assault on female politicians has been going on through the entire Ju-liar phase, and now Alan Jones has brought it front and centre, and so what does Abbott do? Wheel out his wife and daughters.

Say one thing, John Howard was a conservative politician, but he never traded on his wife or his family life. Janette Howard might have run a mean kitchen cabinet, but she only hit the news when accused of influencing an appointment on the board of the ABC. Most of the time she accompanied but stayed discreetly in the background. Sure she joined in the parade as required, but there was no trading off.

Oh she did decide to step into the limelight in 2007 by deciding to help out in an assault on Kevin Rudd (Janet plays second fiddle, with gusto).

The result? Fare thee well, John and Janette Howard ...

What Abbott and his advisors have done, by flourishing Ms Abbott and kinder in the limelight as a way of cleansing Abbott of his anti-feminist sins, is put them on the front line.

It shows that in the fight for power - that insatiable greed for "precioussss" - and to balance perceived weaknesses, Abbott will throw any sacrificial lamb he can find on to the altar.

It would have been a lot simpler just to walk away from those 'ditch the witch' posters.

But enough already, this being Saturday you're hungering for supportive uxorious commentary dedicated to Mr. Abbott, who is much persecuted and put upon, a real victim of bully boy politics, a pathetic ten stone weakling being pummelled by vicious slobbering brutes. Sand is being flung into his face by mean harpy handbags.

Yes, it's 'pick on poor hapless Tony' week, and never mind whose been handing out personality politics these last few years, as Tones explained in cogent fashion a few days ago:

"Honesty, the government blames me for everything," Mr. Abbott said. "If someone gets a flat tyre on their way to work, it's Tony Abbott's fault." (Labor is playing 'blame Tony', says Abbott (forced video at end of link).

Not that the pond is in any way affiliated with the Labor party or the current federal government - not when talking to Stephen Conroy means you have to put underpants on your head - but it's an observable truth.

The pond has noticed lately that Tony Abbott is responsible for the fence blowing apart in the recent squalls, the presence of incessantly squawking Indian mynah birds in the back yard, the salt damp creeping up the walls, and the arrival of the first blowflies of the spring season.

An alternative explanation might be that Tony Abbott was indulging in yet another display of verbal immaturity and childish petulance - one of his ongoing weaknesses and failings - since anybody with more than two rocks in their head would never attempt to blame Abbott for flat tyres.

That  would be completely unfair and unreasonable.

Especially when it's all his fault the battery went flat and the windscreen wipers wouldn't work. And he wasn't around to call the NRMA. Where's a gentleman when he's needed?

So we need a champion, a brave bold knight, a crusader, who will stoop down and pick up the handkerchief and save the fair maiden from outrageous assaults by the handbag mafia. Who you gunna call?

Come on down little Sir Echo, one Christopher Pearson with Need a fall guy? Blame it on Tony (behind the paywall and aren't you glad). 

The comedy stylings of the first par are guaranteed to hook you in and get you going:

Recently, the Gillard government has been intensifying the attempts to distract attention from its own failures and blame them all on Tony Abbott. 
 Senior ministers have been wheeled out on a regular basis with lines so improbable that what they're really showing us is the government's contempt for the common sense of the electorate. It's the same sort of chutzpah that blamed the Australia Day riot on the Opposition Leader. Here are some examples.

Sadly the hook failed with the pond, but you can go on to read the examples, and for free if you know how to google.

The irony? Abbott has spent several years in relentless negativity blaming the federal government for everything that's gone wrong with everything, not that there's all that much wrong in the lucky country at the moment, at least if you lift your eyes from your navel and see how other parts of the world are doing - and now he and his acolytes squawk when the same is done to him.

In the world of a common sense electorate, away from the world of fawning acolytes, it's called noisy disruptive politics, and the best thing to do is switch off and put on some music.

All the same, the pond reserves the right for one last flurry, of a parochial ABC kind. Denizens of other states who've no doubt suffered their own peculiar torture on a Friday night can take a rain check.

By sheer misfortune and chance, the pond happened across the ABC's 7.30 report local edition, Stateline, hosted by Quentin Dempster (you can find the program archive here).

First up was superficial coverage of the grand new plans to sort Sydney's and NSW's transport issues. While criticising the planners for snazzy animations, all the program really did was recycle the animations.

The coverage was superficial, simplistic and short, and nowhere was there any detailed discussion of the shortcomings of the planning, nor Barry O'Farrell's failure to comprehend the enormous stupidity of much that has been put forward by Nick Greiner and his team.

The pond has never liked Nick Greiner. He made a complete hash of his time as Premier and he was then content to get into the business of killing people via smoking.

Now he's back again like a virus, promoting underground buses, tearing up Parramatta road to divide the west, offering more and more motorways so that the rats can drive from one gridlock to another, and completely ignoring light rail and other solutions. And don't get the pond going on a second airport, we could be here for years and years and years.

Apart from Quentin Dempster acting like a gherkin at an outdoor press conference, we got none of this. Instead we cut to an extended puff promotion piece which must have made Ben Drew aka Plan B think he was in publicist heaven, as he peddled his routine about the London riots.

Then Barry O'Farrell himself turned up to "reflect" on NSW infrastructure plans and he was given as easy a time as Ben Drew. Publicist heaven.

So now we know where all the money has gone. Off to the News 24 network, and none of it to the parochial editions of a Friday night, when any sensible punter is off getting pissed at the local (and yes the pond won't make the same mistake twice, staying in on Friday to watch television is not an option).

They always disappoint is the pond's favourite line from The Wire, as applied to that political animal the Mayor.

So let's count the disappointments. Let's start with the Labor party and the Sydney Olympics, which saw from 2000 on, the slow, gradual failure of Sydney infrastructure planning and funding. What a party and what a hangover. Take a bow Bob Carr. Anything the inept, incompetent state Labor party now says about Liberal planning is just a bunch of hot air. They had their chance and they blew it.

And then there's Barry O'Farrell and Nick Greiner, recycled and going around a second time, and the team of "visionaries" who've produced the current grand plan.

It's the first time that the pond has understood that death has its charms, because the pond will be long gone when future generations start looking for the mob that sold them this pup (that's granted the pup will ever grow up and produce a litter).

And then there's Stateline, which is so snaggly and long in the tooth, all the pond could do was stare at in a horrified trance, as it attempted to deal with serious state issues, failed dismally and hared off to a rap artist blathering on about the London riots.

So many disappointments, so little time. Who to blame?

Well Tony Abbott natch, though perhaps you might like to blame the handbag mafia. Bloody women, they're ruining everything ...

Of course this might require gender re-assignment for Barry O'Farrell and Quentin Dempster, but if that's the price for blaming the handbag mafia, so be it ...

(Below: show 'em how it's done Bugsy).