It's time for a lynching, preferably by a social media interwebs lynch mob ...

Look into my eyes, look into my eyes, repeat after me ...

Patriotism is the first refuge of the professional politician, the radio broadcaster and the average ratbag scoundrel.


Hysteria anyone?

Let's crank it up to eleven, and no we're not talking about doom and gloom Hanrahan impersonator David "we'll all be rooned" Murray announcing that Australia is on the highway to hell, or at least to the hell of Spain, Portugal and Greece. (Euro-style debt crisis looms for Australia. (paywall affected)

It's the usual yadda yadda, welfare on the march, productivity in decline, and the rich feeling threatened. This from a man who's only recent and minor claim to fame was sitting on a government body for a handsome stipend, and every so often bursting into a song and dance about climate science denialism. (tap dancing in board rooms done, but costs extra).

Of course once Mitt Romney assumes power and bombs Iran we might well be in the middle of the third world war, that's if climate change doesn't get us first, the streets flooded by raging seas, which just goes to show that the pond is as good at apocalyptic raptures, fear, fright and loathing as anything Murray's got to offer.

Still if you're going to rattle the can, just saying "look Greece, Greece, Greece" is sure to get the nattering media excited. Squirrel, squirrel, squirrel, the pond says ...

But no, we're not talking about Murray and his vision of streets in gridlock and a transport plan that will do diddly squat and no need for a second airport or public transport when we can have grand visions of motorways. Oh wait a second that's Bazza O'Farrell ... once a motorhead, always a motorhead.

But no, we're not talking about Bazza, because today's crank hysteria up to 11 award must - simply has to - go to Generally Grumpy Paul Sheehan, who hits the Alan Jones saga running in One man's rebuke is another's lynch mob.

Say what? Lynch mob?

A mob that kills a person for some presumed offense without legal authority (here).

There's been a lynching? Someone's put a noose around someone's neck and hung them high and hard and the media's missed the story? All except Generally Grumpy Sheehan? Strange fruit indeed.

And it's Alan Jones they've lynched? Surely someone would have noticed?

The last the pond paid any attention to the Alan Jones saga, it had slumped into broad farce, where it belongs, on The Hamster Wheel.

The Hamster lads (oh how Gerard Henderson hates them to be called lads) - you can catch up with the show here, at least until it shuffles off iView - led with a variety of jokes, including a rueful one about their own brush with sending up the dead, but perhaps the most appalling tweak involved turning a listener's fervent declaration of loyalty to Jones into a joke about Queens being under seige:

That's as it should be. The saga has moved from the shock and horror phase into farce, and naturally the Bolter has contributed to the comedy. 

First there was the question of the media using unhappy, unfortunate snaps of Jones which emphasised his resemblance to a bloated John Laws clutching sunnies and a drink:

Which led to the righteous indignation of the Bolter, unhappy at Fairfax's vilification:

Which led the Hamster lads (oh how Gerard Henderson hates for them to be called lads) to search for a better, more honest, more insightful portrait of the parrot:

It's an oldy, but now it's appeared on wicked socialist TV nation-wide, and even now saturates social media and the filthy interweb!

Oh dear, the pond is stealing all the Hamster lad dodgy gags, and in the process we've quite forgotten Generally Grumpy Paul Sheehan, which it has to be said is very easy to do.

Sheehan has spotted a filthy, vile conspiracy, led on the vile, filthy interweb and deviant social media, it seems, by a wicked, snivelling, snorting, triumphalist American! Hiss boo:

Tony Robertson is clearly excited. It is evident in his breathless updates that he has been infected by the thrill of the chase, the scent of the prey, the baying of the dogs, the proximity of a kill. 
Robertson is communications director for the Australian branch of an American internet company, Change.org, which has been orchestrating a campaign to destroy the broadcaster Alan Jones. 

Oh you wicked, slavering, slobbering conspiratorial American, you're ruining it for a grand old man, herding sheep who might have taken offence at Jones when they only needed to buy a gate from any of his many honourable sponsors.

Once upon there would have been no social media, no vile intertubes, just Paul Sheehan handing down pronouncements and wisdom from on high, basking in the rivers of gold. It was only right and proper.

But it's not just one man involved in the conspiracy. There are two! Yes, there's another social media groover and shaker. Let's stick in the knife, and condescend and snark:

The author of the petition is Nic Lochner, a 22-year-old university student with political aspirations. He recently stood as an independent in the election for Randwick Council. He received 105 votes, or 0.95 per cent of the votes cast. Lochner is not independent when it comes to politics. His recent comments on Twitter include: ''By our powers combined, Bob Brown is Captain Planet!'' and this: ''No presumption of intelligence when it comes to the Liberal Party''.

Despicable! How can this upstart compare to a long life of service and abuse by Sheehan, denigrating greenies, climate science, immigrants, boat people, socialists and such like riff raff who are ruining the country.

Time for a little balance, and lordy is the grump the best person to do the balancing act, or what:

His comments serve as a metaphor for what the campaign to destroy Jones is really about. Politics and power. It might have started with principle but that has been overridden. The most unseemly aspect of the campaign has been the way the two most bilious performers in federal parliament, Wayne Swan and Anthony Albanese, have sought to use the death of the Prime Minister's father for political advantage. They have used the campaign against Jones, over remarks made about Julia Gillard's late father, to attack Tony Abbott. 
This is bottom-fishing ...

Yes and completely and utterly unlike the bottom fishing and hero worship and flailing about and political assassinations indulged in by Jones and Abbott whenever Abbott turned up on the show (while giving the ABC a wide berth for fear the basket weavers might want to engage in an intelligent conversation rather than uxorious praise).

Yep, unlike those love-ins, that deviant Nic Lochner is clearly a lick spittle lackey of the Greens and Labor, and it's left to the generally grumpy Sheehan to spot a flathead or a catfish feeding on the bottom and know how to cast a line.

Now you might think that people have in the past criticised Alan Jones, but that's where we get to the vast domestic conspiracy bit. It seems there wasn't any past condemnation, so in a sudden, foul, swoop, it's turned into opportunistic baying for blood:

The condemnation of Jones has shifted from idealism to opportunism. When you have all Jones' traditional enemies, the Labor Party, the Greens, the ABC, Fairfax Media, GetUp!, and now Change.org and more than 100,000 people, all baying for the professional blood of one man, the scale and disproportion of the fury begins to create blowback. 

Fairfax Media? So it's true, the Bolter is correct, Fairfax is up to its catfish gills (lovely muddy freshwater taste when lightly grilled) in a conspiracy.

There's only one thing for Paul Sheehan to do. The honourable southern gentleman thing! Resign, resign now, and storm off into the dark and stormy night. Or else you'd be lending your support, dignifying the conspirators with your presence. Show them real blowback Mr. Sheehan, not just a bag of wind in a column!

And so to that talk of a lynch mob:

Most Australians do not like a brawl involving 100,000 people against one. Nor do they like disproportion. And here we have an attempt to ruin someone over an impromptu remark, made at a private function, on the spur of the moment and later withdrawn, together with a public apology. 
On Tuesday, the retail magnate Gerry Harvey, after ordering his company, Harvey Norman, to pull its advertising from the Jones show, put the question: ''You have to ask are you part of a lynch mob?'' 

Gee I don't know. Does Hardly Normal sell tar and feathers? Can we pick up a decent noose on a 24 month no interest plan?

Or could people band together and embark on an economic boycott as they please against whom they like - freedom of association and freedom of speech still having a fragile existence in this country - without it hysterically being dressed up as a lynch mob conspiracy?

Do we have one last foaming, frothing, flourishing bout of rhetoric? Of course we do:

This campaign, supposedly in the name of tolerance and decency, is no longer an attempt to rebuke, or even shame, but to destroy a person because of his views. It has become a show of power, a warning, a precedent. The campaign is being directed at one man who nobody has ever been obliged to listen to. I would much rather have the emphatic biases of Jones, the gauche excesses of Kyle Sandilands, the squadron of earnest progressive clones at the ABC, than this gutless, sanctimonious wash of collective, opportunistic blackmail. 

Oh dear, the crime has been downgraded from lynching to mere blackmail, and sadly, in the poll attached to the Sheehan column, it was running at 59% against Sheehan, in favour of the gutless sanctimonious wash of collective opportunistic blackmailers. How wrong, how unfair is that? This vast Fairfax conspiracy thing knows no bounds, knows no decency. Their fathers should die of shame ...

Sob, this democracy thing, and all this idle chatter of free speech and freedom of association is a troubling thing ...

...especially if you happen to be a right wing nattering demagogue who finds the demagoguery going against you ...

(Below: speaking of demagogues, somehow the Hamster lads - how Gerard Henderson hates them to be called lads - worked in a reference to Adolf Hitler and Mercedes, and what's good enough for them is good enough for the pond. Take it away Adolf)

So what has this got to do with anything? Well a couple of days ago those Fairfax conspirators had an interactive advertising feature on the front page promoting luxury German cars. The pond bit and here's the result for the pond's suburb:

And here's the result for Mosman, home turf for Tony Abbott and Bronnie Bishop.

Say no more!