Speaking of alien cultures in News Limited ...

There's been a lot of idle chatter recently about the bold Italian experiment of jailing scientists for failing to predict earthquakes.

You can read the standard line in the likes of Tom Chivers' Jailing the scientists over the L'Aquila quake is stupid and counterproductive, but think of the benefits if this Italian thinking was extended more generally.

First up we'd be jailing the politicians who failed to predict that the funding they were providing to scientists would go to wretches incapable of predicting anything, most notably the weather. Then you'd have to jail the general population for failing to predict they were electing politicians who'd failed to predict they were funding scientists who failed to predict anything with a hundred per cent accuracy.

In a few swift steps we could achieve the American dream of having the entire population locked up in a private prison, and not just Hispanics and blacks, and entirely without arbitrary excuses like a never-ending war on drugs.

Would the commentariat be captured by this logic? Well certainly scribblers like Christopher Pearson, who when not publishing embarrassing sycophantic suck-ups to Tony Abbott can always be relied upon to produce errant predictions and insights into Labor politics, when even Labor politicians don't have a reliable clue as to what's going on.

He's at it again today in Gillard's alien culture failing, which The Australian, for your mental health and productivity has thoughtfully locked behind its paywall.

The notion is that the Labor party is full of dirty players conducting the black arts of dirt and smear, while heroic Liberals are dressed in white, especially John Howard and Tony Abbott, and generally rescue fair maidens from evil scientists who fail to predict earthquakes.

And never mind the copious buckets of mud assorted Liberals have been throwing at Gillard's past, or union finances, or Peter Slipper, some deserved, and some with the rich ripe muddy stench of hypocrisy.

Under Rudd, according to the Pearson line, some of the dark art activities were outsourced, but what then are we to make of the Liberal party outsourcing its dark arts to the Murdoch press in general, and The Australian in particular?

The chief villain (this might well be a role for Javier Bardem or Carl Showalter) in the Pearson piece is one John McTernan, who worked for Tony Blair, whom John Howard loved so well, he trooped off to Iraq with to battle the axis of weevils.

Here's how to slur someone without leading with a shred of evidence:

It is widely believed McTernan was ultimately responsible for the Australia Day race riot in Canberra and that the staff member who lost his job over the incident, Tony Hodges, was too junior to have acted as he did without permission or encouragement from above. We may never know precisely what happened and how the blame should be allocated, but in any event it's a most unwelcome development in a governmental culture when someone in the PM's own office imagines he can get away with deliberately provoking an affray.

Indeed. It's widely believed that Christopher Pearson is ultimately responsible for writing drivel, because others on The Australian are too junior to have allowed Pearson to do so without permission or encouragement from above.

We may never know precisely why Pearson is allowed to write drivel, and how the blame for it should be allocated - some claim it's because he's a goose and the The Australian has failed to employ a certified, qualified goose-keeper - but in any event it's a most unwelcome development in a newspaper culture when someone in the chief editor's office imagines he can get away with deliberately provoking the scribbling and distribution of drivel.

Surely this sort of writing is as deserving as the Italian scientists. It is widely believed ... we may never now precisely ... but even though we're relying on a tawdry rumour mill, hang 'em and hang 'em high.

It turns out of course that this lashing out is just part of Pearson brooding about the unfairness of it all because sordid people have besmirched the Fab-like whiteness of Tony Abbott with idle chatter about sexism. There has to be a reason, an explanation, perhaps a foreign agent or a foreign power or a foreign alien culture.

Now you might think sexist chatter is a domestic matter.

Talk of sexism has recently been all the go, what with Tracey Spicer's speech turning up in The Hoopla here, and the moment it jumped the shark, and turned up in the Fairfax press, here, the next thing you know, it was drawing over nine hundred comments.

There wasn't much nuance or subtlety to Spicer's speech but it did have a few juicy lines which occasionally cross the pond's mind when reading Pearson:

This is difficult for me to put into words but if I had to, it would sound a bit like this: Fuck you. 
Fuck you, you misogynist bully with your archaic beliefs, intellect of a pygmy, and tiny dick. (Yes dear reader on Hoopla they know how to spell fuck, while on Fairfax you get f-ck and a forced video for your pleasure)

Naturally the pond disclaims any knowledge of the size of Pearson's dick and is astonished that somehow this seems to have made its way into the public discourse. It's a most unwelcome development in a dominant culture which somehow imagines it can deliberately provoke an affray by remarking on the Prime Minister's childlessness. After all, where would that leave Pearson?

It's so cruel and unfair that casual remarks addressed to a barren woman are taken out of context, misused and abused, when after all it was Wayne Swan that started Pramgate, and Mr. Abbott was merely responding to Swan.

I wonder how long distractions of this sort are going to work with anyone except the true believers. Will implausible accusations against a man with a much-loved wife and three daughters succeed in diverting public attention from the absence of a plan from the government to manage the national economy? 

Manage the national economy? You mean socialism? And with Tony Abbott we'll get even better socialism and central planning? That's the trouble with Pearson, he can't think beyond that white knight taking him to glory and kingdom come.

But here's a problem. You might think of all this as domestic bickering, but how to explain it's actually an evil, alien import and implant?

How to link the sexist smearing of Abbott with the British culture of smear led by McTernan? Since it almost goes without saying that Australian women are too dumb to work it out for themselves and must be beguiled and misled by foreign devils ...

We're told that in Britain a similar smear of sexism worked for a while, but Australians don't strike me as being as ideologically driven. 

Of course not. That smearing of Tonietta Blair and Davida Cameron worked for a while, but there's no way Australians are ideologically driven.

Though it has to be said that Nicola Clegg's strategy of speaking Dutch to outfox Davida Cameron is surely part of a deeply sexist attitude (Nicola Clegg insists on speaking Dutch at Cabinet Office meeting).

And it was astonishing that Davida Laws thought blaming teachers for students failing to aspire to university would help save the Lib Dems who'd conspired to make university terribly expensive (Davida Laws: teachers are failing pupils).

Never mind, let's wrap things up by drawing the strands together:

...it may be that the misogyny front has maximised Gillard's share of the female vote and lost her a lot of working-class men who've seen that kind of baneful carry-on passing itself off as righteous indignation before. 
 One thing is clear. In taking advice from McTernan, Gillard is deliberately embracing an alien political culture, one that thrives on division and class hatred and that most Australians will deplore.

Yep, idle sexist chatter by the likes of Tracey Spicer is the product of an alien political culture, which is to say Britain. So much for the Queen of Australia, so much for monarchists, so much for Prince Charlie and his darling, so much for Ming the Merciless being British to his bootstraps, and loving her until he died, so much for that wretched, filthy divisive alien v predator island full of class hatred, so utterly deplorable ... until we next vote on a republic, and young Christopher and Tony discover once again how the love the benign rule of the motherland. It might be alien, but it's our alien ...

And so we learn to our astonishment this Saturday morning that Australians can't whip up a debate about sexism by themselves ... hapless colonialists, they need to be led by the nose by British practitioners of the dark arts.

Now who was saying jailing scientists and the commentariat was palpably unfair?

For a little light relief, you have to turn Mike Carlton, who runs an old routine but a good one in Just another slip of the Abbott.

He makes the simple, elegant proposition that there should be a new verb, adjective, adverb in the land: to abbott, abbotted, abbotting, and so on.

It's a routine much loved in the film world. Take any editor's name and apply it to the film that's just been cut, and you can end up with "by golly, that film was well Pearsoned" (apologies to any actual film editor named Pearson).

In which case this morning the pond feels both Abbotted and Pearsoned.

Tracey Spicer might have another word for it, but in Fairfax land you might read it as f-cked in the head ...

(Below: a trial run, Tony abbotts sexism).

(Below: found at Eureka Street, here).