Wherein the pond dives into a swampy morass of relativism and opinion with Gerard Henderson ...

(Above: just like Gerard Henderson, the pond seeks relevant sporting metaphors wherever they can be found, here).

The commentariat supposedly infest newspapers to provide insights into events of the day, their commentary illuminating and explaining their insights for the benefit of the average punter, some of whom are even content to fork out the newsagency going rate of a $1.70 a day for their Fairfax fish and chip wrapping (yes some mug punters still exist).

It is of course a fraud, as the narrow-cast commentariat are really there to display ideological zeal and purity, and anyone who fails to conform is cast out of the tent.

On a meta level, this means anyone who disagrees with them are maintaining their own inferior ideological zeal and a purity, and simply have failed to understand the greater purity of the thoughts of the commentariat.

As a result, daily events are routinely pressed into service to make an ideological point.

Sporting events, or cultural events, are only ever mentioned when they can be press-ganged into making a point.

The rituals involved are roughly equivalent to a Roman Catholic church service, or an Anglican clergyman devising a sermon (silence, chattering women).

Above all, there must be demons involved.

Inevitably the pond ends up in the same narrow cast. Here's how it goes. Gerard Henderson makes a reference to the inner city elites. It's then easy to point out that Henderson works in the innermost parts of the inner city, and by definition is a member of the inner city elites, rubbing shoulders with all sorts of toffs, movers and shakers.

But it also means that the quest for demons can result in an almost child-like simplicity, a black and white view of the most reductionist kind.

Watching Gerard Henderson segue from Anthony Mundine to an invocation of his key demons, in Fashionable or not, Mundine's views strike a blow for free speech, is at once like watching an aged master at work, reflexes and footwork gone but still struggling on, or like watching predictable paint dry in a sullen way, or like watching a display of the incipient arrival of senility, a dope on a rope.

First there's the notion - embedded in the header - that the question of aboriginality is a matter of fashion. And then there's the way that Henderson pretends familiarity with Mundine by opening with his nickname Anthony "Choc" Mundine.

Oh yeah bro, Gerard be down with it. And he especially loves Mundine's attempts to do an Andrew Bolt in relation to his opponent Daniel Geale:

Mundine said he ''thought they wiped all the Aborigines from Tasmania out'' and added Geale had ''a white wife and white kids''. He later apologised for both statements. However, he did not resile from his comments about identity and declared yesterday: ''There are people who get jobs, and are claiming benefits, who claim to be Aboriginal because they have a great-great-great-great grandmother or grandfather. That, I think, is wrong.''

Actually if you read press reports, Mundine made his remarks about the great grandmoms and grandads some five days ago, as you can read in Outspoken boxer Anthony Mundine questions Daniel Geale's heritage ahead of rematch (it must be true, it's News.com.au with AAP). Because Mundine's a professional motor mouth who will pretty much say anything to promote a fight.

"Say my great grandfather or my great, great grandfather is Aboriginal, and then everyone else (in my family) is anglo-saxon ... when it comes to me, am I Aboriginal?"

And the later quote cited by Henderson turned up four days ago, as part of Mundine explaining himself (here). By this point, Mundine had realised that there were people with an Aboriginal heritage alive and well in Tasmania, and just because his rival married a white woman doesn't mean his heritage should be dismissed as the pose of a lickspittle fellow travelling whitie lover.

And so Mundine backed away from a lot of it, while still trying to maintain his ideological rage. But how remarkable that Gerard Henderson should be down wit a black radical making a fool of himself promoting a boxing match.

But here's the real point. In the usual course of events, Henderson wouldn't give a toss or two seconds of thought in relation to the pre-fight stirrings of a boofhead like Mundine, who admitted he shot off his mouth in his usual way, and then after all the fuss had promoted the fight, discovered that he'd "mis-spoke" (the pond takes the view that like most fighters Mundine is as thick as a brick most days of the week, despite the proud boast of having shaken Mundine's hand - oh yeah, bro, the pond be down wit it).

The reason why Henderson cared about Mundine for a nano-second is that it gives him the chance to put the boot into an old enemy, Michael Mansell - who unlike Mundine is apparently a dangerous left wing activist, and prone to contradiction, unlike Henderson who, when he's not praising radical blacks like Mundine, is reviling dangerous radical blacks like Mundine.

Which in turn gives Henderson a chance to revisit the findings against Andrew Bolt in relation to fair skinned people with Aboriginal heritage. Ah yes it's dog chew on grass time again (yes the pond has worked with a fair-skinned black person who could still rightly claim said heritage and who was profoundly irritated by the Bolter).

Here's the killer sucker punch:

... Bolt's comments last year were not more threatening to social harmony than Mundine's outburst last week.

So a boofhead boxer comes along, and cleanses and purifies and sanctifies the Bolter.

And that's when we segue out into a general Hendersonian whinge and a moan, with Mundine having served his brief purpose.

You see people what's at stake here is the freedom to be wrong and to be stupid, and dammit, Gerard Henderson will stand up for the right of people like him to be wrong and to be stupid and to be personally offensive. Like the parrot:

Last week, after upholding complaints against the broadcaster Alan Jones, the Australian Communications and Media Authority entered into an agreement with 2GB. As a result, Jones will be subjected to a form of re-education. He will be trained on ''factual accuracy'' and broadcasting ''other significant viewpoints''. 

Yes, let the parrot be wrong and stupid and personally offensive. The last thing we need in broadcasting is factual accuracy.

And so inevitably we come to Henderson's weekly bete noir, the ABC:

It's true 2GB has not one left-of-centre presenter for any of its key programs. But it's also true the ABC has not one conservative presenter or producer or editor for any of its prominent outlets. 

Bugger off Amanda Vanstone, we all know you're an Italian coffee lover and a lover of Europe and worst of all you come from Adelaide. You don't fool anyone.

What's more, senior ABC management refuses to correct errors in documentaries broadcast on the ABC - as I have documented on my Media Watch Dog blog. Yet there is no call for the ABC to be re-educated with respect to fact-checking or to present other significant viewpoints. 

Yes we live in North Korea, and we all need to be re-educated, and the ABC's farcically over-elaborate attention to complaints fails to attend to the serial complaints of that notorious pest complainer Gerard Henderson (who must come across to some as being like the drone next door always whingeing about the noise) and so to Henderson's other noir nightmare:

It's surprising just how many academics and journalists are seemingly indifferent to demands to limit free expression. On October 12, Lateline ran a debate between Rod Tiffen (who was a paid consultant on the media inquiry of Ray Finkelstein, QC) and Campbell Reid (from News Limited). 

The presenter Emma Alberici agreed with Tiffen that there was no big deal in the fact the ultimate sanction recommended by Finkelstein was jailing journalists - since editors could simply do as they were told by the proposed news media council. 

Dammit, Henderson is still watching Lateline, but never a squawk about 2GB and the parrot.

Well you can watch the debate between Ray Finkelstein and Campbell Reid by heading off here (with transcript), but here's what Campbell Reid thought it was worth going to jail for:

... the fact of the matter is that climate change is an evolving argument and discussion that the global society is having.

Only in the world of denialist News Ltd.

Which led on to this glorious Monty Pythonish exchange:

EMMA ALBERICI: ... I see that the review also pointed out that in the paper, when you talked about ... this is in the Daily Telegraph, this is last year, you purported to spell out the impact of the carbon tax on a family's budget, and it was before the time that a price had been set on carbon and it didn't mention the tax cuts that go along with the carbon tax plan 
 CAMPBELL REID: Sure, yes. 
 EMMA ALBERICI: So that was found to have been a little bit misleading? CAMPBELL REID: Again, by the Australian Press Council. The editor of the Daily Telegraph still vehemently disagrees with their findings on that, however, we ran with the adjudication. 
 EMMA ALBERICI: On what grounds does it disagree? 
 CAMPBELL REID: We disagree with the mathematics of it.

On the mathematics before the policy revealing the mathematical calculations had been revealed.

Which begs the question. Why have a regulator at all if the regulation is useless? Why have ACMA, which is visibly continually useless? Why not have a complete free for all, an anarchy of views where everything goes? Is there any point attempting to make regulation sensible and practical, and fix the flaws in the current model?

Apparently not, at least in the world of a defiant News Ltd and fellow travellers like Henderson.

And so Gerard Henderson valiantly stands in the corner ringside, cut man for Anthony Mundine, repairing the damage he caused himself, and proclaiming the right of people to be factually wrong, incompetent, and offensive, because that's freedom of speech.

Tiffen dared to say that comment was free - clearly he hasn't seen News Ltd's pricing model - but that facts are sacred, when what Henderson et al are saying is that facts are relativist, and may be varied according to pressing need and circumstances.

And there you have it. Somehow Henderson has made the journey from conservative commentator to loopy French structuralist and relativist, a down under Foucault or Derrida by way of Nietszche.

There are no facts, only News Ltd and Gerard Henderson and Parrot and Bolter interpretations.

So Daniel Geale might assert he has a Tasmanian aboriginal heritage, but what would he know, up against a boofhead and a blockhead. And the overwhelming majority of scientists might think that climate science is as solid as evolutionary theory, but what would they know up against News Ltd conducting its slowly evolving world debate on the subject.

Above all what would academics know about anything, even if Henderson himself spent time gaining totally useless academic qualifications?

So, that's all right then, apparently. Despite the fact there would be no right of appeal against a decision of the NMC and despite the fact the NMC would be chosen by senior academics who have historically been deficient themselves in overseeing plurality in the social science departments of universities which, like the ABC, resemble conservative-free zones. Sure, Mundine may have offended some last week. But he did strike a blow for free speech in a society in which there is a growing demand to censor unfashionable opinion. 

Yes the freedom to be stupid and wrong and offensive is a precious freedom, and what a shame people should attempt to introduce petty notions of facts into unfashionable opinions. So unfashionable that in the form of News Ltd they currently control the vast majority of print media ownership in this country...

Is there an irony here? Take it away Boswell:

Accustom your children constantly to this; if a thing happened at one window, and they, when relating it, say that it happened at another, do not let it pass, but instantly check them; you do not know where deviation from truth will end. —Boswell’s Life of Johnson

Put it another way:

Accustom your children constantly to this; if a thing happened at one window, and News Ltd, or Gerard Henderson or Anthony Mundine or the Bolter or the Parrot, when relating it, say that it happened at another, do not let it pass but instantly check them; you do not know where deviation from truth will end.

What say you Keith Windschuttle:

... the essence of history has continued to be that it should try to tell the truth, to describe as best as possible what really happened. Over this time, of course, many historians have been exposed as mistaken, opinionated and often completely wrong, but their critics have usually felt obliged to show they were wrong about real things, that their claims about the past were different from the things that actually happened. In other words, the critics still operated on the assumption that the truth was in the historian’s grasp. 
Today, these assumptions are widely rejected, even among some people employed as historians themselves. In the 1990s, the newly dominant theorists within the humanities and social sciences assert that it is impossible to tell the truth about the past or to use history to produce knowledge in any objective sense at all. They claim that we can only see the past through the perspective of our own culture and, hence, what we see in history are our own interests and concerns reflected back at us. The central point upon which history was founded no longer holds: there is no fundamental distinction any more between history and myth. (here)


And that's where paying attention to Anthony Mundine will get you. Off in the wilds with Foucault and Derrida valiantly upholding the right of stupid people to say stupid, incorrect, wrong things, because truth is only a fashionable opinion.

Here's a nice inscription for a headstone. Gerard Henderson ... the last of the French relativists.

Well at least the pond got to talk about more than boxing and the ABC and academics and News Ltd and the parrot and the Bolter ... and nary a word about inner city elites.

(Below: Dr. Johnson wasting his life hacking away at golf balls and dictionaries).