Punting with the blowhards ...

(Above: more Nicholson here).

Here in Sydney the good news is that the same old system of patronage, reward and feeding the rich continues apace, and chief recipient has been James Packer and his six star hotel casino at Barangaroo.

It's got nothing to do with politics as an ideology or as a set of values or as a way of improving the lot of the average punter.

It's got everything to do with the fixers, the shakers, the movers and the givers, and in this sense Barry O'Farrell is as obsequious and as obliging as anything that NSW Labor could manage during its corrupt years in power (corruption still wending its way through the courts).

Some might think the style goes back to the Rum Rebellion rather than Adam Smith or Karl Marx.

A while ago, James Packer made a strategic move to hire a couple of Labor heavy hitters, with a dubious style air and style about them, Karl Bitar and Mark Arbib.

And Packer has taken the time to tickle and rub the belly of current state Labor leader John Robertson, leading a flock for which "rump" is a generous description.

So what's the funniest thing to emerge to date?

Is it Luke Foley, the approving opposition spokesperson telling The Australian brave tosh about how he's an independent thinker and his own man?

Foley is apparently the leader of the opposition in the Legislative Council, and Shadow Minister for the Environment and Climate Change and Shadow Minister for Planning and Infrastructure (there are so few of them left, they wear a rainbow hue of hats):

"I don't think I was ever accused of being a yes-man for any general secretary I served with down there," Foley told The Australian yesterday. 
 "James Packer doesn't need former Labor Party officials to mediate his relationship with NSW Labor. We'll talk directly to Mr Packer, as well as talking to the boss of any large Australian company with a proposal. 
 "I was impressed he wants to seriously engage with the opposition. He understands big projects span the lives of governments." (Packer plays it like a pro, don't put your money on black)

Yes, if James Packer wants a yes man, he doesn't need to deploy his hired Labor hacks, he just has to go straight to Foley to get a yes man willing to say yes.

But undignified butt-kissing of the rich and powerful is just a fair average day in Sydney. That's why the Fairfax "exclusive" - How casino dodged tender trap, with forced video attached - will draw a yawn from punters.

How else can anything happen unless the wheels are greased and the way forward smoothed out? And by golly for any of that, Bazza O'Farrell is your go to government.

No, what's even funnier for the pond is the way the current casino proposal is being presented as an exclusive club which will only rip off Asian high rollers:

A Crown spokesman said the company ''has - and is - following the process set out on the NSW government website. Crown is unaware of any change to the process''. 
Mr O'Farrell has played down the potential cost of a licence to Mr Packer because ''this VIP gaming facility is not a full-blown casino''. 

Yep, it's not a full-blown casino, and if you believe that you'll believe any passing blowhard snake oil salesman.

Apart from the "who, moi?" routine, the strange notion that the casino won't be a casino is the best joke yet (and as solid and as sensible as Bazza's notion that the best place for a second Sydney airport is Canberra).

And it's even more comical to see Luke Foley while away his time explaining to the lizard Oz aged rightist and Dylan freak Imre Salusinzky how right and proper it is that Packer should be handed the keys of the city:

"If there is going to be a world-class hotel for Australia's international city, you're not going to build it at Haymarket."

Oh yes, and they'll be flying in via Canberra and catching the fast bus to Barangaroo to drop their cash.

Now you might have heard, if you've been listening, assorted casino experts say that there's no known precedent for an exclusive non-casino high end only gaming room as a commercial success.

You need the guppies as well as the sharks, and that was the case even for the illegal casinos that serviced Packer's father in the Cross (and proudly serviced by the black sheep in the pond extended "Parker" family).

So here's a bet the pond will make. In due course, after the thing has been built, and a shambolic bit of facadism has been conducted for benefit of the notion of an "exclusive high end gaming room", Packer will simply send out his Labor hoons and personally conduct a charm offensive with willing politicians, and next thing you know the average punters of Sydney will be looking at the grand view of other high rise buildings blocking other high rise buildings views of the harbour ...

It's the democratic Rum rebellion thing to do.

There's an opera in it, what with the grand buffoons, and the back-stabbings, and the devious lunches, though it would need a lot of plotting and a large cast to take into account all the dealings in the back alleys of Sydney. Perhaps it could be called "The Rum Casino", a LibLab opera in five fits.

Meanwhile, it's been a good week for what passes for media analysis in Sydney. The Hamster lads were on song last night, and what a good whipping boy Paul Henry is for them.

Apart from the notional size of his audience - 35,000 - Henry really is a great talent, and with any luck the lads will help build his audience. (You can catch up with it here while it's in catch-up mode)

There's a fair argument that the attention they've paid to Henry to date - way more than anyone else - has helped the powers in Ten to extend the breakfast show for another season. When you're on a loser, give the loser a decent go, he might still turn into a cult hit, it's the Australian way ...

Henry was in fine form explaining why breasts and buttocks were both part of the mating game, to the faux indignation of the sidekicks around him. The lads expressed sympathy for the blonde Stockholm Syndrome prisoner at his side, but truth to tell, she's just doing her well-paid job, in the way that Dean Martin once had to suffer Jerry Lewis.

Keep that Paul Henry coming lads, you can't lose, it's a win-win. No one actually has to watch him, yet we can all relish the horror.

And the lads also delivered some shocking, startling images. No, not the ones involving vomiting after reading a Miranda the Devine article, but this group family photo:

The horror, the horror. And the pond immediately bought the pitch for the new show:

But it seems unfair to restrict the cast to migrants reading stories in News Limited.

Everybody experiences those vomitous moments, some even seek them out as a kind of thrill-seeking form of buleimia nervosa which keeps you slim and free of any nourishing truth, reality, fact, insight, or unbiased food.

But to be fair, there was a little more serious media analysis - why is it mostly left to the lads to do the job - including a zinger of a slam dunk job on the Australian Financial Review at Crikey, under the header Bad times at The Fin, where business can do no wrong (inside the paywall).

Lately the pond has found it hard to get into Crikey. Sure the new layout is clean, and modern, and just what's the fashion, but it's also bleak and sterile and white and simple and a tad empty-looking, like wandering around an Ikea or a Freedom furniture store.

But the piece by Keane and Dyer was worth braving this new bland world for the way it tore strips off the AFR, and reminded the pond why it took until Sunday last weekend to rescue the free rag thrown on to the verandah and give it a cursory read.

The rag has fallen into crusading vendetta Australian-style mode, whether it's the NBN or some other matter designed to send it into an apocalyptic, free range, free market rage. It's predictable, its editorials are repetitious and its commentariat is a rum bunch.

Yet when it comes to the crunch, it's inclined to be dismal:

The stench emanating from Barangaroo and Macquarie Street over Packer’s push should have been an ideal politics and plutocracy story for The AFR, especially with two of arguably the most despised men to emerge from the NSW Labor Party in a generation, Karl Bitar and Mark Arbib, minions for Packer. Instead, The AFR has been a key part of Packer’s media push.

Indeed, and say no more. The Rum newspaper opera anyone?

There's much more on the Fin in the piece, but really we've been good, and it's time for dessert, and surely the sight of one giant dick, the generally grumpy Paul Sheehan, gloating about the triumphant return of another giant dick, one Alan Jones, is as rich a moveable feast as anyone could demand, as you'll discover in Jones still has a microphone, and people want him to use it.

Normally the pond would hesitate to use such sexist language, but not when it's one chaff bag lover explaining how joyous it is that another ditch the bitch witch chaff bag lover is back in with ratings, listeners and advertisers, and presenting this as if it has some kind of redemptive triumphant righteous air about it.

According to the grumpy general, the recent set-to was all a union, left, Labor party conspiracy, in much the same way as one imagines Packer's Barangaroo casino is a union, left Labor party conspiracy.

Oh and it's a Fairfax conspiracy too, and the ABC co-conspirators on radio have suffered a mighty fall, and it's a  social media conspiracy, which has failed, and traditional media is resurgent and triumphant.

There's such a mess of neuroses about it, at one with the venom Jones peddles, ignoring the truth that a shock jock dick with advertisers, ratings and listeners still remains a dick. In much the same way as Paul Sheehan routinely sounds dickish, even as Doug Anderson leaves the building and he stays locked inside.

All the same, ratings come and go, and generally they're like snowflakes in summer when you search for meaning, and there's little doubt that Jones is on the exit road.

Is it news that a shock jock thrives on controversy and attention being paid? Apparently it is in Paul Sheehan's world, but then the lad's deep into rummy Sydney things.

It might take a time, but soon enough Jones will be popping up like John Laws to reminisce with Leigh Sales about the good old days, and why hating women was a good, attention-seeking way to get ahead.

It encapsulates all you ever need to know about Sydney, why Paul Henry is our sort of Sydney NZ lad, and why you might well be extremely happy living elsewhere;

Eventually, after much crowing, Sheehan heads into wrap-up mode with an anecdote:

Another caller, Stephanie, a Jones regular, wanted to talk about the two years of abuse she endured from another radio talk host who indulged in an obsessional hatred of Jones.

She rang up a radio talk show host for two years so she could cop abuse? She kept on calling in, and kept on copping it, and now she's whining about what she did?

Yep, that's the sort of grit and hatred you need for the road rage that gets you around Sydney.

"Was your name and address ever mentioned on air?" Jones asked, in classic Dorothy Dix mode. "Indeed my full name was mentioned for nearly two years by a broadcaster, and where I live," replied Stephanie. "My sons were mentioned … I was referred to on air, several times, as a skanky ho."
Jones: "There are rules for some and different rules for others … It's perfectly OK to refer to Tony Abbott as a 'douchebag' or 'Jack the Ripper'." 

This from a sanctimonious wretch who abuses people up and down hill daily in the most virulent, shrieking parrot mode. One shock jock primly reprimanding another. Talk about comedy stylings ...

And what does Sheehan deduce from this? A righteous denunciation of the general level of conduct and conversation on shock jock radio?

The supreme hypocrisy of Jones talking about different rules, when he frequently leads with a chaff bag joke, apologises in a reluctant morose way, and then comes back again with the same joke?

Nope:

A sense of resentment has energised Jones, and his audience. It's called blowback. 

Actually it's called blowhard, and it takes one blowhard to celebrate the efforts of another blowhard.

Here's how it goes. The pond is terribly sorry for calling the pair giant dicks. They should have been called pathetic dicks.

Boom boom, or boom tish if you will, and so we end this segment of loon pond shock jock blogging with a deep apology ... until the next dick or rum joke comes along ...

(Below: take 'em away, take the lot of 'em away, as the Hamster lads reminded us last night. Who was that masked man and what on earth was he shouting about in a rummy rage-filled way? Sic transit gloria Sheehan and Jones).