Away with the pixies, the Murdoch press, Paul Sheehan and the squirrels ...

(Above: the Sofitel in New York, snap by the pond to give it a film noir Godardian feel).


The news that Dominique Strauss-Kahn might - or might not - have negotiated a settlement in relation to what allegedly happened at the Sofitel in New York reminded the pond that it recently spent a few nights in that notorious tower of Babylon.

The hotel - only an Australian would mistake it for a pub - had, for a few months, achieved an almost mythical notoriety in the pond's mind, but turned out to be a fair average run down somewhat small part of a French hotel chain, full of French speakers going about their business (in much the same way as you can find Century 21 full of Russian and central European speakers, or Qantas still full of harsh consonants and nasal, elongated vowels).

And in much the same way, Strauss-Kahn's alleged settlement immediately turned into a media squabble.

The initial report in Le Monde turned into flat-out dissent, with reports like Strauss-Kahn Discussed Settling Suit, His Lawyers say, indicating that talk of a $6 million settlement was flatly false,  at least according to his lawyers. This was in stark contrast to Fairfax's Strauss-Kahn to pay hotel maid $6m. which ran with the original angle, which stood in stark contrast to the BBC's Strauss-Kahn lawyers deny $6m deal with hotel maid.

Without wishing to sound like a post-modernist reflexive relativist, who knows what the hell is actually going on.

Naturally the pond had sternly resisted the temptation to molest the bellhop, but it's fair to say that the media can never resist molesting the truth, running with whatever angle is currently to hand.

And it's also a reminder why you won't find any reports in the Murdoch press about Tony Abbott's very own slush fund.

After all, it was long ago, and directed at Pauline Hanson, and who cares about her or the white-eating of her political career (only those forced to watch her dance might sense the injustice of things, and which saw her snatched from politics so she might become a telly celebrity).

That's why Margo Kingston's Tony Abbott and his slushy character question passed almost unnoticed, though it did get picked up and given a short run by Michelle Grattan in Abbott has his own slushy history.

Now if you wanted to blacken Abbott's character, you could spend days and days brooding about Abbott's gutter tactics and covert activities, that's if you happened to be the Murdoch press in white knight crusading mood, especially given the consequences of his deeds:

In 1998, he was collecting financial backing for his crusade to encourage legal action against Pauline Hanson. She was later jailed over a technical breach of the electoral law, something even many of her political enemies deplored. 

Abbott was devious, lied, misled people and indulged in what Grattan calls Jesuitical flourishes:

In a 2003 interview with Kerry O'Brien, Abbott was confronted with a 1998 untruth, when he had told Tony Jones that he had not promised Sharples any money. His rationalisation was Jesuitical. ''There is a difference between telling someone he won't be out of pocket and telling someone that you're going to have to pay him money''. In an earlier newspaper interview. Abbott had said: ''Misleading the ABC is not quite the same as misleading the Parliament.''

Mislead is a polite word for lying.

And there's an obvious moral:

Should we be surprised that Abbott calls on the PM to tell all, but was reticent himself? Not really. It's that old story of the boot being on the other foot. 

Yep, hypocrisy rules, and Mr. Positively Contemptible won't have to endure an exhaustive and exhausting trawling through this affair, because it's done and dusted, and there will be no wonderings about his suitability for high office, or his ethics, or his gutter-trawling ways when he was an attack dog, because in the end it was only Pauline Hanson that got jailed, thereby saving the world from watching her dance even earlier than her eventual apocalyptic outings.

It is however a reason why the pond reserves a special contempt for the righteous indignation of the Murdoch hacks, who keep the flame alive today by calling on the contemptible Michael Costa yet again:

Which is of course a complete non-story, right up there with the pond calling on Tony Abbott to co-operate with any police inquiry into the jailing of Pauline Hanson affair. Here's hoping everybody in the NSW Labor party helps the police with their inquiries into the totally contemptible and corrupt way the NSW Labor party ran NSW into the ground ...

And so to a different squirrel - oh yes the pond had a fine time going around the parks of New York shouting "squirrel" in Jon Stewart style (and if you don't understand squirrels and the media, there's a bit about it here) - and the squirrel is of course Paul Sheehan, because today is generally grumpy Sheehan squirrel day.

And the only astonishing news contained within Divided advocates huff and puff as Labor scorns small business is that Phillip Coorey is leaving the rag, while they continue to pay Sheehan for a bi-weekly dose of his magic water bile.

It's amazing, part of the general death wish of the rag as it spirals down into a digital presence and a much reduced brand, and all the more remarkable because today's subject for Sheehan is small business, wherein it becomes immediately patently and obviously clear that Sheehan doesn't have the first clue about the most immediate concerns of small business.

Disclaimer: the pond is involved in small business, and so is the partner of the pond.

Just a sample, as Sheehan goes about the business of fudging and providing a smoke-screen for the way the big business tobacco lobby has taken to using small business institutions to protest the new cigarette packaging legislation, before getting on to his own list of complaints, in a style which more and more resembles Akker Dakker's relentless assembling of lists of gripes, moans and hysterical complaints:

Intimidation: the Gillard government's dismantling of the building industry watchdog has led to a predictable rise in union lawlessness in the industry. 

The building industry is now small business?

Then we're all doomed, we're all fucked.

Oh sure there are contractors and sub-contractors and small business components, but in the end Grollo and Grocon v. the unions is the big end of town, just as Lend Lease v. unions and toppling cranes and occ health and safety is also the big end of town.

It's sloppy writing, sloppy thinking, pure and simple, all because Sheehan wants to embark on one of his typical rants about the Gillard government and how it's responsible for everything wrong in the world or perhaps the known universe - from the carbon tax and energy pricing, without mention of the role state governments play, through to the splendid joys of outsourcing and red tape, again without mention of councils or state governments, and on to the wonders of piece workers being denied tax cuts because they're not incorporated, when really it only takes a hundred bucks to yank a company off the shelf and look as if you're serious about being a small business.

Truth to tell, any Sheehan column could just say I can't stand the Gillard government, please vote for Tony Abbott, and peace and joy will  erupt throughout the world, and hours of wasted reading or brooding about what's big and small business and what might be a more complex and insightful world view wouldn't be wasted.

Truth to tell, if there was any justice in the world, they'd do a Phillip Coorey on Sheehan, outsource immediately and turn him into a small business, and within thirty days, he'd have more to occupy his mind than whinging and moaning and carrying on about the federal government.

Like where his next customer, client, dollar or dime was coming from, and how having made them content, he might score another customer, client, dollar or dime ...

But today Paul Sheehan is small beer, as the Daily Terror embarks on yet another shameless bout of Hansonism:

Asylum seekers need a firm lesson, the rag's editorial opines, but dammit, it's actually the rag that needs a damned good whipping.

No links, the pond is trying to avoid linking to egg-beaters (you can get them cheap just by googling egg-beater + sale).

Don't they realise Tony Abbott was involved in getting their heroine Pauline sent down?

Are they going to embark on a campaign against this hypocrite, who helped save the country from Hansonism and make it safer for boat people?

Swear to the long absent lord, squirrel, squirrel, squirrel ...

Roll on December 21 ...

Squirrel! Take it away Jon Stewart: