Now let us talk of self-righteous, furious, aggressive, fierce, unrestrained feminists unleashing their sharp-ground tongues ...

(Above: oh look, it's a crane wreck, and so on to the train wreck called the Murdoch media).

The thing that astonishes the pond, on a too brief retreat into exile, is how repetitious, narrow-minded, one-track, prejudiced and relentless the commentariat is in its daily outings.

This really shouldn't come as a surprise - Fox News in the United States is every bit the propaganda machine it's portrayed, an engine which would draw a sharp intake of breath and a gaze of admiring awe from an early master like Joseph Goebbels and his Volksempfänger program.

Oh okay, the pond is spending up big on the Godwin's Law swear jar but it's worth it, worth every nickel and dime. (And here, let's pause to honour Senator Stephen Conroy for his own valiant attempt to remove assorted shortwave bands from the intertubes. There, another dollar in the swear jar and worth it, worth double I tells ya).

It's astonishing that some scribblers can get up and repeat the same inane thoughts day in, day out, and expect them to be taken as more than a part of the piffle and gibberish that forms a cloud over the burdens of daily lives.

Then again it's always struck the pond as overwhelmingly strange and mysterious - as wondrous as transubstantiation - that Cardinal George Pell should wake up in the morning believing in all sorts of miracles, water into wine, wine into blood, wafers into flesh, rising from the dead, virgin births, yadda yadda, and by afternoon imagine himself transformed into a climate scientist. Now there's a transubstantiation for you ...

But back to the point, which is today's effort by Paul Kelly, a man who somehow imagines himself as an independent thinker, but who has turned himself into a clown, a drone and an unimaginably tedious bore, right up there with Phillip Adams (who naturally also graces that home of drones and bores, The Australian while peddling his Xmas book on the supposedly commercial-free ABC).

Here's how Kelly begins his effort Finally, the real Julia (placed behind the paywall so you really don't have to give a flying fuck):

The final parliamentary week of 2012 was dominated by the stunning political persona of Julia Gillard - fierce, feminist and unrestrained - whose will-to-survival is Labor's last, best but highly dangerous hope. 
 The real Julia is unleashed in her self-righteous fury and calculated aggression. Her voice now bounces across the summer landscape invading homes, hotels and workplaces. Her arch opponent, Tony Abbott, is traduced as sexist, relentlessly negative and an agent of smear as the nation divides between those who applaud Julia and those appalled by her.

Yep, Julia Gillard is a bitch and a witch, and worse, self-righteous and furious and full of calculated, fierce, unrestrained aggression.

Kelly might imagine he's being balance - after all he claims Gillard is perhaps the best - but highly dangerous hope - for the Labor party, but he sets things right in the second par.

It's not even a dog or a wolf-whistle, it's like a pantheon of trumpets as he rolls his adjectives around the aggressive, righteous harpie.

Might Gillard plead provocation? Is being labelled a devious criminal who didn't just fuck and get involved with scumbags and fraudsters, but who did it knowingly and for personal profit a reason for getting a tad upset?

Of course not, she's just being an hysterical woman, feminist and fierce and all that other stuff we come to expect from harpies. And so the perfect routine is played out, right up there with the gotcha of Obama's birth.

Once you're judged guilty, there's no way out. Protest, and you're being self-righteous, aggressive and ... gasp ... feminist. Take it lying down, and watch the tanks run over you ...

You see, she's a veritable Medusa, look out for the snakes, and a worthy case study for Mr. Kelly's deep and probing psychological analysis:

Gillard has summoned up all the hostility and prejudice directed towards her and thrown it back in the face of her accusers with added venom. At the dispatch box her vituperation assumes a shocking, sharper edge precisely because she is a woman, yet it disappears when she momentarily falters in the chamber consumed by grief and compelled to reference the death of her father whom she loved deeply.  

Oh indeed, added venom from her sharpened shrewish tongue, and only women bleed, and thank you for that insight Alice Cooper.

While the media is obsessed about Abbott's less than complex character and personality it seems struck dumb by Gillard who, in her transformation as Prime Minister, is the much more challenging psychological and political study.

Struck dumb? Not Paul Kelly, he simply can't shut up, and neither can the rest of the commentariat at The Australian, always obsessed by the mystery that somehow a woman got to the top? What's the bet someone will write a line or two about her using her sex to attack her opponents?

Was it as recent as the 2010 campaign the public got confused between real and fake Julia? Gillard has resolved the confusion by the projection of a deeply polarising though tenacious persona, using her sex to attack her opponent, having to endure the humiliation of her past choice of male partners put on public display and recruiting a series of causes from disability to school education to entrench a true believer-caring identity. 

Yep, there you go.

Of course she's using her sex, because it's completely unimaginable that the less than complex Liberal party and The Australian would in any way turn the subject to the humiliating question of her past choice of male partners.

And at this moment might any woman in the vicinity raise a hand if they've enjoyed passing humiliation at the past choice of male partners ...

The biggest political story of 2012 is how Gillard turned weakness into strength. Facing a primary vote in the 28-30 per cent death zone, Gillard began to operate on the assumption she was strong, not weak. It was a psychological defiance of reality and became the year's great drama. 

Yes, just like a woman really, to defy reality, and produce tormented hysterical drama, and what's more she mutated from Medusa into Boudica (that's Boadicea for you old-fashioned Paul Kelly types):

The upshot is that she intimidated Kevin Rudd, abused Abbott as a misogynist, patronisingly told business it had nothing to complain about, loaded the budget with unfunded true-believer Labor policies and accused virtually anybody who raises the AWU slush fund affair of "sleaze and smear". 

To summarise: she's intimidating, abusive, patronising, biased, and an hysterical paranoid accuser of all and sundry who gloat over the way she got involved with the wrong man.

And as for Tony Abbott's sex life? Sssh, not a word, we've been through his dreams and hopes of a son, let's head back to the psycho-political drama, advanced relentlessly by that paranoid harpie:

The trap in this psycho-political drama is overreach. Has Gillard gone too far? Has she overreached on each front? Will her initial poll improvements disappear when reality strikes back? There is an irony in such questions because, of course, for the past six months Gillard has nailed Abbott for proven overreach in his exaggerations about the carbon tax, an overreach that damaged Abbott's credibility.

Reality strikes back? Is that a cryptic reference to Darth Vader, the empire, Chairman Rupert and The Australian striking back?

Oh dear, shocking. Quick, can someone get hold of Margie Abbott to trot back out and remind us that Tony Abbott is a reliable family man, unlike this atheist feminist fury who rolls together the worst of Medusa and Boudica.

There's reams and reams more of this tosh, as Kelly trawls through the tedious ins and outs of the affair, but he really does reach a charming non-sequitur which deserves to be mentioned:

Its declared purpose was to promote safer workplaces. However, at her August media conference, Gillard said she knew at the time of its creation the association's purpose was "to support the re-election of a team of union officials". 
 This, presumably, is why she later called it a "slush fund". What, therefore, does the re-election of union officials have It has been a very bad week for the Prime Minister and a good one for Carr and Shorten, two of the leading pretenders to her throne. to do with workplace safety?

Indeed, what do union officials have to do with anything, especially when only this morning if you venture into Broadway and its reduced two lanes, you might observe the splendid safety activities of Lend Lease and its topping crane (Lend Lease suffers second crane collapse in a month).

Yep, trust the company and the management for safety, which explains why Rupert Murdoch provides a safe haven for peddlers of tosh.

But wait, for those who like Oliver are holding out a plate and demanding more gruel, The Australian is full of it.

There's Hedley Thomas advising that a judicial inquiry into the affair could be short, sharp and inexpensive - even though the meandering Kelly acquitted her of illegality - and there's Peter van Onselen rabbiting on about damaged goods, and there's Dennis Shanahan doing his usual pompous conservative dance about a battle to the political death and there's Chris Kenny explaining - in a way only Chris Kenny could manage - that Labor won the media battle for the week, but completely failed to convince voters of the PM's honesty.

Naturally histrionics was the word that sprang immediately to Kelly's mind, as he reminded the world once again how the ABC was hopelessly skewed, which is surely much worse than The Australian being immaculately skewed.

You see, when the media embarks on an investigation of Gillard, it's being relentlessly balanced and dedicated and insightful and diligent - completely unlike the group think at the ABC - which explains how Kenny can detect that the attacks on Julie Bishop have been "confected".

The funniest thing? Kenny ends with talk of spin, as if somehow he's immune to it ...

And speaking of spin, there was of course Little Sir Echo, Christopher Pearson, assuring the world Bluster won't cover scandal.

Does Kenny ever feel a little unease knowing his column runs shoulder to shoulder with Pearson's lap doggery? Of course not, because when you're two peas in a pod, you're comfortable with the other peas.

Which  brings us back to where we started, which is to say, the mindless narrowness of the commentariat entrenched in The Australian. Ever since Pearson decided that Simon Crean would be a safe pair of hands for PM, the pond has reserved a particular contempt for his powers of prophecy and insight, so we can just resort to a summary of the adjectives, a treat usually reserved for the likes of the unreadable Akker Dakker:

Disaster at every turn ... dogs her ... near-death experience ... abandoned ... hysterical bellows by Labor ... fears festering in cabinet and caucus ... genuine transgression ... tumultuous week ... late-night machinations ... internal intrigues ... ethnically based branch-stacking ... Turkish Lebanese and other Muslim communities ....

And yes, now Bob Carr is one of two leading pretenders for Gillard's throne, the other being Bill Shorten. Let's record it for posterity:

It has been a very bad week for the Prime Minister and a good one for Carr and Shorten, two of the leading pretenders to the throne.

It's clever of course, the usual leadership stir Pearson has been conducting for years, but with two contenders so it's like a 50/50 prophecy.

Poor hapless Simon Crean ... if only he'd realised how fickle Pearson's powers of prophecy are.

Should Bob Carr take heart? Only if he's dreaming ...

And so we come to the end of a survey in which Chris Kenny did the usual Australian-style ABC bashing, and talked of group think and spin, without once mentioning the laundry cycle in which he's embedded.

It's Fox News all over again, full of sound and fury, and like the pompous psychologising of Paul Kelly, generally signifying nothing, or as they say in Tamworth, sweet bugger all ...

But you can bet one thing. Having turned up smoke and mirrors and still not being able to drum up a smoking gun, the next six months of the campaign will be a demand for an inquiry so it can finally be found.

And so to a rogue's gallery of spin and chatter, led by an "exclusive" offered up by one Michael Costa, who will fondly be remembered for his role in a NSW Labor party, a party which plunged the state into a misery of poor infrastructure, poor planning, poor policy and poor decisions that will see the state continue to suffer for decades.

Naturally he's "exclusively" demanding an inquiry, if you count being in bed with Tony Abbott some kind of exclusive.

Oh and as for that inquiry, isn't it rich, isn't it queer, is the pond losing its sense of timing at this time of year, that the "exclusive" righteous demand for an inquiry is coming from a man who learned the fine art of how to fiddle de dee, as you can remind yourself in How taxpayers pay minister's weekender mortgage, wherein Costa is called as country as a Leichhardt cappuccino when the real insult is to remind us that he was once the Transport Services Minister for NSW (or lack of transport services for NSW, as the case may be).

And now, trumpets please, blazoning, flourishing and flaunting, for the parade of rogues right up there with Aida. Over the top? Not when you want to live in a Murdoch opera of revenge on the feminists. Yes, yes, go ahead and count the women you see: