And the Murdochian news is, the campaigning is well under way ...

The pond woke up this morning with the question that's been on everyone's lips these past few months ... when will the PM call an election?

Then it all came flooding back, with a sickening nightmarish reality.

Gosh darn it, how to ruin a really good conversation starter. Kill the chatter. Ruin a column or three.

Oh well, with nothing else to talk about, may as well get into full campaign mode because when you're a Murdoch reporter with buzzing bees for brains, what else can you do.

Yes, the very first item at the top of the digital Oz page is a reference to the PM's campaign:

(screen cap only, no hot links)

Didn't Gillard explicitly state over and over in her speech that this wasn't a time for campaigning?

Never mind, she's under Murdochian starters orders.

You see, the Murdochian press will never forgive or forget Gillard's snatching away of their favourite conversation starter, their daily pacifier, their speculatron stocking and column filler. What point weekly polling now when we will, long days down the track, face the ultimate poll?

Sweet long absent Jesus, it's the 1st February. Can they keep on going on in election campaign mode this way until September?

Silly billy, of course they can. When all you've got in your head is buzzing bees and an unquenchable thirst for revenge, a little further down the same digital page you'll see the bees have produced:

As you'd expect, Dennis "the tie and nicely striped suit" Shanahan is outraged that he's been sentenced to writing about how inept Gillard is for the next seven and a half months. 

Shanahan is acutely aware that he's a one trick pony, but deprived of speculating about an election date, what on earth else can he write about?

(screen cap only, no hot links, the pond is no linkalist)

Now say it three times, and click your nicely polished heels: Gillard diminished, Gillard diminished, Gillard diminished.

Meanwhile, in the real world, there is in NSW, depending on your moral compass, either a vastly entertaining or a vastly depressing circus going on, featuring assorted Obeids.

You can catch up on the latest instalment in Obeid and the truth test (forced video at end of link), and if you want an explanation of why NSW is stuck for a long time with a premier who thinks the second Sydney airport should be in Cairns, look no further.

It was a simple gotcha, but what a gotcha. Mr. Moses Obeid spun his line, and then they played a tape:

Mr Obeid is heard saying: ''Hey, the funny thing is G [Gardner], if they actually knew that we were behind it, they'd realise f--- … Well, they'd shit themselves but then once they got over that, they'd realise f---, we could actually make a few things happen here quickly.'' 
His brother Paul raised chuckles in the the public gallery when he was heard on the tape saying: ''We're not greedy.''

The irony, up there with the gravedigger having a joke with Hamlet?

Obeid had made the recording.

Don't worry about Craig Thompson. Whatever he has or hasn't done, it pales in comparison to the lo jinks that have gone on at ministerial and parliamentary level in NSW.

Obeid got to where he got in the old days, because Bob Carr made the mistake of deciding it was better to have him inside the tent, pissing out, than outside, pissing in, and there's a memorable report on his dumping of Obeid in 2003 in Labor's killing machine spoils the party.

While there will be concerted attempts to link Carr to Obeid, the killer blow came when featherweight Kristina Keneally came to power, and put Obeid ally Ian Macdonald back into cabinet, after Nathan Rees had tried to keep him out.

It's a sorry parochial story, but now it's proving even greater fun than the Rum Rebellion, and just as sordid.

Or funny, since you have to hand it to Justice Peter Young invoking Thackeray and Vanity Fair by noting that the Obeids seemed to exemplify "how to live well on nothing a year".

There's real meat here for investigative reporting, but don't expect it to be done by the Murdochians.

It's rare that the pond tips the hat to anyone scribbling for The Punch, but David Forman nails what we can expect in Will the media rise to the marathon election challenge?

Politics is still reported as a horse race or personality contest, and Australians continue to turn to the online world to vent their spleen and frustration. 
Maybe the problem is that the media is so diminished that it is actually incapable of doing that job anymore. 
 So, here’s an early election prediction. The media will not rise to the challenge. It will happily throw the switch to campaign mode, drive us all insane by being reflexively inane, and, worse, moan about it as though it’s someone else’s fault. 
Please try to prove me wrong.

Naturally it was the pleasure of the lizard Oz today, with its top of the page reference to the PM's campaign, to prove him right.

Reflexively inane.

And there's Tim Dunlop banging the same drum in Real media revolution gives the people the power.

It's delusional of course, the MSM still has the real power, but for what it's worth - and it's worth less and less in terms of the stock market these days - just for a moment, watching episode six of the latest series of Portlandia, the pond had a fevered moment engineering a reverse takeover of The Australian.

In the episode, the hapless Portland Tribune is taken over by LinxPDX, a very successful online blog, and much fun is had thereafter by referencing social media, and new ways of reporting...

Since people don't read articles anymore, just maybe every fifth word. So just make it those five words ...

In which case, here's the pond's five words:

media federal campaign now sucks

Sheesh, that's hard. Can we just use a few more words?

Media scribbling about federal political campaign now sucks really big time.

Oh wait, research shows that people tune out after two sentences, and that's a really long sentence, way too hard for a buzzing bee to grasp.

The pond now looks forward to comments such as "she looks like a dik" as well as to the day the buzzing bees realise that they're no longer journalists, they're linkalists ...

Oh wait, I see where this is heading. Here's the story that garners the Portland Tribune the most hits of all time.

Yep, it's the Daily Terror with bonus Piers 'Akker Dakker' Akerman to fill in the gaps between the tits, or the HUN with bonus Andrew 'the Bolter' Bolt to provide filler between the reports on side boobs and bottom cleavage ....

It's going to be a long year, but it's Friday, so dress casual, and drink up before slumping down ...

Sadly this also means the pond doesn't have the time to mention Chris Berg brooding about George Orwell in The Orwell cult is way out of hand.

In it, the utterly shameless Berg berates a swag of people for using Orwell for their own purposes ... and then proceeds to use Orwell for his own purposes, which is to bag everybody and everything except the faceless funders of the deceptively titled, somewhat Orwellian Institute of Public Affairs.

The po-faced Berg has about as much grasp of irony and hypocrisy as your average spiny ant-eater.

And wouldn't the IPA's name fit well with a government body in the Orwellian universe, or Soviet Russia, or East Germany ...

Apart from that, all that's left to be said is that you wouldn't use Berg as a shoelace on a bit of Orwell's scribbles ... and that the IPA cult at the ABC is way out of hand. Amazingly, Berg even has his own ABC twitter address here ...

It's a bit like going to the Atheist Foundation and discovering it's being run by Hillsong ...

Is Mark Scott still a clap happy these days?

Perhaps Berg is right. Let's do a little tweak on Orwell, IPA style:

War is peace - that's good.
Freedom is slavery - a bit soft. How about Freedom not to know about the IPA's funders is Strength
Ignorance is Strength - sadly weak. How about the Ignorance of Chris Berg is Strength
Tax increases are spending cuts - ah, at last Orwell understands the IPA

Now how about a couple more?

Smoking is great, and then you die
Miners must dig up the ground now so future generations won't waste their inheritance
The Shakespeare cult is way out of hand
The IPA is your big kindly caring brother, fighting for your right to smoke and die, and for the climate to fuck up big time, and Chris Berg is your very bestest brother.