Now you young people, yes you, eat your boiled vegetables at once ...

How awkward and embarrassing.

Little New Zealand. Sweet little New Zealand. Who knew it was the Sodom and Gomorrah of the south, gazumping Tasmania and snatching away the pink dollar.

How predictable, pale, flat and dreary the response.

Gillard unmoved by NZ gay marriage vote.(forced video at end of link)

Oh this lady is not for turning. And Abbott doesn't believe in a conscience.

Speaking of awkward and embarrassing, isn't it weird that day by day Alan Jones seems to be getting closer and closer to that mad uncle in the attic stereotype, the one you only let out on special occasions when he can be guaranteed to put his foot in it.

There's nothing meaningful or useful to be said about the Boston bombing by those who are ignorant and ill-informed, so Jones naturally said it.

Without a shred of evidence of any kind whatsoever, the mouth pronounced:

''I wouldn't be surprised if this was a conspiracy among students, left wing radical students in Boston,'' Jones, from Sydney's 2GB radio, told the Seven Network's Sunrise program.

And from that premise he proceeded to a deeper form of discrimination and racism:

''I think we have to think also very seriously here about our own student numbers,'' he said. '
'We're very keen to have foreign students pay the way of universities in this country without a lot of discernment about who comes in. But I think the fact that we've been spared this kind of thing, touch wood, for so long highlights, as I said, the relentless work done by ASIO (Australian Security Intelligence Organisation) and all our police organisations.''  (here)

It provoked a Twitter storm, but thanks to Crikey, the pond learned that Jones wasn't the only one, as you can read in After Boston, Congressman Urges Caution on Immigration Reform.

There was a lovely graphic accompanying Alan Jones Boston Bombing Comments (forced video at end of link), identifying the real villains in the affair:

See those two twits to the left of the picture? They're the ones that let the mad uncle out of his lair, or the attic, and invited him to speak on the television.

See the twit in the panel bottom right? Judge him by the company he keeps, judge him by the pathetic relevancy deprivation syndrome from which he clearly suffers ...

Yes, you're all guilty, guilty as hell. 

It turned out of course that one of the three to die from the attack was a foreign student attending Boston University.

Even if the bomber turned out to be using a student visa, what does that have to do with the student program in this country? Apart from the implicit racism involved?

But the pond doesn't blame Jones. He is what he is, pathetic and tawdry. The real villains are the ones who invite him on to their show to make his predictable, pathetic and tawdry attention-grabbing remarks. And if you mention Jones and his carry-on, reflexivity doesn't get you off the hook, you're playing their game of attention-seeking.

The pond wished it could say that it watched Sunrise, so it could announce grandly that it would never watch Sunrise again. But here on the pond we've never watched Sunrise, and so have to learn from others how routinely it's a program where the sun sets on intelligence and civilised discourse ...

Naturally you won't find the Bolter writing about Jones. He's too busy getting agitated with Virginia Trioli for pointing out that more than a few people died in Iraq ...

And now to a case of misrepresentation in advertising which really should be the subject of some kind of action.

Now NSW Fair Trading has some handsome guidelines in relation to misrepresentation on the full to overflowing intertubes here, wherein it is explained at great length how published material should avoid being misleading or deceptive.

So what to say about this?

Uh huh. Craven is of course a well-known conservative loon who has provided rich pickings for the pond over the years.

So why not bite, why not click through? Amazingly, he might have something to say about the abuse of Gillard over the years, some insight into why Catholic Tony Abbott stood beneath those ditch the witch, Bob Brown's bitch signs. Better late than never ...

It turns out that the actual header is Thatcher had a nasty side but street parties are for nuts, behind the paywall so you can get on with your life, and be assured, anything you do is more of a life than reading Craven.

Yes, it's Craven arriving very late at the scene, long after the last party-goer's left the premises, to rant one more time about Margaret Thatcher and children hating boiled vegetables, because you know, Margaret Thatcher is very much like boiled broccoli or boiled turnips or boiled beetroot ...

The commissioning policy at the lizard Oz always intrigues the pond. On every issue, there's a flock of favourite commentariat members who wheel and swirl in the sky in unison like a flock of sparrows. Only some arrive a little late on the scene. A bit like Daffy Duck when he got detached from the mob flying south:

There you go, there's Craven to a T.

You see, the lady's not for turning, she's dead and buried, and it was done without fuss, as you can read in Thatcher funeral crowd shows little sentimentality, or dissent, at St Paul's, which carried the sub-header True-blue Tories, Falkland veterans, council house-buyers and immigrants predominate as most detractors protest elsewhere.

Nothing to see here, you'd think, move along and get on with life, close family excepted, but somehow the late-arriving Craven manages an astonishing outburst of bile, and what's more after Craven himself has assigned Thatcher to the nasty side of politics, calling her a nasty politician, which is to say:

nas·ty (nst) adj. nas·ti·er, nas·ti·est 
1. a. Disgustingly dirty. b. Physically repellent. 
2. Morally offensive; indecent. See Synonyms at offensive. 
3. Malicious; spiteful: "Will he say nasty things at my funeral?" (Ezra Pound). 
4. Very unpleasant or annoying: nasty weather; a nasty trick. 
5. Painful or dangerous; grave: a nasty accident. 
6. Exasperatingly difficult to solve or handle: a nasty puzzle; a nasty problem.

Or as Frank Zappa once sang:

Nasty nasty nasty
Nasty nasty nasty

You know, having a fun party might be more honest and more open and celebratory - like the pond's fondness for Irish wakes - rather than calling the dear departed nasty just after they've gone. Does doing it in a newspaper make it better than having a party?

But where were we? Almost anywhere other than Craven's company will do, but back to that bile:

There does seem to be something special in the capacity of that mercifully tiny faction of the venomous Left to hate. It may lie in the common observation that the definition of a mad right-winger is someone who thinks they can run the country, whereas the definition of a mad left-winger is someone who thinks they are a good person. 

Say what? That's quite possibly the most stupid and opaque observation the pond has heard for quite some time, right up there with the observation that Margaret Thatcher is a bit like a boiled prune. But we do so admire the hatred of the haters ... the hating of the hate ... the hate hate hate ...

The funny thing of course is that Craven himself shows an enormous capacity for bilious bile, and for dividing people into good and bad, which is why his next sentence is impossibly funny:

Once your politics consists of dividing people into good and bad, it is a short step to excluding opponents from the category of people altogether. 

Which naturally is what he proceeds to do, excluding street-partiers from humanity:

There is something disturbingly modern about street-party hatred. The same segment of the population that sends mindlessly devastating emails and pens clinically caustic blogs is utterly uninhibited in metaphorically urinating on a corpse in public. 

Oh dear. So emailers and bloggers are lumped in with street-partiers as haters, by a man who really loves to hate ...

Should the pond be flattered or upset? Is this a covert suggestion that the pond is clinically caustic and inclined to metaphorically urinate on Craven, and his corpse-like analysis in public? But do go on:

So where does that leave us in Australia? The political rancour that has been directed against Julia Gillard and Tony Abbott has been vile, if not unprecedented.

Aha, in the very last par we reach the vile misrepresentation that lured the pond into this mugwump swamp of hatred and bile, into a story in which Gillard is given a passing mention, while all the fetid fears and hoppy toads pop out of Craven's mouth, and the real subject - what little subject there is - features boiled vegetables, Margaret Thatcher, street-partiers and hate.

Still we should persevere to the last few sentences because they contain clues:

But does Tony wish Julia dead, and does Julia lie awake at night fantasising about dusting his budgie smugglers with arsenic? No. A more troubling question is whether nut cases, inspired by their British equivalents, will hold Howard parties and Kennett raves when their time comes. Quite possibly.

Parties and raves?

Code!

Young people!!

Do you know a young person who will hold a rave when Kennett departs this earth? Only in the most fetid imaginings of a vice-chancellor of the Australian Catholic University, who on a bad day can sound just as Alan Jones in his distrust and dislike of students and young people ...

Pity the poor students at ACU. If they want to hold a party or a rave, they'll be dismissed as nut cases, which is a bit rich when you look at the nutters running the place ... party poopers who turn up late long after the party is over, and then put on false airs and graces to lure unsuspecting readers into the shallow end of the pond ...

(Below: and now since the lizard Oz couldn't drum up some childish illustrations for Craven's piece, please allow the pond a chance).