Oh it's the luck of the Irish, to be sure, to be sure ...

(Above: the child becometh the man).


While the war of the ISPs continues, please allow the pond to explain the concept of the luck of the Irish.

On Sunday morning, the pond came into the room and noticed that through some kind of technical accident or glitch, the television was on, and worse, it was on The Insiders, and worse still, the back of Piers "Akker Dakker" Akerman's head could be seen, and the ultimate worst, he had already begun to drone on, in the inimitable AC/DC way the world has come to expect ...

The pond took the only practical step possible and immediately switched off the program. The pond finds that with the ABC, switching off the television is the best solution, though turning to another channel always lurks in the back of the mind.

Anyway, as a result, the pond experienced the luck of the Irish.

If the pond had hang on and endured, it would have been possible to see Akker Dakker make a fool of himself.

On the other hand, if the pond had hung on and endured, it would have been possible to see Akker Dakker make a fool of himself, but to what end, since everyone knows he's a fool, and that he routinely makes a fool of himself, because of his blatant, one-eyed bilious prejudice and willingness to contemplate the worst ....

And that's the luck of the Irish. No bloody chance of any bloody luck at all.

Now you can read all about it (forced video at end of link) in News Limited columnist ignites sexuality outrage, but here's the line the pond would like you to note:

Twitter immediately lit up with calls for Mr Akerman’s suspension from the show. The ABC did not return calls.

Yes, the ABC didn't return calls, and when the Abbott government cuts a swathe through the ABC's funding, the pond will not be returning a call, or giving a thought to it, since there seems little point caring about another branch of News Ltd not receiving taxpayer support ...

What's even funnier is that the Billy Bunter of News Ltd obviously realised he'd put his foot in it, and felt the need to defend himself in print, here, and what do you know, he led off with the usual assault:

The chattering classes whipped themselves into a lather Sunday afternoon claiming that I raised questions about First Bloke Tim Mathieson’s sexuality on the ABC Insiders program that morning. 

Yes, a man who routinely goes on to the ABC to chatter - a first class member of the chattering classes - has a bash at the chattering classes.

Naturally it was everyone else's fault that Akerman had made a fool of himself:

Rubbish. The ABC’s producers had conservative Perth shock jock Howard Sattler’s repugnant interview with Prime Minister Julia Gillard listed as an item for Insider host Barrie Cassidy’s discussion to open up the question of whether she had been exposed to sexism during her career. 
Do the sneering Left and the Twitterati really believe that it is possible to discuss the Sattler interview without touching on its subject matter?

Touch on the subject matter? In the style of a sniggering, leering, sneering schoolboy of the most adolescent in the playground, over near the toilet block, kind?

But wait, the defence gets even more pathetic, silly and poignant:

I have never made any suggestions Mathieson’s sexuality. I don’t deal in tawdry topics. 
Mathieson is in fact a very good friend with one of my long-standing mates and over the past several years we have been scheduled to meet for a weekend lunch, with or without his Significant Other, but diary conflicts have prevented such a felicitous engagement.

The Significant Other? What, the ball on the chain, the strife of life?

Yes, there's a 1950s mind set, still strutting around on the ABC, talking of dairy conflicts and felicitous engagements. Pompous, and up its arse, all in one breath-taking manoeuvre. But do go on:

Yet there is no greater rumour mill in the nation than the federal press gallery – which in recent weeks has been relentlessly asking (I shan’t say what because I don’t engage in rumour mongering). 
As I said the Sattler interview was unacceptable, that should have signalled my view clearly. 
Quite frankly, I can’t understand why the Left gets itself so wound up about sexuality and gender issues when it publicly preaches these matters are irrelevant. That’s my position and always has been. What people do in private is up to them. 

Uh huh. In which case surely the correct response to any question put by Barry Cassidy would have been look Barry, what people do in private is up to them, this matter is entirely irrelevant, and I'm not going to comment on it...

Save that I'm scouring through my incredibly full and important diary to discover if there's a way to resolve the conflicts and embark on a most felicitous and serendipitous engagement.

No, no, no. Instead Bunter has to turn his fury on others to distract from his very own, surely patented by now folly:

What angers me more than the phony outrage of the aged feminists and class-and-gender war warriors is that the Sattler interview was deemed worthy of comment when there are so many more pressing national issues.

Yes any excuse to maintain the outrage of the one-eyed bilious warrior, naturally replete with the notion that Labor throws stones, and so therefore can the Bunter.

And then the fat owl of the remove returns to the matter at hand and delivers the most weak-kneed and pathetic sort of, kind of apology:

As I said at the end of the show, addressing Gillard (who wasn’t watching), I intended no offense. 

Which of course doesn't stop the fat owl from being profoundly offensive. And yes, he can't help keeping on being offensive, reaching into his cupboard for "lickspittles":

 I meant it. Just as I now say I will never be intimidated by the baying of Labor’s politically correct lickspittles who were ever so silent when this government was trying to muzzle the news media during its current term. 
 I repeat, I don’t draw up Insiders’ agenda, the ABC did because a conservative shock jock had made a fool of himself and been sacked. 
They ignored the offensive nature of the charge in their attempt to further gore their quarry.

How offensive can you get in a lickspittle kind of verbose way? Chattering on about another fool, in a most foolish way ...

So here's the thing.

Sattler got the chop, and what did Akker Dakker cop?

Not even the lash of a feather, just a 'no comment' from the ABC and let's hope nobody notices or cares and it will all go away.

But he should have never been on the program in the first place - though he certainly encourages former viewers of the ABC to get out and about and take a good long brisk walk in what passes these days for winter in Sydney (sssh, whatever you do, don't mention climate change).

And what's more he should never be invited back on to an ABC program, but when you're just a branch of News Ltd, what are you going to do?

What's that you say? It's offensive to compare Akker Dakker to Billy Bunter, the fat owl of the Remove?

Indeed. Apologies to Billy Bunter and get lost you lickspittles trying to muzzle the pond when you should be off sipping lattes ...

And now, for a breach of Godwin's Law and hysterical over-exaggeration, the pond must turn to Paul Sheehan:

Say what? The Russians are pounding Canberra to rubble, killing the men and the children, raping the women and then killing them, and closing in on the bunker, and with no hope left, it's out with the cyanide pills for the women and the children, and the Lugers for the men, and choke on the barrels, swallow that lead ....

Yes, yes, it's exactly like that:

The mood in the Prime Minister's office must feel like the leader's bunker in Berlin in April 1945, when the muffled sounds of Russian artillery could only be avoided in the bomb-proof war room as the leader ordered the deployment of armoured divisions that no longer existed.

Yes, yes, Sheehan is such a Chicken Little, he can't imagine anyone else in Australia leading a life which doesn't involve Nazi and Russian analogies at the close of the second world war.

And in the usual way, Sheehan doesn't just settle for the one blitzkrieg par, he blitzes the metaphor:

Ashen generals listen in silence knowing that all they have to defend their domain against a legion of hostiles is a dispirited Labor caucus and three groups with little credibility outside their inner-city strongholds: the Greens, Get-Up! and union-funded propaganda. 

And there you have it. If you want a source of hysteria, of crisis, of the notion that the nation is somehow in the grip of a disaster that somehow is exactly like Hitler's end at the end of the second world war, look no further than Tony Abbott and his megaphones, whether employed by Fairfax, or part of the evil empire of the Murdoch Death Star, or routinely invited onto the ABC to amplify smutty innuendo, and then blame lickspittles for their folly ...

But the biggest laugh of all, comes with this Sheehan line:

Accompanying the grim explosions of the polls is the scatter-bombing of media hyperbole, which magnifies Labor's losses in the ground war. My favourite rhetoric of the past week came from political correspondent Simon Benson of the The Daily Telegraph: ''If this Parliament were a novel, it would be Cormac McCarthy's The Road - a post-apocalyptic nightmare of a civilised society descending into eternal darkness while humans wander a wasteland eating each other.''

Because you know Simon you really should have been much more understated, like Chicken Little Sheehan, and only talked of the last days of Hitler in the bunker as the Russians pounded Canberra to a pulp.

Try a little understatement Simon, follow the master of understatement, and headless chicken little hysteria ...

And you know what? Why surely you've guessed it already. This whole gender debate is the fault of Julia Gillard. Yes, she made poor hapless innocent Tony Abbott stand under all those signs saying ditch the witch, and she made really cruel jokes about him wearing budgie smugglers. Yes, she did:

I have never seen a gender divide like the one that now exists in Australian politics as a direct result of a cynical Prime Minister systematically and methodically insulting men and debasing feminism by invoking gender as a weapon to make false claims and cynical smokescreens. The result is as predictable as it is self-annihilating.

Yes, no doubt it's all Gillard's fault that Akker Dakker made a fool of himself. No doubt it's all Gillard's fault that Sheehan blathered on about the last days of Hitler and had to put a very large fine into the Godwin's Law swear jar ...

But as for the day when The Guardian down under (and maybe Huffington Post too) severely dents Fairfax's business and Sheehan is offered a redundancy after having alienated the rag's natural constituency for many decades ... why that's the day the pond will be raising a glass to toast the last days of Hitler ...

And now, speaking of gay as we are, please allow the pond to sneak in a plug for Behind the Candelabra, keeping in mind that the pond routinely dislikes all Michael Douglas and Steven Soderbergh movies.

Dearies, darlings, it's a fabulous, gorgeous show, and if only the aunt who so loved Kamahl and Liberace had been alive to see it.

Michael Douglas is wonderful - by golly he does a good impression on the piano - and so is Matt Damon, and there should be a special mention for Rob Lowe's performance as Dr. Startz. It's really one of the best biopics the pond has seen in recent times, and a credit to HBO, who picked it up when the majors ran scared, and so scored a triumph which is too good to be dismissed as television.

But don't take the pond's word for it, have a read of Emily Nussbaum in The New Yorker, scribbling Steven Soderbergh's Gorgeous Homage to Liberace, which is currently outside the paywall.

And for those who might get offended by being reminded of the closet days ... why not take a look around the media these days, and see the personalities still in the closet, and the sniggers of those who see closets everywhere ...

Yes if you don't switch off The Insiders and go for a healthy walk, then you can always switch off The Insiders and put on a fun show ... and never let it be said that the pond is in to nattering lickspittle negativity when there are better things to do than watch Billy Bunter reduce the reputation of the ABC's current affairs department to tatters.

Without even a hint of a decent fox fur coat or Australian opal jewellery ...

Update:  a friend of the pond's has just provided this link to an update on Scott Thorson: the lover Liberace re-made in his own image, so it won't cost you a click on the New York Times. Strange days indeed ...

(Below: the originals, Liberace and Scott Throson, and their movie equivalents. Check it out. Seriously. You need to go over the top every now and then but with much better style than Akker Dakker or generally grumpy Sheehan)