Every day is a day right for cant, hysteria, FUD, and backward-looking originalism ...

(Above: Janet Albrechtsen, off to the trough with Chris Kenny and Tom Switzer).

Could we just contemplate a few general principles:

1. If a journalist has a hot story, one of the key concerns is the source, and therefore the veracity, of the story. Is it solid, is it safe? The riskier the story, legally or financially, the stronger the concern. Senior executives must take a view.
2. If someone asks for some cash in the paw to get some information, it's the business of the person who has the keys to the cash box - and the person who supervises the person with the keys - to know where the cash is going, and why.
3. If you're in charge, it's a truly feeble excuse to say you didn't know what was happening. That's pleading ignorance and incompetence in preference to knowledge and competence. If say, you're an editor, or a proprietor in charge of herding cats, sometimes known as journalists, it's your business to know what they're up to, and whether it's legal. Anything else is dissembling and clutching at straws as a way of avoiding guilt ... and usually plausible deniability turns out to be really implausible ...

Now apply these principles how you will, to a workplace near you, or to workplaces in the news - whether the White House or a newspaper office or a corporation dedicated to the news -  and let's get on with the day's commentariat craziness.

And since the theme is responsibility, recent events reminded the pond of the Ruddster's great gathering in 2008 - so long ago - which was meant to usher in a new world by 2020.

The Ruddster, rightly, copped a lot of stick for bringing together a quintessential group of ponces eager to have a junket.

But what do we make of a much more intimate gathering of vultures, ready to celebrate and feed off the carcasses of the dead? No doubt also at taxpayers' expense, and sworn to silence, and confidentiality, like a gaggle of furtive schemers, a band of sinister brothers, with the odd sister thrown in for window dressing ...

Would it seem like the ultimate chutzpah? In your face, mo'fuckers? We won and we're going to party down?

A few had the good grace - amazing to think of the Bolter possessed of any grace at all - not to attend such a naked, blatant bit of cosy group think but more than a few had no sense of shame or propriety.

Amongst them, according to Tony Abbott's private function an affair for the conservative media faithful, were Paul Kelly and Janet Albrechtsen.

Which brings us back to that question of group think, because you couldn't find a finer example of group think than what the reptiles of the lizard Oz feature at the head of their opinion pages today. And because opinion is scarce on the ground these days they got a double mention, in the opinion listings and in the digital fickle finger of whirling fate at the top of the page:

Now anybody with any experience at all at reading News and its corp of group think corpses will not need to read any further.

The pair could have opened, for example, with a call for Tony Abbott and his conservative cronies to forget their dehumanising agenda, bite the bullet, help out Abbott's sister and a bunch of gays who, however misguided and however fundamentally flawed marriage might be as an institution, want for all sorts of reasons to get hitched - don't get the pond talk about its own marriages, we like the institution so well we keep on trying it.

Short circuit the ACT fuss, announce a change of heart, be as generous and as bold in leadership as David Cameron or the perfidious French. Bizarre isn't it ... who'd have thunk the pond would type such words...

No, instead, and as usual, the pair lead off with hesitations, saucy fears and doubts, designed to spread and maintain a handy blanket covering of FUD.

Kelly, in Same Sex lobby in slippery territory, starts off by calling same-sex marriage an 'often hysterical dispute', and pursues the same line about 'noise' and 'intimidation':

The explanation, contrary to much same-sex propaganda, is that support for its cause is far more equivocal than it admits and, for many people, there is resistance to the nature of the noisy and often intimidatory same-sex campaign. Telling people who are not persuaded to your position that they are prejudiced or bigots does not, ultimately, assist your cause.

Given that Kelly shows all the signs of being a prejudiced bigot, this helps explain why he might have found the 'campaign' to be 'noisy' and 'intimidatory'.

As opposed to the relentlessly noisy and intimidatory work of the reptiles at the lizard Oz.

How desperate does it get? Well Kelly invokes Frank Brennan - yep, the Catholic church in all its forms are such enthusiastic champions of gay marriage - and even, oh maintain the rage, Gough Whitlam:

The situation is clear: the ACT government is responsible for each and every consequence if this law fails. It is inconceivable that Whitlam, a Labor icon and human rights champion, would have tolerated this ACT indulgence designed to undermine national marriage laws that, if upheld, would permit states to freelance on marriage (think a populist Queensland premier merrily legislating against a federal same-sex marriage law).

Yep, the spectre of Campbell Newman, and what a shocking spectre it is. Oh wait, conservatives just love his bold brave attempt to imitate the very worst of the Arizona penal system ...

Kelly is big on blame.

The same-sex cause may triumph in the High Court. Its champions insist the ACT laws will be upheld. If so, it will be a threshold event. There remains, however, a serious risk the ACT has misjudged, that its tactics are faulty, that it will provoke grief and anger when expectations are dashed and that its intention of intimidating Tony Abbott will backfire.

Not a word about the intimidatory Tony Abbott provoking grief and anger by routinely dashing expectations.

Instead dire talk of what would happen if the Labor party took a stand ...

... it would kill in the tracks any prospect the Coalition would embrace a conscience vote. 
 Abbott would have an irrefutable argument to meet force with force, thereby locking his Coalition partyroom into support for traditional marriage. The same-sex lobby and its ALP advocates risk multiple tactical blunders in their current mindset - depending on the High Court.

But Abbott has already met force with force, and has maintained an impenetrable argument in favour of force and coercion, and never a conscience vote will cross his lips.

And earlier in the piece, Kelly triumphantly announced that the numbers were against the federal parliament doing anything, and on the remote chance that Abbott changed his mind, even if he did, the numbers - thanks to the reality that the Labor party is almost as full of social conservatives as the coalition - wouldn't be there.

So what he's saying is 'go home folks, forget about it'. Which is why people impotently shout at him and others who really, for all their mealy mouthed words, couldn't give a flying fuck ...

I'm alright Jack, so fuck you Jack ...

And then bugger the pond dead, the masochists and the gluttons can line up for exactly the same group think herd mentality serve from Janet 'Dame Slap' Albrechtsen in Indiana Jones and the case of gay marriage. 

Sure, the adjectives are different - now we have talk of anti-democratic cant - but the FUD mindset is exactly the same, even if the way of producing the FUD is slightly different:


Regardless of one's views about same-sex marriage, there are serious questions about how we will get there, if we get there. 

Speaking of mindless cant, this is a doozy. Neither the pompous puffed prose of Kelly nor Dame Slap's rhetoric shows the slightest sign of wanting to get there.

Are we there yet? Shut up kid.

Now on with the abuse:

 A deeply anti-democratic strain permeates much of the debate. Start with some of the cant used by activists pursuing the gay marriage cause. They will, on the one hand, assure us that most Australians support gay marriage, yet in the next breath express ardent opposition to a referendum to change the meaning of marriage in the Constitution to reflect that apparent groundswell of support. Plain English translation: "Don't ask the people. We, the political elites, will tell you what the masses think."

So there's a variation.

Kelly thought it was all the business of the federal parliament. Dame Slap ups him by suggesting a referendum, because she'd really like a full scale demonising of gays and the politicising of the debate. Oh what fun, how many newspapers could be sold on the back of putting down the odious gays in a massive nation-wide display of Putinism (by golly he's such a manly type, such a hunk, does still water run deep? Is marriage a handy cover?)

Ah but Dame Slap has an answer for this nasty thinking:

Gay marriage activists justify their anti-democratic posturing by arguing that a referendum will only whip up division and lead to scaremongering. Plain English translation: "We, the political elites, don't trust the masses. They are too stupid to be trusted in a robust debate to come to the right conclusion." - 

And there you have it. An elitist paid a handsome amount of money to scribble bile for the rag pretending not to be an elitist, and taking the side of honest yeomen by offering plain English translations.

Along with a posturing that yearns for the sort of feral ratbag tabloid hysteria, the wretched photoshop front pages, the wicked distortions, the bald-faced lies, the lizards all of one group think mind, the bizarre Bolter, Miranda the Devine, all joining in a "robust debate". Why it could make a lynching party look like a court of law.

It turns out that Kelly is a wuss when it comes to Dame Slap's idea of a "robust debate". Yep, that old bee in the Dame Slap noggin is buzzing yet again about unelected "activist judges", as befits an unelected member of the News commentariat:

Sooner, but more likely later, the High Court of Australia will settle the question of whether a referendum is required to change the definition of marriage in section 51(xxi) of the Constitution. If the court decides that a handful of unelected judges can redefine the meaning of marriage, it will reveal precisely the same contempt for Australian voters as the activists.

In the process, it seems fair to say that Albrechtsen reveals the same contempt for Australian gays as Paul Kelly and the rest of the commentariat.

And for any experienced Dame Slap readers, what then follows is an entirely predictable bout of bee-buzzing High Court bashing:

We know from past cases that if the clever judges on the High Court want to get to a position, they will get there. Like judicial versions of Indiana Jones, exploring judges have discovered implied rights in the Constitution despite the clear absence of express rights. Redefining the meaning of marriage to include gay marriage is a seductive prospect for judges who prefer to play the more exciting role of social engineer. Camouflaged in judicial robes, these judges are social reformers, leading the charge from the bench for a more enlightened world, limited not by law but only by the brilliance of their own socially progressive imaginations.

You see in Dame Slap's ideal world, there wouldn't be any activist judges, just judges like Ian Callinan, who when not writing sex-laden airport blockbusters, wrote opinions which contrived ways to allow federal parliament to legislate any which way it wanted, while opponents could hit the highway ...

Each example mentioned by Dame Slap - Roe v Wade and abortion (the court 'concocted a right') or Work Choices (what a jolly good idea that was) sees Dame Slap go all originalist, in a way worthy of Scalia:

Citing a judge who respects the original meaning of the Constitution will send sections of the Left into a flurry of indignation about the need for a "living" Constitution that changes with the times. 
At the risk of annoying gay activists and activist judges even further, this assertion is best answered by delving into one of Callinan's footnotes. The judge quotes a rhetorical question asked by the US Supreme Court's Antonin Scalia during a 2005 visit to Melbourne: "Would anyone vote for a constitution which said: 'Those general norms set forth in this document ... do not refer to the people's current understanding of what is embraced by those terms, but rather shall bear the meaning assigned, from time to time, by unelected and life-tenured committees of lawyers'?" 
It's a question that gay activists and activist judges will not answer.

And so Dame Slap throws in her lot with the originalists, the Tea Party, and all that's regressive and backward looking.

So let's hear of her support for banning abortion, and for the restoration of slavery - allowed by the original US constitution - and the stripping of the right to vote won by activists - only in 1920 in the US by way of an amendment to a living, breathing constitution that changed with the times - and so on and so forth, including all the other changes made to the way the world operates in the United States since the eighteenth century, and in Australia since 1901.

Let's see her share Justice Clarence Thomas's understanding that "we the people" in the Constitution at one time didn't include him, and so he had to clutch at the Declaration of Independence (here).

Of course it's not a question that conservative activists, and activists dressed up as originalists ever care to answer, because it's such a stupid question, and it reveals them to be profoundly reactionary stupid people ...

But the pond at least acknowledges that there's a wide diversity of views at the lizard Oz.

Take it to the High Court says Kelly, because everything else is fucked, and if you take it there, be assured the High Court is fucked says, Dame Slap, and the one thing guaranteed by reading them is that nothing will happen in relation to gay marriage, and everything is fucked ...

And the editorialist at the lizard Oz wants people to pay for this sort of nattering, hand-wringing, negative Tea Party content ...

Now there's a reliable joke ...

Let the backward looking, cant-laden, hysteria inducing  FUDsters do their work without payment from the pond ...

UPDATE:

The Bolter quoting Paul Kelly - as a way of proving you didn't need to attend the dinner to share the love - under the header Yelling abuse at gay marriage advocates is half the fun of the same-sex debate, and concluding:

But that's the whole point. Abusing others as a loud-mouthed, noisy, elitist, deeply anti-democratic minority, full of cant, is half the fun.

Oh okay, we changed a few words. Guess which ones ...

(Below: and so to a few Scalia jokes - Tom the Dancing Bug just loves some originalist fun which we've uploaded at snail mail pace- hey big Mal thanks for that copper and the modem. The pond is a www 1990s originalist!)