More shrieking, moaning, sobbing and sighing from the crony commentariat in the Murdoch bunkers ...

As a correspondent has already noted, there's more than a touch of irony in the story tucked away in the Sunday Terror amongst matters of more pressing moment in rum-sodden old Sydney town ...

Yes the Terror has caught up with the Indonesian press, as you can read in Indonesian newspaper depicts Prime Minister Tony Abbott as a deviant.

Deviant? Having a wank while taking a look at porn is deviant? Why the pond reckons by this definition, every man in the world is a deviant, and the more they protest they aren't, the more likely they're a first class deviant (look no further than a protesting Xian, Republican or Islamic fundie for convincing proof).

But the irony of course isn't the crudity of the art work - after all, it's pleasing that in an open society, wanking and sex should be openly discussed - it's that the Murdoch tabloids have already shown the Indonesians how it's done, and with better photoshopping and graphics.

The tabloids know they should be outraged at this shocking treatment of dear leader by the wretched northerners, shamelessly imitating their superiors, but when you're down in the gutter, routinely looking at the mud rather than the stars, how can you suddenly turn noble and highbrow, and get indignant at the gutter ways of the gutter press?

I mean, it's not anywhere near a Pickering or even a Leak. The question is, will the Murdochians do another tit for tat? Will they break? Will all this talk of lowering the temperature prove too hard? Will they text like a Textor?

After all, we know their preferred style. Jolly whimsy:

Already things have gone way too far - fancy stopping Barners making a legitimate trip with legitimate expenses! Next thing you know he'll have to settle for an Indian wedding or the football.

Meanwhile faithful hagiographer Piers Akerman keeps doing a Scott Fitzgerald:

So Akker Dakker, hapless boat in a swirling current, is borne back ceaselessly into the past, here. Because it's easier than contemplating how his clunky cloth-eared hero is having a hard time.

How's this for first class, exceptional apple and knob polishing?

Prime Minister Tony Abbott's dignified response to this Left-wing assault elevates him beyond measure.

And there's more, way more, though it's possible that even the craziest of right wingers have stopped listening to poor old Akker Dakker.

What's quaint, charming and beguiling is that he persists with a half-baked legalism by talking of "alleged spying".

It's part of the problem of course - slagging off the Labor years is still much easier than dealing with current realities and circumstances, and just as the hagiographers find it difficult and alarming, so too does dear leader.

Is there any other form of distraction to be offered today?

We're so glad you asked:

Yes, the Devine is still banging on about a conspiracy in Leaking ABC is awash with cash, but she's had to tone it down. 

There's only so much paranoia and hysteria you can launch into the stratosphere before the balloon bursts:

The allegation that Australian spies tapped the phones of Indonesian president Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono and his wife in 2009 had no discernible public interest benefit. 

Uh huh. That's a lot of horse manure about an 'allegation' of what the spooks got up to under Labor. As for discernible public interest? Of course.

Much like it was of no discernible interest to learn of the extent of US spying, even up to and including the German chancellor's phone. Nary a German with the remotest interest in it.

The information was of dubious origin, having been stolen by fugitive former US National Security Agency contractor Edward Snowden, and provided to left-leaning British newspaper The Guardian.

Dubious origin? Ah, it's part of a leftist plot, just like that leftist plot to expose that right wing Kenyan socialist Obama. Picked up and run by leftie newspapers throughout the United States.

The local online version of The Guardian shared its story with the ABC to benefit from the credibility and amplification provided by the national broadcaster. 

But the ABC has no credibility because it's full of deviant left wing schemers!

It added nothing to the public store of knowledge, since allegations that Australia spied on Indonesia had already been published. 

Which is such a fatuous, addle-brained remark, the pond can only admire the cheeky spirit that wrote it, and the cheekier spirits that then published it ... and yes allegations that Indonesia spied on Australia have already been published, and wouldn't some more be really handy right now.

And yet Scott thought it was out of order for the taxpayer-funded salaries of ABC staff to see the light of day. 
 No. What was out of order was that the ABC recklessly provided cover for The Guardian on a story that has damaged Australia. If the Abbott government can't see that the ABC needs reining in now, it never will. 
 This is an opportunity for Malcolm Turnbull to shine. 
 The Communications Minister, a darling of the Q and A set, now can show conservative voters who mistrust him that he is willing to lose skin for the greater good.

Oh dear, she's off again, she's cranked up, wound up too tight, and now the main spring has snapped, she's calling on climate science accepting Big Mal to do something, and can climate change be somehow too far away? Maybe even bicyclists?

With a few honourable exceptions, its reporting and commentary is often distorted by a reflexive green-left mindset that uncritically pushes damaging climate alarmism, for instance, and has been persistently hostile to the Coalition approach to border protection. 

Uh huh. Never mind the bicycles ..

Does the Devine ever begin to comprehend how she sounds? The distortions produced by a truly weird uncritical mindset that routinely pushes all sorts of alarmism, and is persistently, slavishly supine to the coalition, as befits a supping, dining member of the crony commentariat?

No better demonstration that the ABC is out of control was its refusal to apologise for portraying conservative commentator Chris Kenny as a "dog-f … er". 

On a comedy show. What say you, son of Chris Kenny, here?

In the Daily Telegraph, the always yawn-inducing Tim Blair suggested that Kenny would be treated much more kindly by the public broadcaster if he were an Islamic terrorist — flogging an excruciatingly worn out, tired slur. 
In the Herald Sun, populist torch-bearer Bolt has demanded to know why ABC managing director Mark Scott has allowed this deterioration of standards to occur on his watch. Standards in media and cultural sensitivity, of course, being Bolt’s twin areas of expertise. 
 ‘The Left’ is often characterised by those who appoint themselves as its opponents as lacking a sense of humour, too ‘politically correct’ and too self-righteous to lighten up and take a joke. No doubt Kenny, Bolt and Blair would argue that the difference in this case is that tax-payers fund the ABC, and should not have to hand over their hard-earned cash for this type of trash. 
 And I tend to agree. Let’s see the ABC give back every cent of what it cost them to use Photoshop for thirty seconds. Maybe I’ll spend the spare change on a bus to go see the Great Barrier Reef before it, like the Chaser’s dog, is completely fucked in the arse.

Oh dear. Miranda the Devine joins the yawn-inducing Bleagh ...

But there is a real problem here, and it's revealed by this bleat, this moan, this petulant whine, this self-indulgent whinge, this self-sorrowing, navel-gazing flurry of self-pity:

While other media organisations lay off staff, cut costs and fold altogether as revenue streams dry up, the ABC has been living high on the hog, as its leaked salaries and lavish infrastructure show. The ABC commandeers the prestige of being the "national broadcaster" with none of the responsibilities that its special position should entail.

On one spiteful level, that's a nonsense. Turns out there was nothing much to see, for all the fuss. The salaries being paid to the talent are relatively modest, especially compared to the upper management, with a few bizarre Quentin Dempster moments excepted.

In television especially, none of them cut it up against the commercial networks, and this in the straitened times of commercial networks.

Are we likely to see the day when ABC local radio or RN cave in to Kyle Sandilands' demand for a 100% $2 million pay rise?

Probably not.

But that's not the real point. You see it's newspapers that are really hurting, and unless you count in ABC news online and The Drum as minor helpers, the ABC didn't destroy the tree-killer model, the internet and their lack of vision did.

The Murdoch press - especially The Australian - at one point commanded the prestige and responsibility of being national journals and national bearers of news, but in recent years, the Murdochians sacrificed their status to rabid ideology and a ratbag fawning hagiographical crony commentariat.

Now they're being scooped by a tag tag colonial Graudian intruder.

And all they can do is bleat about the ABC staff living high on the hog.

Resentment, bile, fear and loathing, served piping hot every day of the week, and they expect people to pay for it.

But even if Turnbull does what the Devine wishes and ham strings and de-guts and castrates and mutilates and ring barks the ABC as we used to do with the gums.

Even as the predictable Alexander "the stocking" Downer and Cory "the Islamic crazy" Bernardi cry for blood ....

Even as the Devine scribbles in a fury ...

Turnbull should also examine the ABC's octopus-like reach into new media, where its guaranteed taxpayer revenue gives it an unfair competitive advantage. 
For instance, former Sydney Morning Herald editor Peter Fray sank his own money into fact-checking venture PolitiFact, which barely got off the ground before the ABC launched a rival fact-checking unit, funded in part by an extra $10 million gifted by the Gillard government. 
 Turnbull could resist the call for full privatisation while taking the pruning shears to the national broadcaster. Saviour and reformer, he would win friends on both sides.

...does she really think that PolitiFact was a good idea done down by the ABC?

Does she really think if the ABC is constrained and hobbled that she will see a surge, an uplift of support for the Murdochian crazies?

Does she really think people will pay to keep the crony commentariat a little higher on the hog than they already are for scribbling bombastic, paranoid, opinionated opinion, in the process frequently shredding the facts of a matter?

Does she really think Turnbull will win friends on both sides if he hacks into the ABC?

Does she really think this sort of constant moaning and harping is a turn on, rather than a turn off?

Is she really as weird as she sounds all the time?

There's no doubt all this hard work is tiring for the hagiographers and apple and knob polishers, and things have been even tougher these past few weeks. Why they might even get tougher in the future, and Akker Dakker might be forced to berate the Whitlam government.

But this also helps explain why they're routinely so tiresome, and not a ha'pence of the pond's money will they get, even if the ABC is forced to use big Mal's most excellent sooper dooper copper wiring to communicate...

(Below: why we almost forgot where we started, so enchanting is the Devine in full, ludicrous, shrill cry, but here you go Indonesians, here's how you do it. Hone those photoshopping skills and you too could be a Murdochian)