A tedious start to Monday, and Cory Bernardi and Paul Sheehan to blame ...

(Above: oh dear, more Cory and that six-pack story is here. Eek, how did big Mal get into that other shot?)


Is there any more tedious argument than whether various historical figures actually existed?

Christ, Muhammad, the Buddha, Shakspere and so on and so forth.

It might be possible to mount a case that Edward de Vere, 17th earl of Oxford, was the original author of the Qur'an, but what a tedious exercise.

This sort of nit-picking obscures the more interesting point that both the Qur'an and the Bible are full of absurdities.

So it continues in the present day. The pond has no actual evidence that Paul Sheehan exists. He could well be a Fairfaxian invention, a gigantic cosmic joke, while Cory Bernardi might well be a mythological South Australian creature up there with the bunyip.

As any South Australian knows this creature lurked in the River Murray, and now reports the news to the citizens of Gawler, and apparently still robs tourists at Murray Bridge, scaring or titillating children in the process:

Yep, it's easy to see a little of Cory Bernardi in that creature.

So what happens when two mythological creatures come together? Why you get:

Right there in the splash you can see one of the mythical creatures adopting a conflationary approach to help out another mythical creature.

There's still no evidence they exist, but we can at least dissect what's left, the wretched scribbles of Paul Sheehan.

For a start, there hasn't been a parade of bigotry. For the most part, what the pond has seen has been a parade of mockery ... and for ideas that are exactly, precisely rabid, as noted by some of Bernardi's own colleagues, with perhaps a few wishing he'd go off to join his natural party, the DLP.

But that's Sheehan all over, talking of hate, as if the original hater can be excused the hate because a few hate back, and defending the indefensible, because generally Sheehan himself is completely indefensible and inexcusable, and yet he provides the Fairfaxians with the click bait they love, and so the troll lurks in his cave, just like the troll Bernardi lukrs in the Senate, and like that Murray Bridge troll, they both come out to scare the readers provided a gold coin can be found ...

You can read So ready to throw book at Bernardi without reading it if you like, but it's a wretched effort, right up there with the worst of Sheehan.

Sheehan begins, for example, by conscripting a remark made by Barak Obama back in the summer of 2008, when he gave a Father's Day sermon at the Apostolic Church of God in Chicago, which was actually addressed to the black community:

... if we are honest with ourselves, we'll admit that what too many fathers also are missing - missing from too many lives and too many homes. They have abandoned their responsibilities, acting like boys instead of men. And the foundations of our families are weaker because of it. You and I know how true this is in the African-American community. We know that more than half of all black children live in single-parent households, a number that has doubled - doubled - since we were children. We know the statistics - that children who grow up without a father are rive times more likely to live in poverty and commit crime; nine times more likely to drop out of schools and 20 times more likely to end up in prison. They are more likely to have behavioral problems, or run away from home or become teenage parents themselves. And the foundations of our community are weaker because of it.

Sheehan omits any reference to the African-American community and black children, and instead starts at the point of "We know the statistics".

Does it matter that Obama is addressing a particularly acute concern in relation to a particular community, a problem which has in great part been driven by drugs and by the war on drugs, which has seen a vastly disproportionate number of black men locked up in prison?

It does, because from it Sheehan immediately launches into another generalisation which is patently wrong:

Yes, we do know the statistics. But that hasn't stopped an avalanche of hate - and I use the word advisedly - being unleashed against Cory Bernardi for quoting and echoing the sentiments of Obama in his book The Conservative Revolution (Connor Court 2013).

Sheesh, they even put it in another splash:

So Bernardi is quoting and echoing the sentiments of Obama about the African-American community and black children? Pull the other one ....

An honest writer would have at least written "Yes we do know the statistics about the African-American community and black children in the United States", but Sheehan isn't interested in honesty, not when he can whip up a lathering and a frothing and foaming about an avalanche of hate - despite the reality that one of the things that gets him going, all the fun on Amazon reviewing Bernardi's book, is patently an avalanche of laughter and mockery ...

The rest of it is similarly gold standard Sheehan, and remarkably he's sounding more and more like someone scribbling for the reptiles at the lizard Oz.

The "orchestrated campaign" which arranged the "avalanche of hate" is all the fault of the ABC and Fairfax Media:

All week, Fairfax Media has published a string of negative reporting, commentary and remarks about Bernardi,yet in this coverage no-one has even pretended to have read the book.

What are we to take from this? Well clearly anyone who loves Bernardi would be doing an injury to him by spending a nickel or a dime on Fairfax Media; contrariwise, anyone who finds it hard to read Paul Sheehan's attempts to justify Bernardi would be doing an injury to themselves by spending a nickel or a dime on Fairfax Media.

Why you may as well head off to the official organ of the Liberal Government, The Australian, and partake of a dose of your daily kool-aid:

Why the official organ of the Abbott government even has an official EXCLUSIVE, as you'd expect for Pravda down under, celebrating a government which can still only think in terms of stunts.

It turns out the government has now managed to reduce its three word slogans to two words, all in the name of economic efficiency:

Uh huh, and then we can standby over the next few years, for examples of all the various unintended consequences that flow from said stunt ...

Perhaps you like your prejudice and bile tabloid lite, and the pond has already recommended a robust source:

But it turns out that you don't have to troop off to the Terror to get a critique of the ABC-Fairfaxian follies.

You can cop that from Fairfax and Sheehan:

Monday: the first story that suggested Bernardi's book was controversial appeared, as night follows day, on the ABC. Within hours of the ABC report, and interview by Bernardi on ABC TV following up on that report, Bernardi's office in Adelaide was inundated by phone calls. ''The office was overwhelmed with calls,'' Bernardi told me. ''There was clearly an orchestrated campaign of abuse which was levelled at my staff.''

Oh those cardigan wearers persecuting the poor hapless Bernardi ... what a sad looking victim trotting out his victimology routine.

But here's the thing that puzzles the pond. How can Sheehan stand to be a part of this vicious ABC-Fairfax hate machine? Shouldn't he do a Gerard Henderson and head off to join the other lizards frolicking in their natural home?

Meanwhile, Sheehan gets so desperate that he resorts to a little colonial forelock tugging to a British judge:

If they had (read the book), they would see Bernardi quotes a plethora of studies and that it was a British Family Court judge, Sir Paul Coleridge, not Bernardi, who came up with the phrase that traditional families should be the ''gold standard'' as the best protector of children's welfare. Based on his Family Court experience, the judge said family breakdown was the root cause of most social ills and warns: ''What is a matter of private concern when it is on a small scale becomes a matter of public concern when it reaches epidemic proportions.''

But a nanoseconds googling quickly tells the reader that Coleridge is just another anti-gay marriage campaigner (Gay Marriage 'Wrong Policy') with a bee in his bonnet about marriage of the kind that appeals to UK Telegraph readers (End the scourge of divorce).

So here's the thing. Does it matter whether Bernardi invented the phrase "gold standard" or whether he's simply a simpering copycat, ready to scribble down whatever his distant colonial overlords tell him to think about 'gold standard' marriage?

Does it matter if one denialist invented the notion of sundry "gates" if another denialist roams around talking up all these very same "gates"? (ClimateGate, whatever, you get the sheep picture).

Speaking of selective arguments, Sheehan rounds it out with a quote from Bernardi designed to prove that he's just a pussy cat, and then concludes:

Not exactly rabid. The same cannot be said for the parade of bigotry over the past seven days - absurdly claiming to be in defence of tolerance.

To get to the "not exactly rabid" Sheehan has to overlook Bernardi on abortion as a "death industry", as if women placed in invidious situations and making impossibly difficult choices are part of a killing machine.

It sounded - it still sounds - profoundly rabid, and it was - it is - profoundly offensive, and if you happen to be interested in tolerance, you will no doubt be aware of many women who have made this difficult choice and can live without Bernardi's hate.

Sheehan couldn't go there, because he'd have ended up in a discussion of the kind Andrew P. Street recently mounted in Cory Bernardi, it's not abortion campaigners who are pro-death. It's you, in which he noted the wildness and contradictions in Bernardi's claims about abortion (issues given another airing in Amy Gray's Libs stifle debate while touting 'battle of ideas').

 Or the more general observations of Nick Dyrenfurth in False conservatives mask right-wing misfits, Cory Bernardi is inspired more by America's Tea Party than Britain's Tories.

In fact everybody piled in, with Karen Brooks in The toxic judgment of single parents quoting Carrie Bickmore, John Birmingham attempting satire in We're blessed to have Cory Bernardi batting for us, and Jack Waterford in the Canberra Times, with Cory Bernardi's unnatural alliances could come from left and right, attempting to portray Bernardi as a hapless bumbler:

Cory Bernardi is an earnest, probably sincere, politician who has closely studied the techniques of the American Christian right. He has attempted to mimic both the techniques and the style of presenting them in Australia in an effort to build up a following, a movement and a stage for his ambitions. Mostly, however, he is fairly ineffective, other than in playing the numbers among smallish groups. The public, in particular, has never warmed to him, and not only because of what he says or thinks but because there is, alas, something about him that makes people feel uneasy. Almost all of his public relations successes depend on someone picking up - and very predictably - his cues. Only when others depict him as a monster does he seem humanised, possibly even persecuted.

The bizarre way Waterford's piece runs is that if we ignore politicians, including Senators in the upper house of the federal government, they'll just go away ... as if somehow the Labor party was responsible for Bernardi publishing his tome.

Put it another way. Paul Sheehan lite.

By the way, the Dyrenfurth piece had a splendid illustration:

The best that poor old Michael Mucci could mount for Sheehan?

Baa indeed. As if right wing sheep marching together, like Sheehan and Bernardi, were suddenly exempt from Orwellian observation ...

But you have to hand it to Mucci. He's a flexible chap, so he was standing by to help out John Birmingham with this one:

Oh those crazy, confused Fairfaxians ...

But back to Sheehan, and what really gives the game away is Sheehan's embrace of the "false conservatives", the crazed right-wing misfits who want to re-make the Liberal party into a kind of down under tea party:

Wednesday: Entsch weighs in via Fairfax Media, insinuating Bernardi is a self-loathing homosexual and asking what Bernardi would think if a member of his family turned out to be gay: ''Would he advocate sterilisation?'' 
This is despicable, and there is a subtext to this. After the Coalition won government last year, Tony Abbott dropped Entsch from the position of chief whip. And Entsch is friendly with Malcolm Turnbull, who is openly contemptuous of Bernardi. Entsch even mentioned Turnbull in his attack on Bernardi, saying Turnbull had been raised by his single father and was not a lesser person for that.

As usual, the pond didn't get the point. It's despicable that Entsch mentioned Malcolm Turnbull being raised by his single father and not being a lesser person for it?

But happily the pond did get a few takeaway messages.

Sheehan would be better off joining the reptiles, Bernardi would be better off heading off to the south in the good old USA and joining a Baptist church, and then the rest of the readership could enjoy all the weevils arising from the ABC-Fairfaxian alliance.

Instead single handedly (unless you count in a few chumps like Sheehan) Bernardi has done more to destroy national productivity and sensible discussion in a week than others manage in a year.

And the pond is left with the dire impression that spending a nickel or a dime on Fairfax is a complete waste of time and money. Better to spend it on the sight of a bunyip arising from the ruins of the Murray river ...

Meanwhile, as we're speaking about Malcolm Turnbull, for a closer, how about sharing some of the mockery around, without worrying about parentage, and instead talking about an actual issue?

(More Moir here).