Dumb as mutton, but not nearly as tough ...

There's already a hashtag titled #DumbAsDutton which, if things keep going the way they are, will undoubtedly begin to trend ...

Of course, Dutton has his own twitter account, and his banner says more than most sensible people need to know:

Back to the paranoid one:

"I think it would be helpful if some of the commentators in the area, in this space of politics, started reporting on the incidents, as opposed to being players themselves," he said. 
"I think there's a huge move by Fairfax at the moment to try and bring the government down, that's fair enough. 
"They aren't supposed to be political players, they're supposed to be objective reporters of the news and I think many of them have morphed into frustrated politicians themselves." 
Mr Dutton later told Sky News: "The reality is that there is a bit of a jihad being conducted by Fairfax at the moment."  (here, with forced video).

Naturally Dutton and ScoMo worked the ABC into the paranoid tale of persecution, as per the Graudian here.

In the world of Dutton, as dumb as mutton, but sadly with the tender sensibilities of a bleating lamb, it seems it's wrong for a journalist to talk to a cabinet minister who wants to talk out of school.

Naturally the Fairfaxians had a tidy come-back, no less an authority than Tony Abbott himself:

"If you want better coverage, be a better government."

Well Fairfax can look after themselves outside and inside the defamation courts, but is it possible to begin to imagine the bleating and the squawking if the current government copped what was standard Murdochian practice for years?

Harden the fuck up Dutton, muscle up and get some mutton into you, or you will end up with your very own meme ...

As for loose lips sinking ships, it was Samantha Maiden in News Corp, noted in these pages, who spent the weekend jumping up and down demanding that jolly Joe be sacked.

Yes even in some Murdoch rags - perhaps arising from the lack of timely dispensation of kool aid - you can find hacks enjoying the feast of incompetence offered daily by the federal government.

Naturally it's the business of the heavy duty kool aid drinkers to provide excuses and temporise and obfuscate, and there was a splendid example provided this day by the reptile editorialist. It turns out the reptilian hides of the hacks can't handle the mosquito bites of the twitterati:

It was surely by the deepest and richest irony allowable that at the same time as the pond was running that reptile editorial it was carrying an assorted montage of Murdochian newspaper headlines showing how the reptiles confected their front pages.

The reality is that Border Farce stuffed up in a major way and at significantly high levels within the organisation, and no amount of blaming the twitterati will dissolve that like a dose of reptile NapiSan. But to get any alternative understanding, you simply can't read the reptiles - you have to head off to a story such as Border force launches internal review in wake of 'badly worded' press release.

Here's a reality check both the reptiles and the government should bear in mind. Having now played the fear, loathing, race and Islamic and terrorist card in so many ways, and in such a variety of forms, they have made the populace very toey about all sorts of infringements on liberties once taken for granted in this country, but now put in doubt by many vexatious acts of legislation, including but not limited to the the re-badging of Border Farce in a none too crypto paramilitary form.

There's also the desire to strip citizenship on the arbitrary basis of a piece of Mutton - would you want your fate determined by anonymous bureaucrats and a piece of Mutton? - and there's the desire to confiscate all sorts of personal information, and so on and on, as the government keeps using security and khaki as its only excuses to stay in power ...

The irony of this - the reptiles blaming the twitterati, when fear and loathing generating fear and loathing is at the heart of it - is almost as deep and as rich an irony as the way the reptiles ran this Kudelka cartoon:

Never mind, the guaranteed rule, both for politicians of the Dutton kind and the angry aging white bull reptiles that infest the lizard Oz, is that people enjoying life and having fun and instantly communicating outside the traditional media bulwarks is a guaranteed source of irritation and regret.

But while on the media handling skills of the current government, it was twitter that brought to the pond this account of Mr Abbott's venture north:

Damned pesky jihadists, seems they're everywhere ...