Brendan Darcy and is it time for you to eat your greens as part of a balanced diet?

(Above: eek, Tasmania is full, or so Dick Smith told us).

Today nation we write of a most disturbing shocking and startling secret, a revelation which will shake the commonwealth to its foundation stone (or stones).

The last time Barnaby Joyce posted to The Punch was the 7th June 2010. (articles by Barnaby Joyce). Ever since we've been denied the pearls of wisdom delivered by the battler from the bush.

Worse still those damn independents and greenies who've been voted in by fools, mug liars and dupes, and who think somehow they've got the same rights and entitlements as Barners, have taken to calling him a fool or a piece of 'incredible unfortunateness'. (Key independents berate "fool" Barnaby Joyce).

How incredibly unfortunate. With Wilson Tuckey gone, and Steve Fielding soon to join him, but not before the serial pest makes a last useless stand, hasta la vista baby, no wonder this nation is teetering on a precipice, a cataclysmic disaster, and sweet Barners silenced and helpless to save the nation from its massive debts.

Meanwhile, The Punch has had to scour high and low for a scribbler to demonise the Greens, and luckily they've found Brendan Darcy, one time senior ministerial adviser to Kevin Andrews, such a fine and forceful Minister, who delivers a fine frothing and foaming in The Greens plan for Australia: A big Tasmania.

There's so many things that are appealing about Darcy's piece it's hard to know where to start.

Oh heck, why not where he starts, with Tasmania, gridlocked into genteel poverty by nasty greenies. Odds bodkins, but he fails to mention incest, dribbling idiots and apple eaters, settling instead for its population growth being "historically anaemic for many decades."

Strange, that's not how I remember it in Dick Smith's population puzzle opinion piece. Tasmania was as full as a goog and devouring Australia's resources, no doubt Darcy's ideal outcome for the apple isle. Why I have a dream of Tasmania as the world's new Manhattan, with fine subways criss crossing below the towering apartment blocks and offices, and many excellent art galleries, and once everybody congregates there at world's end, it might well come to pass ...

But of course the real problem is that Bob Brown comes from Tasmania, and if he's not a Satanist, then certainly he's a mix of 'Roussean' primitivism and old fashioned Puritanism, which given his open acknowledgment of his homosexuality, might make anyone with an actual awareness of Puritanism wonder what precise brand of Puritanism it is that Brown embraces.

Memo to Darcy. Capitals mean things. If you want to talk about Puritans, a member of a group of English Protestants who in the 16th and 17th centuries advocated strict religious discipline along with simplification of the ceremonies and creeds of the Church of England, use a capital P. If you want to berate someone for being puritan - one who regards pleasure or luxury as sinful, use lower case, and then please explain the concept of sin in relation to a homosexual atheist.

And while you're at it, please explain what you mean by 'Roussean' primitivism, since it's all too easy to suspect that it's just primitivist shorthand abuse as a substitute for a much more complex and detailed understanding of Rousseau. If I want generalised abuse of Rousseau, Edmund Burke did it much more elegantly, and with considerably more wit and knowledge, along with an equal amount of error. Perhaps the Rousseau wiki might help you out.

Let's not dally too long with Darcy's whale lover and Gaia and mystical nonsense abuse - that's only par for the course, let's instead get down to Darcy's political proposals:

The Greens are also concerned about what we eat, where it comes from and how we commute. This political party are desperate to make us feel guilty about it and to regulate our behaviours; hence the Greens’ policies to levy junk food, ban GM foods, to roll out electric cars that no one wants and to introduce ‘traffic light’ food labelling.

By which we can deduce that Darcy wants us all to choke on the vomit induced by force feeding ourselves crappy hamburgers, embrace chemicals and anti-biotics in our food, and roll out V8's and 4WD's until we use up every last drop of oil on the planet, and while we're at it, have a complete absence of food labelling so we don't have a fucking clue about what's going down our throats.

It's at that point that you begin to wonder exactly what point Darcy is making. Is it that coeliacs shouldn't know what's in food, by way of labelling, and instead of an amber or a red light, they should just tuck in, and then present themselves at the nearest emergency ward a couple of hours later, praising Darcy for the joys of traffic light free food labelling?

Don't know about coeliac disease? Try living with a sufferer, and see how you feel about Darcy's profoundly insensitive stupidity ...

Sure, there's a lot of gluten free wankers out there, but that's surely better than being a Darcy style brain dead wanker ... because, you see, food labelling, wherein you discover what is in the stuff you eat, in other words, information, isn't something to be demonised unless you happen to be a gherkin or someone fellow travelling with big players who think the pigs should just put their snouts in the trough and be silent ...

Let's skip over John Howard and Bob Brown valiantly battled together to save Tasmanian old growth forests, and were defeated by socialist Greens, since you can buy a copy of fairy stories to your taste at any major bookseller, not the independents long ago forced out of business, and just be quiet and drink your gluten-free wheat juice - so that we can get to the nub of the matter:

The electorate knows what is buying when it votes for the major parties. Their respective platforms are mercilessly blowtorched by a skeptical media.

Um, so what did we find out in relation to the matter of climate change from the skeptical, or even a sceptical, media? Why, either (1) that climate change is crap, but can easily be sorted by an army of 15,000 people doing useless cheap make work schemes, or (2) climate change is real, but needs 150 good and true citizens to gaze at their navels and work out what to do, since politicians are incapable of doing it.

Was it just coincidence that right at that moment my eye slid across the page to pick up this twittering tweet?

Join the club The Punch, by running a standard hatchet job on the Greens which only in the most indirect way acknowledges that climate change might be of concern to some.

How to solve this? Here's the solution for a brain dead media ...

Remember how they loved Susan Greenfield, because she's a baroness, and Monckton because he's a Viscount? Well now there's an actual Lord, one Lord Julian Hunt, scribbling Pakistan's lesson on global warming. Surely if he's a Lord, never mind the science, we should all pay attention?

This trend is fuelled by global warming and potentially by any intensification and alteration of the El Nino-La Nino cycle. To understand the reasons global warming is playing a role, look at the main climatic trends in south Asia. In addition to more extreme rainfall, there is also a reduction of ice over the Tibetan plateau and changing precipitation patterns, with less snow at higher levels, plus more rapid run-off from mountains.

How does climate change help explain this? First, the warming in temperatures leads to less snow. Second, the less stable atmosphere causes deeper convection and intense rainfall. The less stable atmosphere also leads to more airflow over mountains and less lateral deviation - so that the monsoon winds and precipitation can be higher in north-western India and Pakistan and weaker in the north-east.

Sorry, I got distracted there for a moment. The good Lord thinks there might be a little problem confronting the world, never mind the current 20 million made homeless in Pakistan by the flooding:

Given the stakes, not least because of the sizeable proportion of the world population affected, these issues need urgent study and also preparations on the ground by the affected countries. Unless this happens, including better flood-warning systems and water-management infrastructure put in place, societies and governments in the region will be unable to respond to the devastating combination of changing environmental stresses, growing population and geopolitical instability.

Naturally Darcy is seriously alarmed as well, and so gets down to the nitty gritty of the dangers of Greens policies:

Everyone should know the Greens want to close down zoos and increase the corporate and personal tax rates. Everyone should know they want to take State aid money from non-government schools, close down our mainstream immigration program and aim to reintroduce death duties.

Take money away from Scientology and Exclusive Brethren schools? Tax the rich? Steady Darcy, they don't need you proselytising for them, making their policies sound wise and sensible ...

That these policies are not widely known reflects poorly on contemporary journalism.

No longer an environmentalist movement, the Australian Greens is a political vehicle for ambitious wreckers.

The most effective tools of Green politics include middle class angst and hyperbolic catastrophism. The wealthiest, most educated parts of our inner city suburbs are especially vulnerable to this contemporary campaign of guilt-ridden millenarianism – exactly where the Greens’ polled best in 2010.

Yes, and don't forget that British Lords are also part of inner city gluten-free elite guilt-ridden by millenarianism. Shame on you British Lord, it's only 20 million people in Pakistan, which by current conversion rates amounts to perhaps twenty people caught in a flood in Australia ...

Meanwhile, Darcy continues to amaze and impress with the force of his logic. His best line of attack is that the Greens show a reverence for the natural world, and therefore deserve contempt for their mystical mumbo jumbo, but the mainstream parties also show a reverence for the natural world, and therefore deserve lashings of praise for their restrained, sensible Gaia love.

No contradiction is intended, for Darcy is bigger than Walt Whitman in his capacity for embracing contradiction and producing a profound synthesis:

I am shocked by how many Liberals and Labor campaigners are too afraid to attack the wrecking ball Greens, as if embarrassed by their own perceived lack of reverence for the natural world.

The truth is both the Labor and Liberal Parties have their own long positive narratives about environmental protection.

You see! Labor and Liberal are as reverent as the Greens, and surely therefore as deserving of Darcy's contempt? No way, Jose, because Gaia worship done the right way is good Gaia worship:

Think of the role Labor played in stopping the Franklin River dam and the Antarctic Treaty to halt the exploitation of its natural resources.

For the Liberals, Malcolm Fraser stopped sand mining on Fraser Island as well as whaling; Howard increased the marine protection areas of the Great Barrier Reef from 5 to 33 per cent; and Kennett stopped the destructive practice of scallop dredging in Victoria.

Stop it, stop it, I love the Gaia loving ways of the big parties.

I say to Labor and Liberal supporters: the Greens have no right to bully you! Stop apologising!

Yes, climate change is crap, yes we only need an army of workers to march out and do battle with it, yes 150 citizens putting on their thinking caps will sort it out. Why on earth apologise for that!

Now how about a bit of meaningless blather. I love a bit of blather in the morning:

Real policy wonks know environmental management is about balance, off-sets and evidence based science, not to the exclusion of human interaction, for material, recreational and health benefits. Real policy wonks don’t pretend there are no losers. Real policy wonks don’t promise 100 per cent renewable energy.

Yes, that's hard edged cutting edge wonky policy mean machine stuff, no doubt why they promised 150 thinking citizens and an army of 15,000 marching out to catch carbon in their butterfly nets ...

Now in a bipartisan way, let's hear it for the biggies ...

Economic management and national security are at the core of public expectations for our mainstream political parties. The parties that can manage our economy and our security concerns are not surprisingly the best to manage our environmental assets.

Yes, yes, no point in being independent, just tug the forelock and fall into line, since if Napoleon doesn't know best, then surely Farmer Jones does, and if they just sit down over an evening meal, once the riotous animals and their recent electoral indiscretions are put aside, everything can be worked out in a way that's best for ... Napoleon and Farmer Jones ...

But wait, Darcy has one last blinding insight:

As a first step, Australians need to remind themselves the Greens are just politicians and should be treated accordingly.

Is that why some people voted for them? Because they're just politicians and so should be treated accordingly, rewarded with a vote if you happen to agree with their policies, or perhaps just because you hate useless Toorak tractors ... and dumb scribbling by the likes of Darcy ...

Well here at the pond, we actually don't follow any party line, Liberal, Labor, Barnaby Joyce, or the Greens - since all by definition as politicians are honorary loons on the pond - but when we see someone like Darcy desperately scribbling away in a bid to demonise the Greens, it's easy to see just how inept the big parties and their political hacks are in dealing with the thought processes required by modern politics, and how it's likely Greens and independents will go on picking off seats so long as this is the best level of debate that can be put forward ...

(Below: eek, Tasmania isn't just full, it's devouring all our resources. Bob Brown, you fraudster you).

The Punch, Dennis Shanahan, and all the news that's fit to print from Murdoch land ...

(Above: forget the election result, it's back to the future with vinyl).

It's official. The election crisis is over. We can all get back to our daily business, our daily grind, our daily bliss, our daily bread, our daily whatever.

But how did I know? Did I poke my finger into chicken entrails? Look at tea leaves? Lose my mind and listen to Kyle Sandilands?

No, it's so much easier than that, because I went off to The Punch, Australia's most distracting, irrelevant conversation ...

Oh sure, there's Leo Shanahan at the top wondering What could Abbott be thinking?, but he's balanced by Joe Hildebrand trying to be funny in Revealed! The secret Bob and Julia tapes ...

Here's the closing patented Hildebrand punch line:

BOB: Those Mount Isa chicks. They could frighten the back end of a horse.

Groan. Next please. Those Punch scribblers, they could frighten the back end of a horse, and then pick up the result and fling around the pats as a kind of comedy routine ...

Then we get to the real meat. There's good old Dennis Atkins, proving his time in Adelaide on the Sunday Mail sleeping through movies comes in really handy when you want to prove that Nick Hornby is just a surface skimming poseur ponce, as he gets down and dirty with Quality vinyl: the top 25 side one track ones of all time.

Illustrated, as usual, by three YouTube clips, proving that all that talk of intellectual property rights in Murdoch land is just a blogger dream. Thanks to Chairman Rupert, we can all go on quoting our favourite songs and movies and still images until the cows come home ... All in the cause of fair comment and academic research of course ...

But if rarefied baby boomer referentialism in regard to vinyl isn' your thing, why there's Julia Thornton brooding about When it comes to women's fashion, size does matter ... and if you want to feel the real depths, why it's all rounded out by Miranda Ryan's shameful confession that she watches Neighbours, and likes it, in True confessions of a Neighours addict ...

It's okay sweetie, I'm a Rupert Murdoch addict, and the junk is sweeter tasting and with more kick than a horse's rear end or crack ...

Hey ho, feeling the need for astute political comment, we toddled off to Dennis Shanahan in The Australian, the dead heart of the nation, and in Forget three amigos, let's go back to polls, Dennis the menace confirms what we all suspected all along here at the pond.

You dumb Australian voters, you got it all wrong. It's F for you lot, which you can either take as F for epic Fail, or for F for fuckwits. You will now be detained after class at Mr. Shanahan's leisure and vote again and again and again until you get it right, which is of course to vote in Mr. Shahahan's preferred choice, a Tony Abbott government.

Alternatively, you can simply delegate your vote to Mr. Shanahan and he'll organise matters quickly and efficiently ...

That's the trouble with pesky democracy and these pesky bloody voters and all this sanctimonious nonsense about the people speaking and the people getting it right all the time in their infinite wisdom. What a bunch of bloody nongs, what a useless result, what a hopeless outcome.

The only man worth his salt is of course doing the decent thing, standing up against this wretched flood of independents foolishly claiming a mandate as if somehow a few voters might have thought Tony Abbott was a little on the nose:

Abbott's refusal last night to pander to the demand of the three independents to break the caretaker convention is right but will be used against him by an increasingly desperate government.

You see! Now let's all join in a verse of The Night they Drove Old Tony Down ...

The prospect looms of a minority Labor-Greens coalition government facing just as much obstruction and difficulty in parliament as a Liberal-Nationals Coalition government.

That's as opposed to a Labour government confronting a Senate where the Liberals found a natural ally in stampeding stomping slavering Steve Fielding.

It seems we now must - as a result of the unrelieved stupidity of Australian voters failing to heed Mr Shanahan - endure the worst of all worlds:

Indeed, a Labor government in formal partnership with the Greens in the House of Representatives facing a Greens-controlled Senate and the most successful opposition leader in Australia's history would be forced to face votes on troops in Afghanistan, another mining tax and a carbon price.

What a dire, hideous, predicament, and it's all the fault of Australian voters. Hang your head in shame you lot. Why it's getting worse than what Sol Trujillo and his three amigos did to Telstra, and we've already had a full astonishing five days of discussion, negotiation and contemplation, and the results not decided, and yet the fix is in, such is the devastating impact of devastatingly stupid Australian voters, and no wonder why Dennis stamping his foot and irate and suffering along with Tony Abbott, who never suffered fools gladly and now has to chatter to these insane rural gadflys as they babble about broadband, as if he was some kind of tech head or something:

The demands and claims from the cross benches -- the sitting MPs Tony Windsor, Rob Oakeshott and Bob Katter, as well as the incoming Green Adam Bandt and the truly non-aligned Andrew Wilkie -- are becoming more obscure and contradictory with every day spent in the limelight. The independents declared for days that their core aim was stable, long-term government but it now appears one of the real options of the three amigos is simply to refuse to support Labor or the Coalition and force another election. So much for stability.

Five full bloody days and no stability and no long term government by Tony Abbott, and they call this a bloody democracy! Back to the bloody polls, you F lot, we're jack of it.

Worse still, the puny minded electorate don't seem to realise that the UN might be involved, the black helicopters are certainly circling, and nefarious international funding - say no more, nudge nudge, wink wind, a nod is as good as a wink to a paranoid - is likely to ruin the sweet reasonableness of Australian democracy:

Bandt, as the first Greens MP elected at a federal election after taking Labor's seat of Melbourne and denying the party's legitimacy, has declared he's prepared to go into coalition with Labor to ensure they stay in power. Bandt is a member of a party that has a worldwide movement, a national structure, funding from overseas and a platform opposed to much of Labor's election policy. So much for it being safe for Labor voters to turn Green.

Et tu internationally funded greenies, denying the will of the people to vote Tony Abbott into power if only they'd been smart enough to understand that Shanahan's will is their will!

Windsor, Oakeshott and Katter are turning themselves inside out to accommodate having the power to decide who forms government and spruiking a new independent political "paradigm" while squeezing both sides for old-paradigm concessions based on power.

Dear me, it's all ruined, and it's all the fault of those wretched Australian voters and their perfidious ways. It's just another rort, utterly unknown in Australia until these last few days has finally introduced us to the concept of pork barreling. Who'd have thought such a quaint political Tammany Hall tradition would turn up in sweet old Oz, as we all know sand bagging only refers to ways to prevent vicious floods affecting susceptible electorates prone to flooding.

Now I hear that the 2 billion dollar Epping to Parramatta railway is being shifted up north to run from Tamworth to Werris Creek ...

I think it's time to end it all.

Hang on, second thoughts, thanks to the inspiration and fearless leadership of Chairman Rupert, I think I'll embed a video clip, so we can all sing along to a verse of The Night They Drove Old Tony Down, and coincidentally and beneficially drive Dennis Atkins a little further around the vinyl twist by running track 3, not track 1, from the album!

Pond devotees are invited to scribble their top 25 track 3 vinyl favourites, but please do it in the piracy of your home, and don't let anyone know you're doing it ...

Miranda Devine, and the delusional scribbling about the delusions of the delusional ...

(Above: nothing to do with anything, street art from Vastergotland, Gothenburg, Sweden, here).

Miranda the Devine scribbling about the delusions of the delusional in Loose lips among the tulips? Can it get any richer than this, the delusional rabbiting on about the delusional?

Which delusional would win the day? we wondered.

Could it be evil nanny state bureaucrats, with their perfidious insistence that backyard pools should be made safer?

Could it be wretched pram drivers and jay walkers, part of an increasingly familiar pattern of inexplicable behaviour?

Could it be lycra clad louts like Tony Abbott making the roads unsafe for behemoths with their cycling ways? Let's not go there, we could be caught in a cul de sac with a 4WD for months...

Could it be greenies, who should be strung up from the nearest lamp post, since they're to blame for everything wrong with the world?

Could it be ratbags who strangely think the Catholic church should practise what it relentlessly preaches to others, especially on matters such as child molestation?

Could it be young people, who caused the great global meltdown because of their addiction to screen culture? (We're losing our minds over technology)? While shortly after they came to inherit the spirit of Anzac ... (The spirit of Anzac lives on in Gen Y).

Could it be climate scientists, deludedly thinking that there might be something to climate change, when Miranda the Devine, an expert climatologist and scientist, has effectively demolished all their saucy doubts and fears?

Could it be the Murdoch press, for promising they'd yanked the Devine away from Fairfax, yet still here she is as bold as brass and scribbling like a feral dunce in the usual way?

There now, just a few Devine hits and memories to get you warmed up for her discourse on the delusionals.

Why not start with the last first?

Delusion 12: It was a sexist election, with Gillard ''pilloried for her 'deliberate' childlessness, her clothes, her morals, her looks, her undeniably unimpressive boyfriend". That was Germaine Greer, writing for London's Daily Telegraph from her Essex home.

She must have been watching a different election.

Or she might have been reading Janet Albrechtsen, soon to be the Devine's sister in arms at Murdoch land, as they jostle for the right to be the most extreme commentariat commentator in the land:

... if you look closely at Gillard's career, it has been a conscious rejection of the milestones many young women want. In the past, Gillard has talked about "the things we [women] have in common, experiences, choices, fears and hopes that our male colleagues may sympathise with but will never share". Yet she cannot share most of these things either.

The sisterhood should stop reading right about now.

Most young women want a career, they want to get married, they want a family life with children racing around their ankles and driving them nuts. As brilliant as Gillard's achievements are, she is no role model for girls who want more than a career.

Ah yes, the hits and memories of the commentariat, as paraded in Let's be honest about Julia's free gender leg-up.

Of course what's got the Devine agitated is the presence of a single Green in the house, talking about a carbon tax, or an ETS, or anything else that caters to the delusion that climate scientists might know more about climate than Miranda the Devine channeling Ian Plimer.

And all her other pet fears and alarums have come out of the election woodwork to haunt her ...

... the four independents holding court at the National Press Club at a press conference organised by Get Up! complete with applause ...

The shock, the horror, the dismay! Then there's the delusion that ...

... The Coalition would have won a majority if Malcolm Turnbull had been leader instead of Tony Abbott. This is persistent, whipped up by Wentworth fantasists and doctors' wives ...

Those damn doctors' wives, speaking of delusional cliches, back into the woodwork with your Readers Digests and your mincing, posturing, stupid Woollahra ways ...

Now for a little delusional alternative 'what if' history, though we can never know for certain how well that alternative history prediction might have turned out:

Rudd has been vindicated, at least in his own mind, no matter which way this mess goes. Of course, no one will ever know for certain how well or badly a Rudd government would have done, but it wouldn't have been the first time a first-term government had weathered bad polls and managed to win.

Amen to that, who knows anything, and all the more reason to scribble who knows what about nothing, or delusions, even when we remember those sad days when former chairman Rudd had few cheerleaders left:

Perhaps the best assessment of the Prime Minister this week comes from the Roman senator Tacitus, via letter writer Harry Gelber, of Hobart: ''Omnium consensu capax imperii nisi imperasset.''

Roughly, it means: everyone agrees he would have been thought capable of governing, if he had not already governed. (Greatest moral challenge turns out to be Rudd's dearest folly).

Not to worry. As a compendium of all that's delusionaly dear to the elitist chattering class of right wing commentators, the Devine's latest effort is an exemplary full moon hashtag twitter aware effort.

Tony Abbott is naturally wonderful, Nick Minchin a splendid hero with goldleaf medal of honour, Malcolm Turnbull an epic ruinous failure, and those wretched free thinking independents the ruination of us all.

In the coming months, the independents are going to cop plenty of stick from the likes of the Devine? Collegial polity? Isn't that just a polite way of saying get fucked?

Here's a taster:

Delusion 11: Tony Windsor is a moderate. Sure, if calling for the death penalty and opposing gun control is moderate.

Well I guess that would make Windsor fit right in with an Abbott government:

Mr Abbott says execution may be a fitting punishment for those responsible for mass death.

"Well, you know, what would you do with someone who cold-bloodedly brought about the deaths of hundreds or thousands of innocent people?" he said.

"You've got to ask yourself, what punishment would fit that crime? That's when you do start to think that maybe the only appropriate punishment is death.

Lordy lordy, what a clever dog whistler he is.

"I have always been against the death penalty," he said.

"I sometimes find myself thinking though that there are some crimes so horrific that maybe that's the only way to adequately convey the horror of what's been done.

"But look, it's not my policy to reintroduce the death penalty. If the matter ever came before the Federal Parliament, it would be a conscience vote." (here).

As for gun control, Windsor should fit right in with cutting edge Liberal party thinking, not that you'll be able to discover their advanced thoughts on their discussion site in relation to "carry concealed weapons permits" or it being time "for evidence-based gun controls", because once the shooters and the greens picked up on the ruckus, those postings promptly disappeared into the digital ether, remembered only by the shooters (here) and the gun controllers (here).

Oops, where was I? Seems that I got so caught up in the Devine's FUD routine that I got sidetracked into looking at Tony Windsor on capital punishment and gun control, only to discover that he and Tony Abbott are peas in the very same pod.

Which brings us to the real extremist who favours public executions ... and it's Miranda the Devine of course:

... it is not arsonists who should be hanging from lamp-posts but greenies.

Roll on that much treasured collegial polity:

"I make the point that I think we can have a kinder, gentler polity," Mr Abbott told reporters.

"I think we can be a more collegial polity than we've been." (here)

Yes, and the way he's been head butting the independents this morning about Treasury budgeting Liberal party costings shows he's an adept at compromise ...

If Abbott has his way, we'll be back at the voting box soon enough, with the independents set up as the fall guys, supporting a 'failed government' and copping the blame, and Miranda the Devine cheering him on ...

Polity? That's just another word for get fucked.

Which brings us to George Eliot:

Speech is often barren; but silence also does not necessarily brood over a full nest. Your still fowl, blinking at you without remark, may all the while be sitting on one addled egg; and when it takes to cackling will have nothing to announce but that addled delusion.

You have to hand it to Miranda the Devine. She's no still fowl. An addled column a day adding to the addled delusions of the world ...

Take it away Ambrose Bierce:

DELUSION, n. The father of a most respectable family, comprising Enthusiasm, Affection, Self-denial, Faith, Hope, Charity and many other goodly sons and daughters.

All hail, Delusion! Were it not for thee The world turned topsy-turvy we should see; For Vice, respectable with cleanly fancies, Would fly abandoned Virtue's gross advances. --Mumfrey Mappel

Janet Albrechtsen, the shape of things to come, and collegial polity all the rage ...

(Above: Janet Albrechtsen on this week's Q & A blathering on about Mark Arbib being faceless and gutless. Gutless maybe, for his refusal to cross Gillard and appear on the show, unless of course he suggested to Gillard that she ban him from the show, so that he could take the dive, but faceless? For gawd's sake, here he is on Lateline being bare faced rather than faceless).

(Arbib rejects kingmaker mantle. Enough with the faceless already, or we'll feel the need to scribble about hideous poils.)

The favourite game on the pond at the moment is re-writing the broodings of the chattering elitist commentariat on the coulda been shoulda been result, and the elevation of Tony Abbott to near sainthood, but not quite, meaning a stay in the Mary McKillop outhouse while we wait for the second approved miracle in the coming months.

Oh okay we promised never to scribble about elites and to always use the proper circumflex, but I guess it's time whipper snappers learned about non-core promises.

Take, for example, Dame Slap aka Janet Albrechtsen - for the love of the dear absent lord are there no takers for Dame Slap? - scribbling furiously in Polished Abbott rises in stature:

At some point, Labor may wake up to its failings. While much has been said, in time tomes will surely be written about the ALP machine's obsession with poll-driven policy and quick-draw political assassinations, its failure to manage a burned leader and its own hubris. It treated voters as mugs with ill-conceived policies, promises that stretched credulity and confused messages about a party that lost its way only to request help from its assassinated leader. And even more hubris when it underestimated its new Liberal opponent. If Labor does take a good long at itself after the election, Abbott can take the credit for that, too. Meanwhile Abbott must hope people keep underestimating him.

Hey presto, and with a bit of Brasso, and a lot of elbow grease, as my grandmother used to say when working over the few bits of genuine silver in the family, this becomes:

At some point, Abbott may wake up to his failings. While much has been said, in time tomes will surely be written about his obsession with poll-driven policy, including his desire to assassinate broadband and his ambivalent refusal to take climate change seriously. He treated voters as mugs with ill-conceived policies, promises that stretched credulity and confused messages about a party that lost its way, only to request help from Malcolm Turnbull in trying to sell his confused climate change and NBN policies. And he showed even more hubris when he underestimated his Greens and independent opponents. If the Liberal party does take a good long look at itself after the election, Bob Brown and the independents can take the credit for that. Meanwhile Bob Brown and the Labor party must hope Abbott keeps on underestimating interest in broadband, especially in the bush, and in climate change.

Why did we insert all that stuff about climate change? Well here's Dame Slap earlier in her piece on the significance of climate change:

With due respect to Turnbull, the Coalition pushing an emissions trading system would not have won seats in Macarthur or Macquarie, or Longman, or Flynn, or Forde, or Dawson; seats picked up by the Coalition. Turnbull chose to martyr himself on climate change, an issue Rudd, Gillard and Labor strategists dropped. Much of the world has dropped it too. Anyone remember Copenhagen? Anyone following what's happening or not happening in the US on climate change? Abbott was responsible for changing the politics of climate change in Australia, putting it back in the real world.

With due mealy mouthed and condescending respect, putting it back in the real world ...

Would that be the real world where Queensland fish species migrating south due to climate change? Dear sweet absent lord, it's a story in a Murdoch rag, and therefore must have been scrupulously researched and so credible.

It seems Nemo's cousins are cruising south as the water warms:

Climate change is turning the environment upside-down, with Queensland groper, tiger sharks and even warm-water fish like coral trout being found in Tasmania.

Scientists also have recorded yellowtail kingfish and snapper heading south, while north Queensland barramundi and threadfin salmon are being caught in Moreton Bay off Brisbane and on the Gold Coast.

Scientists say it shows how climate change is redistributing species.

Of course with her training as a lawyer, Albrechtsen is perfectly poised and trained to refute the observations of mere piscatorial scientists.

But hang on, here's our favourite for the week, the young whippersnapper Wyatt Roy freshly installed in Longman, and good luck to him:

Asked about his views on climate change, he was cautious, but it is clear his views are shaped by the fact he is part of arguably the first generation to have grown up with climate change as an all-pervasive issue.

''I've looked at the science on both sides, and I do genuinely believe climate change is plausible, and at the very least it deserves an insurance policy,'' he said. ''I think one of the things I would bring to the parliament is that longer-term perspective. There are big challenges about intergenerational energy security and energy interdependence, and I think that is part of the wider climate change debate, and … that perspective is something that should be discussed a little bit more. (here).

Take it from Dame Slap Roy! Drop it! Join her in the cupboard at the bottom of the stairs where everyone is safe from the boogeyman ...

Now let's not worry about wheeling out the Pakistan floods, Russia's heat wave and fires, with concomitant life killing pall hanging over the country, and the recent hot summer in the United States, since one off effects are hard to connect to overall patterns, but is there anybody else in the world scribbling the same kind of obfuscatory tripe as Albrechtsen, whose impression of of an ostrich head in sand revives the myth that this is an effective ostrich way to deal with problems.

Actually as Dr Karl explains at great length in Ostrich head in sand, that's all the fault of Pliny.

Meanwhile, whether Albrechtsen likes it or not, or pretends that climate change has no clothes, is invisible and totally irrelevant to the world, it's remarkable how it keeps on bobbing up in post-election discussions on the way things might proceed.

To find out about all that, you have to resort to alternative reading matter, such as Ross Gittin's Revolution of the thinking voter turns politics green. We won't bother quoting him, since he makes his points at length, and in detail, unlike the throwaway gibberish of Dame Slap.

Meanwhile, one of the funniest things about the current situation is seeing former boofhead headkicker and parliamentary ratbag Abbott talk gravely about the need for new standards and collegial consultation with colleagues and parliamentary reform and genuine questions and genuine debate and how needlessly confrontational politics is and how it could be much kinder and gentler - after running an almost entirely negative campaign, much like the Labor party .

Collegial polity! Now there's a new buzzword, especially as Tony Windsor noted drily that in his day he'd been cuffed around the ears often enough by the Liberals when they were in power (yes they speak drily up Tamworth way where the summer heat is good enough to throw a couple of eggs and a cockatoo on the bonnet of a car, and hey presto a breakfast worthy of kings).

The bottom line is that so long as the likes of Albrechtsen rabbits on in a state of denial about the triumphs of Liberal party policy in relation to climate change, broadband and such like, and simply refuses to accept the bolshie indie mood of the electorate, the less relevant she becomes.

Predictably much of the rest of her column is dedicated to a negative diatribe about the Labor party and its many failings, and so is tedious beyond measure and only useful as a way to catch cockatoo droppings should you be so cruel as to keep one in a cage.

Shush Dame Slap! Shush! Collegial polity is all the rage!

And since we're in a transubstantiation mood today, we've adapted our very own recipe for cockatoos to politicians. Tony Abbott would be eminently suitable, trapped as he is in his own climate change juices:

Equipment needed A very large billy (an extremely large saucepan will do)

Ingredients • Water (couple of dozen litres/quarts)
• One medium to large politician
• One large rock
• Salt and pepper to taste

Method Place the water, rock and politician into the billy and bring to boil.

Simmer for 10 to 12 hours.

When the rock is soft, throw the politician away
Eat the rock.

Phew, don't know why I woke up this morning in such good humour, recycling such hideous old jokes.

For a moment there I thought it might be napalm, but I guess it's the smell of collegial polity in the fresh morning air...

You know, I love the smell of collegial polity in the morning. The smell, you know that smell of lightly broiled politicians ... Smells like victory ...

(Below: speaking of politicians and cockies, way back when, John Frith did a fine job portraying Arthur Calwell as a cocky, and you can find more details about his work here. The notion that politics and cockies and humour could mix has stayed with me ever since).

Hendrik Hertzberg, the snail lands with good news, and a pox on anti-élitist élites ...

Every week or so, depending on the mail, since the snails have to be lashed to perform, The New Yorker pops into the mail box, and I can do a Tony Abbott, which is to say abandon lunk head tech head pretensions, and enjoy - with a nice tea and biscuit - the feel of actual printed paper into which ideas have been infused ...

Yes, it's not just the Wallaces of the world that can enjoy a nice cup of cha. Of course such talk is dangerously elitist, since it implies that some teas might be better than others, or that tea is better than a drop of red ... but after reading Gerard Henderson blathering on in his usual way this morning about inner city elites, it was poignant and piquant to read Hendrik Hertzberg's Zero Grounds (yes you digerati types you can get it for free, but I love reading Hendrik, and cheerfully pay for the pleasure).

Wouldn't you know he opens with talk of elites, and presented in proper orthographical style as élite. Yep, you know you're in the company of New York élitists when due attention is paid to the circumflex. Now I'm going to be naughty and pay homage to Hendrik by publishing his opener at length:

A couple of weeks before the last election, the Republican nominees for President and Vice-President granted a joint interview to Brian Williams, of NBC. “Governor,” he asked, turning to the distaff half of the ticket, “what is an élite? Who is a member of the élite?” Sarah Palin replied, “Anyone who thinks that they are, I guess, better than anyone else—that’s my definition of élitism.” “It’s not geography?” Williams pursued. “Of course not,” she said. The ticket’s other half blinked and smiled a tight smile. John McCain had something to say.

MCCAIN: I know where a lot of them live.
WILLIAMS: Where’s that?
MCCAIN: Well, in our nation’s capital and New York City. I’ve seen it. I’ve lived there.

These élitists, he went on to explain, “think that they can dictate what they believe to America rather than let Americans decide for themselves.”

Hendrik - I like to use the first name with anyone I think could put their slippers under my bed on the basis of their thinking and their literary style, and so as to rub shoulders with other élitists - goes on to shove it up McCain and Palin and the Newt for dictating to New Yorkers what should happen in New York, in relation to the matter of the Islamic prayer centre aka "mosque" near Ground Zero.

Now here at the pond we spend most of our time dissing religion - come on what religion ya got so we can diss it - but the great thing about New York, the greatest city in the world, is that it's a seething, jostling multi-cultural mess that's a celebration of diversity and energy.

My current financial plan includes winning the lottery and retiring to New York. Which I guess means I'll have to settle instead for saying hello to cat food and the local outpatients section of the nearest public hospital.

Hendrik gets off some nice shots:

Where the “Ground Zero mosque” is concerned, opposition is roughly proportional to distance, even in New York. According to a recent poll, Manhattanites are mostly for it, Staten Islanders mostly against.

Now that's tribalism. That beats crossing the Yarra or straying outside the eastern suburbs or taking a view on people who live in Norwood. By golly Staten Islanders, those useless bloody ferry riders, who are not in the holy land of Manhattan, will be cut to the quick.

And because I'm shameless, I just want to spread Hendrik's last capper a little further:

In a famous letter—the one that holds that the United States “gives to bigotry no sanction, to persecution no assistance, requires only that they who live under its protection should demean themselves as good citizens”—George Washington offered a benediction:

May the children of the stock of Abraham, who dwell in this land, continue to merit and enjoy the good will of the other inhabitants, while every one shall sit in safety under his own vine and fig tree and there shall be none to make him afraid.

Lower Manhattan is a little short on vines and fig trees nowadays, though there are some excellent wine bars. Washington’s point remains. His letter was addressed to the Jews of Newport, Rhode Island. But, as he knew, Muslims are Abraham’s children, too. By the McCain standard, George Washington was a three-time loser: as President, he lived in New York City; the nation’s capital bears his name; and, even by the standards of his time, he was an élitist. Nevertheless: he was right.

The moral of the story, since the fight about the mosque is between New Yorkers, and dumb Americans of the Palin and newt kind?

Whenever you read a columnist scribbling about élites and élitists, you know you're in the company of wankers always ready to talk about élites as a way of whipping up fear and loathing, and getting themselves crowned as ... élites.

As The Who should have sung, pray we don't get fooled again, meet the new élites, same as the old élites ...

Intelligentsia, élitist, academic, educated are the common currency of abuse in certain quarters, as if there's a problem with somebody being intelligent, capable, educated, and competent.

It's the tall poppy syndrome writ large by boofheads, who themselves constantly display an inability to live and let live, no matter how absurd (such as religion) the things are that we need to let live ...

And it goes against one of the main benefits of living in a big city, which I celebrate each time I wander amongst the tatts, and the goths, and the students and the rabble mingling in the inner city streets, and which Bloomberg, who supported the prayer centre, nailed in one:

“We may not always agree with every one of our neighbors,” he said. "That’s life. And it’s part of living in such a diverse and dense city. But we also recognize that part of being a New Yorker is living with your neighbors in mutual respect and tolerance. It was exactly that spirit of openness and acceptance that was attacked on 9/11".

I swear to the dear long absent lord the next time I read Gerard Henderson, Janet Albrechtsen and the like rabbiting on about élites, élitists, and élitism, I'm going to print out their column simply for the pleasure of flushing their words down the toilet ...

Where there's a lack of respect and tolerance and in its place blather, then the bathroom is the last refuge for the true élitist.

Meanwhile, if you want to hear Imam Abdul Rauf, you can find him here talking to Rachael Kohn in streaming or download form ...

Okay, okay, it means you have to display tolerance and a spirt of openness and acceptance towards Rachael Kohn, but push yourself ...

Now how did you guess I was going to finish off with a Jon Stewart clip?

God bless New Yorkers, and some of America as well ...

The Daily Show With Jon Stewart	Mon - Thurs 11p / 10c
Extremist Makeover - Homeland Edition
www.thedailyshow.com
Daily Show Full Episodes Political Humor Tea Party

Gerard Henderson, Graham Richardson, and yet again ... sob ... those pesky feminists and inner city elites ...

(Above: dearie me, do the inner city types promoting futsal know the dangers of being part of an inner city elite?)

No doubt there are many amongst us who spend their idle moments wondering whether a soprano can shatter a glass, in the same way that the monotonous high pitched shrieking of commentariat commentators on the pond can burst an eardrum or cause nosebleed.

The good news is that sopranos (and other nicely pitched voices) can do the trick, though amplification is handy, and if that's all you have to worry about in your world, rush off to read Fact or Fiction?: An Opera Singer's Piercing Voice Can Shatter Glass in the Scientific American, or this treatise by Cecil, Can opera singers shatter glass with their high notes, or the BBC investigation Can sopranos shatter glass?

Alternatively, regular devotees will, Pavlovian doglike, salivate at the bell ringing news that its Tuesday, and so it's Gerard Henderson day, with punters agog at what the pompous prattling Polonius will make of the election result.

And as usual he leads with a first class piece of nonsense in Abbott's detractors must be in denial:

The Labor Party needs more Graham Richardsons and fewer Karl Bitars, irrespective of whether Julia Gillard or Tony Abbott is commissioned to form the next government.

Graham Richardson? That would be the same Graham Richardson whose wiki lists, among sundry other scandals:

In 2006, Richardson became embroiled in allegations of tax evasion involving the late Rene Rivkin. Federal Court Judge James Allsop released a document on 27 September 2006 showing that Richardson had an undeclared Swiss bank account containing $1.4 million.
He was one of the shareholders of the Offset Alpine Printing company.

In October 2008 he agreed to pay an undisclosed sum to end his ongoing A$2.3 million dispute with the Australian Taxation Office. The tax office took action against Mr Richardson in 2005 after the late stockbroker Rene Rivkin told Swiss investigators that he, businessman Trevor Kennedy and Mr Richardson were the secret owners of a $27 million stake in Offset Alpine. The Tax Office had sought $700,000 it claimed was owed in unpaid taxes, along with a $1.6 million interest and penalty payment.

Yep, in the usual rhetorical way of commentariat commentators, Henderson kicks the standard own goal. While the right wing media might have rehabilitated Richardson, and he now can turn up on Q & A showing the usual insouciance, there are many ordinary punters who remember, and know it's okay to maintain the rage.

Instead in his usual fatuous way, rather than the way that Richardson has been rehabilitated, and reinvented as an astute pundit who relishes a capacity for bastardy and doing whatever it takes, Henderson decides to get agitated by an off the cuff remark by Bitar.

How about that? The ALP national secretary's explanation for Labor's disastrous result is that voters supported the Coalition only because they thought Labor would win. Bitar told Oakes that "there's a lot of people waking up this morning thinking … 'Did I do the wrong thing yesterday?' "

How does he know this - especially since when he made the comment many Australians had not woken up for the day? He doesn't. Bitar just made it up.

This is a hanging offence. A wistful comment, as opposed to the way the actual way the actual campaign was run, like a dog's breakfast. Dear sweet absent lord, what do you give Henderson for his righteous moral cant, and can you slip a little Valium in occasionally?

Actually between making an off the cuff remark and running a Swiss bank account, if Bitar has avoided the latter I can live with a minor bit of rhetorical nonsense a lot more easily than Henderson endorsing secret Swiss bank accounts.

But Henderson compounds the felony, by refusing to restrict Richardson to the opening par. He goes on to report how Richardson has always been a supporter of Tony Abbott and thought of him as a bright guy. So a secret Swiss bank account kinda guy loves a Tony Abbott kinda guy?

And it seems there's wisdom in this assessment? What next, a character reference from Neddie Smith or Ned Kelly or any other neddy going around the track? (ah the neddies).

Yes the prattling Polonius is feeling his oats and in triumphalist mood, as Richardson is rampant and Abbott denialists are being lined up for the slaughter. Sssh, not a word about those watermelons increasing their vote and winning Melbourne and holding the balance of power in the Senate.

Instead as ever and as usual, it's all the fault of the feminists, who naturally are out of touch with the citizens of Rooty Hill:

Then there was Paul Murphy, a small businessman from Illawong. Responding to claims that Abbott worried feminists, Murphy wrote to the Herald about the young women he has employed for more than two decades. He said they were primarily "concerned with conceiving, managing work and kids and running households". Murphy wrote that most of the women in the outer suburbs of his acquaintance "have strong circles of friends and generally hold 'old-fashioned views' ".

Hah, as a Tamworth ratepayer, can I assure the prattling Polonius that he doesn't know anything about old-fashioned views until he's seen agrarian socialism at work in the next six months or so.

Naturally the dim-witted Henderson thinks women voted according to their old-fashioned views, which is as dim-witted as lefties who thought women would stand in a block and voted according to their gender.

Very early in life I began to understand the power of the secret ballot, when my mother discreetly hinted that she voted according to her conscience when confronted by pencil and slip of paper, and bugger what her husband thought on the matter. And that was a long time ago, before feminism was a glimmer in the singlet on Germaine Greer as she fronted the public bar for a beer.

The left-wing community action group Get Up! ran advertisements against Abbott advising women not to vote for the Coalition. Millions of women rejected this advice. And millions of men and women failed to respond to warnings from the likes of Professor Robert Manne and the author Paul Collins that Abbott did not deserve support because he is a conservative Catholic. This used to be called sectarianism.

What? Sectarianism has fallen out of use or is no longer a meaningful concept?

How about this?

... millions of men and women failed to respond to warnings from the likes of Gerard Henderson and right wing rat bags like Janet Albrechtsen that Abbott deserved support because he would do down feminists and the evil inner-city intelligentsia. This used to be called sectarianism.

You see, sectarianism as a brush involves painting a large area to get the right kind of smear:

Sectarianism, according to one definition, is bigotry, discrimination or hatred arising from attaching importance to perceived differences between subdivisions within a group, such as between different denominations of a religion or factions of a political movement.

What Henderson demonstrates in his usual way is a breath-taking intolerance, along with his smug triumphalism, and all this from an inner city elitist member of the highly paid and well off chattering classes kind.

The inner-city intelligentsia could not understand the Opposition Leader's appeal and the likes of Bitar believed what they wanted to believe. But whatever the outcome of the election, Abbott's achievement has been substantial.

Well there you have it. Whatever it takes and whatever the outcome of the election, and how about we tweak that sentence as well?

The inner-city conservative elite could not understand the Opposition Leader's lack of appeal and the likes of Henderson believed what they wanted to believe, and so they could never understand the appeal of the Greens as a protest vote against both houses. But whatever the outcome of the election, Bob Brown's achievement has been substantial.

Meanwhile, Graham Richardson threatens to become a serial pain and pest, aided and abetted by the likes of Henderson. If only someone could do a Latham for him so they could disappear over the horizon together - music by Morricone an optional bonus plus as the bad and the unfortunate are lost to view ...

So it goes. No soprano notes here, but rather a regular bass drone with about the pitch of a didgeridoo, but less range. After all, Sean O'Boyle has done a concerto for didgeridoo and orchestra, while all Henderson offers is his standard drone about feminists and inner city elitists ...

Here at the pond we have a simpler cry. Go Tamworth, teach those city slickers what for. Yee hah ...

Oops, sorry, non-sectarian service will resume shortly ...

Innocent blood had been split. What could atone for that? Ah! for that there was no atonement; but though forgiveness was impossible, forgetfulness was possible still, and he was determined to forget, to stamp the thing out, to crush it as one would crush the adder that had stung one.
- Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray Ch. 16

(Below: Bill Leak's 1995 portrait of Gra Gra, found here, as Richardson broods on the difference between moral and physical beauty, and the tendency of painters to deploy the Dorian Gray effect:

Richardson: "You will always see yourself as somewhat more handsome, more debonair and more dashing than perhaps the painter ... I thought no-one could be that ugly but maybe I was wrong.")

David Burchell, Mark Day, and any old rope anywhere in the known universe as we saunter towards oblivion ...

The capacity for commentariat commentators to make infinitely stupid statements is infinite ...

There's even a formula for it: ∞ x 0 = ∞

(Careful, that's a patented, watermarked, trade marked formula).

What on earth possesses someone to scribble:

Memo to Julia. Whether you are the more or the less impotent party leader once the wheeler-dealing has finished this week, keep the flatterers, the sycophants and the wheedlers at bay, and keep half an ear to the critics, the grousers, and the bearers of unwelcome news.

The alternative for Labor, in its current parlous state, is complete and utter electoral oblivion.

A party that's just scored roughly fifty per cent of two party preferred is facing complete and utter electoral oblivion?

Oblivion
n.
The condition or quality of being completely forgotten: "He knows that everything he writes is consigned to posterity (oblivion's other, seemingly more benign, face)" (Joyce Carol Oates).
The act or an instance of forgetting; total forgetfulness: sought the great oblivion of sleep.

There's exaggeration for effect, and then there's just plain old fashioned stupidity and then there's David Burchell scribbling Coming through loud and clear, Julia. A man so careless with the meaning of words is surely deserving of Oatesian oblivion before he makes me experience the great oblivion of sleep.

There's another line that applies to Burchell: the only time his scribbles are comprehensible is when they're comprehensively silly.

The notion that the Labor party should pay attention to the grouser Burchell is surely profoundly offensive, since he spends his entire columns in deluded states of historical fantasy, flattering the Liberal party and peddling nonsense, and without a shred of balance in his partisan bones (and might I just for a rousing flourish, damn to hell everybody who offers a welcoming assessment of his unwelcoming assessments).

Can someone remind Burchell that while the electorate rebuffed Gillard's team, they also showed a singular reluctance to embrace Abbott and his team? Is he proposing that Labor take note of the party that saved Labor not from oblivion, but a drubbing? The Greens and their preferences?

Scribbling about one team only, with no reflection on what it might more generally means, points to a kind of obsessive compulsive failure to comprehend reality.

Enough already. There's more fun to be had seeing poor old Mark Day attempt to cope with the latest bizarre endeavours of the minor fringes of Murdoch land, in Gripping end to voyage of the bland as Australian politics gets hot.

To be fair, Day spends much of his column comparing and contrasting Sky and ABC 24/7/12/365/∞ coverage, in which ∞ = tedium, but then he can't resist dipping his toes in the cooling waters of the pond, aka AdelaideNow:

The "swinging election party" on AdelaideNow was altogether different.

It was experimental and off-the-wall, seemingly taking a leaf from the Don's Party era of the 1970s and turning the vote count into a kind of variety show with cartoons, crooners, guest pollies and gimmicks.

Experimental? Well that's a nice word. Next time I watch community television I'll know the word to use. Not amateur, not half baked, or half assed, or klutzy, or done with the sniff of acid mingled with an oily rag, or for two and sixpence and it showed, but as experimental, in a kind of hallucinatory and surreal way that evokes a kind of metaphysical appreciation of mundane reality ...

Hosts were former Nine newsreader Kelly Nestor and former Sydney Daily Telegraph editor David Penberthy, now editor of News Limited's online "conversation" site, The Punch. They were helped along by a collection of video clips, a stream of email, SMS and Twitter comments from viewers, and a bloke called Barry playing old songs on an organ (I think).

If this sounds bizarre, you're right. At one point, former Howard government minister Amanda Vanstone said to Barry: "You're on something, aren't you?" You kind of had to be watching: it was surreal, but hypnotically appealing in a train-wreck kind of way because of its rawness and amateur approach.

Ah, at last the truth comes out. Train wreck.

Amateur hour is amateur hour, wherever you find it, and by golly you can find it in Murdoch land just as much as in community television, especially as The Punch has set the new standard in cheap ass conversation, which is to pay nothing so that desperate wanna be Warhols can come forward for their fifteen minutes of fame, and get it by offering up their scribbles for free ...

Poor Mr. Day seems to have been entranced, though sad to say, ever since the time I spent a few minutes watching AdelaideNow's online coverage of the SA election, I've been known to wake up at 2 am sweating and in the grip of nightmares, screaming at my partner, "No, I'll do anything, anything, just don't make me watch it, just make the dreams go away".

There was a very pregnant Kelly, feet up, yakking to Penbo who was sprawled on a couch offering comments on what it all meant. There was precious little detail about seats or individual winners and losers.

I found it hard to work out whether this was meant to be a stimulus package for 1970s retro partygoers, or the kind of election coverage you have when you're not having an election coverage.

Poor Mr Day seems to think this kind of nonsense might actually be the future:

But it was worthy of attention because, if the experts have it right, this is a large part of the future of newspaper websites.

Worthy of attention? Well lord knows my toenails are worthy of attention lest they produce a tear, but only the sweet long absent lord knows what experts he might have in mind, or what future he imagines for cash strapped newspaper websites, but reading this is like reading how the late much lamented Gong Show charted out the future of free to air television.

Sure there'll always be a market for people wanting to watch Kyle Sandilands doing election night coverage, and just as surely there's going to be dumbwits willing to watch Penberthy make a goose of himself, especially if they've dropped a tab or had a toke.

I'm partial myself to a screening of The Big Lebowski every so often ... but then the Coen brothers had a better sense of fun, and most importantly a budget.

Poor Mr. Day feels the need to toe the corporate line:

The Tiser, under its long-serving editor Mel Mansell, is the most advanced in Australia in developing its website as a television medium. He says the transition from providing news and information services on paper to onscreen digital will be slow but relentless. Editors are being tasked to maintain the old while ushering in the new.

Advanced? This is the most advanced?

A bunch of inept amateurs bumbling around relishing their ineptness has all the charm of community television. If you're going to do it online, you need a budget, or you may as well not bother, because people with a budget will do it better, unless you have an audience already blissed out, and unable to tell or to care if they're watching utter crap ...

I can't begin to imagine what the hits were like for AdelaideNow's "experiment". I dropped in for a few minutes, remembered I had better use for my broadband cap, remembered the ghastliness of the SA business and the nightmares, and dropped out again, satisfied I'd seen another cracker barrel novelty item from the bottom of the Xmas stocking that only masochists and parochial perverts would enjoy ...

Hang on that's me, and I still couldn't find the wit or wisdom to enjoy it ...

From this wretched "experiment", which didn't offer strippers stripping as they read the election news, or The Onion acting like an onion, or the Chaser lads offering comedic class and death stares, or even Mick Molloy doing the Late Show, Day draws a long bow:

More and more internet space is being used for video. We are not far from seeing the video newspaper, brought to life by a finger-tap on display pictures as video on gizmos such as the iPad.

Oh dear Mr Day, do get a life, it's here. Except of course if you want to access what The Times might have to offer, whatever that might be ...

Video grabs will be the key to news available on mobile phone screens. Dick Tracy's two-way wrist TV is no longer a comic-strip flight of fantasy but just around the corner.

What? Like this?

Well if you want to hold your wrist at a funny angle for hours on end while watching a never ending Avatar sending greenie coin into Rupert's pockets, why not go back to the future and try this tasty dud from Seiko, launched on an unsuspecting market way back in 1983 (here)?

Yes, yes, the future is here and now, or at least just around the corner, and will perhaps land tomorrow, and never mind that wrist TV is about as futurist as my aunt, just as wrist phones were, and never mind that people couldn't see the pleasure of looking at or burbling at their wrists at odd angles for hours on end, and instead when phones with pictures came along voted with their wrists, but allowing for the marvels and wonders of futurism, and as a devout adherent of futurist thinking, do these fantastic bits of plastic need to be full of crap?

It seems so, such is the vision in Murdoch land:

Earlier this year, Mansell experimented with an AdelaideNow coverage of the SA election.

Oh yes, I remember. And never mind the crap, feel the width and the hits.

The website pulled almost as many viewers as Channel 10 in Adelaide, which is not a lot compared to the number tuned into Nine or the ABC, but still a surprisingly large number for an untried and, in the public mind, alien form of media.

I wouldn't vote for AdelaideNow as my favourite election-night coverage, but it deserves full marks for experimentation.

No, it doesn't. And it isn't alien media, it's just reheated, cheap ass old media dressed in gilt, utterly familiar, and comparable to Don's Party (remind me again who made that telling comparison, along with references to nineteen seventies retro dribble?), and served up as sludge on the full to overflowing intertubes.

It didn't even deserve full marks for surrealism, just as I don't offer full marks to a rave just because a lot of punters want to groove like electric eels after dropping a tab ...

There'll always be space for community television or the like (unless the new government throws away the bandwidth), and people into novelty, but you can't do this sort of amateur nonsense all the time without spending a bit of money on it to make it at least passably professional ... which is to say with decent sound, and reasonably professional contributors.

Somebody should give AdelaideNow some money for their "experiments", or bring in the Media Resource Centre, or simply tell them to stop it, and stop it quick, before we all go blind or get young lads get hair on their palms ...

Pay for such nonsense? Sit through advertising to get more of this nonsense? When it's now possible to waste a life watching rank amateur offerings on YouTube ...?

Yet quality will out, and people will keep watching after the novelty wears thin, providing the quality is there ...

AdelaideNow's online election coverage was shockingly shambolic and inept and perverse and if that's the future of the intertubes, then the lord help the intertubes and us all ...

There's a term for old television programs, reheated and sent into syndication or the brave new world of multi-channeling.

Old rope.

Never be confused by the notion that new rope is new. It's just new rope waiting to become old rope ...

Will we ever get to a point where Rupert's minions understand that while Rupe might have said content is not just the king, it's the emperor of all things electronic, he was talking about content, not delivery systems. And content is content, and crap is crap, and futuristically delivered crap remains crap ...

(Below: speaking of old rope, perhaps the intertubes could reinvent itself, and chart the way forward into the brave new digital world by running celebrity television available to hand anywhere in the world at any time on any device on any wrist? And that's not enough by way of "any", how about anywhere in the known universe on any known alien retro wrist?)