The Sydney Anglicans, a storm in a teacup in a nineteen fifties kitchen ...

The cri de coeur from Sydney Anglicans about failing so often is on another matter than the recent news that to be a married Anglican woman you need to be a submissive woman.

But still it does evoke the sublime irrelevance of the church to the goings on about town.

Oh sure there was a flurry of letters in the Sydney Morning Herald this morning about the new submissive Anglican wedding vows, with Anglicans in an 18th-century frame of mind setting the pace.

The pond forgives the correspondent - Anglicans in a first century frame of mind doesn't have quite the same ring to it, when the point is that the Anglicans want to head back to women doing needlework in best eighteenth century style.

As you'd expect, in the name of balance, there were also a few favourable letters, strangely from gender traitors, who didn't seem to mind submitting to the Jensenist heresy.

The tone evoked for the pond the pleasure of reading a Fairfax rag from the nineteen fifties.

Then Julia Baird took the whole thing seriously, and scribbled No place for spirited women.

Amazingly Baird is listed as a former member of Sydney Anglican synod and the Movement for the Ordination of Women, but she did at least allow for risibility as a response:

...does it matter, in a broader cultural context, that there is a deep strain of misogyny in Anglicanism, and women are still described as subordinates? Is it just a private matter of belief? Or just arcane, irrelevant and even risible?

Yes, yes, yes and yes. The Sydney Anglicans can't possibly be taken seriously, and there's no point debating their misogyny with them, and the only sensible, feasible response is laughter.

There's a fine flurry of comments below Baird's piece, but when you go looking for other responses, the intertubes is silent.

There's unhappiness about the death of Neil Armstrong, or Lance Armstrong being called a drug cheat, but nobody seems to mind or to care about the latest Anglican folly.

The drift into irrelevance is strong, the tendency towards cultism seemingly irreversible, the possibility of a reversal and a reaching out highly unlikely.

And the Sydney Anglican website is itself wreathed in navel-gazing silence about the issue.

The role of women? Why not try instead Phillip Jensen's Apologetic Evangelism ... An Oxymoron?

If ever you wanted an epic gobbledegook call to conservative arms, Jensen's piece is just for you.

Defiance is the key, and let's not have any post-modernist suggestion that the bible is multi-layered, written by a variety of authors with different agendas, and open to all sorts of conflicting interpretations, many of them embedded in conflicting textual points:

Paul did not apologise for being a Christian but he used apologetics as he preached the gospel. He rejoiced with the Philippians in both the ”defence and confirmation of the gospel” (Phil 1:7). He argued and dialogued with the opponents of the gospel. In Acts, his evangelistic work is described as involving arguing, reasoning and persuading - as for example in Ephesus where “he spoke boldly, reasoning and persuading” in the synagogue and then reasoned daily in the hall of Tyrannus (Acts 19:8f). In his relationship with the Corinthians he speaks of destroying “arguments and every lofty opinion raised against the knowledge of God” and taking “every thought captive to obey Christ” (2 Corinthians 10:5).

Submit you heathens!

Put it another way. Baird and any other woman wanting a debate with a Jensenist should either submit or walk away before they cop a serve of triumphalism. No need to apologise if you think you're on the money:

This was not apologising for dividing the synagogue community or for offending other people’s religion or for calling people callous, greedy and impure (Ephesians 4:19). Paul’s apologetics was not apologising for the gospel or its effects upon people – there was nothing to apologise about in the gospel. His apologetics were a form of arguing and answering objections as he declared the truth of the gospel, and through this he showed the folly of rejecting it or embracing other views. In this he was no different to his saviour, who made no apology for speaking the offensive truth boldly.

And no need to think you might be fallible in your thinking, or your interpretation of the bible, not when the language of humble uncertainty is just a way of disguising an almost megalomaniacal certainty:

In adopting today’s language of humble uncertainty, we may be denying our own message. For we may be agreeing with the moderns’ arrogance that God is answerable to human reason rather than human reason being answerable to God; and confirming the post-moderns’ irrational relativism that everything is just a matter of opinion and God is answerable to me.
Is speaking with humble apology a genuine attempt at “being all things to all people”, or is it a mask for our embarrassment about the Gospel?

Yep, there's no embarrassment for a Jensenist turning back the clock. All the way back:

It is not triumphalism, but the truth that Jesus liberates us to live different – and better – lives than we were living when we were in “the domain of darkness”.

Evangelism doesn't simply speak the truth, it also changes lives and societies; from worse to better ...

And women from people with minds of their own to submissive, amenable, pliable, malleable, ductile, soft, receptive and agreeable creatures (per Baird).

And that, you have to believe, is taking the world from worse to better, as we all go back to the past ...

No thanks, but what rich comedy, because living as a Sydney Anglican means living in a time warp or perhaps a time capsule, changing lives and societies back to Judea in the first century.

Or perhaps to a Sydney Anglican dreamtime. Evoke it for us, Sydney Anglicans' graphic artist:

The pond takes to pooper-scooping like Campbell Newman or a duck takes to water ...

(Above: a pooch pooper-scooping poo. It seems it's a Queensland thing, since it was found here at Dogmatic councillors argue over who cleans up the mess).


Okay, let's get the parochial rant out of the way first.

There's the pond sitting down, innocently watching a little ambulance chasing on the news, and up pops a harmless feel good story about Bazza O'Farrell flinging a little cash at PCYCs (why there's even a new one planned for that depressed area of Dee Why, probably depressed because of its proximity to Tony Abbott's electorate).

The theory is that idle youffs, instead of punching people in the streets, go off to the gym to punch punching bags, helped along by your local friendly, cheerful fuzz.

Who knows if it will work, but where's the harm? It's better than the usual right wing sabre- rattling about locking them all up and flinging away the key.

So what does John Robertson, alleged head of opposition, and a rump once known as the NSW state Labor party do?

Why he turns up on the very same news story glowering and saying the only way to combat crime is to have more heavy-handed plods on the street, the implication being that the youffs of today just need to be locked up (and the key flung away).

Combative nattering negativity right out of the Dr. No handbook.

Robertson could have sounded positive, he could have said something nimble. Like how street crime is out of control and how preventative strategies are very important and how the O'Farrell government has failed to take them seriously, unlike the rump known as the Labor party, which believes prevention is better than cure, and better than flooding the streets with fuzz and Orwellian cameras.

At least attempt to sound intelligent and responsive, instead of delivering a thirty second sound bite worthy of a Republican.

Instead Robertson preferred to sound like a head-kicking, hard-hatted union doofus boofhead. Or Tony Abbott ...

Uh huh. It's these little details that count, and by counting this detail, it seems to the pond that NSW Labor (the rump that is) is destined to spend much longer in the wilderness, no matter if the weekend by-election in a safe seat delivered a little gee-up.

Why are politicians inclined to be in the half-empty school? Eventually it catches up with them, as shown by Tony "the carbon tax will destroy the world" Abbott.

And another thing. Will federal Labor learn anything about the NT Intervention from the results in the NT election? Will they finally take seriously the complaints about the continuation of a policy initiated by that prime gruff, Mal "the rough" Brough? Or will they plough on regardless, without pause?

Naturally federal Labor will seek to distance themselves from the loss, but the reality is that federal and state policies are more closely entwined as a result of the intervention.

For that matter will Abbott and Brough learn anything? Will Abbott commit the cardinal sin of putting a rough Brough back in the NT box seat?

The election result has produced an uneasy alliance between the CLP and bush blacks, which will see fireworks for years to come, and the pond almost wept with delight to see CLP leader Terry Mills promise to abolish the Berrimah line.

Oh that's a grand porky to begin with ... (and read about the imaginary Berrimah line here)

And another thing.

The pond last night was sitting down to watch the SBS news - on the basis that sometimes it's interesting to see more than ambulance chasing, even if it's ambulance chasing in an international setting - when what should bob up?

That's right, an extended advertorial for the second series of Go Back To Where You Came From.

Memo to SBS newsroom. The fact that SBS has made a sensationalist bit of exploitative programming out of the plight of refugees, cynically throwing the likes of Angry Anderson and Peter Reith into the mix, isn't news.

It has no place in a news service. SBS acting like a gormless commercial network, which is always incapable of distinguishing between real news and shameless self-promotion, is however news. Of the worst kind.

It's the wrong sort of blatant advertorial news. The ABC has been doing it for years, to the considerable agitation of the pond, promoting a Four Corners story here, recycling a bit of Australian Story there, but that's no reason for SBS to lower themselves to the wretched standard of the ABC. Especially as we already cop advertisements on SBS, but not enough to fund any Australian content, just recycled British quiz shows and Comrade Rex.

Consider yourselves sin-binned for the week, SBS news.

And no the pond won't be watching the show in anticipation that Reith has some sort of epiphany. He's been running his usual epistles from the far right in The Drum, long after the show was shot. There's a greater chance of Satan having an epiphany than Peter Reith ...

We've already read director Lincoln Howes breast-beating about how he pinned Reith to the wall, in To Kabul and back, no escape for Reith (forced video at end of link), but how can you take this as a sign that Reith was pinned?

Reith was unimpressed. He stormed past me on his way to the minibus and said: ''You set her up to do that. You manipulated it.''
I responded: ''I can assure you, Peter, I had nothing to do with it. Did you really expect to come on this program and never have to talk about 'children overboard'?''
''Well, you made sure of it. Manipulating her like that. Typical of your lot with your left-wing pinko SBS agenda.''

Actually Mr. Reith it's typical of their capitalist, advertorial, "sell their news soul for a little program promotion and ratings", red state, right wing pervert agenda ...

Yep, all the show will do is get the pond agitated, and frothing and foaming.

As SBS's news service has already managed.

Consider your entire network sinbinned SBS. And now you've lost the pond as a viewer, make sure you don't lose your other viewer, or the asterisks will swamp the ratings …

Finally, what joy it is to watch Campbell Newman in action. Single-handedly the man is restoring the fortunes of state Labor (and in a collateral way the hopes of federal Labor) in Queensland.

His latest effort has even attracted the attention of we Mexicans down south. After calling the state a Spain in bankrupt action, his latest verbal flurry has been to label public servants and their jobs a form of dog poo:

''We get the pooper scooper out every day of the week,'' said Newman as he sought to justify the need to clean up after Labor. Newman has already sacked 4500 public servants. He is tipped to sack another 15,500 in his budget next month. (Abrasive Newman gives Labor a lift)

Human beans as dog shit.

Newman is a great indicator of the way a Tony Abbott government will likely function. Erratic, ideological, ambitious and deluded. And at last it's dawned on the federal Labor government that they could make hay while the Newman pooper-scooper goes about its business, flushing people down the toilet. (Federal Labor uses Campbell Newman's job cuts to raise fear of Tony Abbott-led government).

Yep, there's Newman and Abbott chortling as they compare pooper-scoopers:

It's made reading the Courier-Mail quite the fun and necessary thing at the pond. Here's their front page digital splash today ...

... for their latest shock horror story Galaxy Poll finds government cuts to public service taking toll on Campbell Newman's popularity.

Phew ...

What a relief there's a story about Ned Kelly's skull, a Queensland mansion and some tasty models to relieve the tortured state.

The deep north rag is abuzz with shock horror and analysis. Why there's Steven Wardill proposing that Clueless Newman should look south.

Ye ancient cats and dogs, Wardill wants Newman to be more like Jeff Kennett! Wouldn't it be simpler to suggest he model himself after a wrecking ball? Oh wait, he already has. It seems Kennett's the Queenslander model for sensible reform ...

Go Queenslanders ...

Oh they do political comedy well in Queensland. And the next round is a union advertising blitz, as outlined in Together union accuses Campbell Newman of trickery in $500,000 advertising blitz.

Newman is no doubt thinking that all the has to do is the hard yards and the slashing and the burning now, and in a year everyone will have forgotten about it. Well everyone except those who've lost their jobs. But that assumes he'll be turning the state economy around as a result of the slashing and burning.

Do people easily forget being called dog shit, which needs to be scraped off the pavement with a handy pooper-scooper? Perhaps only in Queensland, or perhaps not at all ...

Finally there's been a temptation on the part of many to note how Hurricane Isaac is definitive proof that god doesn't like the Republican party and Mitt Romney.

It's a retort to the ill-mannered ways of stupid Christians who went around alleging that events like Hurricane Katrina was god's punishment of New Orleans for having gays and the mardi gras and voodoo and really good funky blues and jazz in their midst.

And for all we know about the mind of god, it might well be true. But Isaac is another natural disaster, given top of the page treatment by sites like the Huffington Post:

There's no need to replicate the epic stupidity of fundie Christians in relation to the causes and effects of natural disasters.

Natural disasters are natural disasters, and you'd hope in time that stupid fundie Christians come to realise it, instead of idle point scoring in a way reminiscent of witch doctors playing on superstition in the darkest of ages .

So despite the enormous temptation, no cheap point scoring from the pond ...

All very well, you say, but is there any upside, a ray of light or hope in today's gaggle of messes?

Well yes, the pond scoured the opinion pages of Fairfax, and it seems Paul "Chicken Little" "the sky is falling" "General Grumpy" "Colonel Gloom" Sheehan has gone missing ...

Now that should put a spring into your step as you stride into the day ... unless of course you're in the path of a hurricane or Campbell Newman, in which case the pond wishes you good luck and the hope that the storm swerves around you and your loved ones ...

(Below: Pat Robertson makes assorted weather predictions).

Polling in the ABC "Drum" style, banging away in the wind ...

A tip of the hat and a wag of the finger to Russ, for drawing the pond's attention to the ABC's idea of polling.

Perhaps all those jokes about the tendency of the ABC to emulate the dear leader of North Korea are right.

Have your vote, have your say, just make sure you submit the right vote.

Or perhaps Russ was right, and it's a devious attempt to exclude Dr. No and his acolytes from answering.

Anyhoo, thus far, the yes's stupendously outweigh the neighs ...

Thanks Russ, lordy how a Sunday passes pleasantly with a smile on the dial ...

A bag of mixed Christian lollies for a Sunday, from a Catholic denialist sherbet to a trinitarian all-day sucker to a Mormon bullseye ...

(Above: eek, watch out Harry, the beasts and the Medowie Christian School are out to get you).

And so to our usual Sunday tour of Christian eccentricities.

Pride of place this week must go to Medowie Christian School, located in the Hunter Valley, which marked book week by banning Harry Potter garb, for fear the children might be introduced to witches, warlocks and wizards:

Ms Van de Mortel said the Harry Potter series, which is about witches and wizards, was not available in the school library because it had been the subject of many international debates.

Indeed. Shocking to imagine a book subject to international debate! Books should be debate-free!

And Lisa Taylor chimed in with a most incisive point:

"In the lead up to Halloween the shops are full of so many grotesque, frightening costumes and I've got two little boys," she said. "It's supposed to be a celebration of literature." (Harry Potter banned by Christian school).

Yes, indeed. A celebration of literature. Excluding the bible, of course, which is perhaps the most amazing collection of grotesque, fanciful stories about ghosts, ghoulies, angels, devils, Satan, crucifixions, and risings from the dead (way better than a vampire flick), genocidal murder, rape, pillage, burning bushes, demons, the anti-Christ, plagues, rivers turning red with blood ... and yadda yadda, more than enough to appeal to that showman Cecil B. DeMille ...

It goes without saying that that the Medowie Christian School has been regularly sucking at the teat of state and federal government taxpayer support since its foundation. And its statement of faith is a classic (pdf the full text here):

k) We believe in water baptism and the sharing of Communion.
l) We believe in the existence of Satan and the reality of spiritual warfare.
m) We believe in all the works and gifts of the Holy Spirit according to the biblical witness.
n) We recognise the jurisdiction of civil authorities except in matters conflicting with the biblical witness and/or conscience.
Note: These doctrines are intended as evangelical interpretations of the Old and New Testaments. Where further clarification is required, the 1979 Baptist Statement of Faith should be consulted.

Your educational taxpayer dollars at work. Hallelujah. Well done wild rocker Peter "Short Memory" Garrett ...

And by golly they can spring for a fancy flash intro to the website. Caught out right there. Don't they realise that Flash is the devil's work?

What next? Well a poignant lengthy profile of Jerry DeWitt in the New York Times, under the header From Bible-Belt Pastor to Atheist Leader is well worth a read.

DeWitt was an evangelical preacher in the small town of DeRidder, La., when he lost his faith, and rather than pretend, he outed himself to family and friends, with dire consequences to his marriage, his job, and his home ownership.

The pond can sympathise with what it's like to be out of step with other people in a small town (oh Tamworth, Tamworth, what a heartbreaker you are), but the funny thing is that being an evangelical preacher, DeWitt did what seemed right and proper by becoming an evangelical in the cause of atheism.

It's a curious journey, treated with sympathy and understanding and insight by reporter Robert F. Worth, especially when it comes to dealing with the trauma of DeWitt in relation to his love of the people and the place, and the trappings of his lost faith

“Religion does a lot of good, especially the loving kind, like at Grace Church,” he said. “I know people who went to a more liberal kind of Christianity and were happy with that. The problem is, for me, there was a process involved in moving from Pentecostalism to a more liberal theology, like Grace Church. What makes me different is that process didn’t stop, and it took me all the way. In the end, I couldn’t help feeling that all religion, even the most loving kind, is just a speed bump in the progress of the human race.”

Amen, brother. The pond isn't big on evangelising - live and let live, and just leave the pond and gay marriage and women's rights alone - but when fundies get to banning Harry Potter, it's time to make a stand. Next thing you know Santa Claus will be on the hit list because of his willingness to share his North pole retreat with Superman ...

What next? Well the Sydney Anglicans have attracted attention with yet another epic effort to role back the clock on women's rights, as celebrated in To love and to submit: a marriage made in 2012:

Brides will be promising to submit to their husbands under a new marriage vow the Anglican diocese of Sydney is expected to approve at its synod in October.
It requires the minister to ask of the bride: ''Will you honour and submit to him, as the church submits to Christ?'' and for her to pledge ''to love and submit'' to her husband.

Truly the Jensenist fundies are off in a la la theological world of their own. Naturally it produced a few snappy responses about the patriarchy and bad theology and derogatory wording, but it's enough already for the pond to think for a nanosecond about submitting to a Sydney Anglican. Eek, nightmares for a week.

Mr Judd, 27, who is studying to be a minister, said a Christian marriage was akin to dancing: ''The male always leads, even if he's not necessarily the best dancer … as long as you take the definition of male leadership that we're operating on, which is giving yourself up and putting others' interests ahead of yourself.''

And an agony of stubbed toes and trodden-on feet for a lifetime. No thanks.

Strong is the spirit of Todd Akins style fundie Republicanism in Sydney Anglicans.

Or perhaps Fifty Shades of Grey?

Not likely, they don't have the imagination, but the pond would like to let loose a femdom amongst them. Just for fun.

Meanwhile, instead of finishing off his seven epic sins of Sydney, Michael Jensen fudges with a review of a book by Sam Allberry, The Trinity: what's the point?

Trinitarianism is as absurd as transubstantiation, and it never fails to amaze the pond how Sydney Anglicans can swallow a three-way elephant while baulking at a crackers camel. All the same, it provides an epic moment of Jensenist gobbledegook:

Human beings resemble God the Trinity in many ways, but crucially not in others. For example, we are embodied; God is Spirit.

Except of course that God was embodied in Jesus. But do go on:

Our unity with each other in marriage and in church is not exactly the same as the divine unity, though it resembles it. Likewise, the pattern of gender relationships that Allberry explores, is not to be simply understood as a direct analogy between the relationship of the Father and the Son. Also, while it is true that God is in eternity as he is towards us in history, it is also true that God is not simply as he is reveals himself to us in history.

Phew. What a slippery, tricky fish this long absent god is ...maybe more like an eel than a fish.

There are a few other distractions on offer - Jodie McNeill is tortured by ugg boots and tracky dacks in The call of casual Christianity - but really the best own goal of the week has been the splendid work of Cardinal George Pell, as outlined in George Pell puts abuse at arm's length (paywall protected):

Australia's most senior Catholic, Sydney Archbishop George Pell, has authorised an extraordinary 4000-word statement publicly distancing himself from responsibility for the church's mishandling of sexual abuse investigations around the country.

It's an old riff, but a goody. There's no head of the church, no one to accept responsibility, no one with Australia wide authority, no way to sue, etc etc. While at the same time you can't stop the average Catholic priest from yammering on about personal responsibility and personal guilt:

"The church is very clever in dividing the different dioceses around Australia. It means that if a priest has molested a child in diocese A, and only that diocese's bishop can do something about it, he is able to transfer the priest to diocese B and not tell the bishop there," he told The Australian.
Dr Keon-Cohen said the NSW Supreme Court in 2006 held the church cannot itself be sued, and litigants who are successful against individual priests are unable to win significant damages, as church assets are "concealed behind a corporate veil of property trusts".

Oh yes, as Keon-Cohen points out, it's right up there with the tobacco companies. Or companies who've set themselves up in nice tax havens in the Bahamas. Your friendly local tax-dodging church at work ...

Here's how you wash your paws in a bowl of water, in best Pellist style, as explained in Countering Sexual Abuse:

As Cardinal I am not the head of the church in Australia. My authority is limited to the Archdiocese of Sydney. The Catholic Church does not have a state or national general manager. There is a division of responsibility in the Church somewhat like the separation of powers in a democracy. Each diocesan bishop supervises his own priests and church workers.

Yep, I'm not the king of the dirty castle, you can't get me.

And a further irony? In his homily for the 20th Sunday in Ordinary Time, Pell had this thought to offer:

We all know that it is no defence legally for someone travelling over the speed limit to reply that he was only following the traffic, part of a group, all of whom were travelling at the same speed.

Uh huh. But what if I'm not responsible for any of the other drivers? After all, I'm only a cardinal, nothing to do with me, if they get caught it's their tough luck for not knowing how to set up a decent defence and a handy corporate tax-free structure, so if the children suffer when they come unto me, they can just bugger off ...

That just leaves enough time to note a recent piece by Adam Gopnik for The New Yorker, I, Nephi Mormonism, giving context to the LDS and its meanings (currently outside the paywall).

Gopnik writes the way the pond would like to write, and right at the moment, as he notes Mormonism is everywhere, what with one of its leading members aiming to be President of the United States.

It's a bizarre, concocted religion, with strange beliefs (anyone want a planet of their own?), made up in the nineteenth century the way scientology was made up in the twentieth (a remark, as Gopnik notes, guaranteed to get teeth on edge).

Gopnik covers all the bases in a sympathetic way and with just the right edge. Here's a taster:

Scholarly opinion on Smith now tends to divide between those who think that he knew he was making it up and those who think that he sincerely believed in his own visions—though the truth is that, as Melville’s “Confidence Man” reminds us, the line between the seer and the scamster wasn’t clearly marked in early-nineteenth-century America. Mark Twain read the Book of Mormon and, knowing what Smith would have read, not to mention knowing about frontier fakery, came to conclusions about both the sources of its prose and the sequence of its composition:

The book seems to be merely a prosy detail of imaginary history, with the Old Testament for a model; followed by a tedious plagiarism of the New Testament. The author labored to give his words and phrases the quaint, old-fashioned sound and structure of our King James’s translation of the Scriptures; and the result is a mongrel—half modern glibness, and half ancient simplicity and gravity. The latter is awkward and constrained; the former natural, but grotesque by the contrast. Whenever he found his speech growing too modern—which was about every sentence or two—he ladled in a few such Scriptural phrases as “exceeding sore,” “and it came to pass,” etc., and made things satisfactory again. “And it came to pass” was his pet. If he had left that out, his Bible would have been only a pamphlet.

The pond must be one of the few, apart from Twain and thee, who've actually read the wretched inflated absurd thing. As Gopnik notes:

The powers that possession of the Book of Mormon conferred mattered more than the doctrines that it contained. “Rarely did missionaries draw on the verses and stories of the Book of Mormon in sermons,” Bowman explains. “Rather, they brandished the book as tangible proof of Joseph Smith’s divine calling.” Some holy texts, the Gospels, for instance, are evangelical instruments meant to convert people who read them; others are sacred objects meant to be venerated. The Book of Mormon is a book of the second sort. As the French religious historian Jean-Christophe Attias points out, in traditional Judaism the physical presence of the Scripture is at least as important as its content: when the Torah is unrolled during the service, it’s meant to be admired, not apprehended. That the Mormons had a book of their own counted for almost as much as what the Book of Mormon said.

The New Yorker recently had a presence at the Melbourne Writers' Festival. They seem to have finally realised that there's a market in Australia for signs that wit and intelligence still live in the United States (none in the current crop of Republicans, but any sign will do, especially when done Gopnik well).

Gopnik is particularly fine on why Mitt Romney is a flip flopper - the whole religion routinely flip flops (sssh don't mention the blacks) - and why adherents just love to make money:

Elsewhere among the Western democracies, the bursting of the last bubble has led to doubts about the system that blows them. Here the people who seem likely to inherit power are those who want to blow still bigger ones, who believe in the bubble even after it has burst, and who hold its perfection as a faith so gleaming and secure and unbreakable that it might once have been written down somewhere by angels, on solid-gold plates.

Oh yes, a holy salutation unto Mr. Gopnik for providing a fine meditation on the bizarre world of exceptionalist native American Mormonism ...

And so ends the readings for the week.

(Below: Harry Potter? Eat your heart out, William Blake knew how to draw a damn fine demonic diabolical biblical beast, fierce enough to make the Medowie Christian School quiver and quake with fear).

Now if you've managed, by a Herculean feat, to get this far, here's a bonus, David Letterman's ten excuses for Kevin Yoder, committed Christian, skinny dipping in the Sea of Galilee. (Politico broke the yarn here). There should be more of it. Come on Sydney Anglicans, come on. Don't let Republican Christians steal a march, get down to Bondi and do some skinny dipping. Dorothy promises to watch submissively, while finalising the epic tale of an ancient tribe of Israelites who landed in Australia just before Christ ascended to heaven. If you need any good excuses, here they are:

Oh dear sweet absent lord, not another day with the birthers, strike that, the Brucers ...

The baying hounds, the feral pack of flacks, still can't let go of their favourite bone. Have a look at the sordid collection above, on digital display for all the world to see, in today's weekend Australian (remind me again why you pay for the rag?)

When you've got nothing to write about, you resort to colour and movement, and David Crowe's piece is a doozy, dragging in Artem Naumov:

Ah yes, it was Artem Naumov what got her off the hook.

Then there's Hedley Thomas's mea culpa and cry from the heart, about the Media's shameful silence, and it indeed it was an extraordinary shame and a shocking silence for a few days before the media began reporting on the prime sources for The Australian's daily display of smear and smut and mud-flinging.

And now, after the orgy, and Gillard being unexpectedly feisty, comes the remorse?

Not on your nelly, now comes the snide Australian editorial, justifying it all, in Gillard opens a file on spin.

It's as convincing a display of paranoia as we've seen from the castle, curiously known by itself as the "heart of the nation" when the "barking mad backside of the nation" might be a better psychiatric fit.

It turns out that the rag has been treated shamelessly by everyone, and most especially Julia Gillard:

...Julia Gillard decided finally to confront the issues surrounding the end of her legal career at Slater & Gordon in 1995. Her tactics were as clever as they were transparent. The Prime Minister had spotted a clear but relatively minor error in a page six corollary story to our investigations into the affair. Our reporter referred to a "trust" fund when he should have written "slush" fund -- you be the judge. Having demanded and received an apology, Ms Gillard decided to go on the attack, accuse this newspaper of recycling "false and defamatory" information, conflate our coverage with a vicious online blogger's efforts and try to put the issue to bed.

Oh the deviant, spiteful hussy. Fancy demanding an apology - why fancy getting one, how it must hurt, having it imposed from up high for a simple slip - and then fancy conflating The Australian's remorselessly vicious pack of hounds coverage with the efforts of a vicious online blogger who once worked for the rag as a cartoonist. Shocking, shameful.

And the hapless rag was dudded and diddled. Key questions were asked, but some were not, because somehow the rag didn't have the wit to ask them, no doubt because its valiant reporters were shocked and startled and distracted by Artem Naumov turning up.

It turns out that Gillard is at fault because not only did she fuck a cad, she failed to turn him into the coppers:

When Ms Gillard became aware of the alleged corruption, she ended her relationship with Mr Wilson. We do not know what other action she took, if any, to alert authorities.

Yes, the witch is guilty, guilty, we tells ya. And then - in a ritual familiar to those who read the lizard Oz's editorials - it's time to strike out and slash at the vipers and the snakes and the enemies surrounding the valiant troops in their fortified castle.

You might think of it as a prime bout of paranoia, not understanding that the miscreants are everybody else in the media, some of whom took a more proper approach than the screaming tabloid way of the Oz. And some who, shamefully, shockingly didn't:

The Prime Minister has not attacked The Sydney Morning Herald for reporting on Thursday that she might have broken the law -- something this newspaper has never alleged.

You see, the witch is a Fairfax lover, which is an extreme rag, unlike the moderate careful Australian, except when it has to apologise, and even then it really shouldn't have. Shocking, shameful.

The Australian has been ever so controlled in its approach. Why there hasn't been any more than a dozen spiteful, malicious stories and columns provided by a vicious gaggle of hounds and run in the rag on a daily basis ...

Yet, astoundingly, their political editor Peter Hartcher accuses The Australian of being "dedicated to the destruction" of the government.

Oh that's way below the belt Peter Hartcher. That's shocking, that's shameful. What right minded person could read the right wing ranting of The Australian and possibly imagine it was dedicated to the destruction of the government and the elevation of Tony Abbott?

It's simply preposterous, absurd.

Yep, that's how easy it is to step into cloud cuckoo land when you read an editorial in The Australian.

They can't even be honest about their painfully obvious intentions. Has the rag ever mounted one of its crusading pack of hounds crusades against Abbott? In your dreams ...

It's okay, rabid pack of hounds. It's your right, but please enough of the stench of hypocrisy. Just be honest about it ...

Oops, sorry, that's just so unfair.

You see the poor rag has been harassed and bullied and tormented, and it's just so damned unfair:

The Age also has been spared Ms Gillard's wrath, despite following our reports with accounts of its own.

Oh diddums, there should be a law against a woman bullying a hapless, innocent paper just going about its daily job of vilification.

Should the rag maintain the rage, stand defiant against the herd? Of course it should:

But then, commentary by its political editor, Michelle Grattan, has seemingly sought to build a bridge with the Prime Minister ever since suggesting in April that she should resign. Many journalist have accepted the invitation to move on.

But not The Australian. It's determined to sulk and carry on, and naturally the ABC must be included in its wrath:

At the ABC, political host Barrie Cassidy has demanded journalists place Tony Abbott under more scrutiny. Yet he argues Ms Gillard should face less. Perhaps instead of writing about journalism, he ought to practise some.

Oh what a pathetic bunch of paranoid anal retentives. Talk about opening a file on spin, and a false heroism under fire.

And so the Brucers have their Birther cause.

That it's corrupted and tainted by its sources - most notably Ralph Blewitt - is a never no mind.

Peter Hartcher, for example, in his piece this morning PM and a fistful of questions for Fairfax, mentions Blewitt as a key source, without at all delving into Blewitt's history and why he might be demanding immunity from prosecution to dish the dirt.

Yes, it's more questions, yet more questions, and never mind who's asking the questions or why.

It's as shameless and scurrilous an effort as any The Australian has mounted, and it leaves the pond wondering why at the same time Hartcher didn't bother to mention some of the controversy surrounding Blewitt, as outlined for example in that slander sheet Vexnews, with Bad to the Boner: PM's accuser is sleazy sex tourist, preying on vulnerable young Thai women.

And if that involved too much nose holding, how about a mention of the details about Blewitt in Fairfax itself, in the Phillip Coorey story Union official in PM row fled Indonesia, which helps explain why Blewitt might be asking for immunity from prosecution for dishing the dirt. And let's not even begin to contemplate the racist, sexist, anti-Semitic rantings of Larry Pickering, whose cartoons are too vile for the pond to run.

If you're going to get down in the gutter, at least include the full story. There's little doubt that Gillard got herself involved in a nest of union thieves, but right at the moment, many of the journalists involved in this story are quite happy to stay involved with the same nest of thieves, and push their cause and their barrow, and then get agitated when anyone points out there's more than one side to the story.

Or they just bung on a massive paranoid sulk, like The Australian. Because all they're doing is asking questions, just questions, not accepting the right of others to question the questioners and their Brucer motives.

Ah well, it's Saturday, and the sun is shining, and it's time to get the nose out of the gutter and that rag The Australian, and look up at the bright blue sky, and perhaps leave the final word to Mike Carlton as he broods about the capacity of the lunar right to embrace sinister conspiracy theories in Geniuses at work scaring the punters:

The latest in the genre is the Julia Gillard-Slater & Gordon shock horror. This is being furiously peddled on the internet by Larry Pickering, a purveyor of obscene cartoons and anti-Semitic filth, with a shove along from the fine, Italian hand of John Pasquarelli, former speechwriter to Pauline Hanson.
Naturally, the radio shock jocks and Melbourne's village idiot Andrew Bolt have been all over it like flies at a cow pat, and The Australian has been indulging in a week-long fit of hysterics on the thing, climaxing on Wednesday with no fewer than six opinion pieces ordering Gillard to 'fess up. Fans of the Oz editor-in-chief, Chris Mitchell, will recall another of his global scoops when he was editing Brisbane's Courier Mail in 1996: forests died and rivers of ink ran dry to prove the historian Manning Clark was a Soviet spy who'd been awarded the Order of Lenin.

Melbourne's village idiot all over it like flies at a cow pat?

Love it, why it's a metaphor worthy of Tamworth ...

And yes, this morning's editorial is extraordinarily revealing of the pugnacious, obnoxious crusading "Manning Clark was a Soviet spy" atmosphere that now fills the air at The Australian, in much the same way as that smell in the nostrils can suggest that to a reader that they've trodden on a cow pat. All you can do is pick up a twig and scape it off - rubbing the shoe on grass also helps. Or a newspaper if it's handy. But is that a good enough reason to buy The Australian?

Gillard and the union movement of seventeen years ago might not emerge too well from the frothing, foaming frenzy, but the sordid behaviour of Chris Mitchell and his pet pack of rabid hounds has emerged even more tainted.

That self-righteous, brooding, paranoid, wildly accusatory and resentful editorial says all you need to know about Mitchell and the way The Australian is currently run.

Oh look, squirrel, Soviet spy, Julia Gillard ...

(Below: and a special honourable mention for John Shakespeare for his illustration accompanying Carlton's piece. Caught it in one Mr. Shakespeare, well played, or should we say well drawn. That portrait of Chris Mitchell leaping high above the pack to catch a morsel is unnervingly accurate).

Elisabeth Murdoch and profit without porpoise ...

(Above: a late nineteen sixties Siemens teleprinter, found at Brisbane's living heritage network).

It would be remiss of the pond to head into the weekend without mentioning Elisabeth Murdoch's fine flurry at the MacTaggart lecture.

In its own inimitable way, Fairfax covered her speech by recycling Dan Sabbagh's Humanity over profit: Elisabeth Murdoch attacks family in speech.

That would be Fairfax, still waking up to the way the world is wired.

At what point will they realise that in the new-fangled world of the intertubes, the punters can just trot off to read the piece at The Guardian under its original header Elisabeth Murdoch rounds on brother in MacTaggart lecture?

It reminds the pond of the good old days, when local newspapers were hooked up via teleprinters to their British masters.

One rag, of the pond's intimate acquaintance, could fill up half the paper with recycled bits from The Observer, and the other half with communications from its masters on North Terrace.

Sob, but the good old days are gone, and so if you hare off to The Guardian online, not only do you get Sabbagh, but you get the full text of Murdoch's MacTaggart lecture here, and you get Lisa O'Carroll explaining how Elisabeth Murdoch seeks to distance herself from family's woes, and you get Greg Dyke delivering yet another broadside at the family (and the Daily Mail) in Murdochs and Daily Mail are 'damaged goods' after Leveson, says Dyke, and if that's not enough for you - there will be tests after all this assigned reading - you get a Guardian editorial, Murdoch shows off liberal sympathies.

Frankly after this barrage, there's not much for the pond to add.

It is piquant to compare and contrast Elisabeth's lecture with that of her brother at the same venue in 2009, when the war on the BBC was going full steam ahead, but again The Guardian has got that covered with coverage that contains not just the full text of the failed Murdoch's speech, but the BBC Trust's response (you can find both of them here).

And you get bonus English comments below the fold in relation to James' petulant, childish outburst, vainglorious, which was then, and now even more clearly, the work of a petulant peacock that would one day lose its tail feathers:

So, another self-serving speech by a Murdoch with an attack on the BBC. Who could have guessed?
It's like one of those Doctor Who's where James will turn out to be the Master with lots of overcomplicated schemes to take over the Interwebs.

Damn you Murdochians, how dare you attack the home of the good Doctor.

Well Elisabeth has learned that lesson well, praising the BBC, contradicting her brother, talking of values, and decrying his emphasis on profit:

"Profit without purpose is a recipe for disaster."

Run that one around in the mouth, savour the after-taste as you would a good red. Sure when you break it down it doesn't quite add up. It might sound just as well as if it were profit without porpoise, because "purpose" needs a modifier to make the point. Perhaps profit without pious pieties of porpoise?

Never mind, could we work up a variation for The Australian and Kim Williams' benefit?

A profitless rag with only malicious crusading malevolent purpose is a recipe for disaster ...

It has to be said that the pond regards the output of Elisabeth Murdoch's production company Shine has - in Australia and elsewhere - lowered the collective television audience's IQ by at least ten points, a phenomenal achievement considering the valiant efforts of other producers and the entire Ten network to reduce it to zero.

But at least her role as a producer of content means she's aware that the BBC is a handy market for her product, and she's willing to embrace creative types who look askance at Rupert:

There was even praise for another former MacTaggart lecturer, the late Dennis Potter, who famously named the cancer that killed him "Rupert". She said she was "firmly with" the television playwright who said "the job of television is to make hearts pound" – a vision of the medium whose core purpose is "to form human connections" as opposed to a vehicle for the exercise of raw political power.

Ah well, if The Shire, Wife Swap, WAG Nation, Australia's Next Top Model and Dating in the Dark (all stunning, as in stunned mullet Shine Australia productions, read about them here) are all about human connections, it's time for the pond to turn into a dalek and run about shouting "exterminate, exterminate".

If that's the sort of product designed to make hearts pound, then the pond would prefer to pound heads.

Meanwhile, questions will linger.

Is Elisabeth playing a long game to get to the top of News?

Will the local brigade of rampant chauvinist ABC bashers in News Ltd sense there might be a changing of the guard, and the rush of the tide going out on the old order? Will the triumphalist ABC bashing subside?

Perhaps wisely, The Guardian wasn't having any of Murdoch's beguiling words and conciliatory stance, on the basis that she remains a Murdoch, and within the tent:

To compare the siblings' speeches was like one of those cop-pairings: Good Murdoch, Bad Murdoch. But Murdochs nonetheless. As Ms Murdoch admitted, throughout her career she had been helped and bankrolled by her father. And aided by her surname. She is the third member of her close family to be given this platform, the most prestigious lecture in British broadcasting. What better demonstration of the Murdochs' dominance in British media? One of the conclusions of the phone-hacking scandal is how desperately the media industry needs greater plurality – whereas up until the hacking scandal it was heading the opposite way. The answer to that conundrum lies not in speeches about values, but in structural reforms. Those will start not in a media gathering, but with Lord Justice Leveson.

Still, it's a measure of how things have changed in the UK - would-be Emperor James departed, and a new possible Empress making speeches - and how in due course those changes will wash up on Australia's shores, and not just via a teleprinter or Fairfax regurgitating a Guardian story.

In a market that's becoming ever more limited, there's very limited upside in alienating a substantial swathe of potential readers.

Will The Australian ever get back to the glory days, when an editor like Adrian Deamer could write an editorial criticising the Springbok tour of Australia? (and got sacked by Murdoch for his troubles, as noted in Deamer's wiki here).

The point, as Gina Rinehart is only just discovering, is that acquiring shares in the media to deliver ideology is an uncertain and bad business model. (Rinehart tries to sell shares after Fairfax $2.7 b slump).

Rinehart hasn't done anything to help the Ten network as it spirals down into the depths, with I Will Survive the latest dire outing to reveal how board and management are out of tune with the times, and now the network Mott-less (Ten's programming chief David Mott departs - though it should have been the gormless board and Lachlan Murdoch that first departed, which only goes to show the benefit of power, lineage and money over talent).

Whatever Rinehart had in vague mind in relation to Fairfax - perhaps turning it into a new front for like-minded Andrew Bolts - it was silly and redundant, since the raving ratbag loony market is well enough catered for by the dominant Murdoch press.

Who knows if the Murdochs down under will come to understand the dangers of zealotry and crusades, but all things must pass, even Rupert Murdoch, and his desire to elevate Paul Ryan to the vice-presidency so the Republican war on women can continue to roll out (who knows what Elisabeth thinks about this).

And the current braying, crusading, alienating regime of The Australian will also one day discover the revolving door.

So the pond will settle for the sound of a conciliatory note in the air in Elisabeth Murdoch's speech.

It's just a straw in the breeze, but the pond will always settle for a straw as a way to access a milkshake ...

(Below: and it being a kind of Guardian day, who could pass up Steve Bell on Rupert? More Bell and others at The Guardian's comment page, here).

Graham Lloyd, environment editor for The Australian, a chenius at spinning ...

(Above: once again First Dog is a chenius, though not in way that the Late Show hailed Ivan Reitman as a chenius - Youtube. The pond feels guilty at the cartoon above still being behind the paywall for the moment, so has split the work up. You can get it in its original form here if you're a subscriber. The rest is below, and the only connection to what follows is the sound of a braying donkey blathering about a carbon tax. Crucial research which helps explain it can be found at the 7.30 Report here).

So here's an interesting exercise in spin.

Graham Lloyd for The Australian, reporting on the findings of Robert Mulvaney of the British Antarctic Survey, produced a piece with the header Ice-core warming 'within bounds' (behind the paywall, you're expected to pay to be misinformed, so why not Google?)

Now that's a cracking start. How to maintain the spin, worthy of the surgeon who worked on Shane Warne, on the scientific study's findings?

Easy peasy.

Stress that recent warming might be unusual but "not unprecedented relative to natural variation". Then lead with a blatant distortion of the findings:

The research by Robert Mulvaney of the British Antarctic Survey, Cambridge, countered assumptions that human factors were responsible for the warming of the Antarctic ice shelf.

Uh huh. Yet The Australian a little later ran with this report by the AFP headed Humans partly to blame for Antarctic ice shelf collapse: study.

The results "are consistent with a more rapid human-induced warming on top of a slower natural warming," Robert Mulvaney, a researcher with the British Antarctic Survey (BAS), told AFP.

Keep spinning Mr. Lloyd:

Although temperatures have risen by about 1.5C over the past century, the authors note that this increase is within the bounds of natural climate variability over the past 600 years.
The Nature report said the long-term climate history provided by the ice core confirmed a close connection between past temperature and ice-shelf stability.

Strangely the AFP report in the very same rag just didn't get it:

Meteorological stations have shown a rise of 2C in the past 50 years in the Antarctic peninsula, which is roughly triple that of the global temperature rise.
"If the warming continues, then ice shelves further south in the peninsula that are believed to have been stable since the last ice age may also break up in the next few decades," Mr Mulvaney warned.
Ice shelves are floating mats of ice, attached to the Antarctic coast, that are formed by flowing glaciers. In recent years, several major ice shelves have broken away from the peninsula, a result of what scientists say is an upwelling of warmer water from the Southern Ocean.

A result Mulvaney and his team attribute in part to human-induced warming.

Remarkably Mr. Lloyd presents himself as the environment editor of The Australian.

His qualification? Well it would seemingly be an infinite capacity for perversely misrepresenting the findings of a scientific study, published in Nature.

Now if you want to read the story in Nature, you'll have to brush the red back spiders out of your purse to access Recent Antarctic Peninsula warming relative to Holocene climate and ice-shelf history.

But if you want a short form Reuters/Scientific America summary, you can find it here, and you can also head off to the British Antarctic Survey for background, where you'll find a discussion with Mulvaney here, along with this quote from him:

"The most significant thing ice cores have told us is that greenhouse gases are so well-related to climate, and that at no point in the last three-quarters of a million years have carbon dioxide and methane reached anywhere near the levels they are at today."

Is that what within bounds means Mr. Lloyd? Within bounds?! Or are you just another bounder drinking the kool aid that flows freely at The Australian?

If you happen to be a subscriber to Crikey, you can also read Simon Copland's Antarctic melt alarm as scientists find 'very unusual' warming.

Copland took the indecent stop of interviewing an Australian researcher on the team, Dr Nerilie Abram from ANU:

Dr Abram says the warming over the past 100 years has been dramatic. ”The Antarctic Peninsula is one of the fastest warming places on Earth at the moment,” Dr Abram said. ”The last century of warming has been unusually rapid with the mean temperature increasing by about one and a half degrees — one of the fastest temperature increases seen in the ice core record.”

A real live actual Australian scientist who's been doing observations in Antarctica.

How supercilious, how pretentious, how reprehensible. That's totally out of bounds.

“The ice shelves along the west coast are showing signs of becoming less stable, but we haven’t seen the big collapses that we’ve seen on the Antarctic Peninsula so far,” she said. “The big concern about that area is that it is where the West Antarctic ice sheet is. The amount of ice being lost there is accelerating and this is contributing to global sea level rise.”
It paints a worrying picture, according to Abram: “The main finding of our research is that warming as fast as this is very unusual. We should be very concerned about that.”

Not if you're Graham Lloyd, used to drinking nicely iced kool aid. No reason to get concerned about things within the natural bounds of simplistic distortions.

No doubt the Bolter will chime in and explain one more time how actual scientists conducting actual observations in the actual Antarctic don't have a clue, especially when put up against an armchair keyboard expert like the Bolter.

Which leads the pond to ask for the umpteenth time: do you get your science from Graham Lloyd, The Australian and the Bolter, and do you realise that as a result, your News is Limited?

* * * *

And now a new segment. Know your Brucers.

Just as the Birthers have mighty dedicated folk burrowing away in the exceptional USA, down under has the Brucers, and the pond has been mightily impressed with the Brucing of Ean Higgins in recent days in relation to matters involving Julia Gillard. After all, it takes exceptional skill to weave a story out of a trek to talk to a person who won't talk ...

Higgins has a tremendous track record, and will be fondly remembered by New Zealanders for the clever questions he asked during the Pike River Coal Mine disaster. Like:

"Why is the local country cop doing it (the rescue operation)?" he said.

The thin-skinned New Zealanders labelled the question disgraceful and offensive (merely because it drew gasps from the assembled throng), and called Higgins a "typewriter interviewer" and "boorish" and an "utter tosspot".

"Australia are so focused on us, their prayers and their best wishes to all involved and they get some utter tosspot like that over here who mars all them.
"We know he's not representative of Australians."
He said the newspaper needed to be named.
"Their editor needs to give some explanation of why they've sent such a boorish fellow to this sensitive situation." ('Boorish' Australian journalist infuriates)

Silly Kiwis. The Australian sends boorish chappies all over the place, much given to reporting sexism and the thoughts of Larry Pickering (about his cartoons no one should say anything).

How dare they defame one of Australia's finest Brucers, and that in a herd of most excellent Brucers stabled at The Australian?

Go Brucers.

Will the Brucers give up? Of course not. Here they are at it again, collectively, a herd, a pack, a howling ravening tribe:

Be careful if you try to snatch away a bone from a Brucer.

There's way more smut and smear to peddle ... and never you mind if in throwing the mud, you might reveal yourselves to be little better than smut merchants, worthy of a job on the Melbourne Truth, and there might be a little muddy blowback coming your way ...

(Below: the pond isn't alleging anything of course, just wondering, just asking how a senior journalist for The Australian could get himself called a boorish utter tosspot? Just a question, only a question of course. We only ever ask questions at the pond, in a fair and balanced way, and you decide).


And now for a rousing finale. Support the Dog! And did we mention the carbon tax?

The pond joins the Brucers at The Australian in abject, grovelling, creepy crawly apology ...

In its previous post the pond provided a link to a story by champion Brucer (and journalist for The Australian) Ean Higgins, which ran under the header An old flame faded into black.

Sadly if you click on the link, all you get these days is a 404:

The pond apologises profusely.

If you link to the gutter, occasionally all that turns up is mud.

Here's a link to a story in Crikey which might last a little longer and which might help explain why it's been a bad day for the Brucers: Gillard secures apology from The Oz over AWU story.

Now let's run into the visual record the apology, attached to the masthead, so that Google may circulate to all the record of the dismal day for the Brucers:

Andrew Crook's story also provides a link to an anti-Semitic rant posted under Larry Pickering's name on his website.

It's amazingly rich and vile stuff. And it's not just the Jews that cop a serve. So do lazy Arabs, racist Japanese, racist Chinese, wretched Aborigines, and so on and so forth.

The pond isn't in the habit of reproducing vile racist rants, but if you read Crook, he gives you more than enough of a serve. Ain't Google cache a handy thing ...

But by golly, do the Brucers at The Australian keep odd company, or what.

And over at Fairfax, finally a little truth surrounding Ralph Blewitt has broken into the mainstream, as you can read in Union official in PM row fled Indonesia.

Ralph Blewitt, the former union official who wants to give evidence about the alleged rorting involving Julia Gillard's former boyfriend, fled Indonesia in 2009 to avoid arrest after allegedly selling Australian expatriates land he did not own.
One couple, Deborah and Paul Storck, told the Herald from Lombok yesterday that Mr Blewitt still owed them $190,000 for land they thought they had purchased on Gili Gede, Lombok.
''He's not a credible fellow,'' Mrs Storck said. ''Be wary of anything he says. He still owes us a lot of money. Who does he think he is to bring up stuff from 17 years ago?''

There's more, though this might be old news for those who love to saunter in the gutter with the Brucers.

Now Gillard has been forced to come out and denounce the smear campaign against her as sexist and defamatory, as you can read in PM defends conduct as lawyer.

Well you'd have to say that the cruel photo selected by Fairfax to illustrate the story is first class evidence of sexism at work.

There's nothing new in what Gillard said in her denial. She's said it before, and she's said it over and over again, and meanwhile the Brucers are off with the likes of Larry Pickering and Ralph Blewitt.

The pond wonders how Kim Williams - sophisticated man about town, cultured member of the elite and lover of classical music - enjoys presiding over a cesspit.

Meanwhile, all the pond can do is congratulate the Brucers for their epic work.

Well played Brucers.

You've reduced the status of journalism another notch or three. Keep going and Fairfax will have more to boost about than carelessly losing a couple of billion, and The Australian carelessly failing to achieve a profit ...