The pond answers a few questions in a lizard Oz survey ...

It should go without saying that the pond is here to help - we just love to help, where did we put our special sociopathic cheesy grin? - but where to begin?

Let's start with that survey that popped up yesterday at the lizard Oz. You see, there was a plaintive plea by the reptiles at the lizard Oz, anxious to find out what the pond felt, and with a really simple survey designed to find out. One click and you were in, though some might feel they'd just booked into the Hotel California ...

Now the pond considers itself inclined to centrism, moderate, enjoyed a good education thanks to a public education system (after the Catholics were left behind), interested in good management (which doesn't happen to involve catching a VFT to Canberra to visit Sydney's second airport), in short one of those faint-hearted weak-kneed liberals (with a small "l") who shrink at the sight of violence.

Home in the inner west, a relatively stable relationship (well at least more stable than a thugby league footballer), interested in public transport, loves a good chardonnay, has a firm view on what makes a good coffee, thinks it's the right of others to share the quiet life of marriage  ...

Oh wait a second, that puts the pond one step away from beastiality and polyamory (thanks South Australians for Cory Bernardi)  ...

Oh wait a trice, that puts the pond in the Nick Cater playbook of evil intellectual elites wanting to ruin the country.

Does a stupid inane survey allow the capturing of that sort of stupid inanity?

So let's get this straight - now you want the pond to fill out a form - for free - to help fix a cocky cage lining rag that routinely demonises, denigrates, deplores and denounces the mild Lois Lane lifestyle of the pond?

Hasn't the pond already made clear how it finds your EXCLUSIVES, which turn up on your digital front page on a daily basis, comical and silly? Pathetic and tragic, and rarely exclusive, except for the many exclusives who dress up an ideological axe to grind as an exclusive, when really it's only an exclusive insight into the level of the kool aid in the water cooler that day ...

As an incentive to pay to click through, they're about as beguiling and as tempting as an offer to tour a town camp and laugh at the inhabitants ...

And what about that rotating whirlwind, that digital splash from hell at the top of the right hand page. 

Have you ever heard of the notion of familiarity breeding contempt?

Like this offering from Peter van Onselen today:

By golly, here's a thought. Why not do a Crikey, which offers a sizeable amount of contra and goodies to help persuade people to sign up?

Why not offer a year's supply (quite sizeable) of the special brand of kool-aid van Onselen drinks to help him get through the day scribbling nonsense for the lizard oz. 

The pond says this while recognising that the pond's disdain for van Onselen might only be a short-term emotion, though perhaps shared by a (sizeable) section of your shrinking readership ...

And while we're at it, how about that splash from Kevin Donnelly, the oh so predictable, regularly regurgitating, special pleading panderer to private and Catholic education. He inspired another thought:

How about a year's supply of wafers to go with a digital subscription? 

That'd fit in with the Shanahans, the Sheridans, and be a fitting memorial to the late Christopher Pearson, as well as a celebration of your pet Tony Abbott, and his favourite poodle, Cory Bernardi (thanks South Australians, no really, thanks a bloody million).

Now there's just one trouble with the wafers thing. We have a coeliac issue in the family. Can't abide the gluten in the wafer. Yes, I know, I know, it's such a first world Irish condition, like depression, a taste for drink and literature, but still ...

What's that you say? The pope says coeliacs can go to hell, not even stop at purgatory for a few thousand years with Christopher Pearson and, no doubt in due course, Angela Shanahan? Seems gluten is an integral part of the body of Christ?

Well if you believe that, you can believe the sanctimonious righteous tosh yesterday from Tony Abbott about parliament needing to be a better place, with people who can do better than that. 

Like Cory bloody Barnardi (thanks a heap South Australians, no really, thanks a squilliion).

So what can we suggest as a subscription offer for Dame Slap?

Yes, that's it. Throw in a year of the Small Government monthly, soon to be reduced to a quarterly and then perhaps only released yearly, and instead of all this jibber jabber about governments interfering in our lives by providing decent working public transport, everybody can read it while on a shank's pony ride to work.

Oh dear, someone is cynically whispering in the pond's ear, and the kool aid has only reached chin-level.

Surely the problem here is that the pond can read rabid, raging anti-government diatribes any day of the week from frothing and foaming Republicans in the United States.

Yes it's completely bizarre to have to go to the bother to google to read Step up and end the blame game, and read what starts out as an attack on individuals using the court system to a more generalised rant about government.

No, there's no discernible or immediate connection, apart from Dame Slap's relentless desire to slap government, quite similar to the desire of other reptiles at the lizard Oz, high on the in-house kool aid to slap the Labor party, the Greens, climate science, bicycle paths, gay marriage, public education, public transport, Fairfax, ABC viewers, community radio, inner city elites, intellectuals, lovers of poetry, chardonnay sippers and latte swillers ... and so on and on, all notionally part of your target audience, part of your potential demographic.

Feeling the heat is on now are we lizards of Oz? 

After the split, you actually have to start turning a profit and beguiling readers? Want to know what you could do better? What you could do different?

No, second thoughts, don't worry, just keep on publishing the rantings of a well-heeled, privileged member of your in-house elite about how everyone needs to step up to the plate and take responsibility

The human tendency to look immediately to others when something goes wrong is not helped by politicians who encourage us to believe that government can fix more and more of our problems. If we are fed on a constant drip of government intervention, we end up handing over to others ever more responsibility for our lives. Then, when things go wrong, we don't look inwards, we look outwards. The blame game is surely -- at least in part -- the flip side of too much government interference in our lives. 

Which is of course just pathetic, sanctimonious righteous blather, just another part of the blame game, though it surely has to be said that it's ingenious to blame government for the actions that individuals take in court.

Why that's taking the blame game up to top notch level. Which is what Dame Slap does week in, week out. She's always blaming someone, somebody, for something that doesn't feel right in her self-contented universe. Her blather about the blame game is about as meaningful as Piers Akerman pretending he's not part of the chattering classes.

On a rhetorical level, it's meaningless gibberish.

The pond thinks it quite reasonable to hand over responsibility for public transport to others (though how a man who thinks a second airport for Sydney should reside in Canberra got his hands on the wheel must remain a mystery, thanks NSW Right of the Labor party).

And also thinks it quite reasonable to support public education over the incessant wheedling and noise emanating from the likes of Kevin Donnelly, anxious to ensure that Scientologists and the Exclusive Brethren and other cults like the Catholic church can keep on sucking at the taxpayer's teat, not that you'll read anything about that in the tirades published in the lizard Oz.

But do go on blaming government in the blame game:

And to make matters worse, when those at the very top of society play the blame game, it's hardly surprising that others follow their lead. Take a very recent example. When will a member of the Gillard government fess up to their government's mistakes, take responsibility for the train wreck headed their way at the next election and go about fixing what has gone wrong? Blaming minority government or misogynist men or Kevin Rudd for your political woes is not the sign of a responsible government. It is little wonder that individual responsibility takes a back seat among the people when our leaders can't resist playing the blame game.

Indeed. So when things keep going wrong at the lizard Oz in terms of trying to turn a profit, having alienated a significant and sizeable portion of its potential demographic, by publishing right wing gibberish of a kind that makes the IPA gasp in admiration, please don't play the blame game if some people refuse to sign up.

After all, the disdain felt for your rag is only a short-term emotion felt by a (sizeable) section of your potential readership, and it'll be a cold day in hell, or perhaps a warmish one in purgatory, before the pond disturbs the red-backs in the purse to reward your relentless, monotonous, tedious Johnny one note contributors singing their Janet one note songs ...

Oh alas and alack, we see that we've now reached the end of your survey, and that pitiful question "Is there anything else you'd like us to know?" lurks right at the end ...

Well since you asked, your rag is crap, Chris Mitchell is a disgrace, your EXCLUSIVES are risible and pathetic, your attitude to climate science reporting shocking and shameless, and in due course will lead to tears, and your unwillingness to tackle the potty mouthings of Cory Bernardi and Mal Brough and such like, or crusade against their divisive shit-stirring both pathetic and malignant ...

And worst of all? Your gormless ideological crusades are replicated all over the web ...

For free ...

Go take a a cold shower, forget the surveys, and stop loading the kool aid into the office watercoolers ...

And there you have it. An EXCLUSIVE insight from the pond. And remember (fixes cheesy sociopathic grin) we're here to help ... call any time ...

Take the whole bloody lot of them off the couch ...

(Above: a question asked and a petition mounted, here).


The pond only lasted a few minutes into the ABC's Q and A before switching off.

There was a sensible question from the floor, noting that Howard Sattler had copped a sacking for his performance and asking what sanctions might be taken in relation to News Ltd hack Piers Akerman appearing on the ABC.

Oh there was much smirking, and schoolboyish waving of the hands, and nothing to do with me, and waiter could we have a bowl of water for an obligatory washing of the hands, but nothing more ...

Earlier the pond had made it through Media Watch, perhaps because it only runs fifteen minutes, but perhaps also it requires of itself some critical distance.

The show also tackled the issue of Piers Akerman - you can read the transcript here - and the ducking and weaving that saw The Insiders take a clip off YouTube, but again there was no mention of Akerman being suspended from the show, no mention at all. The question wasn't even raised.

It seems a man judged by host Barrie Cassidy as being as pathetic as Howard Sattler - his words, not the pond's - as pathetic as Howard Sattler, and doing exactly the same thing as Sattler, spreading rumours by way of disingenuous witterings, will be rewarded with ongoing membership of the ABC's chattering classes.

Jonathan Holmes noted that nobody will get the sack from Macquarie Radio for being rude to the Prime Minister - this Prime Minister anyway.

Et tu, ABC, et tu ...

But at least Jonathan Holmes did round up a gaggle of first class loons - with David Koch leading the way, but challenged by the bizarre Brian Wilshire and the eternally squakwing parrot - and he did remind us of one eternal truth:

Piers, this notion that you’re not a member of the chattering classes is weird. That’s how you make your living. Chattering. Chattering. Chattering. And then, in this case, denying what you’ve said...

Indeed, but there's no reason to listen to or read this vexing, idle chatter from a wretched perpetual motion chatterer, and there's even less reason for it to turn up on the ABC, even allowing for the pleasure of seeing him caught with his spoon in the jam.

Meanwhile, it comes as no surprise that the media world is shrinking, as noted in another Media Watch story, Fairfax sends jobs off shore.

Fairfax is saving money, at the risk of alienating the staff that survive, and the customers too.

Indeed and the pond has recently been on the receiving end of plaintive online begging letters.

Click on a few Fairfax stories in a row and you are likely to cop this sort of sombre-charcoal edged plea (screen cap only):

Now to save a stray reader clicking to enlarge the text, it says "We noticed you're a regular SMH reader and thought you may like to learn about the digital subscriptions we're introducing soon. We'd like to show you a brief video that explains it."

Sorry, team Fairfax, you see the pond has a problem.

If anyone was ever able to produce any evidence whatsoever that a single cent of its subscription had gone to support chattering people like Paul Sheehan, the pond couldn't live with itself.

It would be insupportable, intolerable.

And besides, there's plenty of other fish in the sea, both for news and for bilious right wing chattering opinions ... So no, the pond doesn't want to learn about the digital subscriptions you'll be introducing soon.

At least not until you outsource Paul Sheehan's job to either an Indian or a Filipino call centre ...

And to be fair, it's not just Sheehan, it's people like prattling Polonius who routinely turns up on a Tuesday to chatter, often to inanely abuse inner urban and other elites, presumably scribbled or typed up at his inner urban elitist institute.

Yes Gerard Henderson is at it again in Assange's acts of defiance have narcissistic edge.

Since we seem to be in the turf of psychiatric analysis, with narcissism tossed around and not a single mention of prime, smirking, narcissistic former chairman Rudd, is it wrong to observe that Gerard Henderson seems to have an obsessive compulsive interest in Julian Assange which reaches quite bizarre and weird depths?

Henderson even uses the matter of Edward Snowden to take another long pot-shot at Assange.

Weird enough, and soon enough the buzzing bees emerge from the old noggin:

During the Cold War, most citizens understood that communist totalitarianism was a threat to Western societies. Today, the evidence indicates that most citizens in the West accept that Islamist terrorism is a fact of life and that, in such a situation, some individual rights will be curtailed and some secrecy enforced to protect society. 

Well actually no. The pond is fiercely anti-Islamic (and fiercely anti-Catholic and fiercely anti-Scientology and fiercely anti-Calathumpian for that matter) but the notion that the current behaviour of the Obama administration is that much different than the Communist party's behaviour in China deserves some serious examination.

Not to be found in the 'four legs good' rhetoric of our prattling Polonius.

He just takes it all as right and proper, braying 'two legs bad' and thinking it constitutes an argument. That and trip back to Cold War days in the 1950s ...

But what about the tools? What about the effectiveness of deep data mining, and intruding into privacy on the basis that if you've done nothing wrong, you have nothing to fear?

Because there is scant evidence that the trawling through immense amounts of data has produced any kind of effective anti-terrorist results, though vague claims are made, with a wave of hands in the air and "it's confidential, don't ya know".

There is every possibility for example, that this bit of the pond, for daring to mention Islamics, fundamentalists, bombs, terrorists and plots, as well as prattling Polonius, might well trigger a few flags and end up on the desk of an agent, who will have wasted his or her time.

The pond's advice? Try a bit of field work, try a bit of old fashioned investigation. Get out and about and mingle. This might involve growing a beard - difficult for a female field agent - but give it a go.

Why not head off to the Al Risalah Islamic Bookstore and contemplate their media statement?

Second thoughts, since Gerard Henderson thinks we're in a holy war with them, why not hire him as a double agent, and send him out to Bankstown to show us how to mount a Crusade?

Never mind, here's where Polonius gets truly offensive, by making a comparison between people drawing attention to the way governments spy on their citizenry, and a few rogue British ponces who spied on their government a long, long time ago:

Philby and his ilk set out to aid an enemy in the cause of ideology. Assange and his ilk set out to release information, irrespective of whether it benefits a foreign government or non-state enemy. 

Yep, there's prattling Polonius giving aid and comfort for the activities of the Chinese government.

Chattering on about the need to curtail individual rights and the need for secrecy to protect society. Right out of the Communist party's rhetorical playbook.

The Cambridge spy ring did not succeed because their narcissistic alienation was not shared by most of their fellow citizens. 
It is likely the WikiLeaks phenomenon will ultimately fail for similar reasons. 

And there, dear Fairfaxians, is the reason the pond has absolutely no interest in your digital subscription.

Imagine if a cent went to Gerard Henderson scribbling a justification for the Chinese government's censorship of the Internet and infringement of its citizens' right to privacy.

Oh wait, there is one other even more offensive reason:

Sure, Assange has a fan club on social media and within universities and sections of the ABC, but it is far from clear that he has anything like the backing he claims. 

Sob, yes, it's more chatter about those bloody 'leets.

Week in, week out, prattling Polonius chatters on, delivering this sort of idle abuse of elites - this week it's social media, universities and sections of the ABC - though presumably not the Akker Dakker section of the ABC - and you want the pond to kill off a few redback spiders in the purse to pay for the pleasure of reading this sort of tosh?

In your dreams. Sleep safely and well little redback spiders, and sweet dreams of a new media landscape ...

(Below: the pond has run it before and will run it again whenever that chattering Polonius channels Colonel Blimp and runs half-baked half-arsed woefully inaccurate historical analogies).

Oh it's the luck of the Irish, to be sure, to be sure ...

(Above: the child becometh the man).


While the war of the ISPs continues, please allow the pond to explain the concept of the luck of the Irish.

On Sunday morning, the pond came into the room and noticed that through some kind of technical accident or glitch, the television was on, and worse, it was on The Insiders, and worse still, the back of Piers "Akker Dakker" Akerman's head could be seen, and the ultimate worst, he had already begun to drone on, in the inimitable AC/DC way the world has come to expect ...

The pond took the only practical step possible and immediately switched off the program. The pond finds that with the ABC, switching off the television is the best solution, though turning to another channel always lurks in the back of the mind.

Anyway, as a result, the pond experienced the luck of the Irish.

If the pond had hang on and endured, it would have been possible to see Akker Dakker make a fool of himself.

On the other hand, if the pond had hung on and endured, it would have been possible to see Akker Dakker make a fool of himself, but to what end, since everyone knows he's a fool, and that he routinely makes a fool of himself, because of his blatant, one-eyed bilious prejudice and willingness to contemplate the worst ....

And that's the luck of the Irish. No bloody chance of any bloody luck at all.

Now you can read all about it (forced video at end of link) in News Limited columnist ignites sexuality outrage, but here's the line the pond would like you to note:

Twitter immediately lit up with calls for Mr Akerman’s suspension from the show. The ABC did not return calls.

Yes, the ABC didn't return calls, and when the Abbott government cuts a swathe through the ABC's funding, the pond will not be returning a call, or giving a thought to it, since there seems little point caring about another branch of News Ltd not receiving taxpayer support ...

What's even funnier is that the Billy Bunter of News Ltd obviously realised he'd put his foot in it, and felt the need to defend himself in print, here, and what do you know, he led off with the usual assault:

The chattering classes whipped themselves into a lather Sunday afternoon claiming that I raised questions about First Bloke Tim Mathieson’s sexuality on the ABC Insiders program that morning. 

Yes, a man who routinely goes on to the ABC to chatter - a first class member of the chattering classes - has a bash at the chattering classes.

Naturally it was everyone else's fault that Akerman had made a fool of himself:

Rubbish. The ABC’s producers had conservative Perth shock jock Howard Sattler’s repugnant interview with Prime Minister Julia Gillard listed as an item for Insider host Barrie Cassidy’s discussion to open up the question of whether she had been exposed to sexism during her career. 
Do the sneering Left and the Twitterati really believe that it is possible to discuss the Sattler interview without touching on its subject matter?

Touch on the subject matter? In the style of a sniggering, leering, sneering schoolboy of the most adolescent in the playground, over near the toilet block, kind?

But wait, the defence gets even more pathetic, silly and poignant:

I have never made any suggestions Mathieson’s sexuality. I don’t deal in tawdry topics. 
Mathieson is in fact a very good friend with one of my long-standing mates and over the past several years we have been scheduled to meet for a weekend lunch, with or without his Significant Other, but diary conflicts have prevented such a felicitous engagement.

The Significant Other? What, the ball on the chain, the strife of life?

Yes, there's a 1950s mind set, still strutting around on the ABC, talking of dairy conflicts and felicitous engagements. Pompous, and up its arse, all in one breath-taking manoeuvre. But do go on:

Yet there is no greater rumour mill in the nation than the federal press gallery – which in recent weeks has been relentlessly asking (I shan’t say what because I don’t engage in rumour mongering). 
As I said the Sattler interview was unacceptable, that should have signalled my view clearly. 
Quite frankly, I can’t understand why the Left gets itself so wound up about sexuality and gender issues when it publicly preaches these matters are irrelevant. That’s my position and always has been. What people do in private is up to them. 

Uh huh. In which case surely the correct response to any question put by Barry Cassidy would have been look Barry, what people do in private is up to them, this matter is entirely irrelevant, and I'm not going to comment on it...

Save that I'm scouring through my incredibly full and important diary to discover if there's a way to resolve the conflicts and embark on a most felicitous and serendipitous engagement.

No, no, no. Instead Bunter has to turn his fury on others to distract from his very own, surely patented by now folly:

What angers me more than the phony outrage of the aged feminists and class-and-gender war warriors is that the Sattler interview was deemed worthy of comment when there are so many more pressing national issues.

Yes any excuse to maintain the outrage of the one-eyed bilious warrior, naturally replete with the notion that Labor throws stones, and so therefore can the Bunter.

And then the fat owl of the remove returns to the matter at hand and delivers the most weak-kneed and pathetic sort of, kind of apology:

As I said at the end of the show, addressing Gillard (who wasn’t watching), I intended no offense. 

Which of course doesn't stop the fat owl from being profoundly offensive. And yes, he can't help keeping on being offensive, reaching into his cupboard for "lickspittles":

 I meant it. Just as I now say I will never be intimidated by the baying of Labor’s politically correct lickspittles who were ever so silent when this government was trying to muzzle the news media during its current term. 
 I repeat, I don’t draw up Insiders’ agenda, the ABC did because a conservative shock jock had made a fool of himself and been sacked. 
They ignored the offensive nature of the charge in their attempt to further gore their quarry.

How offensive can you get in a lickspittle kind of verbose way? Chattering on about another fool, in a most foolish way ...

So here's the thing.

Sattler got the chop, and what did Akker Dakker cop?

Not even the lash of a feather, just a 'no comment' from the ABC and let's hope nobody notices or cares and it will all go away.

But he should have never been on the program in the first place - though he certainly encourages former viewers of the ABC to get out and about and take a good long brisk walk in what passes these days for winter in Sydney (sssh, whatever you do, don't mention climate change).

And what's more he should never be invited back on to an ABC program, but when you're just a branch of News Ltd, what are you going to do?

What's that you say? It's offensive to compare Akker Dakker to Billy Bunter, the fat owl of the Remove?

Indeed. Apologies to Billy Bunter and get lost you lickspittles trying to muzzle the pond when you should be off sipping lattes ...

And now, for a breach of Godwin's Law and hysterical over-exaggeration, the pond must turn to Paul Sheehan:

Say what? The Russians are pounding Canberra to rubble, killing the men and the children, raping the women and then killing them, and closing in on the bunker, and with no hope left, it's out with the cyanide pills for the women and the children, and the Lugers for the men, and choke on the barrels, swallow that lead ....

Yes, yes, it's exactly like that:

The mood in the Prime Minister's office must feel like the leader's bunker in Berlin in April 1945, when the muffled sounds of Russian artillery could only be avoided in the bomb-proof war room as the leader ordered the deployment of armoured divisions that no longer existed.

Yes, yes, Sheehan is such a Chicken Little, he can't imagine anyone else in Australia leading a life which doesn't involve Nazi and Russian analogies at the close of the second world war.

And in the usual way, Sheehan doesn't just settle for the one blitzkrieg par, he blitzes the metaphor:

Ashen generals listen in silence knowing that all they have to defend their domain against a legion of hostiles is a dispirited Labor caucus and three groups with little credibility outside their inner-city strongholds: the Greens, Get-Up! and union-funded propaganda. 

And there you have it. If you want a source of hysteria, of crisis, of the notion that the nation is somehow in the grip of a disaster that somehow is exactly like Hitler's end at the end of the second world war, look no further than Tony Abbott and his megaphones, whether employed by Fairfax, or part of the evil empire of the Murdoch Death Star, or routinely invited onto the ABC to amplify smutty innuendo, and then blame lickspittles for their folly ...

But the biggest laugh of all, comes with this Sheehan line:

Accompanying the grim explosions of the polls is the scatter-bombing of media hyperbole, which magnifies Labor's losses in the ground war. My favourite rhetoric of the past week came from political correspondent Simon Benson of the The Daily Telegraph: ''If this Parliament were a novel, it would be Cormac McCarthy's The Road - a post-apocalyptic nightmare of a civilised society descending into eternal darkness while humans wander a wasteland eating each other.''

Because you know Simon you really should have been much more understated, like Chicken Little Sheehan, and only talked of the last days of Hitler in the bunker as the Russians pounded Canberra to a pulp.

Try a little understatement Simon, follow the master of understatement, and headless chicken little hysteria ...

And you know what? Why surely you've guessed it already. This whole gender debate is the fault of Julia Gillard. Yes, she made poor hapless innocent Tony Abbott stand under all those signs saying ditch the witch, and she made really cruel jokes about him wearing budgie smugglers. Yes, she did:

I have never seen a gender divide like the one that now exists in Australian politics as a direct result of a cynical Prime Minister systematically and methodically insulting men and debasing feminism by invoking gender as a weapon to make false claims and cynical smokescreens. The result is as predictable as it is self-annihilating.

Yes, no doubt it's all Gillard's fault that Akker Dakker made a fool of himself. No doubt it's all Gillard's fault that Sheehan blathered on about the last days of Hitler and had to put a very large fine into the Godwin's Law swear jar ...

But as for the day when The Guardian down under (and maybe Huffington Post too) severely dents Fairfax's business and Sheehan is offered a redundancy after having alienated the rag's natural constituency for many decades ... why that's the day the pond will be raising a glass to toast the last days of Hitler ...

And now, speaking of gay as we are, please allow the pond to sneak in a plug for Behind the Candelabra, keeping in mind that the pond routinely dislikes all Michael Douglas and Steven Soderbergh movies.

Dearies, darlings, it's a fabulous, gorgeous show, and if only the aunt who so loved Kamahl and Liberace had been alive to see it.

Michael Douglas is wonderful - by golly he does a good impression on the piano - and so is Matt Damon, and there should be a special mention for Rob Lowe's performance as Dr. Startz. It's really one of the best biopics the pond has seen in recent times, and a credit to HBO, who picked it up when the majors ran scared, and so scored a triumph which is too good to be dismissed as television.

But don't take the pond's word for it, have a read of Emily Nussbaum in The New Yorker, scribbling Steven Soderbergh's Gorgeous Homage to Liberace, which is currently outside the paywall.

And for those who might get offended by being reminded of the closet days ... why not take a look around the media these days, and see the personalities still in the closet, and the sniggers of those who see closets everywhere ...

Yes if you don't switch off The Insiders and go for a healthy walk, then you can always switch off The Insiders and put on a fun show ... and never let it be said that the pond is in to nattering lickspittle negativity when there are better things to do than watch Billy Bunter reduce the reputation of the ABC's current affairs department to tatters.

Without even a hint of a decent fox fur coat or Australian opal jewellery ...

Update:  a friend of the pond's has just provided this link to an update on Scott Thorson: the lover Liberace re-made in his own image, so it won't cost you a click on the New York Times. Strange days indeed ...

(Below: the originals, Liberace and Scott Throson, and their movie equivalents. Check it out. Seriously. You need to go over the top every now and then but with much better style than Akker Dakker or generally grumpy Sheehan)

Stepping out of the tent ...

The pond is stepping out of the tent (and changing ISPs), and may be some time ...

Oh the poor bloody penguin ...

And the poor bloody loon ...

... not waving, drowning ...

The Optus The ...

Some mots juste and experiencing nausea with a medieval nobleman ...

Usually on a Saturday, it was the habit of the pond - the long absent lord and the completely stuffed "broadband" of Optus willing - to drop in on the thoughts of Christopher Pearson in the lizard Oz.

Such a loose connection. "Broadband" and Optus ...

Never mind, those days are gone, just as many other days go... but thanks to Guy Rundle, we now have some mot juste notions to send Pearson on his way, chief amongst them that he turned into God's Maoist.

When the pond first knew Pearson he was a delusional Adelaide Maoist, who could stop anyone on the way to a wedding and explain to them the virtues of the Khmer Rouge and Pol Pot.

Now enough was known at the time of Pol Pot and his works to understand that this was a form of madness. But you couldn't talk any sense with Pearson or the Adelaide University mob (okay, the pond was Flinders, want to make something of it?)

There's none so deluded as those who will not see or listen ...

Unless you happen to think that it would be a good idea to ship the city elites, the Pearsons, the Nick Caters, and all the other reptiles at the lizard Oz out to Barraba to become farm workers and tend the wheat fields, so they could learn to be upright peasant citizens.

Hey, maybe there's something to be said for that ideology.

It was entirely possible at the time to think the Vietnam war was wrong, and to think that United States' policies had helped spawn the perverted rule of the Khmer Rouge, without at the same time thinking that persecution of intellectuals and innocents was the way forward (or the persecution of the poor bloody conscripts sent to the war by conservative politicians of the cowardly kind).

It truly was astonishing to see alleged intellectuals roaming around Adelaide in Maoist guise, worshipping the thoughts of a mass murderer, when Mao would have had them for breakfast …

But there's something about extremists and fundamentalists that always yearns for the extremes, and it's very easy to flip their polarity, reverse them, with one fundie form of thought replaced by another equally fundie strain.

The pond is reminded of a recent story in Harpers of a woman who started out a vagrant hippie flower child, and then ended up a fundamentalist prejudiced American Christian. (Blinded by the Right? by T. M. Luhrmann, but if you don't have a Harper's sub, you can find a few quotes here in How hippie Christians became evangelical conservatives)

So it was with Pearson, who flipped and ended up a more extreme Pellist than Pell, what with his idle talking up of the Latin mass and his infatuation with the more bizarre antics of fundie extremists within the Catholic church.

Two lines of a Yeats' poem always springs to mind when thinking of Pearson.

The worst are full of passionate intensity and the centre will not hold.

Pearson knew little of balance or the centre, which is why Rundle's analysis is more than a clever turn of phrase in vale Christopher Pearson, God's Maoist (behind the paywall):

Like many of that movement, Pearson began to depart the Left when the Left began to depart from a "Promethean" vision -- that communism would be achieved by the total domination of external nature, and the total freedom of humanity -- and became a Left of limits: environmental, social, cultural. By the late '70s, it was all over bar a hard slog, less the God That Failed than the God That Lost. Pearson settled into what could well be regarded as the world's longest lunch. After John Bray's death in the '90s, he moved gradually towards the light and was received by Mother Church in 1999. Inevitably, he went to the ultramontane Tridentine, Latin mass end of things. Yes, he became God's Maoist. 

The only variant allowable? Perhaps God's Adelaide Maoist in recognition of the fetid atmosphere when Pearson began to flower, and learn the art of screwing contributors to his publication (a technique still on view many years later at the Huffington Post).

The most disturbing aspect of Pearson's legacy? Well you could take his acceptance by John Howard and Tony Abbott as indicating their flexibility and generosity.

Or you could take it as a sign of their ideological rigidity and inflexibility and their willingness to deal with a fellow traveller who was as crazed when worshipping in Pell's church as he was when he worshipped in Pol Pot's cadre.

Or perhaps it's the same sort of flexibility that allowed Howard to trawl for the votes of the Exclusive Brethren, and never mind dealing with a cult.

What makes a form of fundamentalist acceptable to political parties? How can a leopard change their spots? Well they don't, they simply switch polarities. That's not to say that travelling through life it's necessary to start out with a set of ideas, and never adjust or modify or change them.

But there's something about cults and extremism and fundamentalism that appeals to certain people and it crosses party, ideological, philosophical and religious lines. The pond trawls the crazies of the right, but there are ratbags of the left (think the attention-seeking Paul Howes or Gra Gra Richardson).

They often start out in student politics, flexing their muscles, pounding the walls, playing theoretical rugger bugger games with the other side, seeking an inside edge.

Generally it involves a deluded capacity to think that they are the ones who should be blessed with power, that they are the ones who know what is best for others. Inevitably at one point or another they'll start setting it all down in the pages of the lizard Oz ...

Which is perhaps why the reptiles at the lizard Oz should be turned into farm workers. It couldn't harm them could it?

Why it might even make them shut up about intellectuals and latte elites and what a fine cultural and intellectual titan, if Latin mass barking mad fundie, Pearson was, and never mind that he helped in the degutting and destruction of SBS, and in the management of perhaps the most risible Howard legacy of all, the so-called national museum.

And at this point, Optus permitting, the pond was going to move on to other topics, other writers, since the reptiles at the wizard Oz will simply fragment and multiply, a bit like the brooms in that Mickey Mouse cartoon celebrating classical music.

But what do you know, the brooms are already out in force.

Like this:

More humbug and nausea than anyone should feel entitled to on a Saturday.

For the decade that I contributed to The Adelaide Review, Christopher was an impresario of ideas, a rigorous editor and a generous paymaster. I came to rely on him almost as a medieval nobleman might rely on his food taster. 

A medieval nobleman!? A bloody Maoist Pol Pot loving food taster ...

Dear sweet absent lord, think about what you're scribbling as a metaphor man!

And you want more humbug and hypocrisy? A refusal to acknowledge anything, a desire to airbrush the past, much like an airbrush artist at work in Playboy?

Cop this:

To some of his former allies and friends on the Left, Christopher's evolution was simply inauthentic. A better interpretation, I think, is that he had summoned up the courage to choose one way of life over another. His view was that he had surrendered some instincts to realise deeper ones. 

Uh huh, because well you know to be gay is just to be so shallow ... to be gay is to indulge in base basic instincts.

You know bias is so ingrained in Abbott, such deep prejudice, that he simply doesn't begin to understand how offensive he sounds. Or how offensive Pearson's self-loathing was ...

Again, he wasn't the first person to find the spirit more compelling than the flesh as he became older. He could, of course, simply have lived with contradiction. Ultimately, he opted for what he considered the more honourable course for him. He made what he thought was the best choice in his particular circumstances and stayed true to it. 

By golly they must have packed a lot of spirit into the food and the drink ... because it seems to the pond he didn't leave the flesh as he became older, he catered to the flesh, and in the usual way, if you abandon one part of the body, another part of the body will attempt to compensate.

To know Christopher well was to have a grandstand seat at the clash of mighty emotions as well as to have the benefit of a fine mind and a good heart. As his readers know, he was often hard on people but he was rarely harder on others than he was on himself. The Christian virtue he most struggled with was forgiveness; especially self-forgiveness. 

Oh dear sweet absent lord ..

 In his writings, as in his life, Christopher opened windows for people through which they could see into different worlds. He had an extraordinarily broad taste for life and a gift for sharing it. He was a complex man, in some ways a torn character, but to be at all close to him was to receive a practical education in the human condition. 

 Thanks to Christopher, people have insights they would not have had and wouldn't even have known they were missing. For many, certainly for me, the world is now painted in richer, truer colours. 

The richer truer colours of a man given to self-loathing and fundamentalism.

And now you can see why Rundle's thoughts are mots justes, and why we now have a beast, tinged with fundamentalism, slouching towards Bethlehem ... or perhaps Canberra.

So it goes, but it turns out that something is seriously wrong on the intertubes and so the pond will now head off to spend a couple of hours arguing with Optus, leaving you with these thoughts ...

The Optus The, or if you speak German, Die Optus Die

The Malcolm Turnbull copper loving broadband plan The - go on, translate it into German ...

The Tony Abbott luddite understanding of the intertubes and crazed religious fundies The ...

Sprechen ze Deutsche, silver plate? Should it be Optus Die, or Opus Dei?

Meanwhile, be careful of ideology and ideologues and the religious and religiosity and the extremes, when live and let live is such a simple philosophy and so hard to carry out with style ...

(Below: the pond being trampled by new members of the lizard Oz commentariat. Off to the wheat fields with them).  

A post from inside the bubble ...

(Above: important fashion and lifestyle advice below, sponsored by Marlene Dietrich)


The truth is, the pond lives in a bubble, a bit like the bubble-boy in that Seinfeld episode determined to be offensive to bubble-dwellers and bubble-lovers...

I mean, the pond is vaguely aware that Howard Sattler exists, in the same way that it is vaguely aware that Western Australian does, and that the dearest wish of sandgropers is to be excised from the continent, towed away and parked somewhere in the Indian ocean.

In much the same way, the pond is aware that Bob Francis exists ... though perhaps not quite so sure about Adelaide ...

But the bubble isn't to do with distance. Mention Alan Jones and the pond can say with absolute certainty that it has never once heard the parrot's show, despite many years living cheek by jowel who once resided in the north of Newtown (and locals will know what that means).

Sure some taxi drivers get pissed off when you ask them to switch to another channel, but since any trip with a Sydney taxi driver is an exercise in fear and loathing, why have a double shot of fear and loathing with the parrot's squawking? And you can quadruple that for Kyle Sandilands.

If any shock jock says something silly, it will be reported, as with Sattler's latest folly, 'He must be gay, he's a hairdresser'. (forced video at end of link). So let others do the hard yards and the hard listening ...

Now in this modern day and age, you can if you like listen live to 6PR (go here) or you can go to the station's terse statement about Howard Sattler being suspended, here, but why would anyone bother.

Sattler doesn't have any insights to offer, just the standard bile and biliousness, lavishly served in a local market to a parochial crowd, as shock jocks do around the world.

Anxious station executives wring their hands, and announce suspensions, but it's all hypocrisy and paw-washing in the style of Pontius Pilate, because shock jocks are employed to shock, in much the same way that people are drawn to the Bolter because he's a raving ratbag. There's nothing that beats extremism, except more extremism ...

The simpler answer is to live in a bubble, and to save much energy by knowing that diligent possums are still out there ready to report the latest shock jock horror and suspension. Apparently they do it for Australian cricketers too, the ones who are inclined to get into brawls at 2 am, while acting like Oscar Wilde fops on the field ... (or so the pond's partner says, and no, there are no hairdressers in the family)

It only became clear to the pond of the full extent of its bubble when a kindly soul delivered a lot of freebie newspapers from the flight lounge and the pond had a chance to examine the lizard Oz in the actual flesh, so to speak.

Truly the pond can't remember buying the hard copy thoughts of the lizard Oz reptiles in decades (there are only so many cocky cages that need to be lined, so many cockies one should torture).

What caught the eye wasn't the snake pit of the commentariat. That's well known ...

No, it was the snake pit of the letters pages.

There was an astonishing line of conga dancers, all at one, all in complete accord with the lizard Oz editorial that Gillard was clumsy and manipulative, unlike Howard Sattler or Queensland Liberal party donating chefs in search of light-hearted jokes and setting them down strictly for their own private, personal amusement, and never mind the hard work involved. Anything for a private joke and a tickle of the funny bone.

Claire Brittian of Claremont WA (oh yes come on down 'groper) thought Gillard was an insult to her intelligence, though she had no thoughts about Chris Mitchell daily insulting her intelligence; Lucia Kasparkenko of Jones Hill Queensland (please no obvious jokes) was highly offended and thought Gillard was naive; Don Smith of Noosa Queensland, shook his head in dismay and thought it pathetic and juvenile; Jan White of Donvale Vic, found the speech offensive on many levels, and divisive; David Anderson of Burwood WA thought Gillard's gender bleatings had zero credibility, showing staggering hypocrisy and contempt; Pauline Just, Adelaide SA, was outraged at the misandrist Gillard, a bitter and twisted woman wreaking havoc on the country; Veronica Alp, Melbourne Vic thought Gillard unfounded and unfair, on her last legs and shoving her extreme feminist views down the throats of Australians.

Veronica also delivered the immortal plea for Australia to wake up! Yes, wake up Australia, the pod people are here and they write letters to the lizard Oz editor.

Just below her, Ian Mastin, Woodgate beach Qld thought Gillard had a problem with half the population and that if the media was being fair, she should be crucified; Ruth Bonetti, The Gap, Qld thought Gillard was trite and demanded a grown-up government; David Bares of Southbank Vic was outraged that Gillard, leader of the nation, should have dared to divide the country in such a disgraceful manner; Deirdre McQueen of Eltham Vic thought Gillard was beyond embarrassment; John Morrissey of Hawthorn Vic thought Gillard was out of touch with reality, and Colleen Walker of Mt Louisa Qld thought that the PM was inciting prejudices where there are none, and so should be resoundingly critised (sic, you can't expect subbies to do the letters too):

Ladies of Australia, we have strong voices, smart options, equal roles in society ...

Indeed. Good luck with your job in the army Colleen ...

Now there was one dissident voice, one Denise Taylor, of Larrakeyah NT who actually thought Gillard had worked hard and behaved with dignity, and that the chance to celebrate Australia's first female PM had been lost in three years of sexist abuse. But talk about a solitary voice swimming against the tide ...

What was interesting in this snake-pit of abuse was the way many of the correspondents raised the issue of Emily's List, as if they'd been faithfully reading the lizard Oz commentariat and imbibing the kool-aid of hate, and how many of them sounded like they'd vote for Senator John Madigan when it came to abortion ...

Throw in the lizard Oz talking not just about gender war, but class war and the Queensland high school affair, and a series of short Last Post letters from readers - which ran 18-0 against Gillard - yes that's eighteen -zip - and you have a frenzy of fear and loathing.

Throw in Cut & Paste doing it all over again at the bottom of the page and poor Denise Taylor looked like a very lonely outsider, invited to express a view because ... well because even the lizard Oz feels the need for a little tokenism. Only a little mind you, a tad, a dash, a soupçon ...

It reminded the pond exactly why it's best to live in a bubble. If you spent even a few days reading the lizard Oz in its physical form, you'd end up entirely detached from reality - the reality that Australia isn't in such a bad position relative to the rest of the world at this moment in time - and barking kool-aid drinking mad as a march carrot-munching hare.

And in the process you'd also be detached from another reality, which is to say the reality of the Howard Sattlers that litter Australian radio, the reality of the reptiles setting the overt agenda of that gay divorcee chairman Rupert, and the reality of life in the Australian army ...

M. Young, female, Townsville, Qld set the pace in the alternative unreal world of the lizard Oz's last post by being given the top position, and saying she intended to wear a blue tie on September 14. This seemed both unfashionable and silly.

Now since you asked - well maybe you didn't - the pond has a view on blue ties. There are several reasons politicians of all major parties favour blue, and none of them reassuring. The first and banal but true reason is that few men know how to deal with striped ties and striped shirts, or patterned ties and patterned shirts.

Worse, blue presents a soft image, but given the Freudian phallic nature of ties, a real man would wear a bright pulsating tumescent throbbing tumid red tie.

Sadly this never happens, because it would reveal their true alpha male, clawing and scratching and back-biting aspirations, so bland, boring duck egg blue it is.

A red tie would also send sensitive young women into a frenzy, in much the same way as the student's red dress in Picnic at Hanging Rock sent her fellow students into a Freudian hysteria ...

Sadly therefore M. Young of Townsville, the pond must urge you to consider either a white tie (virginal) or a black tie (satanic witchcraft), or perhaps a polka dot (confused):

Lah di dah, lordy lordy, and it's days and times like these that the pond is truly eternally grateful to live in a bubble.

Is it possible to imagine living with the fear, loathing, anger, rage, hostility and hate that daily litters the pages of the lizard Oz? Or the stench of unawareness of the real world?

No, it's not a bloody EXCLUSIVE ... but somehow surely it's all misandrist Julia Gillard's fault ...

Ah well, if only the pond still had a cocky - given up long ago as a cruelty to innocent creatures - so that the cage could be relined. And amazingly no doubt yesterday's scenes are being repeated today as more rags are given away free, and the wretched rag once more fails to lurch anywhere near a profit.

Yes here you go, here's Gra Gra:

Indeed. As one Labor stalwart said to the pond yesterday, it will never be too late for Gra Gra to piss off to Switzerland to check out the status of his Swiss bank accounts ... and then hope he never comes back ...

And finally an honourable mention to Brendan O'Neill, a man who can be relied on to take the wrong position about everything and anything, simply for the sake of perversity:

But what's truly perverse about O'Neill's piece, presented in the lizard Oz as Snowden is certainly no saint or saviour? (behind the paywall but information just wants to be free)

Now you might think it's his completely predictable blather about the cult of whistleblowers or his babble about the fashionably atheistic set, or his resentment that The Guardian had a hand in the Snowden affair ... dear sweet absent lord, he's such a spectacularly repetitive, bees-in-bonnet idiot ... you know if old Joe McCarthy had been around today, you could reliably turn to O'Neill to write a vigorous defence, berating the filthy Marxists and the fashionable atheists, while pretending to be an upstanding Marxist himself ...

No, set all this aside, what's truly perverse is that the lizard Oz should put the piece behind the paywall, because O'Neill is such a vain, preening, attention-seeking peacock, he's reproduced the piece on his blogsite, where it's available to read for free, here.

If you don't want to soil yourself and reward O'Neill with even a click, since the blog has a truly laughable quote from The Guardian as a subheader - "A Marxist proletarian firebrand" - who defends the Pope, the CIA, and the establishment on a daily basis - you can find it on the laughable Spike, where it was published last Tuesday UK time, and is also available for free here.

It's the art of the snake oil salesman to extract money while selling entirely useless snake oil, and lordy lordy is the lizard Oz a master snake oil salesman, or what.

Dammit, that cocky will have to serve more jail time to help save the world.

Alternatively, why not save up and buy yourself a bubble instead?

(Below: Twiggy or bubble boy? Your choice)

Waiter, some garlic for the spatchcock and tool jokes and don't forget the tin foil hat ...

What rough
gruff
Brough
canetoad-like
slithers,
slides
hops
and slouches its way
to Canberra?

Well that's the poetry out of the way for the day.

Naturally the pond is vastly relieved to learn that the rough Brough is entirely innocent, and the menu that caused the storm is merely the work of Liberal party donors who, having nothing better to do, laboured to produce a menu which would be seen only by themselves, in the cause of a light-hearted joke, a jolly jape amongst chums proving nothing but a wonderful, wondrous Queensland sensa huma ...

Thank the long absent lord. What a tragedy if the rough Brough had been thwarted in his bid to do over another section of Australia, having already done his best to do over the blacks and Peter Slipper. Who knows, since he's a walking disaster zone, he might also do over Tony Abbott in the future ...

And there's another upside to the affair. How pleasing to see Eva Cox join the hounds of the Murdochians as they roam the moors, and what a splendid joke she makes:

Gender not a party tool?

Was it all the work of a deviant Murdochian subbie having a leg pull?

Nope, a careful scrutiny of Gender not a party tool (behind the paywall so you don't have to feel like a tool) reveals this header bait by Cox:

It also shows how gender as a political tool disrespects the office of the PM.

Why it had the pond sending jaffas down the aisles ... in memory of the tool jokes that did the rounds in that centre of the sexist universe, Tamworth, you blood beaut ...

No doubt people will notice Ms Cox diligently applying her rhetorical tools in Murdoch la la land, and here's hoping she gains a position as resident token feminist in due course ...

Meanwhile, the sanctimonious, righteous Abbott advises that we should all be better than that.

Indeed. The man knows what he talks about. But will he ever do better than that?

Meanwhile, and more importantly, the pond is indebted to Lenore Taylor in The Guardian, down under version, for keeping tabs on Maurice Newman.

Newman, it might be recalled, bobbed up some time ago to get upset about Robin Williams, climate denialism and pedophilia, as you can read in It's OK to link climate denial to pedophilia, ABC tells ex-chairman Maurice Newman, if the paywall doesn't get you, and you can saunter off feeling free and full of wallet or purse.

That header must surely stand as a wonderful example of Murdochian la la land bias - since it didn't summarise the intent or the meaning of the ABC's response to Newman's complaint - but more to the point, inter alia, the story contained this classic Newman whinge:

Mr Newman said he was the first person to admit he was not a scientist and described himself as a human-induced climate change "agnostic". "I considered the report to be defamatory because it went on to discuss me personally and an opinion piece I'd written comparing some in the climate change camp to religious believers," he said. "In lumping me in with despicable flat-earthers, they also, through their introduction, likened people like us to pedophiles and drug-pushers."

Uh huh. Well he's certainly no scientist, but what cheek, in maintaining the notion that climate science is just another branch of religion, that he should label himself an agnostic.

Lenore's first par in Top Abbott business adviser wants renewables target scrapped, puts that distortion to the sword:

The chairman of Tony Abbott’s proposed business advisory council, Maurice Newman, has called for the renewable energy target (RET) to be scrapped because he believes the scientific evidence for global warming and the economic case for renewable energy no longer stack up.

The killer kicker is embedded right there ...

Newman is going to be Abbott's advisor and in an astonishingly short time he seems to have moved from agnostic to true believer (oh okay, if you believed the guff about being an agnostic, the pond has a second hand Harbour Bridge - we'll even throw in the Opera House and a set of steak knives - to sell you).

“When we look at the experience of Germany, they have not been successful in reducing emissions; when we look at the science it no longer supports the global warming theory and when we look at the health and economic effects of windfarms and the obscene wealth transfer from poor to rich we have to ask: why are we persisting with them? I think it is a crime against the people.”

Roll that one around on your tongue ... when we look at the science, according to this "agnostic", it no longer supports the global warming theory ...

Of course there are thousands of scientists who would say precisely the opposite, and the more they say it, the more the flat earthers buzz around with denialist chatter, and turn their approach to wind farms into some kind of socialist revolution. It's a crime against the people, the people are being oppressed, rise up and support the coal owners ...

As for the actual science on view at which Newman spoke?

As well as health and landscape concerns, members of the Crookwell Landscape Guardians at the meeting were concerned that “electro magnetic electricity” could be transferred from windfarms through the air and the ground, possibly causing failures of farm machinery and the danger of electric shocks from farm bores.

Don't you love it? Landscape guardians?

Better still, the voodoo science, worthy of Alan Jones, with electro magnetic electricity invisibly surging through the air ...

Watch out, you're standing under a power line ...

Now if we were talking about TV and radio signals but as it happens, we're not, we're talking nonsense ...

It reminded the pond of its dear, long-departed grandmother, who roamed around the house at night, just before bedtime, making sure all the switches were in the "off" position because the electricity might leak out and do all sorts of harm to inhabitants of the house while they peacefully slept (she also did the same for taps, a more useful precaution in relation to water bills).

So here's the problem. While everybody gets agitated about a menu, there's Abbott's proposed chair of his proposed business advisory council roaming the land, creating furphies and whipping up conspiracies, all the while donning sheep's clothing, the better to play the part of a dissembling wolf ...

And renewable energy, which should be judged on sensible grounds, is being subjected to a groundswell of hysteria, and mumbo jumbo, and scientific nonsense.

Here's what Robin Williams said, as you can read in the transcript of the show here:

What if I told you that paedophilia is good for children, or that asbestos is an excellent inhalant for those with asthma? Or that smoking crack is a normal part and a healthy one of teenage life, to be encouraged? You'd rightly find it outrageous. But there have been similar statements coming out of inexpert mouths again and again in recent times, distorting the science. This is what The Economist magazine said last week about the election in America. 
Reading: Republican pessimism is more than a PR headache. Put simply, it is hard for a party to win national elections in a country that it seems to dislike. Mr Romney's campaign slogan was 'Believe in America'. But too many on his side believe in a version of America from which displeasing facts or arguments are ruthlessly excluded. Todd Akin did not implode as a Senate candidate because of his stern opposition to abortion even in cases of rape or incest: many Republicans in Congress share those views. His downfall came because in trying to deny that his principles involved a trade-off with compassion for rape victims he came up with the unscientific myth that the bodies of women subjected to rape can shut down a pregnancy. 
 It was a telling moment of denial, much like the comforting myth that there is no such thing as climate change or, if there is, that humans are not involved. Ensconced in a parallel world of conservative news sources and conservative arguments, all manner of comforting alternative visions of reality surfaced during the 2012 election. Many, like Mr Akin's outburst, involved avoiding having to think about unwelcome things (often basic science or economics). 
Robyn Williams: That from The Economist magazine last week. These distortions of science are far from trivial. Our neglect of what may be clear and urgent problems could be catastrophic.

Yes, Newman is so dumb he can't even understand the implications of metaphorical speech, as deployed by Williams in that first par.

And here's the company he's keeping, according to a website reported by Taylor:

“STT thinks that the wind industry is well and truly on the ropes, but our ‘never say die until it’s dead and buried’ attitude means we won’t be happy until there is a garlic-coated crucifix driven through the heart of this rort-ridden scam of the century. Turn up, be loud and take our country back. Let 18 June 2013 be a day the Coalition won’t forget.” 

Garlic-coated crucifix! Yep, there's some knock-down scientific imagery for you. And better still?

Coalition senators Chris Back and Ron Boswell and backbencher Craig Kelly are scheduled to attend the rally. 

Yes, in a few days, the loons will be on parade, and what will be truly interesting is the way Tony "climate science is crap" Abbott responds to the hysteria.

Oh there's a hard rain going to fall.

Second thoughts, it's all too hard. Can we just do a joke about squirrels, or spatchcocks?

Take it away David Pope, and while you're at it, perhaps we could have a joke about aluminium tin foil hats?

(Below: More Pope here. But was there enough garlic in the mix?)