More news of simpering hagiographers ...

(Above: let's hear it for hagiography)


There are hagiographers to the left of the pond ... hagiographers to the right ... hagiographers everywhere ...

Well perhaps not to the left, and certainly not of a republican bent.

Yep, once again Sydney has offered up the nauseating spectacle of royal fever, and this for a lad who thus far has distinguished himself sporting a Nazi uniform and displaying the royal jewels in Vegas, when unfortunately what happened in Vegas refused to stay in Vegas ...

He also indulged in a little pot-smoking and under-age drinking, not that there's much wrong with that, except when the commentariat go into a frenzy, berating young 'uns for being dissolute and irresponsible and drug-fiends and a disgrace, and in my day and so on and so forth ... and then promptly falling into a simpering frenzy about Prince Harry ...

They were all at it ...

Over at monarchists HQ, they were gushing and going gooey eyed about the royal drug and sex fiend (and nothing wrong with that unless you happen to be a republican drug and sex fiend).

You can join them if you like, here, and click through to the videos, and possibly learn how Australia is a crowned republic, or at least learn how to spout humbug and nonsense ...

None of them were inclined to show the royals showing the youff of today the way forward, and so that lot falls to the pond as it goes into a tabloid frenzy worthy of the dunghill known as the UK press:

And so on and so forth and never mind the ragheads or the Pakis or other jolly terms applied to chums having fun, because everything's a jolly jape when you're filthy rich and royal and an entire town simpers and fawns over you, including that fawner in chief, Australia's PM ...

So while we're on a tabloid roll - the pond so rarely gets a chance, what with all the idle chatter of Sartre and Wittgenstein and the deeper contextual meanings of Finnegan's Wake  - what should turn up this Sunday for amusement?

What's that you say? It's the one-time frothing and foaming frenzied Akker Dakker turned court hagiographer in High hopes for a low-key Abbott.

Oh sure, it had its high points, including this:

Even the most committed Labor supporters working in the Fairfax press had to backtrack on their predictions of diplomatic failure and begrudgingly admit that Abbott’s visit had been an outstanding success.


This at the very moment the lizards at the Terror were busy recyling yet another outburst from Peter van Onselen, who had already railed at Dear Leader in the lizard Oz by claiming he showed steroidal chutzpah in Indonesia:

The thought of this de facto Fairfaxian sneaking inside the News Corp tent and spouting heresy naturally sent the Bolter into a frenzy, as you can read in Abbott damned after three weeks of not breaking promises, where in the usual way, the Bolter breaks the paywall and removes any need for himself to think ... by quoting lengthy slabs of the van Onselen piece.

What a cheap, sordid, reactive, trading off, blogger he is, as low and as common as the pond ...

Which leads the pond to an aside and a note to the editor of the Daily Terror.

Dude, dude, this breaching of the paywall simply has to stop. And it's not just the Bolter, it's you.

You see, you can read Akker Dakker's hagiographic simpering for free in his blog - which is what we've linked to above - yet if you click on it in the opinion section, you cop this:

Dude, dude, can't you see how fucked in the head, what a muddle-headed wombat approach it is, to ask for registration in one section of the rag, and yet in another provide free, easy and wide open access without even a hint of news+?

Get a grip of yourself, you deadbeat bum ... either give up paywall and let the simpering Akker Dakker roam free, or give up the blogs ...

Meanwhile, back to the main theme, it's great fun that the News Corp mob are arguing and bickering amongst themselves,  and at such an early stage of Dear Leaders reign, and it makes the conclusion to Akker Dakker's hagiography all the funnier:

Barely a month since the election and the Abbott government is establishing its style. 
Not the flash-and-trash that marked Labor but a solid, unostentatious down-to-earth professional approach that bodes well for the nation’s future.

Establishing its style?

Why yes, and over at the Fairfaxians, it seems the style is all Bollywood a go go:

Whimsically The Age presented it with a more satirical edge:

You can read the story yourself here (forced video at end of link), but it would seem, on the surface and as deep as you can go in the shallow end of the pool to be a sublime example of shameless rorting, with Barners, MP for Hicksville, aka Tamworth, once the centre of the known universe, excelling himself.

It's such a delight, the pond feels compelled to quote The Age quoting the mighty member:

After a private jet flew him to Malaysia, Mr Joyce claimed a $5500 flight home for him and his wife from Kuala Lumpur. 
The day of the flight, Mr Joyce met Malaysian officials at noon and at 3pm before flying home at 10pm. 
"My study period in this country was only of one day's duration," Mr Joyce wrote in an obligatory report about his study tour, "but it was of great assistance in familiarising myself with Malaysia". 
Mr Joyce summarised his top five findings in the opening page of his report. The first read: "Malaysia has recently experienced high levels of economic growth, which has created urban cities comparable in wealth to cities in developed countries." 
Mr Joyce's second major finding was that economic disadvantage in Malaysia remained, particularly in rural areas. 
Some of the insights Mr Joyce gleaned appear to have come outside of meetings: "Proximate to Kuala Lumpur and running to Singapore are substantial freeways that would look quite in place in an Australian major capital city." 
Mr Joyce completed his piece, writing: "In summary, water is wealth, housing is health and roads bring the progression of social services."

It is, of course, an epic fail. Not a single word about catching the monorail, getting off at Pasar Seni to buy a cheap watch in China Town, or getting off at Masjid Jamek to visit Little India, and not a word about visiting the Petronas twin towers - pretty much all you need to do in Kuala Lumpur for a cliched tourist overview garnered on a one day stopover junket.

Junket! At the taxpayers' expense

Instead we're offered a painful essay of the kind a year ten student could cobble together from a wiki page ....

Oh yes, the Abbott government is quietly establishing its style, and thanks to Barners, MP for hicksville, what a style it is ...

Shades of Orwell, as the new pigs show just as much enthusiasm for the trough as the old pigs. Or should that be elephants?

(Below: Nicholson getting it right in 2011. More Nicholson here).

Lies, damned lies, or incompetent journalists incapable of reporting what was said? The pond merely reports and you decide ...

The lie, the damned lie - funny how speakers in tongues often speak with a furry forked tongue - is in this story, Coalition 'never had a policy of towing boats back', says Scott Morrison.

What to make of this then?

Which inter alia includes this at the end of the story:

Asked whether the tow-back policy had been through shadow cabinet, shadow treasurer Joe Hockey told reporters in Brisbane: "It is our position to go ahead with that."

So either Joe Hockey was totally clueless back when quoted by AAP 28th March 2013, here, or he was a total liar, pants on bloody fire. Or News and AAP got it totally wrong.

How about we wheel in the Fairfaxians, here:

Inter alia in that story:

One senior Australian official said it was obvious it would be impossible to tow back boats and have a constructive relationship with Jakarta. ''It would take the relationship off a cliff,'' the official said. 
The refusal of the crew of a boat to return to Indonesia when ordered on Wednesday had the opposition saying again yesterday it would tow back boats where safe to do so, whereas the government's policy had been shown to be impotent. 
Mr Abbott said a Coalition government would back the navy using whatever ''steps that are necessary to get that boat turned around''.

Clearly the Fairfaxians were eating mushrooms, or on crack ...

In fact you can spend hour upon pleasant hour romping through the "turn back the boats" headlines that littered the rags during 2012 and 2013 as the hairy chested tub-thumping Abbott went about his Dr. No impersonation.

Now the pond doesn't mind that he's "softened his rhetoric" and changed his mind - that was on the cards all the time.

No, it's the shameless lies about the shamelessness and stupid policies that's the problem here, and Scott "speaking in forked tongues" Morrison is more shameless than most.

But look, let's not worry about the crack-sucking journos, let's go to the horse's mouth:

Within a week of taking office, I would go to Indonesia to renew our cooperation against people smuggling. I would, of course, politely explain to the Indonesian government that we take as dim a view of Indonesian boats disgorging illegal arrivals in Australia as they take of Australians importing drugs into Bali. 
Within a week of taking office, I would give new orders to the navy that, where it is safe to do so, under the usual chain-of-command procedures, based on the advice of commanders-on-the-spot, Indonesian flagged, Indonesian crewed and Indonesian home-ported vessels without lawful reason to be headed to Australia would be turned around and escorted back to Indonesian waters. (address to IPA, here)

Quibble time?

Turned around and escorted back isn't quite the same as towed, though with a broken engine, towing might be the only way to turn around and escort back ...

Still, there's wriggle room, so here's where the words were put straight to Abbott and he accepted them with equanimity:

CHRIS UHLMANN: Your policy on this, on tow-back, says that it requires a commitment from the return country not to return asylum seekers to a place from which they claim to be fleeing persecution. Do you have that kind of commitment from Indonesia? 

Drum roll please, standing by for the Abbott denial that there's absolutely no policy on tow-backs:

 TONY ABBOTT: Well, that's the commitment that we expected under the Howard Government and there is no evidence that the Indonesian Government did refoule (sic) people in the past. We have no reason to think they wouldn't be prepared to enter into the same kind of understandings again. 
CHRIS UHLMANN: And yet the head of the Indonesian people smuggling taskforce said recently that tow-backs were inhumane and dangerous. 
TONY ABBOTT: And we managed to get a good arrangement with Indonesia in the past, and there's no reason, particularly under President Yudhoyono, why we couldn't have a good arrangement in the future. (7.30, with actual talking and smirking pictures)

Yes, you could, if you like spend endless hours of fun going through the various sayings of the horse's mouth, and the horse's arse for that matter, and no matter how you spin the resulting horseshit, it still comes out the same way ...

You have of course a choice. Tony Abbott is a clueless idiot who didn't know what he was saying, or he's a liar, liar pants on fire ...

Already the hagiographers are busy spinning webs of deceit, and wouldn't you know one of them is the Bolter:

Prime Minister Tony Abbott never promised or threatened to “tow back” boats to Indonesia, a dangerous manouvre which, if done without Indonesian permission , would also breach Indonesian sovereignity.  (sic, so and fuckwittedly spelled thus) (How the ABC frames Tony Abbott)

It is of course completely preposterous and utterly stupid, because these days a little idle Googling will catch the lie in a nano-second.

Why do they bother?

It seems the utter shamelessness has got up the nose of hapless Peter van Onselen, who this very day decided he couldn't stand the fraud and scribbled Jakarta-friendly Abbott is chutzpah on steroids for the reptiles at  the lizard Oz (no link, you might get led into the world of lizard Oz "lite").

He started it off this way:

Tony Abbott's visit to Indonesia has largely been hailed as a success. That can only be true if honour in politics no longer matters, because the aspects of the visit which have been praised saw our new Prime Minister backflip on his entire raison d'etre from opposition. 
Julia Gillard's carbon tax about-face after the 2010 election may have been politically stupid, but the "new" Abbott we saw in Indonesia was chutzpah on steriods. 
He lamented the unnecessarily inflated rhetoric surrounding the issue of boat arrivals, blaming all sides for escalating statements. But it was Abbott, personally, who quite deliberately ramped up rhetoric in opposition: presumably to score cheap political points as well as to minimise the chances of Labor "solutions" to boat arrivals actually working.

Honour in politics? He's joking, isn't he?

Never mind, the woeful lickspittle fellow-travelling van Onselen suddenly seems to have discovered a sense of outrage which remained dormant for years.

Van Onselen spends the rest of his piece bemoaning Abbott's inflated rhetoric on the deeply flawed policies of turn-backs and buy-backs, and the code of secrecy surrounding the new operations, and Abbott saying one thing to the Indonesians and another to the domestic audience, even proposing that this speaking with forked tongues might see the nation being profoundly misled by its leaders, as if Abbott had never misled the nation during his time in opposition.

How feeble it is for van Onselen to note that Abbott has changed his tune on a number of matters, and for a conclusion he delivers a sound spanking with a wet lettuce:

...none of this dampens what adjusting into the role of PM has meant for Abbott. It highlights the single-minded approach he took from opposition: acting as a deliberate wrecker of government policy in the pursuit of power. 
Australians should be glad that opposition leader Abbott has been put out to pasture and Prime Minister Abbott is acting like a leader (aside from curtailing oversight and scrutiny). But if we want our political discourse to rise above what it became in the past three years, at the next election he must be held to account for what he promised before he became PM. He said he would stop the boats, pay back the debt and scrap the carbon tax. These are easy enough key performance indicators by which to hold him to account. 
To borrow Abbott-style inflammatory rhetoric: if he fails in these three tasks, our 28th Prime Minister deserves to be skinned alive at the next election.

The time, of course, to have called Abbott to account was when he was spreading his inflammatory rhetoric around the land, and how dismally van Onselen failed at the job, lining up with the other reptiles to welcome an Abbott victory.

Now here you go.

Explain this header for the Bolter.

It would seem that the reptiles at the lizard Oz simply didn't have a clue, or they were peddling lies ... why else would they see a glimmer of hope in the notion that Jakarta might be open to tow-backs on the 16th July 2013?

Yep, you read it first on the pond. The Bolter trashes the lizards.

Perhaps we should have used the header How The Australian frames  Tony Abbott ...

The absurdity of the certain ... and the Bolter ... and the rest of the pack ... and no offence intended ...

(Above: read on, some other precipitations to follow Michael Maslin's exemplary cartoon for The New Yorker. More here).


It was Stanley Baldwin, with possibly a tip of the hat to Rudyard Kipling, who famously said:

"What the proprietorship of those papers is aiming at is power, and power without responsibility - the prerogative of the harlot through the ages".

Now it's perhaps tad unfortunate to smear harlots this way, but allowing that in 1931 harlots enjoyed less acceptance than sex workers, the point is true enough.

And while we're quoting, how about this internet meme?

Which brings us to this from the Bolter:

... the divide isn’t between those who accept the science and those who don’t. Science does not speak with one voice on this matter, although the consensus now is that sceptical positions I’ve argued have indeed proved correct - on the warming pause, cyclones, Antarctic ice spread and more. It seems to me it’s actually been the warmists who have not “accepted the science” in these matters.

Yes, it's bizarro world and it's a near run thing between absurdity and the completely delusional.

The Bolter rounded off a long rant about climate science with this outburst:

Neither Lomborg nor I “deny” the science. There is little difference in our opinion on the latest IPCC report. The IPCC report actually confirmed our scepticism. (here)

It's why the pond, though it occasionally tries, can't really be bothered reading the Bolter. It's like engaging with a petulant child ... black is white and naah naah, and a flurry of graphs, and the Bolter is on board with the IPCC.

Roll that one around on your tongue. We don't deny the science, we think the IPCC report confirmed our scepticism ...

Oh wash out your mouth with soap, scribbled as it is by a preening, posturing, raging blogger with the scientific credentials of a gnat. Oh apologies to gnats, along with harlots ...

Which brings us today to the ever reliable Chris Kenny. Now the only reason the pond even began to think of Chris Kenny is that it seems he's still agitated about the Chaser lads, as you can read in Chris Kenny to pursue Chaser team over dog skit despite ABC ruling.

So the pond decided to click on today's weekend piece with the usual predictable nonsense embedded the header Maginot Line protects Tony Abbott from leftist snipings of 'love media'.

Yippee, it's gold bar free. Kenny bilge for free ...

Yep, what really caught the eye was the allegedly "gold bar" free status of the piece, but of course when you click on it, it turns out to be a bit of bait and switch:

Gotcha.

That's how desperate and pathetic the reptiles at the lizard Oz are these days - any fraudulent misrepresentation to get you to sign up to "lite access", which the pond will never do, though lo, a thousand "nites" might pass ...

Anyway, thanks to the ruckus, the pond's attention was somehow drawn to this critique of Kenny, which might be old news to some but which the pond missed while on its OS junket to Honkers and beyond (oh darlings, you would have loved it so):

Kenny is a staunchly neo-conservative, anti-progress, anti-worker defender of the status quo. He is an unrelenting apologist for the Liberal Party. He was one of Alexander Downer’s senior advisers at the time of the Iraq War. He’s been known to argue for stubborn, sightless inaction on climate change. He spits at anyone concerned with such trivialities as gender equality, environmental issues or labour rights from his Twitter account on a daily basis. Recently, he characterised criticism of the lack of women in Tony Abbott’s Cabinet as a continuation of the Left’s “gender wars”. He is a regular and fervent participant in The Australian’s numerous ongoing bully campaigns against those who question its editorial practices and ideological biases. The profoundly irresponsible, dishonest, hate-filled anti-multiculturalist Andrew Bolt has recently referred to Kenny on his blog as “a friend”. 
And it’s a jokey picture of a bestial embrace that I should be afraid of discovering online?

Indeed. And if you want the links embedded in that piece by Kenny's son, Liam Kenny, scribbling for Junkee, you need to head off here.

Truth to tell, it's not as if the Chaser lads can't point to right wing inspirations. There are the many cartoons by Larry Pickering, which never seem to produce outrage, but a kind of tolerant bemusement in the commentariat - the pond refuses to run them - and even Bill Leak has caught the eye in the past:

Not that there's anything wrong with anal (or oral or missionary come to think of it), though it was mentioned in despatches in Leunig and Good Taste way back in 2006 on Media Watch.

It's remarkable that there's been so much yammering in recent days about how the Liberal party and George Brandis are the true guardians of free speech and a free press, and in the very same breath, the Fairfaxians and the ABC are cast into the burning fires of hell for their outrageous ways.

Wouldn't it be simpler to let it go? Not really, not when you're one-eyed and slagging off one side is fair game, but there are cries of fair dibs when the other side is given a poke in the eye (or a poke somewhere else).

The pond thinks it's part of an unhealthy obsession with the ABC, but truth to tell, that's probably because large slabs of the commentariat can't actually stand to watch or listen to commercials - catch Gerard Henderson getting agitated about the squawkings of the parrot when there's the ABC to demonise?

But back to Kenny junior, who got up a splendid head of steam, and then let the whistle blow loud and long:

Like clockwork, and in the unlikely company of the ABC’s Media Watch, the Murdoch newspapers have taken up the question of just how this image could possibly have been allowed to go to air. In what is perhaps the most idiotic contribution, The Australian’s ‘Cut And Paste’ section has asked whether prominent feminist Anne Summers is as offended by this joke as she was by the sexual vilification of former PM Julia Gillard. To equate the two things is a ridiculous move, typical of the desperate, flat-earth refusal in some corners of liberalism to acknowledge the existence of gender politics. Involving Summers in this episode for no sound reason is transparent ideological sniping. In the Daily Telegraph, the always yawn-inducing Tim Blair suggested that Kenny would be treated much more kindly by the public broadcaster if he were an Islamic terrorist — flogging an excruciatingly worn out, tired slur. 

The always yawn-inducing Tim Blair! Why here's a man who makes the pond sound feeble and in its dotage. But do go on:

In the Herald Sun, populist torch-bearer Bolt has demanded to know why ABC managing director Mark Scott has allowed this deterioration of standards to occur on his watch. Standards in media and cultural sensitivity, of course, being Bolt’s twin areas of expertise. ‘The Left’ is often characterised by those who appoint themselves as its opponents as lacking a sense of humour, too ‘politically correct’ and too self-righteous to lighten up and take a joke. 
No doubt Kenny, Bolt and Blair would argue that the difference in this case is that tax-payers fund the ABC, and should not have to hand over their hard-earned cash for this type of trash. And I tend to agree. Let’s see the ABC give back every cent of what it cost them to use Photoshop for thirty seconds. Maybe I’ll spend the spare change on a bus to go see the Great Barrier Reef before it, like the Chaser’s dog, is completely fucked in the arse.

Again you'll have to go to the original piece here to get the embedded links in the piece and relish the comments - 258 when the pond dropped in - but by golly the pond likes the cut of this Kenny's jib.

Now the fact that he's Kenny's son has really nothing to do with it, except for those quaint old duffers who still like to blather on about patriarchal lineage. If anything, Kenny might claim to have sired someone able to think for themselves and deliver a "fucked in the arse" joke with some flair and style ... let alone ...

Standards in media and cultural sensitivity, of course, being Bolt’s twin areas of expertise.

Yep, it's not the patriarchal lineage, it's the style, and as a result, the pond felt no need to circumvent the bait and switch routines of the lizard Oz, and get around the "lite" begging bowl, and actually read Kenny senior this day, and what a relief and a pleasure that is, because no doubt it's full of the usual carping, angry, bitter nonsense.

Instead the pond went to bed last night chortling, and woke up the same way this morning, and it's all thanks to Kenny.

In its own way the piece is an eerie mirror reverse of the current war engulfing the Daily Mail and its attempt to blame the Miliband son for the Miliband father, and blame the British Navy serving Jewish father in ways that were shamelessly and fatuously wrong, and which is producing ongoing fallout likely to continue for weeks.

You might well like to catch up on Alastair Campbell monstering Jon Steafel on the BBC's Newsnight. The pond usually has very little time for Campbell, after his dubious sexed up service for the war monger Blair, but it takes a feral to take out a feral ... and poor old Steafel looks like a British badger caught in a Conservative culling program ...

Great entertainment here.

And then Neil Kinnock came out in Mail attack in Ed Miliband worse than anything I faced, says Neil Kinnock. Senior Tories have jumped on the Mail, and all sorts of politicians have come to Miliband's defence, and some have leaped to the rag's defence by asserting that while the piece might be absolutely outrageous tosh, it's the right of British rags to publish contemptible, outrageous tosh ...

It's all terribly English, a kind of thumping and agitation with kippers and toast at ten paces, and it's kept the pond entranced for days ...

Oh yes, there might be something to be said for patriarchal lineage after all ... and no offence intended ...

(Below: and here's how they did cartooning in the old days, with this example from Punch in 1937. The text below A queer fairy story, or, the babes in the war-wood reads Italian newspapers have charmingly expressed the opinion that the rearmament of Democracies is becoming a menace to the peace-loving Dictators of Europe, with the cartoon showing Stanley  Baldwin and Leonard Blum dragging a terrified Hitler and Mussolini through the armed woods).

It's horse head awards time ...

The pond knows that it's beyond Huff Post to recycle Huff Post as it recycles everything else, but hey there's knockdown self-reflexive reflexiveness for you, and besides that actual remark tickled the pond pink, or red, or whatever colour you fancy ...

Yep, it's truly amazing that Rep Marlin Stutzman, R - Indiana actually said it (here), and thereby instantly achieved his 15 minutes of Warholian fame - House Republican Tries, Fails to Put Out the "Don't Know" Mess He Made.

But let's not be hasty, because Stutzman has actually clarified a feeling at the pond.

The pond feels disrespected all the time - young punks with no respect and too much attitude - and get the fuck off my lawn - and in the spirit of Stutzman, we've decided to order a hundred horses' heads, since it seems the activities of the Mafia and politicians is in perfect synch - except, you might propose, that the Mafia usually knows what it wants when embarking on a shakedown...

Now we aim to get something out of the horses' heads, though we're not sure what it is, but hey, let the horses' heads flow.

First horse head heads off to that headless ass Barnaby Joyce.

Dear old Barners, already well down the path confirming Tamworth's burgeoning reputation as home to hicksville hypocrites:

No need to link to the reptiles at the lizard Oz playing their new "lite" games - no gold bar in sight but access to site barred unless you hand over personal details - so why not just read Joyce pulls in his horns on foreign land buys.

Even more astonishing the deal involves an Indonesian company, and we all - good xenophobes all - know that the boat people are entirely the fault and the responsibility of the wretched Indonesians.

Now the next time you stage a redneck wedding, make sure you sling Barners a couple of shekels to sing a song about how Australia is being sold off to duplictous furriners, or otherwise the taxpayer might have to pick up the cost of the petrol - Barnaby Joyce admits he may have claimed petrol costs for a second wedding visit.

The second horse's head of the day is an easy one, and if we'd come up with the idea earlier - where were you Rep Stutzman, where were you when you were needed - Graham "Gra Gra" Richardson would have a wall littered with horses' heads:

Indeed.

Provided at some point Graham Richardson does an interview where he faces up to the reasons many people can't stand him, not for a nano second.

Was it the Rene Rivkin matter wot did it? Was it the undeclared Swiss bank account containing $1.4 million? Was it the Offset Alpine affair? Was it the dispute with the Tax Office? Was it the affair of the cash for comment scandal? Was it his constant interference in the federal Labor party's affairs long after he'd turned into a shock jock? Or was it the stench surrounding the NSW Labor party? Or did it simply happen when he became a quisling lickspittle fellow traveller with the rest of the lizards in Murdoch la la land (and more on Gra Gra at his wiki here).

Sleep safely Richo, the pond is transporting your horse's head to a Swiss bank vault this very day.

Speaking of quislings, this effort by Mike Quigley surely deserves a horse's head:

That's a supremely rich call for a man who fucked up the roll out ...

Now by this time you're possibly saying that the pond is being too selective, but let's face it, Eddie Obeid has a roomful of horses' heads - he buys his own - and there's no point giving one to Leighton, since everybody knows it's only union corruption that excites the imaginations of the lizards at reptile central.

No, what we're looking for this Friday are truly eccentric outbursts of pique.

Come on down Paul Keating:

Now we know that the Bolter is an opera lover, keening and moaning into his red wine about the way love brings together the ice princess and Prince Calàf ... when he's not keening and moaning about SBS daring to show a different world to the one he favours, as you'd expect from someone who seems to toys, just below the surface, with a crypto-fascist desire to ban people, ideas, and reporting of same if any of it happens to offend the Bolter...

Better to be not seen and not heard than agitate the Bolter ...

So a blow against opera would by extension be something of a blow to the Bolter, if he only lived in Sydney.

But all the same, Keating has gone a tad funny of late, as you can read in Keating attacks harbourfront operas  if you've been tending your Fairfax hits ...

If a few harbourside operas attracts his ire, what on earth does he make of the rampant militaristic naval display which will see the entire Sydney CBD in lock down mode for the weekend?

Everybody's gone barking mad - "so many ships" - even sometimes sensible people like Mike Carlton - and it's already started and soon enough the whole joint will be closed off, the CBD shut down, and the harbour with it - for a display which conjures up memories of British imperialism and the ruling of the waves (and never mind the acidification of the oceans).

Eek!

(More useless maps here).

Now deep down the pond doesn't mind - ever since the pond learned naval captains favoured wearing frocks in moments of crisis, we've had a soft spot for the navy.

Spectacle? Go for it ...

Two dogs fucking? Shut down the harbour and bung on the fireworks ...

So what on earth is Keating yabbering on about so selectively?

Mr Keating said Opera Australia artistic director Lyndon Terracini told him in a phone conversation that "opera-goers enjoy the opera more with the cross-water lit city panorama as the backdrop" - a claim Mr Terracini denies. 
"This is an admission by the artistic director that, on these occasions, he is unable to stage a sufficiently attractive and engaging opera performance without appropriating public view from public land," Mr Keating said.

This from the man who almost single-handedly helped stuff up Barangaroo, which bids fair to outdo Laurie Brereton's spectacular efforts at Darling Habour, so little loved it's already being given a revamp, thereby ensuring that new money will be wasted as spectacularly as the old ...

The pond offers it all as yet another spectacular example of Sydney parochialism and old class wars, a free kick for people living in Hobart, or Perth or Adelaide and forced to endure the snickers and sniggers of a Sydney given to superior airs.

It turns out that Keating, deliberately, conflated the upper class world of opera with the other activities of the Royal Botanic Gardens and Domain Trust, and opera is the least of these:

Opera Australia has staged two operas at Mrs Macquarie's Chair - La Traviata and Carmen - and Madame Butterfly will be staged next year. Mr Terracini said the site was "open all day everyday to the public" and opera performances were held only at night, when the gardens were closed. Harbourfront performances drew many first-time opera goers, he said. ''It's a very good use of the landscape … and the facilities that Sydney has to offer.''

Indeed.

If it's good enough for Prince Harry and a flock of sailors - hello sailors - to gum up the works, then where's the harm in the opera bunging on the odd do?

Not in parochial Sydney, not with Paul Keating with a bee in his bonnet about the toffs and opera, and so he too scores a horse's head this Friday ...

(Below: same as it ever was, though maybe this time the punchline should be "I'm afraid you're gonna need a new economy").

The simplicity of hagiographic fawning, and yet another serve of wet lettuce ...

Beautiful, stunning, and elegant in its simplicity isn't it? 

The pond has always found a stray billion or two handy for simplicity, but the Twitter format simply doesn't reveal the real impact of the koan. 

Please allow the pond to expand the gnomic insight:

Simplicity

So much easier

And both more beautiful

And stronger

Leads closer

To Fairness For All

Now there's a poet who shows he doesn't have a single clue, and yet in showing that, reveals an enormous amount of insight. 

Let me tell you about the rich. They are different from you and me. (and more here on Fitzgerald and Hemingway)

Much disputation erupted in the Academy associated with the pond - many felt that "Simplicity" should have been replaced with "Senility", arguing that the original text had surely been corrupted, but the pond insists this is how it should read. No doubt supporters of the Earl of Oxford will continue to take a different view ...

As for the American crisis, the gnomic master had equally wonderful insights:

All win? Opening route to millions of jobs?

This from the man who in creating Fox News helped create political anarchy in the United States, and those damned Yankees still keep on trying to blame Australia, but he's an American citizen old chums.

You let him in, you gave him the green card, and the social security number, so just suck it up ...

And what do you know? It turns out he's just a hapless, senile old Frankenstein who wound up his Faux Noise monster, and let it,  and the Tea Party and all the rest of it loose, and now all he can do is tweet hapless twitter ...

Meanwhile, in Murdoch la la land on the other side of the planet, the work of the hagiographers going about their lickspittle fawning continues.

Please allow the pond to note in passing the excellent work of the current fawner-in-chief:

No link, just a screen cap, because there's strong medical evidence that too much fawning consumed in a single day can lead to constipation.

"Struck just the right note" is as far as it's safe to proceed, according to a gaggle of the pond's scientific advisors.

Oh indeed, let's not have any idle talk about turning back the boats, or towing back the boats, or buying back the boats, or paying Aussie spies to winkle out deviant Indonesian villagers and fisher folk ...

And whatever you do, please don't mention the Fairfaxians picking up on a story that enjoyed a brief life in Indonesia:

Lock him up, for the love of the long absent lord and Her firm position on thugs and law-breakers, and throw away the key ...

Lordy lordy, was it only a year or so ago that a fearsome completely fierce Abbott  was rumbling in the jungle with headers like We can turn back boats if we want, says Tony Abbott.

That piece is trapped behind the lizard Oz's wall of doom lite, so please allow the pond to quote from the fiery sermon:

Tony Abbott has hit back at Australia's nearest neighbour, saying Australia has every right to return asylum-boats back to Indonesia. 
Amid growing tensions between Jakarta and Australia's alternative government, the Opposition Leader said he would “absolutely” pursue the controversial tow-back policy in government.

"Absolutely" should here be strictly understood - courtesy of its dictionary definition - to mean "possibly", or "not terribly likely", or perhaps "absolutely, at least until I flew up to Indonesia a lion and then flew back a lamb".

There's more in that March 16th 2012 piece - in the light of the recent talks - which is either ironic or most amusing, or both if you like, as Abbott went about the business of blustering and grand-standing, and creating fear and paranoia while repeating his mantra of simple three word slogans:

“Let's not forget these are Indonesian flagged, Indonesian crewed, Indonesian home-ported vessels that are coming from Indonesia,” Mr Abbott told the Nine Network. “Of course they can go back to Indonesia. They've done it before, they can do it again.” 
The Coalition is set for a showdown with Jakarta after the opposition vowed to press ahead with its controversial plan to tow back asylum boats, despite Indonesia's Foreign Minister Marty Natalegawa describing the policy as "impossible". 
 Yesterday, Dr Natalegawa dealt a hammer blow to a key plank of the Coalition's border protection policies - boat tow-backs - saying the plan was an exercise in burden-shifting and would be unacceptable to Indonesia.

Showdown? Yep, that's how you describe the lion laying down with the lamb ...

Now you can see what Sheridan meant by "hitting the right note".

You need the same dictionary which contained that definition of "absolutely".

The right note:  lie down and roll over, swallow your previous words, and your previous policies and your blustering, bullying ways, kowtow, cave in, pander, prostrate, knuckle under, fawn, say uncle,  toe the mark, and so on and so forth ...

But will anyone care?

Not the hagiographers in Murdoch land, busy basking in the reflected glow from their hero in action. Sure he said the impossible and claimed the impossible while in Opposition, but to tell lies to get power ... why it's admirable in its simplicity ...

But it does remind the pond of a recurring gripe out here in social media nihilist anarchist land.

The mainstream media (yes, there's a temptation to erupt into SM babble about the LSM) routinely castigates the dark side of the intertubes for their wildcat ways ...

Paul Sheehan, for example, loves to berate the dark side of the web.

And it's true, if you head off to neo-Nazi sites like Stormfront, or other rabid parts of the web, you get exactly what you expect ... racist madness, or a looniness which would turn the pond into a tsunami.

But really, the ratbags are able to take their lessons from their alleged betters, whether it's Derryn Hinch once again breaching a court order (here), and using as an excuse others in the MSM also were alleged to have done it ...

Or aspirational parrots like Ray Hadley repeating an untruth from the tabloid gutter Daily Terror ...

And what does he cop for his trouble?

A severe spanking with a wet lettuce by ACMA.

Because that's yesterday's news and Swannie is now a feather duster - well at least a plucked chook - and it's all too late and whatever damage was done is now long gone.

The ACMA is in discussions with 2GB about remedial measures. (here at Radio Today).

"Remedial measures"?

It's the beginning of October 2013, the broadcast in which Hadley dishonestly accused Swan of dishonesty took place on 25th June 2012, and now we're settling down to discuss "remedial measures"?

WTF? The children have long ago consumed their fruit snacks and bottles of water thanks to the Parliament House hospitality program, and have moved on, while Hadley - who has attracted attention in the past for his bullying of his staff - continues on his merry parrot ways.

This is why the shock jocks and the Murdoch press routinely sail as close to the wind or past the wind as much as they like, because they can  just throw the wet lettuce in a salad, and then eat the steak instead ...

Never mind, but next time you hear someone talk about the wild excesses and dangers of anarchist social media, point them in the direction of the self-regulated Murdochians and assorted parrots of a right-wing ratbag persuasion ... and then make them eat a wet lettuce salad without benefit of any dressing down.

But speaking of Hadley, as thick as the neck of your average 'brick with eyes' thugby league footballer - soon coming to a Senate near you - it's grand final week in Sydney, and the pond has been challenged to make a stand.

And so we cheerfully recycle this image which did the Facebook rounds a week ago:

Of blinking Abbots, predictable vixens, confusionist Lomborgs and fascist skeletons in the Mail's attic ...

(Above: more David Rowe here).


So Tony Abbot blinked ...

Abbot?

Well we take our cue from the mighty Jakarta Post:

What a creepy, crawly, fawning, simpering, apologetic, back-stabbing performance it was, the little the pond bothered to check out, so now it will be up to Scott "blathering in tongues" Morrison to stiffen the spine, and pretend the mad policies trotted out to the electorate can and will actually be implemented.

All the Abbot did was dissemble about his previous rhetoric and kick the can down the road so that he could emerge a cleanskin, proclaiming peace in his time, and leaving the mopping up and the dirty work to others. As a strategy, it's not much of a strategy ...

It was an old saw in Tamworth - oh if we could only mention Tamworth, now it's Barnaby "hicksville, attending weddings is a real job of work" Joyce la la land - that a bully would, like a cur, turn and show tail when exposed to a larger force ...

The preferred form of words, should you care to employ them, is "softening the rhetoric":

Well played reptiles, good job.

Yep, statesman Tony is softening the rhetoric, and never mind that it was the vile rhetoric that helped create the sense of a national emergency and a national panic.

Now strangely past, once those born to rule once again get to rule ...

Naturally the make-up department at the lizard oz was busy applying lavish amounts of pancake, with this the best spin of all from Paul Kelly:

Those damned elites again!

And what do you know, after all that arse-licking, the Indonesian elite might well squander the opportunity that the splendid, gracious, generous, giving Abbot has offered them ...

Have you ever seen spin disappear so quickly up its own fundament? And the Murdochian hagiographers keep beavering away ...

What else?

Well today Dame Slap takes to frumpy Angela Merkel, which allows a side-swipe at Julia Gillard, as per the header Gillard's not a patch on Merkel (sorry, no links to the lizard Oz lite, it can only lead to tears).

For what it's worth, here's the Dame Slap punchline:

Merkel is no Margaret Thatcher; the German Chancellor mystifies people more for her lack of vision. That said, Merkel is a refreshing contrast to our first female prime minister. Merkel has never tried to trade on the fact she is a woman or the first female Chancellor of Germany. There have been no confected gender wars or no attention-seeking claims about misogyny. Unlike during Julia Gillard's short time in office, there have been no leaked internal memos during Merkel's many years in office explaining how to play the female card for political purposes. 
She has outlasted and outperformed our own female prime minister, and when Merkel retires to write her memoirs, they will likely make for a more intriguing read than the ones being written now by Gillard.

Yes and likely enough they'll be more entertaining than reading Dame Slap who is, in Russ Meyer terms, now beyond the valley of the predictable vixen.

Will the reptiles at the lizard Oz ever let Gillard go?

Probably not, they'll clutch her to their literary bosoms like well-worn rag dolls until it's their time to go to college ... how else to explain a negative review of a book yet to be written or read?

Meanwhile, the reaction of the reptiles at the lizard Oz to the most recent news in climate science is reassuringly predictable:

Now the pond has long ago given up on Lomborg and his home away from home amongst the reptiles at the lizard Oz, so please allow a lengthy quotation from another source:

Ever since his controversial (and error-ridden) 2001 book, The Skeptical Environmentalist, Lomborg has minimized the threat posed by global warming, arguing that – while he claims to accept the science documenting that the planet is warming – it is far from a top priority for humanity to confront. 
He argued then, as he does to this day, that the environment has improved over the past few decades and industry has cleaned up its act so there is no need to implement new regulations to curb carbon pollution. (Of course, he ignores the fact that it was 1970s-era environmental regulations that brought about such air and water quality improvements by forcing industry to clean up its act a bit.) 
In Lomborg’s home country, the Danish Committee on Scientific Dishonesty reviewed the 2001 book and identified a litany of dishonest practices, ranging from “Fabrication of data; Selective discarding of unwanted results (selective citation); Deliberately misleading use of statistical methods; Plagiarism; and Deliberate misinterpretation of others’ results.” 
Ironically, the Committee decided it couldn’t reprimand Lomborg because he lacked any inkling of credibility or training in the climate sciences, so they took pity on him and absolved him of responsibility for his errors. And boy, were there errors! An independent review by Danish scientist Kare Fog documented 319 specific errors, exaggerations or logical flaws in The Skeptical Environmentalist. 
Undeterred by such a thorough debunking, Lomborg used the book to launch a lucrative career on the speaking circuit, especially popular among the Exxon- and Koch Industries-funded climate denier crowd, which loved his efforts to convince people that climate change was too expensive to address and that everyone should focus attention elsewhere on 'more pressing' problems. (Bjorn Lomborg's Climate Confusionist Spin is Never Ending, with links, and there's more on the fuss at his wiki here).

Indeed, and Lomborg can always rely on a sale to our very own local Kochians, the Murdochians, and sure enough his interminable song remains exactly the same:

With its moderate tenor, the new IPCC report ought to make our debate more constructive. Instead of being scared silly and overreacting, we need to realise that global warming is just one of the 21st century's challenges, and one that we can address today with low-cost, realistic innovation.

Yep, no need to get alarmed, just carry on as usual, with a bit of R and D, and a little splash of cash, all will be well, and meanwhile, keep on shipping that coal and buggering up the reef ...

Total cost to Australia to sort it out? Why it's loose change, a snip at about $3bn, and guaranteed to provide a benefit about 500 times higher than present policies. (And as a bonus, it might well cure acne, and what a relief to teenagers).

As the pond's NZ friends might say, why that's as chup as chups.

You think the pond jests? Of course not:

We need to get realism back. Yes, global warming is happening. In the long run, it has an overall negative impact. Yet economic models generally find that moderate global warming is a net global benefit. Globally, cold is a far greater contributor to deaths than heat. With increasing temperatures, avoided cold deaths will vastly outweigh extra heat deaths. By mid-century, researchers estimate 400,000 more heat deaths but 1.8 million fewer cold deaths.

Why that's a net bonus of 1.4 million fewer corpses and to hell with the loss of fertiliser, and let's not forget soon we'll be able to routinely traverse the Northwest Passage, with coal for cargo!, and drill for oil in all sorts of places once judged too difficult ...

And so on and so forth, as sly a fifth columnist as ever you could expect to find in a columnist ... and finding a fitting home amongst the reptilian hagiographers ...

Speaking of fifth columns, at one point the pond thought of dedicating today to the Republicans of the United States, but how long can you spend saying people are barking mad?

Surely it's simpler to just call them barking mad, and let the caravan move on ... at least for a couple of weeks, until the Tea Party has an even better chance to reduce the world economy to a shambles ...

No, what caught the eye was the epic effort by the Daily Mail to smear and defame a dead man, who happened to be a Jew and happened to join the British navy to fight the Nazis in the second world war.

It was a vile attempt to get at Ed Miliband - an indication of how Miliband is closing the gap on Cameron - and it makes the vile parrot's vile local joke about Gillard's shamed father look like the effort of an Anglican vicar at a tea party.

The pond rarely links to the Daily Mail - lie down in the gutter long enough and you're sure to look like mud, not to mention the fleas - but you can read about the fuss here.

What the grotesque right wing rag did revive in the pond was memories of its days under Lord Rothermere, who famously disliked Jews, and famously supported appeasement, Oswald Mosley, the British black shirts (the BUF), the Nazis and Adolf Hitler.

Rothermere corresponded with and met Hitler, congratulated him on invading Czechoslovakia and encouraged him to invade Romania.

There's more at his wiki here, but how quixotic of the rag to berate Miliband's father for being a Brit-hating Marxist when they have such a mad uncle and former Hitler-loving fascist owner locked in the attic.

It could, with only a minor bit of distortion, be said that the Daily Mail is the Hugo Boss of British journalism ...

Does it help to dig through the past in this way? After all, the pond now is sometimes driven around in a Mercedes Benz, and in student days was known to use the Führer's pride and joy, the people's wagon ... and there's a Boss suit in the house ...

Not really - truth to tell, a heck of a lot of the upper class in Britain, all the way up to the royals - were Hitler lovers, but if the Mail is going to do it as a way of defaming a current politician, then everybody should be doing it ...

Because in the process they make a nonsense of the sort of defence mounted by Greenslade in Don't damn the Daily Mail for its fascist flirtation 80 years ago ...

Yes, damn the Daily Mail for its fascist flirtations and crypto-fascist instincts right now ...

(Below: what a fine figure of a fascist lover he made).

Defensiveness in, defensiveness out ...

(Above: damned Jesuits and Fiona Katauskas, found at Eureka Street).


First a little good news.

The Bolter and his wretched report barely cracked the 100k mark last Sunday - 105k for his first outing and 99k for the repeat. By way of contrast, Insiders did 167k, 94k and 51k for its various Sunday outings. (here)

Remember in the good old days when the Bolter was keen to boast how he was doing over the public broadcaster?

Amazingly even The Observer Effect managed 109k. There's clear evidence Ten would be better off running Ben and Holly's Little Kingdom or the Octonauts (both 250k for five city metros on multichannel ABC2)

The Bolter is now what the pond likes the think of as charity publishing - you keep a show on at a loss because someone on the board thinks the basket case is really a deserving charity case.

Maintain the rage! Bring back Video Hits!

Meanwhile, Media Watch was once again singularly entertaining, reporting on how the Daily Terror cheerfully picked up a story about aliens in the ether, and celebrating Alan "the parrot" Jones squawking in error about climate science under the apt, self-referential header Rubbish in, Rubbish Out.

The pond hadn't thought of the Lord of Monckton in ages, and how pleasing to learn he's still keeping company with the parrot and Bob Carter, all of them squawking away like a flock of Major Mitchells ... lah de dah, la la la ...

So many loons, so little time, which is why the pond appreciates it when a reader points out another member of the pond, in this case Jamie Briggs getting indignant, and proving once again - if confirmation was needed - that the Adelaide Hills are in a class of eccentricity all their own - as you can  check by reading Uniting Church backing for Inverbrackie detention centre angers Federal Government.

Never mind that it's a nonsense - Briggs talks about saving $40 million while the federal government is busy pissing billions against the gulag wall - it's the spirit of denialism that's alive and well in the hills.

The pond was so moved by Monsieur Briggs - it's surely just a coincidence that his name is a play on the word "brig", which perhaps is better than a play on keelhaul - that we headed off to his website, only to find a kind of time machine preserved in aspic:

Shadow parliamentary secretary for supporting families?

Yep, that's the header this 1st day of October, more than a few days after the 7th September election.

Things move slowly in Mt Barker, that's a fact, and clearly Monsieur Briggs' website moves at the same speed. Now there's a man who only needs copper for his connectivity. You can join him in the social media stone age here ...

But enough already, because today is a day for righteousness, boasting, preening and celebration.

Usually the pond is Uriah Heep-like in its modesty and forbearance, but we just have to mention that last Tuesday we were shattered that Gerard "prattling Polonius" Henderson had failed to address the matter of the Pellists and David Marr.

We predicted the smell of sardines would be irresistible to Polonius, and what do you know, knock the pond down with a feather, sure enough today the fiercely independent Fairfaxians have published yet another bulletin from the Sydney Institute defending the Pellists.

Never mind that it's late to arrive, as dated as a Jamie Briggs blog. It's what you can expect of Hendo's copper-wired mind, and happily the pond is looking forward tonight to the bottle of red it won.

But what a narrow squeak, saved only by a belated, narrow-minded squeak.

Oh dear, decisions, decisions, what to do, what to buy? Prattling Polonius, or a limited edition John Olsen print?

Well if you've saved your Fairfax hits, you can click for free on All smoke and no smoking gun: Cardinal Pell was quick to act on abuse claims.

Indeed, indeed, to be sure, to be sure, yes, yes, yes, the entire Catholic church was astonishingly reactive, active and procactive in the matter of all its scandals, and swept nothing under the carpet, and Cardinal Pell is a wonderful man, an astonishing human bean, and ...

Once again, it seems that the deviants and the perverts at the ABC are responsible, in their vile soft way, for people refusing to accept this modest truth:

Following the publication of his Quarterly Essay last week, titled The Prince: Faith, Abuse and George Pell, Marr received numerous - and overwhelmingly soft - interviews on the ABC. On September 23 he told Philip Clark on Radio National Breakfast that ''these two old followers of Bob Santamaria, now a cardinal and a prime minister'' are part of a political movement which ''is running the country in 2013''. 
Earlier in the interview, responding to Clark's claim that Pell is ''the prince or spiritual adviser to the leader of our country Tony Abbott'', Marr commented: ''It's a dream. It's a Medieval dream.'' Not really. It's a journalistic beat-up.

Indeed, indeed, to be sure, to be sure. Which is why you won't find any mention of Tony Abbott disremembering a visit with George Pell, as celebrated by The Chaser lads - how Hendo hates the lads - and still available on YouTube here.

Nor will you find Hendo quoting Tony Abbott on the matter of Bob Santamaria:

My first contact with what turned out to be the Santamaria movement was a school friend’s invitation, back in 1976, to attend a weekend course on the issues we might face at university. It was never entirely clear who had issued it or who was organising the conference but it was an impressive speakers’ list and some instinct whispered that this was not an opportunity to be missed. I arranged to tag along and have been under the Santamaria spell ever since. 
At times, I recoiled a little from the single-minded intensity of the activists I met. Still, some of them became more than friends. We came to share a brotherhood born of holding the same values, debating the same issues, confronting the same challenges, and suffering the same defeats. For Santamaria and those influenced by him, it wasn’t enough to have a point of view: it had to pass the highest ethical and intellectual tests. 
It wasn’t enough to have a sound philosophical position: it had to be applied to real life. “What is to be done?” was the one Marxist-Leninist interrogatory he took rigorously to heart. The result, at least for those close to him, was a life of constant intellectual and political struggle against the conventional wisdom of the day that almost inevitably seemed to fall short of his bracing ideals. There are people from that conference, and all the others like it, in positions of intellectual leadership right around our country. It is a tribute to his influence and authority that, even now, it would be invidious to name them. Some are notional political opponents between whom there’s the bond of trust that comes from sharing an intellectual trench on a hostile battlefield. 
In the famous Melbourne University debate about the Spanish Civil War, he declared: “when the bullets of the atheists struck the statue of Christ outside the cathedral in Madrid, for some that was just steel striking brass. But for me, those bullets were piecing the heart of Christ the King”. He could engender a thrill in the heart that was part patriotism, part Christian idealism and part “fighting the good fight”. I was lucky to know BA Santamaria for the last 22 years of his life, to have attended diligently to his writing and speaking over that time and to have been the beneficiary of the occasional private lunch and long phone call. I am honoured to have been asked to help launch these memoirs as there are many whom he knew better and loved more. Perfectionist that he was, I’m fairly sure that I would have been a disappointment to him. Still, hardly a day passes without recalling his example and its challenge to do more, better. (sadly Abbott's launch of BA Santamaria's collection of letters has fallen out of sight on Abbott's website but you can find it in google cache here)

Hardly a day passes, from the horse's mouth so to speak, back on 30th January 2007.

When confronted with inconvenient truths it's important to be economical with the truth.

Now Abbott has been consistent and open in acknowledging Santamaria as an inspiration - calling him "a philosophical star by which you could always steer" and "the greatest living Australian" - presumably becoming one of the great dead Australians on his death. (The Whirling Dervish)

So why does Polonius indulge in this bit of historical revisionism, which verges on Monckton-ish denialism?

Santamaria's influence was exaggerated by his supporters and opponents alike. Abbott is not the Catholic that the secularist Marr believes him to be. Nor is Pell. As the Cardinal said last week: ''Marr has no idea what motivates a believing Christian.''

Who knows, but the last few pars by Polonius are rippers of bile and barely repressed, seething hatred:


Andrew West in the Religion and Ethics Report was one of the few ABC journalists to challenge Marr's thesis. West suggested to Marr that his criticism of the Catholic Church's handling of sexual abuse stems from a small l-liberal point of view and a rejection of mainstream Catholicism.

No, no, say it ain't so, please tell the pond that David Marr doesn't think the Catholic church is a load of superstitious, but still dangerous, and deadly to gays, old rope ...

West has a point. In The Prince, Marr concentrates on Pell's celibacy. Marr told West that ''it was the celibate Church that gave paedophiles safe haven''. This does not explain why paedophilia is widespread outside the Catholic Church. What's missing from The Prince is that the overwhelming majority of sexual child abuse cases in the Catholic Church have involved attacks by men on young boys.

And you know what that means. It's nothing to do with the Catholic church warping sexuality, it's all to do with warped homosexuals ...

So it goes, and so, courtesy of Polonius, we continue to get ample evidence that the church and its apologists simply don't get it.

Poor old Pope Francis. He tried to tart up the church with a few nice words about gays, women, contraception, and its cruel obsession with rules, but at the heart of the beast remain the Pellists and their apologists, of the Polonius kind, and it's easy to see that the spirit of B. A. Santamaria lives on in the land and politics and in the church, with the latest reminder the treatment doled out to a gay and women-friendly Melbourne priest - Church dumps rebel priest.

There are many other aspects to Polonius's apologetic excuses for the Pellists - the clerical crimes date to long ago; Pell was a victim of "mocking questions" from a bipartisan collection of Victorian MPs, as if that trial was somehow remotely comparable to the abuse of children by people placed in a position of trust and power over them; and talk of how Pell did more than most, as if doing little or nothing was somehow enough; and so on and on, in the way apologists seek to work to diminish the victims and bless the oppressors for the fine work they've done ...

No doubt Marr will strike back, but what's the point.

You may as well try to explain the finer points of climate science to the parrot ... because all you'll ever get is garbage in, garbage out, defensiveness in, defensiveness out ...

(Below: more Martin Rowson here)