Sophie Mirabella, Penn and Teller and a little bullshit goes a long way ...

(Above: Penn and Teller showing what could and should be done to politicians who talk about ethics).

Las Vegas being what it is, the town provides the perfect superannuation plan for aging performers.

Cue the likes of Wayne Newton, Cher, Donnie and Marie Osmond.

It therefore seemed wise to take in Penn and Teller, with Penn doing his standard libertarian routines, and Teller donning the guise of Harpo Marx, except when whispering instructions to audience members involved in the routines. They did the magic bullet trick, the sawing the lady in half trick, with splatter, and sundry routines, a few of which were ... quite magical. They also fronted the punters after the show for a photo opportunity.

No complaints there, and it does show how you can spend your time in an amusing way deep in the most surreal city in the world.

Alternatively, you can take a deep breath, and dive into the bowels of The Punch, Australia's most regressive conversation. And there you might find Sophie Mirabella writing about ethics under the header Ethics classes for Labor pollies and their appointees.

The header gets the themes right, because Mirabella doesn't take the high road - like talking about ethics classes for all politicians, and all appointees of government for jobs usually described as providing services to the public. Ethics for public servants 101 you could call it, remembering that politicians are after all supposed to be servants of the public that elects them.

Mirabella's notion of ethics is that it's simply a handy tool for bashing in the heads of opponents, a kind of philosophical ice pick, or jemmy, or piece of 4 x 2, or baseball bat.

Which makes this curious opener all the more poignant:

But the critical question is who determines what is ethical? Do we look at the conduct of public figures to create modern yardsticks of ethical behaviour? Do we look to our political leaders?

Indeed, and do we look to the scribblers in The Punch for special insight, for a special understanding of ethics and ethical behaviour? Do we look to our political leaders as they confuse ethics with the standard bout of eel-bashing and snake venom?

Nope, here's what you get instead:

It’s reasonable to question whether it is ethical for a Prime Minister to essentially bribe State Premiers with taxpayer funds in order to get them to agree to a deal that is all about improving his own political outcome for the coming election.

Reasonable? Essentially bribe? For doing what politicians do? On that basis, there isn't an ethical politicians in parliament. And so on:

The $2.4 billion “extra” that Kevin Rudd threw on the table at the very last minute to get his desired result comes directly from the pockets of tax payers. Is it ethical to spend someone else’s money in such a self-serving bribe in order to score a personal political win?

Dearie me, so now the money comes directly from the pockets of tax payers. Fancy that, and I imagined the money came from the government's ambitious plan to mine the blue cheese in the moon and ship it to Bolivia.

But since we must ask ethical questions, in relation to spending someone else's money in self-serving bribes, can we also ask an ethical question as to whether someone should be using taxpayers' money to pay the wages of a Senator intent on writing point-scoring drivel when the ostensible subject is ethics?

If I want that sort of drivel, I can always turn to the professionals, like Akker Dakker, who whips up yet another mashed potato rich with butter in How PM was saved by a perfect Storm.

Akker Dakker has mastered the art of conflating any current or passing crisis (this time Carl Williams and Melbourne Storm) with a more extended pursuit of Chairman Rudd and his follies.

At least Akker Dakker understands that there's no point in musing about ethics when going for the jugular. If it's a matter of knee capping, apply baseball bat to knee until knee is capped. Use magnum .44 in serious cases ... (or perhaps just visit the machine gun emporium in Vegas off the strip and let off a few rounds).

Only a fiendish automaton could surpass the relentless intensity of Akker Dakker's awesome predictability.

Except perhaps Sophie Mirabella. Her out on the question of politics?

Politics, by its very nature, is an ethical minefield.

Yep, politics, by its very nature, is a minefield of cliches and cack-arsed rhetoric.

Mirabella then spends the rest of her piece wielding the baseball bat, and thrashing Christine Nixon around the head in ways that Freddie Kreuger, Jason Voorhees, Michael Myers and the family behind the Texas Chainsaw Massacre would surely envy.

And then she has the cheek to end with this flourish:

Accountability and personal responsibility are at the core of ethical behaviour. If we are to set basic standards of what is ethical, they ought not be merely theoretical.

After all, our kids learn more by example than they do in a classroom.

So what do they learn from Mirabella's brand of political hackery and thuggery?

Kick the shit out of an opponent, especially when they're down, and never let up, never offer an out, never look at two sides, always look at one, and did I mention to make sure to kick the shit out of an opponent? Perhaps verbally for starters, but if you happen to find them in a dark alley by themselves with a cricket bat handy ....?

Who knows, that's a really interesting ethical question.

By the time I'd finished reading Mirabella, I realised with sickening finality that I was back in Australia, and now Penn and Teller were but a dream.

Ah well, I'm reminded of one of their early outings, Penn & Teller's Cruel Tricks for Dear Friends, in which they outline seven routines, tricks or swindles by which you can defraud or fool your friends and family or loved ones. Penn's opening lines set the tone:

"There are 5,380,000,000 people in this world. 4.71% of these live in the United States. Of those living in the United States, 60.3% own televisions. And of those owning televisions, only 27% own video recorders. That makes 38,705,057 of US, and 5,341,294,943 of THEM. That's 137.999 suckers for each one of us. *cash register sfx* Sucker-wise, it's an embarrassment of riches. If you follow our instructions closely, and have the money to fund your betting, you're gonna make money off us. Even if you paid as much as the full, list, retail price of $3.95 for this tape, you're gonna increase your money by an order of magnitude in less time than it takes to say 'knowing falsification of advertising claims resulting in irretrievable financial loss by the aggrieved party.'"

Looked at another way, there are some 22 million people in Australia, but all Sophie Mirabella has to do is convince fifty per cent of the 85,000 odd voters of the Victorian seat of Indi to vote for her, and then she can act like an indolent, insolent offensive gadfly in front of all Australians, while in the process being paid handsomely from taxpayers' tax money to blather on about ethics.

I always thought fondly of Wangaratta as "the big Wang" and know I know why.

So here's an ethical question for Mirabella. Is it ethical for an MP to boycott the apology to indigenous Australians and question whether any indigenous child in Victoria had truly been taken from the parents? (Outspoken Liberal MP defends apology boycott). Or just malicious and spiteful and hurtful?

Never mind. Penn as usual when not doing his ranting asides about libertarian issues (burning the American flag and then saluting it), also did his usual routines about mediums and psychics, which this quote from the TV show Bullshit sums up nicely:

Penn Jillette: (on the subject of talking to the dead) One of the weird things Houdini discovered is that some of these mediums actually slip into believing their own bullshit. They forget their own misses, or as John Edward, THE BIGGEST DOUCHE IN THE UNIVERSE, does, rewrite them as hits that we're just not able to recognize. Cold reading can be done accidently. That doesn't mean the psychic is a better person. Lying to themselves does not make lying to others ok. It can make intellectually lazy scumbags more convincing and dangerous. But even if these fucks know they're just making shit up and pushing people's buttons, they tell themselves, "At least I'm comforting the bereaved." WHO THE FUCK ARE THEY TO DECIDE THAT LYING ABOUT THE UNIVERSE AND A DEAD LOVED ONE IS WHAT THE BEREAVED NEEDS? That's condescending BULLSHIT!

Yep, and then there's Sophie Mirabella writing about ethics. And, then, forgive the caps, there's condescending BULLSHIT!

Oh and as to that use of offensive language, please forgive:

Penn Jillette: (Penn explains why there is so much vulgarity on the show) You'll notice more obscenity than we usually use. That's not just because it's on Showtime, and we want to get some attention. It's also a legal matter. If one calls people liars and quacks, one can be sued and lose a lot of one's money. But "motherfuckers" and "assholes" is pretty safe. If we said it was all scams, we could also be in trouble. But BULLSHIT, oddly, is safe. So forgive all the bullshit language. We're trying to talk about the truth without spending the rest of our lives in court because of litigious motherfuckers!

I think from here you can do the rest ...

(Below: Sophie Mirabella wearing a hat).

Christopher Pearson, a soupçon of Michel Foucault, a dash of Abbott and Gillard, and dropping a tab at Zabriskie Point ...

(Above: Michel Foucault, and Christopher Pearson. Spot the similarities).

Okay, I take it all back.

The United States has some wonderfully surreal moments, touches, people and places, but there's no way any of its try hard wannabe poseur eccentrics can match Christopher Pearson.

How else to approach Club Sensible is casting its eyes over Julia and Tony?

Club sensible? Oh club me to death with a feather.

The front of the piece is the standard berating of Kevin Rudd, and a back handed slap across the face tribute to Julia Gillard, and the obligatory praising of Tony Abbott, and forgiveness of his sins (no doubt accompanied by the rosary, a few lord's prayers and the odd hail mary), but it's the self-congratulatory sting in the tail which says more about the pompous portentous Pearson blow hard persona than any critic could evoke.

Do go on:

Some of my readers on the Left may demur at the suggestion, but this week I feel like Michel Foucault.

Oh it's a show stopper, that line. The whole whirly gig comes to a halt, the cackle comes from deep down in the bowels, then erupts, then comes the gasping for air ...

Not that I'm from the left, but the notion of the conservative Latin-chanting Pearson donning the intellectual garb of Michel Foucault is surely a deeply post-modernist post-ironic jest.

What next? Occupying university buildings with Maoist students? Dropping LSD at Zabriskie Point in Death Valley, to get the best experience of your life? (Ah Death Valley, I miss you already). Death by AIDS? A new way forward as a Nietzschean neo-anarchist? Or perhaps a chance to become a truly contradictory creature, a Catholic atheist?

In 1971 postmodernism's darkest star formally took his place as a professor of the College de France.

He said at the time that he would have preferred a seamless transition, moving inconspicuously from the lecture hall's benches to the rostrum, as one more voice in a ceaseless, scholarly conversation. He also told his audience that he feared he might be something of a cuckoo in his new nest.

Moving from a sedate spot in the Inquirer section to a position among the pundits in the front part of the only national broadsheet is a comparable promotion.

Oh now I get it, it's just a feather display, a preening piece of pomposity and unseemly boasting about a positional move in a newspaper that fancies itself as a broadsheet, when really all you need for an outback dunny is a well torn up tabloid.

However, my expertise is not primarily in conventional political analysis but in publishing and editing poets and novelists. My preferred tools of trade are satire and counterfactual speculation rather than crunching the latest Treasury numbers or Newspoll.

Satire and counterfactual speculation?

Well surely if there was a Murdoch circus in town, Pearson would be one of the leading clowns, but is an ability to do pratfalls a sign of satirical talent? Sadly, it's likely if Pearson got into the ring with Jon Stewart, he'd be eaten alive, with no feathers or bones left, just a well-digested owl pellet, and equally sadly, there's no chance of it happening, not when Stewart can do a song and dance minstrel routine to nail Bernie Goldberg to the floor.

As to counterfactual speculation, at least Pearson got that right. Let's leave aside the obvious meaning, which is running contrary to the facts, and get into the logical aspect of the word:

adj
(Philosophy / Logic) expressing what has not happened but could, would, or might under differing conditions
n
(Philosophy / Logic) a conditional statement in which the first clause is a past tense subjunctive statement expressing something contrary to fact, as in if she had hurried she would have caught the bus. (here).

Yep, that's Pearson alright. If in fact he had hurried, he would still always manage to miss the bus.

Again, I share the view Foucault rather surprisingly announced at that inaugural lecture: that "society must be defended", mostly by the art of paradox.

Foucault and I have at least one thing in common, in that we're both high-profile homosexuals. I'm neither as intelligent nor (thankfully) as vain and dysfunctional as he was. He and his deracinated Maoist lover were identified early on as sacred monsters of French letters, in the tradition of Andre Gide.

Oh dear. Feel the self-love. In a most unvain way.

Pearson is a high-profile homosexual, just like Foucault? That would be the same as the man described as the most cited intellectual in the humanities in 2007 by The Times Higher Education Guide? (here). Surely this is an example of satirical counterfactual whimsy of the highest order? So it turns out:

The only person who has ever spoken of me in those terms was Peter Coleman, the long-time editor of Quadrant and intellectual godfather of Australian conservatism, and I'm pretty sure he was joking.

Pretty sure? Absolutely sure? Or as I've learned to say in America these last few weeks, very uniquely sure? It's only a joke? Or perhaps embedded deep within it is some folk wisdom from the right? Oh okay, it's just a joke, a jolly jape amongst chums. So we elevate the risk level to definitively sure? So it goes with satirical flourishes:

One leaf I hope to take out of Foucault's book is an unconventional approach to how political power is mediated, the ways it ebbs and flows and how, especially in the lead-up to the federal election, power (like nature) abhors a vacuum. Another is to see the solemn taken-for-granteds of the zeitgeist through the prism of the comic and the absurd.

Uh huh. Mediated power. The zeitgeist. Give that freshman ponce a clip around the ears.

Well as a prism of the comic and the absurd there's no doubt Pearson is a mighty fine prism.

Now here's a few examples of Pearson's prism of the comic and the absurd. First he comes in praise of Julia Gillard, as if to show he knows how to bury Caesar in style:

One of the many good things to be said about Gillard is that Lindsay Tanner, her old ultra-leftist foe, was prescient in wanting to block her route to a safe seat. He said she was "a conservative careerist". Quite so. That's why people warm to her, despite the bottle-orange hair, the still-grating voice and the 1980s Carlton feminist collective values to which she still intermittently clings.

This is Foucault?

Then he goes on to praise Tony Abbott in tandem with Gillard, in a way that would leave Alexander Pope breathless, though perhaps not from admiration:

As people, both of them are clearly devoted to their parents, good with siblings and very fond of their nieces and nephews. It is a welcome change from the Rudd household, all of whom seem to me a bit strange and affectless.

Well bugger me dead, ain't that a profound neo-anarchist Nietzschean insight.

Gillard enjoyed the usual female advantage in terms of early social maturity, while Abbott as an undergrad had his famous attempt to bend a lamp-post during a drinking session with rugger mates.

That said, he was entranced early on by the Jesuit ideal of public service and "being a man for others" at a phase when our Julia was pretty clearly concluding that (solidarity notwithstanding) "it's every girl for herself and the devil take the hindmost".

The young Tony was an incurable romantic, not only with his first girlfriend but in his crusading zeal for lost causes and his personal devotion to Bob Santamaria, whom he once described as "the greatest living Australian".

No, surely not, surely this isn't Foucault, or even a slice off the arse of Foucault's rump, unless you accept Jean-Paul Satre's view of Foucault as "the last rampart of the bourgeoisie". Being a conservative Catholic stamps you as an incurable romantic? Sheesh, give me Carlton any day, or perhaps Smith street.

Do we really need to know the gormless Pearson's views on the personalities of politicians, and their domestic lives, not to mention the standard slurs about carrot tops and feminists? Or is it okay to have a go at Pearson's physical appearance?

Indeedy if I wanted this kind of idle speculation about personalities and the private lives of politicians, I'd be better off reading the New Idea or Woman's Day or the Women's Weekly.

But here's the capper:

Space doesn't permit a consideration of either candidate's more recent history at this juncture but readers may contribute to the conversation via my email address at the end of this column.

And why doesn't space permit? Because the doofus wants to spend time talking about how much like Michel Foucault he is, and how he got a promotion in the rag best known as Chairman Rupert's lap poodle and refuge for ratbag right wingers.

Well at least now I can spend each week contemplating The Australian and wondering when Pearson might jump the shark, like Louis Pierre Althusser, who was a mentor to Foucault, and who wrapped up his life by strangling his wife while giving her a neck massage.

Some neck, some massage.

Oh it's a funny old satirical prismatic counterfactual world, and the way that Pearson manages to inhabit a bizarro world all his own is Hieronymus Bosch at his finest.

Dream on America. You might have your David Brooks, your William Buckley, your Stephen Colbert ... great conservative thinkers ... but we have Christopher Pearson, punching out of the post-modernist, post-structuralist, post-satirical, post-ironist, pompous post-prismatic corner. I feel ever so European ...

Bring on that bloody paywall Chairman Rupert. Bring it on now!!

(Below: here's how to do it in a post ironic way. Head off to Death Valley, find Zabriskie Point, it isn't hard, drop a tab of acid, and then do it, in a primal way, in the dust. Hey, the worst thing that could happen is you end up thinking you're Foucault or you're in an Antonioni movie).

Miranda Devine, Col Allan, Christine Nixon, Nevada, a biker in the Alabama Hills and America hurrah ...

(Above: the Alabama Hills).

Now where was I ...

Ah yes, lost in America, the new Rome, central station for loonacy, where luckily the only open carry we saw was in Virginia City, with a couple of spruikers re-enacting the grand old days of a town where Mark Twain got his start in the newspaper game.

Amazingly there are still firearm freaks who think a return to the days of the wild west will ensure civil discourse and civic harmony, as if the ostentatious display of the personal capacity to kill any offensive bystander transcends the politics of power and fear.

But that's just one of myriad strands where the right to freedom seems to be the right to be angry and alienated and fearful and unhappy and fat (waiter, super size me with another hit of that wonderful high fructose corn syrup).

Never mind, if you head out to the back blocks of Nevada - often dubbed "fly over" country - you can see plenty of ghost towns, including Rhyolite, or be entertained by the amateur munitions museum at Hawthorne, which celebrates the ordnance work of the military's nearby ammunition depot. There's a handsome collection of devices designed to blow up things, and the genteel owner offers expert guidance to the various technologies.

The strip in Carson City is an irredeemable offering of empty vulgarity, and even the downtown state legislature for Nevada lacked a sense of stature, the only joy a hippy restaurant directly opposite the two assemblies, right next to the plaque for the pony express. Long gone in Carson City ...

But then what can you expect of a car culture - so many RVs with SUVs attached - that thinks a trip to an ersatz Paris or Venice in Vegas is more meaningful than an actual trip to the real Europe, which would perforce involve mingling with ... Europeans.

Signs of parochialism, paranoia and xenophobia abound, but perhaps my favourite was the radio preacher - the bottom of the dial is littered with preachers - who, when asked to explain how a country like Japan, bereft of the benefits of Judaic Christian culture, could still produce a low crime rate and a seemingly civilised society, had a blithe and pat answer: "Japan is a police state". So much for the grand American experiment of introducing democracy to the country after the second world war.

You have to wonder about the media. Staying in cheap motels means there's always a couple of minutes to catch up on cabal packages, which invariably offer the delusionary world of Fox. In much the same way as it's good to see Americans harping back to the world of the gold rush, it's a wonder to behold strict constitutionalists yearning for the simplicities available when its eighteenth century heroes drew up a guide for four million citizens, as if that's going to be a sufficient guide to a new and rampantly corrupt Rome rushing towards four hundred million. As if in the process the strict constitutionalists weren't the most amazing bunch of activist regressives ...

You have to wonder about the babble of the media. The most striking thing is the incessant repetitive mind-numbing advertising. There's dozens of lawyers spruiking their wares, offering all kinds of litigation, for personal injury, claims on this and that, the chance to sue someone, or the chance to go bankrupt.

There's also, courtesy of financial managers in plague proportions, a televisual chance to sort out credit card debts or mortgage repayments, or discover your abysmal credit ratings, or otherwise get back on the precarious perch of being poor in America by paying people to pay people to learn how to pay off people. Yep, you can hire financial advisors to advise on financial advisors. Waiter, super size me on that bankruptcy.

As a corollary, there's also a plague of pharmaceutical offerings, with each certain cure or remedy accompanied by an exemplary list of dangers, catastrophic side effects, possible death, until the final reassuring note that in any case, not to worry, why not have a chat with your doctor because this pill might cure everything that ails you.

My personal favourite was Goldfield Nevada, where Virgil Earp took to his death bed, an old gold mining town which at some point made a determined attempt to become tourist trap like Virginia City, but which instead has slumped into a decaying surreal eccentricity which is visually beguiling, and truth to tell, much more potent than the fake bars and eating houses hanging off the Virginia City boardwalk.

Well let's not to the full travelogue bit - digital slide shows are the most irritating aspect of modern life, filling the intertubes to overflowing with Susan Sontagian moments - but it all came together in the Alabama hills, that strangely named collection of rocks beneath America's tallest mountain, Mt. Whitney, and scene of many a Hollywood western.

(And so the bones of my father can rest in peace as I tracked back to the location where Gunga Din was filmed amongst the rocks, and the ghost of that great Tasmanian Errol Flynn can be heard laughing at Randolph Scott and life in Virginia City).

Anyhoo, a retired biker rocked up to engage us in conversation, and test our attitudes on various matters, including lesbians, hippies, liberals, sundry other wankers, and of course our love - however warped and foreign it might be - for the United States.

It shows how you can go quietly barking mad in the company of the immense and glorious Sierra Nevadas (Spanish in a literal way for snowy mountain range), but we didn't take the bait, and instead just went for a cruise along Movie road, before heading into Lone Pine for a world famous buffalo burger, while he went back on his Harley to his unimpeded view of Whitney.

It also goes without saying that if you don't actively pursue news of Australia via the internet, now that Steve Irwin is long gone from cable, you can spend a couple of weeks being blithely unaware that Australia exists. The closest we got to being reminded of the place was the odd suggestion that we were English. Sheesh, not even Austrian.

Still, as well as the joys of working class Vegas, and the surreal beauty of the various Nevada deserts (what a great place to let off a nuclear weapon), and the unnerving poverty lurking behind many small towns, bolstered only by defence work, and a cruise down Sunset Boulevard to see the rich in their mansions, there was another great upside.

The loons of America, as befits the new Rome, are way ahead of the local domestic variety (known as the common Australianatus agitatus garrulous cawing and crowing loon), and for two splendid weeks I didn't once have to think of the likes of Miranda the Devine.

You can imagine the culture shock then, after returning from America, to catch a read of her latest offering A bureaucratic child of our times.

This splendid piece divides into two pieces, and really the first bit could have been written by a biker lost and going quietly mad in the Alabama hills beneath the shadow of Mount Whitney, as she gets terribly excited about an editor for the tabloid press, and the joys of working for Rupert Murdoch - the man who, via Fox News, can almost singlehandedly be credited with the destruction of intelligent conservatism in America. As to Devine's editor?

He poked fun at phoniness and PowerPoint presentations and encouraged us to take risks, and thumb our noses at authority, whether inside or outside the building. He resisted attempts by management to drag him away from the core business of putting out a daily newspaper, and deputised process-minded underlings to such menial chores as attending marketing meetings. He would bellow and throw advertising people out of his office in a burlesque display designed to assert the primacy of editorial.

Come on down Ben Hecht, all is forgiven, hold the front page, spill some of that tabloid print on your fingers, Mark Twain get down and write a story about that ugly varmint dead eye Dick plugging Mexican Pete for having a go at Eskimo Nell. Tabloids are go! And never mind the thunderbirds:

The two news conferences he called each day were high-wire acts; we all knew we had to be armed with good ideas and detailed information if he called on us. No seat warmers, with a couple of puzzling exceptions, were tolerated. He was often brutal, and publicly humiliated people for mediocre efforts, while everyone squirmed.

But he was a great tabloid editor, the most effective and terrifying boss I ever had. No one in his conferences had any doubt about what our goal was, and that energy was transmitted down the line to every reporter and editor. As a result, the quality of reporting and writing improved exponentially.

Of course, we worked in the Murdoch empire which was refreshingly free of useless bureaucracy in the 1990s, because Rupert Murdoch himself scorned it.

In much the same way I suppose that Fox News is today refreshingly free of intelligent life and a moderate tone.

But I got to wondering. Who was this masked marvel, this unnamed hero of the tabloid world, and then I remembered that the Devine had once worked for the Daily Terror as a police reporter, before the notorious Col Allan turned her into an assistant editor and then an opinion columnist.

Yep, Col Allan, the man who led Chairman Rudd and Warren Snowdon astray at Scores, in a vain attempt either to turn Rudd into a gentleman of the old school or to tarnish his nerdish reputation and so prevent him becoming the PM we have today. (Kevin Rudd hits a strip club).

Well if you want to read more about Col, why not try Rupe's Attack Dog Gets Bitten, Keeps Barking, and keep three or four bottles of Pinot Noir handy for the read. Therein you can discover the myriad ways that Allan has attempted to reduce the collective intelligence on hand in New York city to the level of a pulp tabloid yellow scandal sheet, not far from its kissing cousins in the grand old days of the Hearst Empire, courtesy his reign at the New York Post.

May the rag go on losing money for Chairman Rupert for years to come.

The second half of the Devine piece is a hatchet job on Christine Nixon. Well Nixon can answer for herself as to why she decided to chuff off for a meal at a parlous moment during a bushfire, but what I like most is the splendid way that the Devine then manages to get in all her pet fears and phobias, as a kind of collateral damage an ordnance expert might wonder at:

And the media adored her. She was progressive! She took part in the gay and lesbian pride march! She was a woman! She was consultative! She relaxed uniform standards! She recruited women and minorities! She answered emails, had lots of meetings and set up myriad committees. She was the nana feminist, who humbled the most masculine, testosterone charged militaristic symbol of the patriarchy itself. She was perfectly chosen and trained to spend her days being busy doing her job, whatever that was. Busy, busy, busy. The truth is her defenders are right, she can hardly be blamed.

Christine Nixon is the perfect leader for our age.

Oh dear, the font of civilisation is putting out the New York Post, or perhaps Fox News, and its downfall gay and lesbian marches, and consultative women, and nana feminists.

You know, a crazed biker standing in the shadow of Mount Whitney couldn't have said it better.

Same as it ever was ...

Take it away Talking Heads ...

A little housekeeping and viva Las Vegas ...

Well sadly - oh bugger it, I'm not sad at all - I'm off to Vegas, and between blogging and Vegas it's likely the bright lights will win.

I'm hoping to find Mike Tyson and a tiger in my room, but failing that, I'll settle for a renewal of my marriage vows at the world famous little white wedding chapel, wherein such luminaries as Joan Collins and Burt Reynolds testified to the sanctity of marriage.

Why Patty Duke liked and believed in marriage so much, she went there to acquire her first and third husbands, while Mickey Rooney tried it twice (he did it six times elsewhere). Now that's a commitment to marriage in the best American way ...

And then there's Paul Newman and JoAnn Woodward (sic), and Mary Tyler Moore (first husband), Burt Ward - Robin to oldies - and Frank Sinatra showing old guys how to molest young women like pretty pert pixie Mia Farrow, before Satan did it to her in Rosemary's Baby, and Bruce Willis and Demi Moore and some opera singer from China, and Stone Cold and Steve Austin (WTF), and the drummer for Cher, with Cindy Lauper as the maid of honour, OMG, and Michael Jordan and George and Alana Hamilton and Natalie Maines from the Dixie Chicks, never mind who she actually got hitched to, some nonentity, and why I see that Victoria Principal did a renewal and Rita Hayworth added Dick Haymes to her belt of scalps, and Freddie Prinze was there, and Steve Lawrence and Edie Gorme (marriage and renewals!), oh you crooners, and Don Allen, en vogue, whatever the fuck that means, and Ryan Young from the Dallas Cowboys doing a renewal and Slash from Guns and Roses and ...

OMG. Eeek, shrieek, I feel so faint and flushed with excitement. I'm off to America, home of culture and civilised values, and my spiritual pulse is throbbing as I hot wire into the zeitgeist.

Put aside those memories of the US military blowing away Iraqi civilians in surely what are amongst some of the most chilling and disturbing images to emerge from that dismal exercise in murderous stupidity (collateral murder), showing that, when you get in the road of a 30 mm M230 chain gun being handled by a loon who thinks he's playing a video game, shit happens.

Can the same culture that produced Las Vegas produce this kind of shit? Sure thing.

Meanwhile, and sorry for that total bummer aside dudes, because I still maintain the rage, there'll be a bit of work, but hey, that's only between losing my memory, making out with Mike Tyson's tiger and forming a deep sapphic relationship with a pole dancer. I'm hoping, yearning, to meet a few Republicans so we can embark on a lesbian bondage fiasco together ...

Perhaps when it's all done and dusted, I might head up to area 51 so I can finally reveal the truth about aliens ...

You know the truth is out there, but as with chilling military footage, sometimes only WikiLeaks provides the answer.

Okay, there's only one major downside to this orgasmic delight, apart from American food and constantly avoiding Fox on the box.

I'm flying Qantas. Dear lord, did Geoff Dixon strip the guts out of this airline or what. The only thing worse would have been if his scheme to sell it off to the private debt equity moguls had succeeded. Then we wouldn't have had an airline at all.

As it is, the cabin staff are constantly petulant and quarrelsome, and do their duties with a reluctance and stiff indifference that can only be matched or bettered by the people to be found on British Airways, surely the most wretched airline in the world. No wonder they strike all the time. I'd strike too if I had BA staff as companions. (And as for those Qantas grumps, why wouldn't you feel surly and peeved, herding and feeding and tending cattle all day and night, when you've been screwed and nail gunned to the floor).

Throw in the regular Qantas maintenance scares that now make the front pages every second day, and you have to have - even if Air Crash Investigations isn't your favourite program - the suspicion that some day soon Qantas's nose dive might turn into an irreversible double flip pike. (And it's not just me - the cardigan wearers at Choice agree - Worst airline? Australians make their choice).

Here's hoping that the in flight entertainment system is actually working, and the compression of the spine in the seating doesn't produce a permanent disability and the maintenance guys in Rangoon clocked on for the day.

Given a choice, you'd be mad not to fly Singapore Airlines or Cathay Pacific, or any of a dozen other airlines. I'm stuck with running down my points until the agony can be brought to an end ...

If this blog fails to recommence, don't imagine it'll be because of a mugger in LA, an alien from Mars in area 51, getting it on with Mike Tyson's tiger, or discovering the seamy side of life with wayward Republicans. It'll be Geoff Dixon's legacy at Qantas.

Phew, it was good to get that off my chest. If you read about a passenger running amok on a flight to LA, just nod your head wisely. You saw it coming ...

Meanwhile, this site is profoundly contrite.

We've been giving the Catholic church and Senator Conroy and various guardians of our morals working hard to prevent the downfall of western civilisation a terribly hard and unfair time.

So as we jet off to Vegas, we thought we'd leave behind a very important message to young folk at the head of the column. Whenever Conroy wonders why someone, anyone, won't think of the children, it's a gentle reassuring reminder that here on the pond, we're always thinking of the children.

There are many more historical wonders to be found in the Prelinger archives at the Internet Archive (search for Sid Davis here, or sex education here).

If you want the companion piece to Boys Beware, it is cunningly titled Girls Beware, also made in 1961, and available here for streaming or download. Truth to tell, it lacks the resonance of its partner, but if you have hours of your life to waste, why not do it as an antipodean John Waters savouring absurdity?

Because surely Sid's Boys Beware is a masterwork of paranoid film-making, epic in its evocation of a 1961 sensibility. As well as total abject sickness, it has the charm of the very best Ed Wood, though unfortunately without any cashmere sweaters (but Sid kept his budgets down to 1k a show, just like Ed).

Still any gourmet buff of the hideous will be compelled, knowing that it's only too easy to pick a dilettante by their interest in Plan 9 from Outer Space, when Glen or Glenda is to hand.

Sid Davis has even earned his own wiki page here - the good lord rest his paranoid sexually repressed mountain climbing soul - and perhaps I can even earn redemption, or at least a few brownie points by spreading his message.

Which is of course that the nineteen fifties was seriously weird and fucked up, and under Senator Conroy, the Pellites and the Jensenist nepotics, we seem to be heading back to that never never land of surreal weirdness.

Oh why do I bother pretending - get stuffed Conroy and the Catholic church, along with your great big internet filters, not to mention the Catholic church's ongoing attempts to evoke the theology of Sid Davis.

And now with a Daffy Duck laugh, and a Porky Pig stutter, that's all for the moment folks, as I head off to entomb myself in Geoff Dixon's legacy ...

Rock on dudes and dude-ettes.

Oh jesus, I've broken my first and only rule.

Never actress, only actor, thank you very much, never pole dancer-ette, only pole dancer, never Mrs., only Ms. And ditto sculptress, waitress, stewardess and all the other coy sexist claptrap that infests this godforsaken world (and just where is that bloody absent god, sheesh, have I got a few choice words for her).

Unless you're thinking of heading off to a doctress or a cheftress, enough with the diminutives ... (thanks to Jakki for these circumlocutions).

And if any bright spark hurls the word 'mistress' at me, thin ice on the pond buddy ...

Rock on dudes, and fuck the -ettes and -resses...

Piers Akerman, and socking it to the censorial tonsorial, short, no porn please, software ...

This is a solemn and momentous day for loon pond.

Piers Akerman, aka Akker Dakker, and sometimes fondly known as the Billy Bunter of the Daily Terror as he yaroops and garooars at Chairman Rudd, has jumped the shark and become a wild-eyed libertarian.

Censorship hides behind the great Conroy firewall, he furiously scribbles, in the first sign that the conservative commentariat might be turning against Senator Conroy and his great big new filter.

Inevitably Akker Dakker makes the leap to China, as an exemplar for the mandarin ways of Chairman Rudd and his cohorts:

Bizarre but true, Australia and China are allied in their determination to censor internet content. In totalitarian China, the plan is known as Green Dam. In Australia it should be called “freedom-be-damned” ...

... It might seem extraordinary that the Rudd Government would propose to install a filter that would make Australia one of the strictest internet regulators among the world’s democracies, possibly in the same league as China, when it proclaims to stand for openness and transparency.

Akker Dakker spends plenty of time berating the Chinese - and why not, because when you're in China it's fun to observe the bizarre ways the intertubes sometimes performs as the filters kick in. Fun, if you're on a plane out of the country ...

But he also spends some time working up a lather about ACMA and Conroy (and of course 100 illegal people smuggler boats, which doesn't have much to do with filters, but suits the Akker Dakker schemata of throwing in the kitchen sink and the bathtub when mounting an assault on Chairman Rudd).

He's even caught up with the news that Google doesn't think much of Conroy's plan, and even shows he's down with the leet skills of hackers:

Conroy’s planned censorship has already been outflanked by smart technophiles who delight in tweaking the egos of authoritarian buffoons and finding the loopholes in their censorial software.

Censorial software! A bit like a tonsorial trim of pubic hair back in the days when Penthouse took on Playboy!

Akker Dakker himself is no noob, but a fully fledged 1337 as he Sp33ks the speak:

A program called The Onion Router (TOR) can be found on the internet that permits users to anonymously access websites, thus thwarting the electronic plods detailed to smash internet pornography rings, or, in China’s case, possible subversives.

Well I guess if people google Onion Routing, they'll get to this, which just so happens to be an official U. S. Navy site - damn you, U.S. Navy, damn you and your Conroy-busting ways - and then they can move on to Tor (another US Navy initiative), and so on.

But perhaps the most poignant tale belongs to BoingBoing, an inoffensive site for nerds and wonderful things, which has at various times been banned or filtered as the result of dumb systems. Way back in 2006, when they discovered they were banned in UAE, Qatar and sundry other locations, they declared war on internet censors and filters.

You can read the tale here (unless you're in a country where funny things happen to the net), which proves that sometimes all censor and filter ware does is get folks mad as hell, willing to throw open the window, shout about it, and get then active.

Meanwhile, Akker Dakker seems keen to egg on the activists:

When Conroy erects the Rudd Government’s own Great Firewall, the IT race will be on to see who can breach it first.

Well actually it's already been breached before it's been erected - a VPN will do over what Conroy is contemplating - so if you're a geek with a bit of cash, away you go. And there are many other solutions. Thanks to China, and the netizens determined to climb its wall, there are many ways to defeat Conroy's plan.

What he's relying on is that the vast majority won't mind or won't care or won't go looking, sheep willing to be herded, while the evil dissidents who refuse to think of the children will be cast out into the electronic wilderness.

Here's how BoingBoing put it:

The fact is, there's no effective way to censor the Internet in broad strokes. Only dumb CIOs and totalitarian governments like the UAE believe that adding censorware to your network will prevent the naughty stuff from slopping in.

Sheesh that's cruel, calling Conroy a dumb CIO, down there with the UAE totalitarians.

Anyhoo, for a change of pace, you can always wander over to The Punch, to read Paul Colgan's contribution to Australia's dumbest conversation in Why Conroy's critics should censor themselves.

A highlight in Colgan's call for a rational debate?

... in February ABC TV’s Hungry Beast commissioned a poll which found 80% approval of a mandatory government internet filter that would block access to websites containing RC material. That was a phone poll of 1000 people conducted by a market research agency.

Images and information about one or more of the following:

Here's how the Hungry Beast poll defined the RC material to be blocked:

- child sexual abuse
- bestiality
- sexual violence
- gratuitous, exploitative or offensive sexual fetishes; and
- detailed instructions on or promotion of crime, violence or use of illegal drugs

It reminds me of that famous poll which asked people when they'd stopped beating their spouse. Fifty per cent said they'd stopped in the previous year, fifty per cent in the year before that, fifty per cent said they'd never started beating their spouse, and fifty per cent didn't understand it was a trick or leading question.

But it's nice of Colgan to act dumb, so that Conroy won't feel alone. It's just that it gets a tad problematic when he reprimands The Punch readers for their hysteria:

...nonsensical arguments that Australia is turning into Nazi Germany, quoting Mein Kampf, stating this single issue of trying to block access to child porn will bring down the government and personally attacking a government minister are counterproductive and drive away ordinary folk who might otherwise care.

For a group campaigning against censorship, the anti-Conroy crowd has got to learn to censor itself. Then maybe there can be a sensible debate about it.

Que?

Akker Dakker himself has explained how Chairman Rudd and his rather larger than four gang are trying to turn Australia into a communist gulag dominated by Red Guard thinking. Where does that leave Akker Dakker?

Stand down Colgan, the leet of the Daily Terror have spoken, unless of course you want to rubbish Akker Dakker who, as we scribble this, might, like any good Scotsman, be finishing his porridge, painting his face blue, and standing tall in the Daily Terror office roaring 'freedom, and damn you and your mandarin green dam Conroy', while brandishing Chairman Rupert's system administrator manual for making punters pay for their access to The Times online ... and then keep paying again and again ...

After all, access to page three bimbos in a filter-free world is vital for western democracy, but only if people are made to pay for the privilege ...

(Below: aw, look at the cute bunny).

Miranda Devine, Malcolm Turnbull, and time for a narcissist vision of Napoleonic Camelot splendour ...

(Above: a dream of Camelot. Heroin helps. Brett Whiteley's Balcony 2).

Way back when, Miranda the Devine wrote an incisive, insightful insight into Malcolm Turnbull and narcissism, under the header Face it, we are all narcissists now.

I keed, I keed, it was the usual guff, lashing up a column by whacking a topic with chook feathers. It was a chance to do a little abuse of this sordid day and age, under the guise of giving Malcolm Turnbull a psychiatric analysis:

Let's play a game: who doesn't have narcissistic personality disorder in our self-obsessed age? A surfeit of self-love is almost a prerequisite for success now, and the proliferation of egomaniac sites, from Twitter and MySpace to Facebook and YouTube, make the peer pressure to be grandiose and irrationally self-confident almost irresistible.

Rather like the preening, posturing, posing and babbling of commentariat columnists.

Then the Devine picked up on Brendan Nelson's farewell to the man who did an "et tu Big Mal" on him:

When Brendan Nelson so deliciously diagnosed his leader, Malcolm Turnbull, last week as being afflicted with the disorder, he spoke not just as a trained medical doctor but as a former Opposition leader with an axe to grind; or, as one internet wag described it, "post-traumatic embitterment syndrome".

Ah so long ago, but hardly a calling card for Turnbull's character:

After all, Turnbull never gave Nelson a chance. He abused him to his face and undermined him behind his back, as Nelson tells it. He used poor opinion poll ratings to depose Nelson, and then polled lower himself.

Turnbull has "narcissistic personality disorder," Nelson told Peter Hartcher last week. "He says the most appalling things and can't understand why people get upset. He has no empathy.''

Nelson also told me Turnbull was a narcissist, as demonstrated by the yes-men surrounding him. "Whatever judgments he makes, he appears not to make good judgments about people. He can't read people. It's part of his narcissism … There's a risk he'll blow up one day."

Lordy, surrounded by yes-men, unable to make good judgments about people, a risk he'll blow up one day?

What's the next best thing for big Mal then? Surely it's to be premier of NSW. And so now the Devine is scribbling A worthy assignment for Turnbull - saviour of NSW.

It seems there's a role for preening narcissists in governing the lost state. Naturally she gives big Mal a mission statement for the job which is positively Napoleonic:

That is the beauty of the job for Turnbull. If he were premier he could work on his pet projects of the republic and an emissions trading scheme in NSW. Those opposed to such ideas would give him the benefit of the doubt because, well, what could be worse than what we've had? It would be a way of winning over the rest of the country to his ideas by proving they could work in miniature.

Far from being a job beneath his talents, he would have a far greater impact on the nation by fixing the NSW basket case. It could be the experimental laboratory for his grand plans and visions and boundless energy. He could have an immediate impact on the environment, if that were his desire.

He could create Sydney in his own image, with reforms to state finances, public transport, power generation, taxes, property development, and greenness. He could build museums, art galleries, roads and rail.

By golly, he could also cure poverty, banish homelessness, discover a cure for cancer, astonish the world by establishing a fountain of youth at Parramatta, and if that doesn't increase tourism enough, re-build the Taj Mahal or a decent pyramid somewhere near Goulburn on the Hume highway.

On and on the Devine raves about the wonders of Malcolm

Just by being Malcolm, he would attract new talent and investment to the state and get sullen business on board. As the state began to shine, we would worship at his feet. The bipartisanship he was so good at would serve him well, as Kevin Rudd would be happy to lavish largesse on an invigorated NSW government cranking up the engine of the national economy.

Turnbull would singlehandedly raise the prestige of state governments around the country, restoring the federation to its rightful place. After a series of mediocrities and under-achievers, the office of premier would once again have the status it enjoyed under some of the great premiers like Sir Henry Parkes, who served five terms and was considered the father of Federation.

By this time in the read, I began to wonder. Does she really believe this guff? Or did she drop a tab of acid before settling down to the keyboard? Or is it just another form of devious snidery, whereby big Mal's failings and Napoleonic ambitions can be satirised?

Who knows, but as I read on, I began to think it was just a rich fantasy, a conjuring of lovely phantasms, an essential relief valve for a commentariat columnist always given to strange dreams. The clue?

He and his wife Lucy would have fun creating their own little Camelot in the Emerald City he loves, his lifestyle would barely change and the commute to Macquarie Street would be a pleasure.

Camelot! Just like the Kennedys. We could have a big round table, and swill chardonnay for hours on end, and one day a year could be dedicated to latte sipping by the gleaming light bouncing from the emerald waves of the harbour. We'd call it State Latte Sipping day and Gerard Henderson could launch it at Ultimo.

But wait, you say, the grudges and grinds of the commentariat hate Malcolm for his liberal Liberal ways. There was the Devine berating him for his stand on the ETS in Fine feathered factional friends (and never mind what David Clarke might think of the new saviour landing in Macquarie street), and there was the Devine way back in 2007 getting agitated at Going like Turnbull at a gate, wherein the noble liberal warrior was compared to a shark in a tank of fish as he began his mad scramble to head the party.

Settle back, enjoy your latte, all will now be well, and NSW will be transformed, and in transforming NSW, Malcolm will transform himself, and then he will go on to transform Australia.

Turnbull would singlehandedly raise the prestige of state governments around the country, restoring the federation to its rightful place. After a series of mediocrities and under-achievers, the office of premier would once again have the status it enjoyed under some of the great premiers like Sir Henry Parkes, who served five terms and was considered the father of Federation.

Turnbull loves to be loved. His greatest political achievement so far has been to burnish his reputation in his milieus of business and media, at the expense, really, of his own electoral advancement. If he were to become premier he would have the gratitude of a desperate electorate fed up with 15 years of Labor rule.

When the moment was right, he could parachute into federal politics if he were needed, having served the political apprenticeship he previously lacked, but having done a lot more good than hanging around the backbenches reading his Kindle.

By then he would have proven - to party and electorate - whether he is capable of self-restraint, in a contained context.

Dearie me, that's not Malcolm in the middle, that's Malcolm rampant, that's Malcolm showing to Napoleon and Caesar that they were underdone. That's Malcolm in Alexander the Great mode, or perhaps, on an off day in a bad mood, Ghengis Khan.

Tremble, oh tremble, you City Rail ne'er do wells, Malcolm is on his way to sort you out.

Now for a little surface dressing of realism. There's only one fly in the ointment, one obstacle to the grand vision. That's poor old Barry O'Farrell. Dull, lacklustre, failing to excite. According to one school, according to the Devine, Bazza wouldn't step aside, and Turnbull would lose the leadership ballot, but then according to the Devine, we should also remember the way Bob Hawke took down Bill Hayden, and became the ultimate drover's dog just a month out from the election.

Salivate at the prospect. Go for it big Mal:

All that remains is a groundswell of public opinion to appeal to Turnbull's natural civic mindedness. But, so far, the Facebook page "Malcolm Turnbull for NSW premier" has only nine fans.

Sheesh, nine fans. All this orgiastic, onanistic, narcissist, oneiric fantasy for nine fans.

Now you might think you've wasted your time reading the Devine, and her transformative fantasy, but surely you now know a little more about narcissism, and the condition known colloquially as the Napoleon complex. You might have thought that the complex involved men of shorter height, but not so:

The Napoleon complex is named after French Emperor Napoleon Bonaparte. The conventional wisdom is that Napoleon overcompensated for his short height by seeking power, war and conquest. However, Napoleon was actually of average height for his time period and misconceptions may have been due to an incorrect conversion of his height. Historians have now suggested Napoleon was 5'6 (1.68 m) tall. Napoleon was often seen with his Imperial Guard, which contributed to the perception of him being short because the Imperial Guards were above average height. In psychology, the Napoleon complex is regarded as a derogatory social stereotype.

You see, the Devine has produced a derogatory social stereotype, a demonic vision of Turnbull as Napoleon, turning Sydney into a city of sweeping boulevards, driving out the poor so that the emerald city can once again reign supreme, and socking it to those lesser, minor, puppet states, who in time will come to worship the emperor of the middle kingdom.

This slavish adherence to Turnbull's narcissism is most likely a deep and dark double play, designed to send tremors through the state Liberal party and ensure Malcolm never gets near Macquarie street. It's the ultimate grift in a party of grifters.

Or else it was just a tab of acid.

Whatever, it's tremendous fun, and an exciting vision, and now I must go have my third latte in the hour ...

(Below: please, oh please rush off to the Malcolm Turnbull for NSW Premier page, and become a fan. Now not with just 9 fans, but with 99 fans, and rising! Rising fast! Camelot is coming to Sydney. Free latte for all. Chardonnay running like rivers of gold in the streets - or was that a drunk having a piss in Chinatown. And remember, it's the only way to get rid of that wretched Opera House and build a decent Camelot on the emerald harbour).

Stephen Conroy, and once again with the filter, oi vey, ach wey ...

Like one of those cheerful moles ready to turn up anywhere and do the right thing in a game of "whack the mole", Senator Stephen Conroy turns up on pages of The Punch to spout his usual nonsense, thereby ensuring that The Punch retains its reputation as the home for bad political pennies given a home because they'll write for free.

Conroy: Don't believe the myths on the ISP filter is Conroy's attempt to answer Eliza Cussen's Top 10 internet filter lies, but if you read Cussen and Conroy, you'd have to give her each round in the smackdown, and Conroy's rebuttal evidence for a Top 10 reasons why Conroy is a twit.

Naturally Conroy sent the punters into a frenzy, and at last count, he had very friends amongst the hundred plus who spent their precious online time writing abusive comments.

I'm reminded that in China, the whack a mole game is called 扑傻瓜, literally smack those fools (and let's not get bogged down as to whether it should be called whacamole in honor of one brand, or a more generic whack-a-mole).

I particularly like this thrust from Conroy:

For Ms Cussen to compare Australia’s policy with countries like China and Iran is ludicrous.

Which reminded me of Conroy's outing not so longer ago on Hungry Beast, and if you'll pardon me quoting myself, here's the nub of it, with Conroy leading off:

"Google at the moment filters an enormous amount of material on behalf of the Chinese government; they filter an enormous amount of material on behalf of the Thai government."

This said by way of explanation of how they could help implement his own great big new filter.

Google Australia's head of policy, Iarla Flynn, said the company had a bias in favour of freedom of expression in everything it did and Conroy's comparisons between how Australia and China deal with access to information were not "helpful or relevant".

Well of course these days Google and the Chinese government aren't such chums, with the government outraged because its spies couldn't warn it about Google gazumping them a week before Google's official deadline as to whether they might abandon the mainland for Hong Kong.

But since Conroy saw no harm in Google doing splendid work for the Chinese government, what can you say? Ludicrous is as ludicrous does, especially when defending the indefensible.

The long and the short of all this nonsense is that I'm building up a list of governments that won't get my vote until hell freezes over. Chairman Rudd's government is on the list, courtesy of Conroy and sundry other matters, along with the NSW government, including but not limited the usual reasons, such as their huge list of failed policies, unimaginable mismanagement and extraordinary incompetence.

Heck, I'd like to be in the UK right now, and offered a chance to vote just so I could do a miniscule payback against the lickspittle lackeys who rushed off to yet another desert adventure in the middle east, as if they'd learnt nothing from the Tripartite Aggression in the nineteen fifties. Yep, David Cameron might be a git, but at least he's a fresh git, and he doesn't have the blood on his hands in the way that the Blair-ites do. Posturing ain't the same as doing.

But I guess we should get back to Conroy - the trouble being that Conroy's mantras of nonsense lead to tedium, ennui and endless repetition.

Here he is, again, explaining why his list can't be made public:

The Refused Classification Content list cannot be made public because if it was, it would simply be a catalogue to direct people to specific URLs that are Refused Classification. Also, publishing links to child abuse content is a criminal offence. The Government has held a public consultation on improved transparency measures to ensure the public have confidence in the list and the submissions will feed into the legislative framework.

Confidence in Conroy, his department, and his government in this matter?

Well I'm sure if you asked the Chinese government, they'd explain with similar delicacy why it's simply impossible to reveal to the public the machinations of government, while arranging many splendid sessions to improve transparency measures (and taking a list of the people who dared to turn up and ask about improved transparency measures).

The only benefit for the historian contemplating the Canute-like ways of Conroy is a trip back in time to the Papists and their wondrous Index Librorum Prohibitorum.

Way back, when the Catholic church got together a list of prohibited publications - the final edition was published in 1948, before being abolished in 1966 - the Vatican censorship roulette wheel actually had a considerable impact on society and thinking. The likes of Johannes Kepler ended up on the list, along with botanists, geographers, and cosmographers.

Of course the church regularly got it wrong, so there were lists of corrections correcting the lists, which were published in an Index Expurgatorius.

By the twentieth century, the index had well and truly run off the rails, and it never amounted to a hill of beans in the long run in terms of repressing ideas, alternative thinking to the constipated ways of the conservative Catholic hierarchy, or Lawrentian scribbles about Lady Jane and John Thomas playing hide and seek.

As the wiki on the index notes under the sub-header Modern day irrelevance:

In the twentieth century, the overall number of published books has increased dramatically, so that a new book of fiction is printed in the United States every thirty minutes. Simultaneously, the standards by which items are judged as immoral has shifted by significant margins.

The Index now includes a small fraction of the possibly objectionable material (sexual, scientific or theological) that is available in the multimedia world of the 21st century. For instance, while the Index prohibits the works of a few pre-1948 authors such as D. H. Lawrence on the grounds of sexual offensiveness, that number is negligible compared to the quantity of pornography available at the end of the 20th century.

Anyone in Conroy's department think about the billions of pages now online, let alone other media? Let alone ways of hiding it or transmitting it, way beyond the purview of Conroy's simple-minded filter.

The ironies abound - for example, Adolf Hitler's Mein Kampf never made it on to the Catholic list, nor did Darwin's key work, while Lawrence and Joyce also missed out:

"We looked everywhere for a mention of Charles Darwin, for example. There was nothing," said Wolf, referring to the British scientist who proposed the theory of evolution and enraged those who believe literally in the biblical story of creation.

Adolf Hitler's hate-filled ideology, "Mein Kampf", was also never put on the Index, though Wolf and his team did discover evidence that the censors considered what to do about Hitler, with discussions in the office going on for years and a decision constantly postponed.

All this became about once the Vatican opened up the secrets of its forbidden book list, by throwing open the archive to scholars (here). Thereby providing a handy list for perverts to read and frolic through as they check out the rich set of works handily ticked as sure to upset Catholic thinking, with a possible waft of sexual perversion along with theological perversity.

Meantime, the likes of Sartre, de Beauvoir, Zola, Denis Diderot, Milton, Locke, Galileo, Roussau, Hume, Descartes, John Milton, Gide and Hume all copped a hit. Even sweet old Laurence Sterne. Oh Tristram Shandy, did it come to that! (There's details of other writers who earned a guernsey here - hmm, must give old Sterne another read, he made it to the list!)

At some point or another, an online equivalent to Vladimir Nabokov's Lolita will come along and challenge Conroy, and he will once again be embedded in the kind of papist folly that haunted the Vatican for centuries.

Not that the Index did much to save the children or keep pedophilia under control in the Church.

Strange that, since Conroy keeps rabbiting on about saving the children.

Meanwhile, what's the chance of the report of the Commission to Inquire into Child Abuse in Ireland, available here, getting caught up in Conroy's filter?

If you want a vivid description of vicious sadism visited on helpless, powerless children, why not take a wander through some of its pages?

I was playing basketball one day and Br ...X... came over to me and said to me, says he “I have some sweets for you upstairs...”. ...(He told me)... to come up to his room. I genuinely thought I was going to get some sweets. He went into his room and came out naked, he told me take off my clothes, he rubbed some oil on me and he buggered me, I was in a bad way after that. He took me into his room and locked the door, and it was oral sex and all of that. ... I don’t like talking about it.

It's as good a guide to pedophiliac behaviour as you might find on the internet, and the level of physical violence and ritual humiliation and punishment is extraordinary. I used to think the nuns gave me a hard time, but it turns out it was nothing.

One time in the class, my arms would be black and blue, both arms, because I couldn’t read a couple of lines in Irish, he ...(Br X)... beat me.... He’d put you in the corner, your hands would be up like that ...(displayed arms raised)... if you dropped them you’d get the leather. He put me in the back of the class and he’d tell you to run to him, he’d put his fist out like that ...(indicated fist and outstretched arm)... and you’d run into it.... It would be the kick in the shins you would get off him. As soon as you hit the deck he would pull you up by the ears for what we used to call the rabbit punch, you know, like that ...indicated hand movement... with the side of his hand on the neck, he’d chop you, you’d go down on the deck. I was out ...(unconscious)... that day, you’d be reeling ... an 11 year old child. (here)

Yep, as a textbook for sadists with access to children, I couldn't imagine much worse.

That said, there's no point trying to ban the Catholic Church or filter its presence online, anymore than there's any point trying to take down Mein Kampf. Mushrooms always grow best in the dark.

Meanwhile, what does Conroy think his filter will do?

Ms Cussen claims the Government’s policy won’t protect children from viewing harmful ‘stuff’ online. As I have said, the Government has never claimed filtering is a silver bullet solution.

Well what on earth will it be? A clay pot solution? A fig leaf solution? A fudge and deceive solution? Or just a half-assed empty gesture solution from a thick-headed government?

You know, reality is always worse than works of fiction. Pornography involving children is illegal and should be prosecuted with the same vigour that the Catholic church is being persecuted for its many failings and errors. A filter won't do anything about the real problem, which is children mis-treated and abused.

What a pity Conroy doesn't have a grasp of the reality of institutional brutality, and what a pity he doesn't understand that banning as a solution is a centuries old failure.

If only banning, or at least filtering the Catholic church was an effective solution ...

I’ll never forget the cat-o’-nine-tails, 10 tongs ...(thongs)... it used to have knots across the bottom. Observing other boys stripped and the blood running down as they were being flogged across the body, it was terrible. There must have been a new rule by the Government at some stage because it happened no more. (here)

Now there's a useful role for Government.

Chairman Rudd, and a call for sects and cults to roll up for federal government funding ...

(Above: how to reward this kind of sneaky letterbox campaign back in 2007? Would a couple of mill for your schools do? Sourced from Crikey here)

The ongoing scandal of the Federal government continuing to fund cults received a little top up today with The Age's report Sect's small schools given $2m in federal grants.

It's a long time ago that Four Corners took an interest in the sect - with Separate Lives in September 2006, and then in October 2007 with The Brethren Express, in which John Howard's willingness to play footsy with the sect was given healthy exposure.

Howard was consistently defiant as he shovelled money into private education involving whichever religious sect could arrange a half way decent application form:

JOHN HOWARD, PRIME MINISTER (archive footage, 22 August 2007): I do not deny for a moment I've met representatives of the Exclusive Brethren, and why not? They're Australian citizens, it's a lawful organisation, and as Prime Minister I have met an enormous number of organisations - it's my job.

Back in those days Chairman Rudd sang a righteous tune:

KEVIN RUDD, OPPOSITION LEADER (archive footage): I believe this is an extremist cult and sect. I also believe that it breaks up families.

That was then, but in August 2009, it was revealed that the Rudd government had increased funding of schools run by the sect by fifty per cent. In Howard government days in 2007, the sect received just over $9 million, but in 2009 they copped $13.9 million (Govt increases funding to Brethren 'cult').

The cult showed remarkable skill in milking the teat of the taxpayer dollar, by getting new schools dubbed campuses of already established schools - which meant a school based in Sydney might have a "campus" in Albury.

So it's hardly surprising that the latest news is just a riff on a well-established angle:

A tiny school campus in Bendigo run by the controversial Exclusive Brethren religious sect is receiving $1.2 million in federal funding to upgrade its library, despite having just 11 primary students last year.

Documents also show that the Exclusive Brethren-run Glenvale School's Swan Hill campus - which has just 16 primary students - received $800,000 for a hall under the schools building program.

There'll be the usual squawking, the usual robust defence from sect representatives, and the usual dissembling from the Rudd government, and nothing will happen.

Since this is an equal opportunity site, it's worth mentioning that Scientology is also a beneficiary of the current 'system'. Around the corner from us is a dour former Catholic school there's a school now running with the name 'Athena', which handily has a listing on the nsw.edu.au site, here:

The Athena School is inclusive of all denominations and cultures and encourages the recognition of our spiritual nature. Importance is placed on developing such virtues as kindness, tolerance and respect, as well as those which appear on our school logo: persistence, integrity and understanding.

In order to develop such virtues, we teach from the booklet "The Way to Happiness", which is the first nonreligious code based wholly on common sense. This was written by L. Ron Hubbard as an individual work and not part of any religious doctrine.

Yep, I've always associated L. Ron Hubbard with extreme common sense, and what better way to reward his common sense educational ways than tip some $1.4 million of government funding into the hat (Scientology school defends funding).

So while Nick Xenophon jumps up and down in the Senate, nothing will happen.

Meanwhile it would be remiss not to mention the way Islamic schools also have their hand in the pie. Way back in 2005 The Age published a story Muslims sound alarm over schools:

The teacher could not believe what he overheard. The "visiting" imam was launching into a tirade against the Jews and Americans that bordered on the ludicrous.

But then came the clincher, he recalled. "The imam told the students that the Jews were putting poison in the bananas and they should not eat them." ...

Werribee College is from all accounts an Islamic school with a difference. According to former staff it was a longstanding practice of the school principal, Omar Hallak, to have Muslim staff sleep on the premises after big international terror attacks such as those in Bali and the London tube bombings to prevent retributive attacks.

The Sunday Age has been told that Werribee College appears intent on exporting its particular brand of Islam to Indonesia, an achievement made possible by generous commonwealth and state grants — estimated to be in excess of $3 million a year.

Well the Werribee College continues to flourish, and you can get its mission statement here.

Back then, it was calculated that combined state and federal funding offered $7,000 a student, which resulted in a cool $32 million a year to Islamic schools in Victoria.

If you want to check on why the Exclusive Brethren deserve your tax dollars to support their schools, why not head off to the only site endorsed by the Exclusive Brethren to get a whiff of their views, here:

All the passages which speak of the resurrection (Romans 8; 11, John 5: 21, Luke 20, 1 Cor. 15, Philippians 3: 10, 1 Thess. 4 and Rev. 20) in the New Testament show clearly that the resurrection of the saints is an entirely distinct thing from the resurrection of the wicked, being founded on their redemption and their having received life from Christ. These scriptures all show clearly that there will be 1,000 years between the resurrection of those that are the fruit of redemption and those that are the fruit of the rejection of redemption. See J.N.Darby, Collected Writings vol.11 page 264.

Those, like our deluded writer, who wish to prove a “general resurrection” quote Matt. 25 where the division between the sheep and goats is detailed. There is not a single syllable about the resurrection in that scripture! End of argument!

Indeed. But who are the sheep and who are the goats, and how many chickens can you pluck in order to provide a decent schooling in the mysterious ways of the Rapture?

It's hard to know who to blame for this wretched state of educational affairs. Back when it was brooding about extremist Islamic schools, The Age blamed David Kemp:

Canberra's big spending laissez-faire approach to non-government school funding, intended by former education minister David Kemp to boost the numbers of Christian schools, has fuelled an increase in community-based Islamic schools across Australia which qualify for the same subsidies ...

Although the Federal Government seeks to promote "a pluralist and tolerant society" in providing hundreds of millions of dollars to non-government schools, it carries out no day-to-day monitoring of courses or management standards. This is left to the states, whose monitoring is at best cursory.

But it actually started way back when the big concerns (Catholic and Anglican) got to dip their paws in the coffers, and then a fair dibs mentality took over, and any other lunatic group with a barrow to push could turn up at the trough, and make out like a pig on a fattening campaign in a well-run piggery.

Week after week you can read the commentariat fulminate about militant atheists, and the way they're ruining things, but last I looked there wasn't an atheist chaplaincy program of the kind the Howard government offered the true believers - though it was consoling to read the creationists getting agitated about Atheists to do religious eduction in schools.

And week after week you can read the commentariat fulminate about the Rudd government, but truth to tell, in its funding of private schools, it's not even Howard lite, it's full cream homogenised pasteurised Howard.

Stories will keep dribbling out, about money going here, and money going here, but it's only further proof that everything changes only so that everything can stay the same, and nothing will happen.

By the way, Gillard's response to the latest story?

A spokesman for Education Minister Julia Gillard said schools with multiple campuses were treated as a single school.

He said the department had been advised that the combined enrolment for Glenvale School was 206 primary students and therefore it was eligible for a $2 million grant.

QED. And not a word about the troublesome bothersome worrisome business of funding cults and sects.

So on goes the educational circus, roll up cults and sects, come one and come all, and Chairman Rudd will see you right. Just make sure you know the angles, know the pitch, and then you can head off and teach whatever you like ...

Militant atheists?

Poor meek and mild atheists played like all-day suckers and saps ...

(Below: poor little persecuted tadpoles descended from monkeys).