Tortured minds and tortured scribbles and a dark foreboding ...

(Above: cartoon found accompanying Daniel Pipes Equates Keith Ellison to Hitler).

... because he didn't feel like going home to an empty apartment on his birthday, and it really was extremely sudden, the way it struck him that, good heavens, he understood nothing, nothing at all about anything, for Christ's sake, nothing at all about the world, which was a most terrifying realization, he said, especially in the way it came to him in all its banality, vulgarity, at a sickeningly ridiculous level, but this was the point, he said, the way that he, at the age of forty-four, had become aware of how utterly stupid he seemed to himself, how empty, how utterly blockheaded he had been in his understanding of the world these last forty-four years, for, as he realized by the river, he had not only misunderstood it, but had not understood anything about anything, the worst part being that for forty-four years he thought he had understood it, while in reality he had failed to do so, and this in fact was the worst thing of all that night of his birthday when he sat alone by the river, the worst because the fact that he now realized that he had not understood it did not mean that he did understand it now, because being aware of his lack of knowledge was not in itself some form of knowledge for which an older one could be traded in, but one that presented itself as a terrifying puzzle the moment he thought about the world, as he most furiously did that evening, all but torturing himself in an effort to understand it and failing, because the puzzle seemed ever more complex and he had begun to feel that this world puzzle that he was so desperate to understand, that he was torturing himself to understand, was really the puzzle of himself and the world at once, that they were in effect one and the same thing, which was the conclusion he had so far reached, and he had not yet given up on it, when, after a couple of days, he noticed there was something the matter with his head. László Krasznahorkai, War and War

The point being, that if ever you're looking for a glib, solipsistic insight into the heart of darkness in Hungary (or perhaps Berlin, where Krasznhorkai has lived since 2007), then this long quote is as good as any.

That's if you want existential bleakness and a dark foreboding.

Of course you could present dozens of other names - from Dostoevsky for Russia through Nietzsche for Germany to Ingmar Bergman for Sweden.

Then you'd be right up there with, and making as much sense as, David Wilson, trotted out in the Daily Terror and The Punch, to make sense of events in Norway in A glimpse into Scandinavia's heart of darkness.

Scandinavia has extremely low overall rates of crime and murder compared with most advanced countries in the Western world. Yet it is a fundamental paradox of Scandinavia that, for all the region’s stability and order, there are deep-seated anxieties about crime and social disintegration. Beneath the tranquil surface lurks a dark spirit of foreboding.

That is why there is such an appetite in Scandinavia for the violent crime-fiction genre that conveys this atmosphere of menace, as demonstrated by the smash-hit Danish TV series The Killing or the novels of Stieg Larsson, such as The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo. Norway has its own acclaimed writer of bestselling thrillers, Jo Nesbo.

His fictional blond, blue-eyed detective Harry Hole specialises in catching spree killers.

Uh huh. Well it makes for good atmospheric scribbling, while at the same time being utterly meaningless, as if somehow an appetite in Scandinavia for violent crime-ficiton is exceptional, as if Stieg Larsson hasn't become an international best-seller (even in places where beneath a turbulent surface lurks a dark spirit of foreboding). As if somehow there isn't a market for Agatha Christie, or Midsomer Murders or Cliff Hardy, and as if the United States hadn't cornered the market in serial and spree killers in books, movies, on television and in reality decades ago ...

Alternatively, if you've got little by way of intelligent thought to offer, perhaps the best alternative is to say nothing.

Meanwhile, over at The Australian, the anonymous editorialist does his or her best to grapple with the problem:

Hours before his attacks, Breivik posted a 1500-word manifesto on the internet calling for a Christian civil war to defend Europe against Muslim domination, for Europe to rise up in a modern version of the Crusades against Islamic totalitarianism. It is lunatic stuff - as lunatic as the diatribes we get from extremist jihadist groups.

Uh huh. Yet The Australian has routinely been a home for the writings of the likes of Daniel Pipes, as with Size of Islamist Menace (10 per cent to 15 per cent suggests that Islamists number about 150 million out of a billion-plus Muslims, more than all the fascists and communists who ever lived), Blind to the Islamist threat in the Middle East, (How well will the former Muslim inhabiting the White House, so adamant about "mutual respect" in US relations with Muslims, protect Western interests against this threat?), Islamists impose sharia by stealth (...fascists never developed a 2.0 version, nor did communists; only Islamists have done so. Because it threatens our values and our civilisation, this evolution represents perhaps an aspect of their movement no less frightening than their brutality), and so on and so forth and etc.

If you take the time to read Daniel Pipes in his home lair, you'll be surprised to discover that the February 2009 Victorian bush fires were most likely a part of an Islamist attack on Australia (Bushfire Jihad?).

These insights seem to have entirely escaped the 2009 Victorian Bushfires Royal Commission (final report link here), and reports about people charged with arson in Victoria also failed to discover militant Islamics on a Jihad.

So back to the anonymous editorialist in The Australian:

In this environment, the extremist lunacy that apparently fuelled Breivik's rampage has gained ground, leading him to write his sickening tirade about Crusades and Knights Templar to save Europe from Islamic totalitarianism. It was typical of the irrationality that is motivating extremist groups across Europe and which must be dealt with effectively if further carnage is to be avoided.

Indeed.

Meanwhile, the news that Anders Behgring Breivik read Daniel Pipes has Mr. Pipes doing a little dance in Terrorists Read Me, handily updated to include Breivik amongst his evil readers.

Breivik's manifesto, a 1,518-page compendium in English titled 2083 – A Declaration of European Independence, signed with an Anglicized version of his name, Andrew Berwick, and posted on the White supremacist website Stormfront.org, has come to light. I find myself quoted and cited many times. In most cases, this occurs in the context of essays written by Breivik's anonymous countryman, Fjordman. In a couple of cases, Breivik quotes me directly, once about Syria and once about Muslims in Europe. On one occasion he discusses me directly, in the context of arguing that "it is imperative that the European Jewish community without delay take a stance on the ongoing Islamisation."

Uh huh. Who'd of thought?

But if you really want to go off with the pixies, why not try Pamela Geller's Atlas Shrugs, which you can find as a favoured, linked blog on the Australian Conservative website, and her defensive Murderer's Manifesto imagined cautious alliance with Jihadists: "We Both Share One Common Goal", and LA Lies.

Never mind. You could just perhaps restrict your reading to The Australian, and to Chris Kenny's righteously indignant Hussain's views on bin Laden disturbing and dangerous.

Hussain insults us all by defining the age of terror not through this insidious evil and its consequences but through a list of anti-American grievances.

This is a moral backflip that instantaneously converts the terror campaign from being a savage and unprovoked attack against western people, their supporters and their values into a tale of western wrong-doings fomenting resentment and violence.

What is the point of these words if not an attempt to provide excuses for terrorism?

Indeed. Nothing like a balanced approach.

Back to the anon edit:

Emerging are details of a conspiracy that, if only in his tortured mind, goes to the very heart of much foment being seen in parts of Europe over the perceived threat to local cultural and patriotic values posed by multiculturalism that challenges national identity.

Only in his tortured mind?

Oh dear. Let's hope he hasn't read the anonymous editorialist's own words in Editorial: The veiled conceit of multiculturalism (a misinformed tolerance finally hits its limits in Britain), Editorial: Rising nationalism is a natural response (there is a fine balance to promoting tolerance), and so on and so forth.

What's it all mean? Well of course we must blame the writers, the novelists, those conjurors who summon up the dark side of deep foreboding, but never blame the journalists and commentators writing for the newspapers, who only deliver the facts ma'am, just the facts (and never mind the ferment of opinion-making and muck-raking).

But what's the bet that after the innocent dead are buried, in due course the same hysteria and irrationality will return to the commentariat and the scribblers, and the rabid fundamentalists and their slick fellow travellers will maintain their course as they argue over the big and little ends of the egg-cutting procedure?

As for the pond, we're with Krasznahorkai:

... because being aware of his lack of knowledge was not in itself some form of knowledge for which an older one could be traded in, but one that presented itself as a terrifying puzzle the moment he thought about the world, as he most furiously did that evening, all but torturing himself in an effort to understand it and failing, because the puzzle seemed ever more complex and he had begun to feel that this world puzzle that he was so desperate to understand, that he was torturing himself to understand, was really the puzzle of himself and the world at once ...

(Below: and a cartoon to lighten the existential mood).

Two years old, or is that two years young ...

(Above: two years ago the pond cranked to life, scribbling on, inter alia, Tony Abbott and climate change."Plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose"- Jean-Baptiste Alphonse Karr).

It was two years ago today that the pond came to life, metamorphosed from an absurd time spent in Michael Duffy land.

Two years. Lah di dah.

Since the meaningless observation of trivial rituals is part of the joy of life, let me count the benefits:

in this time, I have expended no money on psychologists or psychiatrists;

in this time, I have posted no comments, rants, snide asides, or other responses to newspapers online, whether Fairfax or Murdoch, whether Tim Blair's tomfoolery, or the flummoxing Miranda the Devine, the perplexing Janet Albrechtsen, or the irritating Paul Sheehan, despite many and varied temptations, provocations, and inane stupidities (and if you multiply the benefits world-wide, into the land of David Brooks and Daniel Pipes and ... why it's a lifetime savings benefit);

in this time, a few kindly people have left comments, suggesting that howling into the wind, into the gale of silliness peddled by assorted minions, whether Punch-drunk or otherwise employed by Rupert Murdoch, is a protective strategy commonly employed by many docile rational, sense-seeking souls, confronted by the awesome sight of hacks paid to be elite members of the commentariat, and then daily burbling on, in the style of Gerard Henderson, about the dangers of elites;

in this time, when wandering dangerous inner urban elite streets (strangely populated by tattooed junkies, wretched students, lowly ethnics, pensioners and street bums), I smile at the passing parade, and give thanks for the pleasures of being alive, and not being paid to whinge and moan and run around like Chicken Little at least once a week, in the manner of Tony Abbott invoking the wrath of the carbon tax and the destruction of everything;

and in this time, even the parrots feasting on the winter cherry blossoms chortle like loons, at the sheer joy of the intoxicating loonacy of squabbling and bickering, while being far removed from the ugliness wreaked on the world in the name of post-colonial adventurism.

In short, to paraphrase Catch 22, the pond has kept me sane, by way of allowing me to express my profound insanity, brought on by the insane ways of the world ...

Along the way, the sublime contradictions and hypocrisies of the commentariat have provided enormous pleasure.

Even the smallest follies will do, and somehow it all links together, as with Max Mosley, former president of the FIA, bankrolling legal actions against the News of the World because of the way the rag did him over with stories about a Nazi-style orgy. (Max Mosely bankrolls phone hacking cases against the News of the World, Formula One's 'Nazi' Sex Scandal).

So it goes, as Bob Ellis says when channeling a decent writer ...

Somehow that segues nicely into the news that Melbourne F1 Grand Prix cost taxpayers $50 million.

That's right, long suffering mug punters shove fifty million buckeroos down the copious pockets of Bernie Ecclestone, supposedly to generate up to $39 million of economic activity (don't get me started on the multipliers used to justify this kind of government waste - been there, peddled that snake oil).

Why next thing you know you'll end up like the HUN carrying on about the waste of money involved in bringing Oprah Winfrey to Melbourne, while at the same time US visitor numbers have fallen, as if they were ever going to rise given the current US dollar exchange rate (Oprah's Down under show a big blowout).

Never mind, the Grand Prix remains a shocking waste of taxpayer money, so we immediately raced off to gadfly petrolhead Tim Blair for a searing indictment of the waste, since after all, international socialist big government conspiracies are the daily durum wheat grain he feeds his tea party chooks.

Oh foolish pond. Blair isn't too worried about the taxpayers or the idea of rent-seeking, he's worried about the size of the engines, and the amount of noise, and the possibility that soon enough we won't be able to hear the growl.

Did we ever mention the pond's theory that some men think the size of their penis is somehow mystically related to the size of their exhaust pipe?

Oh the suffering, oh the humanity, on show in Formula Prius.

It seems that the cars might be forced to use electric mode and be quiet in the pits, and that's the real reason we shouldn't be bothered by the Grand Prix any more!

Blair's hopes for the future?

The era of lame may yield to an era of helmetless death drivers aboard V12 nitro trikes with bodywork made from corn chips

Helmetless on trikes?

Perhaps Blair could yet emulate the irony of the American motorcyclist who died protesting helmet laws, because he wasn't wearing a helmet that might well have saved him. (Rider dies at motorbike helmet protest).

Or maybe not.

Perhaps the entire commentariat should be encouraged to ride and drive their nitro trikes without helmets, on the basis that we always need more entrants in the Darwin Awards. (The awards have their own wiki too).

Next week, Tim Blair goes feral about art subsidies one more time, perhaps because Cate Blanchett can't reach the back row with her feral growl ...

And so on to an entirely unrelated matter.

Thanks to a mention on Slate's Doonsebury page Say What? feature - you truly have to be a loon to make the cut - we found ourselves reading Andrea Peyser's astonishing bilious assault Harry Potter scribe casts a sexist spell for yet another Murdoch lowlife publication, the New York Post.

Serendipity being what it is, that led us to this response 'Harry Potter' sexist. Yes, and I am Jessica Rabbit.

How is it possible that such bitter, incoherent, talentless, mean-spirited, humourless, eaten-up-with-naked-envy (of other people's fame, money and niceness) utter crapitude is appearing regularly in the New York Post? Either blackmail is involved, or someone is very, very good in bed. The former seems much the more likely.

Actually Kerryn, you're way too kind. Even if you have no time for Harry Potter, reading Peyer's piece was a bit like seeing a dog playing with its vomit after eating too much green around the gills grass. We commend it to readers with strong stomachs, or perhaps with a gruesome desire to see Jimi Hendrix or Momma Cass re-enact their deaths ...

And it leads to an even grander thesis, way beyond blackmail and being good in bed, way beyond Blair and Peyser bleagh.

The entire blogosphere has had to be invented simply to provide people with a way to respond to the astonishing diversity of biliousness, stupidity, silliness, nastiness, misinformation and misunderstandings visited upon a hapless world by the minions of Murdoch ...

With a bit of luck, the forthcoming paywalls down under will remove these scribbles from antipodean consciousness, in much the same way as The Times' paywall has removed that paper from the general conversation.

That's been way better than the physical closing down of the News of the World.

With a bit of luck, there will be no need for a pond in several years, with the Murdoch empire broken up, or in ruins like some Ozymandias statue, or trapped behind paywalls of its own making ...

The result? Max Mosely can quietly about the business of wearing Nazi memorabilia while copping a whipping, and Bernie Ecclestone keep going about the business of picking the pockets of Victorian taxpayers ...

Meanwhile, to those who drop by from time to time, thanks for your patience and interest, and now a poem to celebrate the passage of time, and the wounds it can inflict:

I met a traveller from an antipodean land
Who said: "Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in Holt street. Near them on the strand,
Half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown
And wrinkled lip and sneer of cold command
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,
The hand that mocked them and the heart that fed.
And on the pedestal these words appear:
'My name is Rupert Murdoch, King of Tabloids:
Look on my rags, ye mighty, and despair!'
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare,
The lone and level pavements stretch far away".

And now for that Doonsebury (click to enlarge).

George Pell, Phillip Jensen, divorce, marriage, and the whole damn thing ...

(Above: the man who loved marriage so much he invented new ways to get a divorce. Like, start a church).

It being Sunday, and the news inclined to be grim, it's time for a little respite, retreat and meditation, and in the process to catch up with the thinking of Cardinal George Pell, as revealed unto the world in the Sunday Terror.

Unless you like to waste money and kill trees by buying today's rag, you'll have to be content with last week's Same-Sex Union.

Naturally the Pellists are deeply disturbed by the notion of same sex marriage, which flies in the face of everything that is reasonable, and has already led to some dangerous thinking:

One or two Muslim voices are already calling for Australian law to recognize polygamy, one man with many wives. Some feminists might approve this provided a woman could have more than one husband!

Oh those perverted feminists and their damned, vexing taste for polyandry. But let's leave jokes about Muslim voices and women's perverted tastes aside for an even more vexing issue:

If we reject the natural order of society and if we decide to manufacture reality through redefining marriage, why should we resist further changes such as polygamy?

There you are: the natural order rejected, and reality manufactured, and hapless society incapable of resisting change!

It led us to think that there were other issues to contemplate:

If we reject the natural order of society and if we decide to manufacture reality through redefining marriage and becoming brides of christ, why should we resist further changes such as intercourse with the spirit world?

Indeed. Let us take us our text:

There were giants in the earth in those days; and also after that, when the sons of God came in unto the daughters of men, and they bare children to them, the same became mighty men which were of old, men of renown. (King James version, Genesis 6:4)

Oh dear. The sons of god doing it with the daughters of men, to the bare-faced point of baring children.

Let's face it, this kind of unholy holy business actually led to the holy ghost having his way with Mary, and producing a most troubled and troubling son.

Now the birth of Jesus Christ was on this wise: When as his mother Mary was espoused to Joseph, before they came together, she was found with child of the Holy Ghost. (Matthew 1:18).

Talk about fiddling in the dark and disturbing the natural order of things!

And we haven't even got on to the vexed problem of the Nephilim, the offspring of the 'sons of god' and the 'daughters of men', though perhaps that's why god introduced the concept of genocide into the world by showing how it's done with a giant flood.

Yep, spirits cavorting with the flesh has always been a tendency in the world (just ask Hollywood), and it can turn quite nasty, as Barbara Hershey discovered in The Entity (just ask any pulp movie buff for further references, a treatise on the sexual implications of The Exorcist, and an episode guide to Supernatural, as the boys battle Lucifer and get tempted by wicked fallen angels).

But perhaps the most unnatural order of things involves the church requiring of its people that they abstain from the natural order of marriage, and instead become chaste brides of christ in a church which is the ultimate bride of christ. Talk about kinkiness ... why it makes the way the pond regularly becomes a bride of satan quite a normal way of conducting a relationship.

But will the Pellists discuss the way the Catholic church rejects marriage and the natural order of society for a manufactured spiritual reality and an artificial definition of marriage based on the views of goat herders and cheese makers from thousands of years ago, and remain resistant to changes involving people wanting to display love and affection towards each other?

Fat chance.

Meanwhile, over at the Sydney Anglicans, Phillip Jensen is in meltdown mode over marriage, in No Fault Today, No Marriage Tomorrow. It seems that easy divorce has ruined marriage, as opposed to the joys of a guilt-ridden, onerous judgemental divorce, or perhaps a life spent building up the raw materials trapped in a marital hell all your very own, a kind of Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? ("Flores para los muertos")

... changing the basis for divorce changed the real meaning of marriage and, for many people, has effectively made marriage redundant.

Yes indeed, that rascally Henry VIII has a lot to answer for.

Changing the basis for divorce in sixteenth century England certainly changed the real meaning of marriage, and it led to ... eek, the Anglicans, the Sydney Anglicans and the ponderous pontificating Phillip Jensen.

Now it's those damned pesky gays seeking to do a Henry the Eighth:

So now again we have a minority wishing to address their problems by changing the nature of marriage. The homosexual community is a much smaller minority, than those who were seeking easier divorce and they are not facing legal or financial discrimination, for their issues have all been dealt with in recent legislation. Their motivation for changing marriage is to gain social acceptance of their lifestyle.

Oh the wicked fiends, seeking to live in suburban bliss when there's really nothing wrong with a ghetto.

However, such a change is self-defeating as it will only further diminish the distinctive value of marriage and its place in society.

Because you see heterosexuals have done such a good job enhancing the distinctive value of marriage, to the point where a decent Catholic nun or priest, brides of christ, won't have a bar of it.

It will not immediately change our relationship with our spouse, but over time it will further erode the fundamental place that family life has in our nation. It is a further rejection of the Christian culture but it is also, and more importantly for our parliamentarians, a further undermining of the family structure on which all stable societies are built.

By golly, Henry VIII, and by extension, all those Anglicans who followed him, bear a heavy responsibility, and it shouldn't be easy for them to deliver a hospital pass to the gays, so they can get out of jail and go on to tithe the world their five hundred bucks.

And it's heartening to see that prattling Dean Jensen agrees:

Here then is a great paradox. At this time when Henry VIII and the community has, by simplifying divorce, so redefined marriage as to say that it is of no real value (“only a piece of paper” and a head chopping away), some people feel their relationship will only gain value if it is recognized as a marriage.

Oh dear, I think the subbie's just slipped a fast one into the ponderous Jensen's final par, trying to perhaps highlight the contradictions and hypocrisies of a church founded on a quickie divorce rabbiting on about the dangers of quickie divorce, and linking this to the matter of gay marriage. Damn you subbie, hie thee back to Rupert.

Meanwhile, speaking of the media, on a more solemn note, it was fascinating to see the way, knee-jerk style, that all the early reports on the tragic events in Norway immediately linked it to Muslims, Islamic terrorism, al-Qaeda and international terrorists. (try a local have it both ways Was al-Qaeda or far-Right group behind attacks? as an example).

The 24/7 news cycle now requires ill-informed, meaningless, fact-free, intuitive speculations to feed the satanic mill of misinformation.

This has been noted in detail by Gleen Greenwald in a piece for Salon, on The omnipotence of Al Qaeda and the meaninglessness of "Terrorism", including a flurry of links showing how the media just reached for the bottom shelf - mix terrorism and Islam and produce instant headline.

... now it turns out that the alleged perpetrator wasn't from an international Muslim extremist group at all, but was rather a right-wing Norwegian nationalist with a history of anti-Muslim commentary and an affection for Muslim-hating blogs such as Pam Geller's Atlas Shrugged, Daniel Pipes, and Robert Spencer's Jihad Watch. Despite that, The New York Times is still working hard to pin some form of blame, even ultimate blame, on Muslim radicals.

As for the concept of terrorism:

... in many (though not all) media circles, discussion of the Oslo attack quickly morphed from this is Terrorism (when it was believed Muslims did it) to no, this isn't Terrorism, just extremism (once it became likely that Muslims didn't).

This then is where the "war on terrorism" has led us.

To cultural and religious wars and to acts of madness, with religion as the font and unholy souce, while the sophists fronting the churches spruik on endlessly about how their snake oil will fix the world, and the desire of gay people to get married and lead boring conventional suburban lives (perhaps with a whiff of Virginia Woolf in some cases) will lead to the end of the world.

If you can spot the difference between a fundie Muslim cleric and a Christian fundie cleric carrying on about how gay marriage is a danger to the natural world, you're more astute than the pond.

Perhaps it's more likely that the end of the world will come out of some fundamentalist true believer's gun barrel ...

Christopher Pearson, Simon Crean, and the deeply perverted fantasy life of The Australian's anonymous editorialist ...

(Above: a Nicholson from May 2003. More Nicholson here).

Every Saturday, it seems, we can now rely on Christopher Pearson speculating on the Labor party, always from the wrong end of the telescope and always with the fate of dear opposition leader Tony Abbott firmly in mind.

It's like a priest or a nun speculating about sex (well hopefully these days priests and nuns are suitably chaste so the metaphor will stick), but however you cut it and what metaphor you use, it's charmingly removed from reality.

Take the header: Early poll could save Labor from total collapse.

Early poll? Save Labor from total collapse? Head off to the abattoir now and save yourself?

Only in Christopher Pearson and Tony Abbott's dreaming.

But it gets better.

In the space of a week the online betting odds on Simon Crean becoming the next Labor leader have shortened from 100 to one down to eight.

This may or may not mean anything, of course, and the sums being wagered are not huge, but let us note it as a straw in the wind.

In some ways Crean's the obvious choice.

Simon Crean the obvious choice?

The sums aren't huge and it may not mean anything, but hey, the wolf's outside, so piggies, let's build a house of straw ...

Only in Christopher Pearson and Tony Abbott's dreaming.

It will be remembered, by the few who care, that Simon Crean bored the pants off everyone back at the start of the noughties when he was elected leader of the opposition in November 2001, and eventually he got rolled without even contesting an election, to be replaced by the mad Mark Latham. Crean then continued to bore the world as Treasury spokesperson for Labor, got the boot from that job, ended up shadow Minister for Trade, and thereafter has bounced around in various positions. He now damps down any enthusiasm and passion that might be found in regional Australia or in the arts (the Hon Simon Crean MP).

The notion that the Labor party would dredge up Crean and catapult him back into the leadership is such a masturbatory fantasy that it makes the use of conventional pornography seem like research into realistic female behaviour.

Only Christopher Pearson could manage it, and what's worse, in public, without benefit of concealing rain coat ...

Pearson has his reasons of course:

I cannot imagine Crean winning the next election against Tony Abbott and neither does anyone else. His real job would be, as the saying goes, to save the furniture. His hardest decision would probably be deciding when to call the election, unless it's decided for him by the exigencies of a hung parliament.

His hardest decision would be when to call an early election, so he can hand over the silverware to Tony Abbott while clutching at some of the furniture? Unless the hung parliament decides they can't stand being bored witless by Simon Crean, it'll be up to him to call said early election?

Uh huh. Waiter, give me some of what that chappie Pearson is on, because egad, it looks like exceptional stuff.

Of course Pearson is simply channeling Tony Abbott, as he seems to on a weekly basis these days:

Despite the view inside the beltway - and in Johns's thesis - that there are at least two more years of the present term still to run and that no government willingly surrenders the Treasury benches, the assumption that the election will inevitably be in late 2013 seems to me mistaken.

The recent experience in NSW, where there are fixed four-year terms and the Keneally government's position just kept deteriorating, is one Labor will think long and hard about before repeating.

Uh huh. Of course according to the polls, if the lemmings jumped off the cliff right now, a lot of the lemmings would go down hard, and it's hard to imagine the position deteriorating any further.

Unless of course you happen to be political pundit Pearson:

A primary vote of 27 per cent with no relief in sight poses the grim question: are the longer-term interests of the party best served by clinging to office?

Whoever next leads Labor may well decide they're not.

And so Simon Crean gallops to the rescue of the Labor party, cuts his losses, and presides over a rump which allows Tony Abbott to rule for a minimum of three terms, perhaps even longer than John Howard, perhaps for all eternity ...

Well when dealing in a rich fantasy life, it's the pond's belief you should cultivate the very best fantasies. Why settle for second best, and the drudgery of maintaining constant rage and Chicken Little routines for the next two years, when you can imagine Simon Crean coming to the rescue?

Pearson's best hope would be to pray for the death of an independent or two, or a Labor party member in a vulnerable seat, but I guess such explicit prayers might sit a little oddly with a dedicated Christian.

But soft, we're interrupting Pearson's dreaming:

Maybe the best course of action would be to provide six to nine months of stable government to show the party's still capable of it, to reclaim its traditional heartland and then take the electoral drubbing it's expecting with as much grace as it can summon.

So there you go, Labor party hacks, anoint Simon Crean and take your whacking, and so fulfil Christopher Pearson's wet dreams of a Tony Abbott rampant ...

There's more - who can resist the sight of Pearson quoting that Labor party luminary Gary Johns, who dared to suggest that changing leaders might be a bad strategy, and so interfered with the Pearson dreaming - but can we just leave these two devotees of the Labor party contemplating the fluff in their navels.

And so leave just enough room to contemplate this morning's contribution to the heart of the nation's fantasy life from the anonymous editorialist in The Australian.

In Only when the tide goes out ... the anon edit offers up this, like the wise Solomon adjudicating on the best way to cut up a child:

Thankfully the tide seems to be turning in the climate change debate.

Where once there were polarised camps -- with one side creating panic and alarm about soaring temperatures and rising sea levels, and the other denying any evidence of change -- now we are beginning to see a more rational debate, with the scientific facts being discussed in a dispassionate manner.

Uh huh. The anon edit then goes on to flail Fairfax journalists, left-wing commentator David Marr, ABC presenter Fran Kelly, for failing to discover that The Australian is at the cutting edge of climate science, and - it seems - for introducing politics into science, a crime the lizard Oz would never commit.

It seems, according to the lizard Oz, that the entirety of the climate science debate can be reduced to one paper and one concurring expert:

His (Phil Watson's) work has been endorsed by Macquarie University climate researcher Howard Brady. "In all cases, it is clear that sea-level rise, although occurring, has been decelerating for at least the last half of the 20th century," says Dr Brady.

All part of the ebb and flow of debate.

Uh huh. And remind us who this Dr. Brady is again?

Well why not head off once more to Paging Dr Brady and see what you can find, and why the lizard Oz places such deep obdurate faith in the opinion of one man.

Offering up such unseemly detail seems too arduous for the fatuous fat-headed anonymous editorialist, preening and posturing and indulging in a self-congratulatory fantasy as deep and as silly as any indulged in by Christopher Pearson.

The Australian as the home of rational, dispassionate discussion of climate science? While at the same time abusing everyone left and centre as Fairfax dissidents and ABC trouble-makers, cardigan wearers and conspiracists? While at the same time endorsing the notion that personal observation constitutes science and so if you stare off to the horizon and can't see any bend in the earth, then surely the world is flat ...

That's surely some kind of deeply perverted fantasy.

Hey, if that's your thing, why not head off to the local second hand book store, and pick up some old Playboys ...

It almost goes without saying, purely for the rational, dispassionate interviews you'll find inside ...

(Below: we keed, we keed. See Climate change: Playboy called it in 1980, which is a damn sight sooner than the anon edit called it at the lizard Oz).

Another day in the Murdoch coal mine with the minions of Rupert ...

(Above: another day inside The Australian's coverage. Screen cap, no active links).

Captain's Star log this fateful day: the evil empire controlled by Zurg has begun its relentless fight back, using two favourite tactics:

One is known as the Sergeant Schultz "I know nothing" defence, which can be expanded into the wider ranging ploy "I see nothing. I was not here. I did not even get up this morning!"

Certain keepers of galactic arcane wisdom insist that it should be known as the Manuel "I know nothing" defence, but these tend to be British, and with a fawlty understanding of the world.

If faithfully followed, there is nothing in this defence to impede an attacking manoeuvre: "And since I know nothing, and even though some insist perhaps it was my job to know something, I'm perfectly placed to fix up the mess."

The second, the Bart 'bunker down' feint - "I didn't do it, no one saw me do it, there's no way you can prove anything!" - is a fiendish ploy, and is claimed by some as the reason the Maginot Line crumbled.

Naturally there are fellow travellers and sympathisers ready to help Zurg's empire, and you can find them in the oddest places. The pond was moved, touched to the heart, by Mark Fletcher trolling for trade at New Matilda with Has News Ltd Actually Done Anything Wrong?

Apropos the current fuss, Fletcher scribbles a most moving cultural reference:

It’s like watching the hyenas maul Scar at the end of The Lion King. Sure, Scar wasn’t exactly the hero of the story, but did he deserve to be torn to shreds?

By the end of the piece Fletcher has convinced himself that a code of ethics for journalists isn't really desirable or necessary, and so we look forward to his ongoing campaign to remove the bible from the world, since surely such a long and tedious exposition of a code of ethics for humanity isn't really desirable or necessary.

Oh and Fletcher also wins an award for deploring the words "righteousness" and "Schadenfreude" as the closer to his piece. What a whacky, zany spoil sport.

Of course in other contexts, this would be understood as Stockholm syndrome, and be seen as providing convincing evidence as to why those who call themselves 'progressives' are easy prey for the likes of Scar on a daily basis. Fie fi fo fum, I smell the blood of a cardigan wearer ...

Meanwhile, big Mal has stepped up to the plate, and caused much excitement about climate change, except in the Murdoch press.

Big Mal was delivering the inaugural Virginia Chadwick Memorial Lecture, for a coral reef hugging foundation, which I guess is a tad different to the usual tree huggers.

Big Mal said many pious and unexceptional things, including denying he was an incipient Bolshevist (you can catch coverage of Turnbull in Turnbull defends climate change at Lateline, here).

Presumably big Mal was disturbed by the notion of Tony Abbott rabbiting on about the Chinese yet again:

Mr Abbott said recently that Australia's emissions reduction target, backed by both sides of politics, was "crazy" because it would be overwhelmed pollution increases in China.

But Mr Turnbull said Chinese emissions were one-fifth of Australia's and India's were less than one-tenth.

"Our regular references to their [India and China's] emissions and 'Why should we do anything until the Chinese and the Indians do something' - they find those references incredibly galling," he said.

"How incredibly embarrassing statements like that are when you actually confront representatives of those countries." (here)

Okay, so it's just another step in the big Mal v Tony the lycra-clad lout Abbott phoney war, and perhaps it's not as amusing as the Abbott quote contained in Barry Jones' plea Intelligent discussion all but extinct, who starts his piece thusly:

An article by The Age's Michael Gordon titled 'He says She says' last week, included a disturbing paragraph in which he quoted Tony Abbott, in South Dandenong, answering a question about how CO2 emissions are calculated: ''It's actually pretty hard to do this because carbon dioxide is invisible and it's weightless (my emphasis) and you can't smell it.'' (you can catch Gordon's piece here He says, she says in a faux election campaign).

Weightless? Well Jones gives that a good shellacking, but along with scientific stupidity, Abbott did the old Orwellian routine:

He (Abbott) went on to paint a vivid and troubling word picture, raising the spectre of an ''army'' of ''carbon policemen'' rampaging around the country with clipboards, attempting to measure something that was ''neither easy nor accessible'', and making life difficult for business.

And weightless too! How difficult it will be to stop it floating into the stratosphere!

Where's the flagship, The Australian, the so-called dead heart of the nation, in all this?

Well, they did pick up an AAP in relation to Turnbull, and ran it under the header Libs support science on climate says Malcolm Turnbull.

But on the digital front page - dear absent lord, you don't actually buy the rag, do you? - as featured above in the screen cap, big Mal doesn't make the cut, not when there's room for Bjorn Lomborg doing his usual comedy stylings in Bootleggers hijack climate change debate (and as a skilled hijacker of debates, Lomborg surely knows what he's talking about), a cherry-picking piece by Brendan O'Keefe seeking to sow FUD with 'Man-made pollution reflects sun', the UN surprisingly refusing to act as part of a giant conspiracy involving black helicopters, UN snubs pleas on climate change, the states maintaining a bolshie rage in States step up carbon tax compo fight, and the jewel in the crown, Sea-level rises are slowing, tidal gauge records show.

The one expert quoted in relation to that report regarding sea levels was a Dr. Howard Brady at Macquarie University.

Uh huh. So I immediately went in search of Dr. Brady, but someone else beat me to it, and here's the result. He's a former Catholic priest, a retired seventy year old scientist who did a lot of work in Antarctica, and he used to be chief of Mosaic Oil. And he's ready to play his part in The Australian's attitude to science, by throwing around adjectives like "ridiculous" and delivering puns about how the CSIRO's predictions were already dead in the water, with no sound basis in probability.

Big Mal does make the cut in relation to the NBN, with John Durie's piece Malcolm Turnbull lays down alternative blueprint to the NBN, but if you read that piece, please make sure you also read the piece in IT News, Analysts cast doubt on Turnbull's NBN.

I guess a bit of soft soap about big Mal is only fair - praise the NBN plan, bury the climate change dissident - seeing as how big Mal likes to take Rupert Murdoch at his word, and sees no reason to do anything about anything in relation to the cosy duopoly controlling the print media in Australia (Turnbull takes Murdoch 'at his word').

Oh and there's also room on the front page for a bit of fear mongering in relation to Internode revealing a proposed pricing plan (NBN fees to start at $60 a month).

We're looking forward to startling, shock horror revelations regarding Internode's current offering of 1 TB a month for $150 a month using ADSL ...

All up, the two issues - bagging the NBN, dissing climate change science - and their editorial placement, and the treatment in the coverage offered up in today's edition, suggest that The Australian will go on being the unfair, unbalanced, and in some cases, outrightly dissembling and deceptive rag it's been for many a year ...

Reading it truly is an experience in weightlessness, and it brings us back Mark Fletcher's question Has News Ltd Actually Done Anything Wrong?

Could we modestly suggest an alternative header for his next piece?

How about Does News Ltd Actually Ever Do Anything Right?

Perhaps if Fletcher wants to give it a go, how about starting with The Guardian's editorial News Corp and phone hacking: Wiful blindness at the very top.

Or perhaps we could just settle for a piece titled News Corp, climate change and the NBN: wilful misreporting starts at the very top.

(Below: the Murdoch empire, a fit subject for satire this last decade. Here's Doonesbury doing it in 2004. Click to enlarge).

David Cameron, Paul Sheehan, and the meerkats dance while the Murdoch empire flounders ...

(Above: the first part of a classic First Dog, with more First Dog available here and the full cartoon currently available to subscribers).

A long lost Anglophilia bubbled to the surface of the pond last night watching the cavortings of the English parliament live on ABC24.

We'd intended to watch a movie, but for some reason ended up on the rarer part of the dial and immediately became entranced. David Cameron is an adept, engaging parliamentary performer, albeit in a prattish public school boy way, and by the end of the show butter hadn't melted in his mouth, and he emerged as almost saintly for giving Andy Coulson a break.

But what was most entertaining were the rituals of the house, with MPs rising and falling like meerkats in a bid to catch the Speaker's eye, and the whimsical Speaker himself, delivering little homilies and asides, while maintaining order and making poor old Harry Jenkins sound like a braying colonial ass.

And then there was the full blown range of stereotypes, from the Major in Fawlty Towers to the complete cast of Yes Minister and Yes Prime Minister, these days with a multicultural tinge, and a sprinkling of women. And then there were the questions, plenty of inane Dorothy Dixers and cheap point scoring, but all done in such a civilised, quintessentially British way.

A special commendation for the MP who deplored the tone of partisan questioning in the parliament before she went on to ask a cheap, tawdry partisan question of the most self-serving kind. And for sheer stoicism, there was Nick Clegg looking like he'd swallowed a badger, a stoat or a weasel, and so grumpy that eventually the director changed to a new angle, for fear that Clegg's unhappy look might break the lens.

Oh it was a splendid, jolly, entrancing night of Meerkatism, way better than a movie, but just like a movie, and every so often we felt moved to shout "Shame", "Shame", as if in some Wagnerian chorus ...

But enough of movie reviews - all we can do is urge you to see the show if it ever plays again in a theatre near you - because the pond's beat is the callow commentariat, and sure enough there's Paul Sheehan turning up like a bad penny this morning to put the best spin on it he can manage, for Rupert and his minions, in Plot getting thicker but News not for burial.

Really, for comedy stylings, Sheehan gives Meerkatism a go:

I even saw, live, the mock pie attack on Murdoch. You couldn't script it. Yet the attack merely served to underline the gravity with which Rupert and James Murdoch were addressing the ethical problems that had tainted their company.

Gravity? Oh spare me days. Surely the loon saved Murdoch's bacon, since the tone after the stupidity was much different to proceedings before the activist decided to reveal the self-defeating stupidity of activists wanting their five seconds of tabloid fame ...

Never mind, on Sheehan rambles, reading as if he's looking to a gig with News Corp before retirement:

Much of the coverage of the corporate embarrassment of Murdoch and the structural damage to his $40 billion media empire has suffered from a want of perspective and an excess of schadenfreude.

Somehow Sheehan manages to deplore schadenfreude while at the same time producing a splendid bout of schadenfreude:

The parliamentary committee hearing in London may have been the beginning of the end of News Corp as a family company, but is not the beginning of the end of the empire. Quite the contrary. News Corp should emerge from this controversy stronger, not weaker, because it can no longer be run for the primary benefit of Murdoch himself.

Um, isn't that the entire point of the schadenfreude? Le Roi est mort, vive le Roi!, except in this case the new le Roi is going to find it hard to be a Murdoch carrying on the family control and power ...

As to the fate of the empire, who knows whether in five or ten years, it will have held together, or been torn apart, like so many empires before it. Murdoch has assembled and built a disparate set of assets on a number of continents, and handily self-contained, so that takeover and scrap metal merchants can eye off the goods and if they like them, make off with them. I guess there's a reason Sheehan is a journalist rather than a private equity pirate ...

As well as giving the corporation a fiscal clean bill of health, Sheehan also manages to sanitise the activities and the zealotries of the Murdoch empire, which according to Sheehan are almost saintly, except for one rotten apple.

Yes the sweet cherubins of News Corp are far removed from the tawdry values of the News of the World newspaper, which makes you wonder what Sheehan thinks of the behaviour of Fox News in the United States, the Daily Terror in Sydney, The Sun in the U.K., the Post in New York, The Australian purporting to be the dark heart of the nation, The Punch reducing the IQ of the nation even as we speak, the late unlamented showcasing of Glenn Beck, and the whole tribe of Faux Noise pundits, and ... and ... and ...

Second thoughts, don't ask, don't wonder, as Sheehan thinks Genghis Khanism quite splendid, and much more ideologically sound than Meerkatism.

The rest of the piece is an astute praising of Murdoch for abandoning newspapers and turning to television, and then in a dose of real schadenfreude, Sheehan uses the occasion to predict the imminent end of newspapers:

The events of the past few weeks, even the past 48 hours, have speeded up the entire process of the media's mass migration into the digital age. Every media company which owns major newspapers in the English-speaking world now must question the longevity and viability of printed newspapers, however venerable and respected their brands may be. They become at risk on the day their structural costs become greater than their revenues.

Uh huh. In just 48 hours, and all because Murdoch shut down a rag to save a television bid, as if this explains the sudden desire to shift to the intertubes.

This is such a profoundly absurd red herring, it's hard to know where to begin, as if News of the World hadn't attempted to join the digital age, and indeed back in 2010 moved behind the News Corp online paywall (News of the World moves behind paywall), such that it cost punters a quid a day to get their online fix, or two quid for a four week subscription.

Sheehan's attempt to dress up the specific, and immediate embarrassment offered the Murdoch world by the NOTW's sordid activities as a kind of digital turning point is rich comedy gold.

That day has already arrived for many American newspapers, where the migration of advertisers and readers to the internet has been more aggressive than in Australia. Quality journalism is expensive and the internet is cheap, a conundrum that has not been resolved.

Actually news of the day is relatively inexpensive, and it's the spin offered by the commentariat and by news gathering organisations that might turn out to be too expensive for the punters.

Pay for Paul Sheehan's thoughts, if they're lurking behind a paywall? Why, I'm sorry, but at a cent for the day, that kind of opinion mongering is hugely expensive, and the internet, awash with opinions and meerkats, is relatively cheap.

Never mind, Sheehan then offers up a final bit of schadenfreude, though we hesitate to call it that because he clearly doesn't like being in the schadenfreude business, though he routinely offers up schadenfreude with a bash of bile and lemon bitters on a weekly basis:

Yesterday, Rupert Murdoch had what he described as the most humbling day of his career. He has, however, built a media company that has the bulk and breadth to prosper long after he has gone. The only real casualty is the vanity that News Corp can remain a family company.

With a bit of luck, the real casualty is the vanity that News Corp can remain a source of yellow press ideological and political thuggery.

And here the fate of the Hearst empire holds out some hope. After William Randolph Hearst - a man with sufficient clout to nudge the United States into a war with Spain in 1898 - departed the scene of his muckraking newspaper empire, the Hearst Corporation lost its megalomaniac tang, and now operates as a much more sedate publisher of magazines, local and weekly newspapers, and owner of television networks. The controlling trust still contains Hearst family members, but the desire to maintain an ideologically driven empire has given way to the practical business of running a relatively consolidated company with a range of media businesses.

And that might be the real casualty of the Murdoch empire, if the dismantling of the Murdoch legacy gets under way in earnest.

First the absurd share holding structure might go, and with it the personal, family control and the personal benefits, but second, bits of the empire might be picked off and devoured by others, in much the same way as the News of the World became extinct overnight.

Suddenly the meerkats understand that the emperor might actually have no clothes, or at least not enough to rule over fully clad politicians, and then there will be only one word to describe the pleasure watching the fate of the family empire unfold.

Schadenfreude.

Bring it on.

Oh and please, in the meantime, can someone bring the meerkats down under, and teach the braying colonials in Canberra how to stage a decent parliament ...

UPDATE: oh and we almost forgot to mention the splendid contribution of the anonymous editor at The Australian, under the hook Gillard seems caught in News Corporation schadenfreude, with the header Providing the answers is hard without questions. The piece provides a splendid bout of dissembling, disingenuous, sanctimonious and righteous justifications of the corporate empire, as befits a minion of Murdoch, and can be warmly recommended to all connoisseurs of humbuggery, but this in particular caught the eye:

Inevitably, any attempt by politicians to bring the fourth estate to heel should be treated with great wariness. The Australian eschews cosy relations with the government, the opposition or any politicians. We always remain open to cordial dealings and the exchange of ideas but we make no apology for reserving the right to scrutinise, criticise and hold to account any politician in the interests of our readers.

Uh huh. As exemplified by the rag's coverage of Tony Abbott, climate change, and the role an NBN might play in the digital age. If I'd had the computer near the breakfast bowl, I'm afraid I'd have snorted into the milk and the cornflakes. But then it got even better:

We will continue to do this, with no complacency, and with a focus on truth, ethical practices and without being beholden to anyone. That is simply our job - no question about it.

Along with vengeful, mindless crusades and vindictive petty opinion-making passing for journalism?

Roll on the paywall, and I'll have some schadenfreude with that please. Make it a double serving of sneering elitist latte ...

(Below: hmm, what would be the best greeting card for homeless, dispossessed members of the commentariat?)

Janet Albrechtsen scribbles not to praise the lord, but to ignore him and go Gaga ...

(Above: look, I'm not a Vickers Viscount).

Christopher Monckton - oh dear, why do we call him Christopher? - perhaps it's the new house style of The Australian:

Christopher Monckton has defied a plea by the British parliament to stop claiming to be a member of the House of Lords, telling his critics to "get used to it". (Affronted aristocrat defies the Lords).

Anyhoo, it turns out the Oz's use of the first name was a momentary style guide aberration:

An affronted Lord Monckton brandished his passport and instructed National Press Club vice president Steve Lewis to read from it aloud.

“The holder is the Right Honourable Christopher Walter Viscount Monckton of Brenchley,” said Mr Lewis.

Lord Monckton added: “The House of Lords says I'm not a member of it. My passport says I am - get used to it.”

Um, actually nobody was disputing that Lord Monckton can call himself a Viscount, and so a Lord (of the minor kind), in much the same way as few dispute the right of any goose to call themselves the Right Honourable Lord Goose of East Cheam.

As to whether said Goose is a member of the House of Lords, why, we defer to the House of Actual Real Lords (Monckton specifically excluded, but who knows if they know what to do or say or what action to take to stop him behaving like an East Cheam Goose of the Most Honourable Kind).

Never mind, this being Dame Slap day, we thought it might be good to go back a few years to see Janet Albrechtsen channeling Lord Monckton in Beware the UN's Copenhagen Plot:

Even after Monckton’s speech, most of the media has duly ignored the substance of what he said. You don’t need me to find his St Paul address on YouTube. Interviewed on Monday morning by Alan Jones on Sydney radio station 2GB, Monckton warned that the aim of the Copenhagen draft treaty was to set up a transnational government on a scale the world has never before seen. Listening to the interview, my teenage daughters asked me whether this was true.

Eek, it's the black helicopters, coming to take me away, hah hah. Of course it turns out that it was all true:

So I read the draft treaty. The word government appears on page 18. Monckton says: “This is the first time I’ve ever seen any transnational treaty referring to a new body to be set up under that treaty as a government. But it’s the powers that are going to be given to this entirely unelected government that are so frightening.”

Uh huh. And Monckton is still terrifying the citizenry down under with this kind of one world government international conspiracy nonsense.

So where are we today Dame Slap? What fresh conspiracy has the UN concocted that will strip us of our precious liberties, or perhaps our precious bodily fluids?

Well sadly with the Murdoch family in the headlines, and Christopher Monckton in full flight in his antipodean follies tour, Janet Albrechtsen has retreated to a little cultural analysis, and in particular, in Hermione and Lady Gaga heroines for our times, to the joys of being Hermione Granger, Emma Watson and Lady Gaga.

Move along people, nothing to see here, except for the closer:

In their different ways, Watson, her alter ego Hermione and Lady Gaga are proud to be who they are. Perhaps only a generation who has grown confused by who are can fully appreciate the power of that message.

Perhaps only a generation who has grown used to copy delivered without a subbie can fully appreciate power message last sentence.

Of course this puts Albrechtsen at odds with the considered cultural thoughts of Miranda Devine who tweeted - twitterer that she is - last year a link to Paglia on Lady Gaga, wherein Paglia is alleged to demolish an icon, while Gaga presumably keeps laughing all the way to the bank.

Apart from the vulgarity of the Devine tweet page, and the astonishing presence of those leftie Fairfax rags' mastheads, if you follow the link, you end up on Lady Gaga and the death of sex, back in the day when the Sunday Times' magazine trawled for trade by stirring up trouble over pop icons, a hallowed tradition since the epic days of The Beatles versus The Who versus the Rolling Stones, and about as useful and meaningful.

Well the pond's happy for a three way shoot out between Janet Albrechtsen, Camille Paglia and Miranda the Devine, and may the most useless and meaningless win.

Meanwhile, it seems that News Corp is now moving away from its Monckton "group hug, let's all have a climate change denial love-in" days, with Malcolm Farr leading the way in the addled Punch with Debunking the bunkum of that dopey Monckton.

Farr - a rough equivalent to the wretched Alan Colmes in attempting some kind of balance - took offence at Monckton saying Australia was now regarded as a sovereign risk, right down there with Greece, Ireland Spain and Italy, for bunging on a fake Australian accent, and for delivering a glib showbiz patter which liberally splattered big scientific names, Latin phrases, and a flurry of scientific studies, not to mention the matter of his Lordship's lesser Lordship:

... when Lord Monckton says Australia is considered a sovereign risk, it is likely he will be ignored by overseas financial markets who, like the Clerk of Parliaments, are confident they know the truth.

However, rank-and-file Australians might not know that. Having been dazzled by the names of philosophers, the Latin and the flurry of scientific studies, they might believe him when he says the Australian economy is wrecked.

Consumer confidence here is low, that is clear. Lord Monkton seems to want to drag it lower for his own purposes.

Actually Big Mal II, it's Tony Abbott who wants to drag Australia's economy, and consumer confidence ever downwards, and definitely for his own purposes, and meantime, for gawd's sake can we have a subbie in the house, lest that Monkton without a "c" decides to sue ...

Ah yes, it's a long way back to Janet Albrechtsen talking of Monckton as a prophet:

Monckton’s warning to Americans that “in the next few weeks, unless you stop it, your President will sign your freedom, your democracy and your prosperity away forever” is colourful. But no more colourful than the language used by those who preach about the perils of climate change and the virtues of a hard-hitting Copenhagen treaty.

Contrast Big Mal II's take on Monckton's "colourful language":

Showmanship is a valid tool in making a public case to ordinary listeners, and show-offs are not always wrong. However, one gets the feeling Lord Monkton does it for manipulation as much as entertainment.

Ah well, now Albrechtsen is going ga ga over Gaga and even Miranda the Devine seems to be a Monckton free-zone.

Again we pause solemnly to remember the good old days, back in 2010, as in Climategate gives lord of the sceptics plenty of ammunition:

The visit to Australia this week of Lord Christopher Monckton - the world's most effective global warming sceptic - couldn't have been better timed.

In those days, the Devine was all over the world's most effective sceptic like a rash:

Monckton is a man whose time has come because he owes nothing to anybody and he has the capacity to interpret the science to a public looking for answers.

The end result?

Could this be the last of the Monckton Follies and his regular tours of the antipodes? After all, even the best showbiz entertainers wear out their welcome, and can only make a return tour when their greatest hits turn up on the 'hits and memories' part of the dial.

There's a faint air of desperation over at Menzies House, the Robert Stigwoods of the tour, as they run this kind of desperate tosh: Next You Know the Left Will Say Lord Vader isn't a "Lord", when the whole world knows that Lord Vader and Screaming Lord Sutch are genuine Lords, and if you can take it, there's a video of the entire debate here.

Happily, Bryan Ferry can still get an audience, so there's hopes for Lord Monckton.

You might think that previous welcome mats offered by the likes of Albrechtsen and Miranda the Devine have left a permanent stain on their credibility, but that's to assume they had any credibility in the first place.

Anyway, better hurry to catch Monckton, whose tour has now been reduced to the level of a reality television show, a kind of mindless American or Australian Pop Idol, and who could do that better than the sozzled Punch team in No knockout blow in great climate stoush:

PRESENTATION
Ant: Denniss’ tie was awful. If you’re going to wear one, for God’s sake tie it properly.
Tory: Shit. I didn’t notice what anyone was wearing, I was too distracted by trying to work out who was in the audience and trying to come up with some sort of cheeky headline for this piece.

Dear sweet absent lord, does it get any more devolved than this, and presumably without the aid of a six pack or some weed?

Does Rupert Murdoch realise he's directly involved in stripping IQ points off any innocent Australian who stumbles into his publications like a mugwump in search of a swamp?

Never mind, if the idea of catching Monckton's act fills you with a vague sense of nausea and dread - much like you get when offered a News Corp publication - why there's always Randy Newman touring in August ... and if you've got a yen for something a little more modern than Newman's always croaky and now aged voice, with Lady Gaga Albrechtsen-approved, why we can all go Gaga now ...

(Below: Fiona Katauskas at New Matilda, here).

Lord Monckton, and a little light entertainment involving the House of Murdoch ...

(Above: why not light up a Viscount today?)

Shocking news.

Lord Monckton has been de-frocked, or de-lorded or whatever else you do to advise a putative member of the house of lords that, lordy, lordy, you ain't no lord of the lordy lordy kind.

Yes, it's all here, in Climate sceptic Lord Monckton told he's not member of House of Lords, and if you don't believe the cardigan wearing lefties at The Guardian, why you might actually have to revert to the 'cease and desist' letter published at the actual House of Lords site, in A letter to Viscount Monckton of Brenchley from the Clerk of the Parliaments (also handily available in pdf from to send to friends and relatives).

Dear Lord Monckton

My predecessor, Sir Michael Pownall, wrote to you on 21 July 2010, and again on 30 July 2010, asking that you cease claiming to be a Member of the House of Lords, either directly or by implication. It has been drawn to my attention that you continue to make such claims.

In particular, I have listened to your recent interview with Mr Adam Spencer on Australian radio. In response to the direct question, whether or not you were a Member of the House of Lords, you said "Yes, but without the right to sit or vote". You later repeated, "I am a Member of the House".

Eek, it's that damn cardigan-wearing Marrickville ABC Mauler Adam Spencer who's done the good lord down.

I must repeat my predecessor's statement that you are not and have never been a Member of the House of Lords. Your assertion that you are a Member, but without the right to sit or vote, is a contradiction in terms. No-one denies that you are, by virtue of your letters Patent, a Peer. That is an entirely separate issue to membership of the House.

Oh golly, I could go on quoting the rest of the letter, but why do a spoiler?

Oh heck, stop twisting my arm, here's the wrap-up:

I am publishing this letter on the parliamentary website so that anybody who wishes to check whether you are a Member of the House of Lords can view this official confirmation that you are not.

Would it be wrong, would it be gloating, to suggest that Caroline Overington make the trip to the parliamentary website, so she can correct the egregious, erroneous errors to be found in Christopher Monckton won't lord it over us, assert ABC, Fairfax? (yes, yes, I know talking of erroneous errors is doubly redundant, but what fun to be a redundant like Overington, or as Jeeves might say, to show signs of being mentally negligible).

Throughout the column Overington kept blathering about Lord Monckton, seemingly refusing to accept that the good lord is a Viscount, not a lord in the Lords, and ended her piece thus:

Lord Monckton spoke at a Sydney function last night, and, all being well, will address the National Press Club on July 19.

All being well a few actual journalists might turn up and give Lord Monckton a little bit of curry, or stick, or what ho, I say old chum, as Bertie Wooster might say.

Let's not confuse the concept of a Viscount in the United Kingdom, a lord of a lesser kind, with the Vickers Viscount, or for that matter Viscount cigarettes (caution, ancient You Tube cigarette commercial of an Australian kind which may tempt reformed smokers to revert to primeval ways).

As always, the pond will respect the right of anyone to call themselves a lord, and claim any lordship they like.

Who can forget the fabulous contribution of Lord Humongous's contribution to the world of wrestling?

Yes, Mad Max lived on in the ring, and you can catch his lordship's career details, such as they are, here. He wasn't the only lord to grace the mat, and in many ways he probably added to the status of wider house of lords in a way that Lord Haw Haw never managed.

What next you ask? An apology from the fatuous Overington for taking cheap shots at Fairfax and the ABC when she might have been better off taking cheap shots at his lordship?

Sorry that's not the Murdoch house style.

UPDATE: news in from the ABC in Ballarat:

His (Monckton's) closing comments accused those behind the promotion of climate change science and those involved in the Copenhagen and Cancun climate change talks of being directly involved in a plot to establish a non-democratic one world government.

"Nearly 1,000 new central bureaucracies, globally, regionally, nationally and locally - all answerable to the State's parties - or the commissariat, rather - to the UN framework convention on climate change," he says. That's going to be the seat of the new world government; they're setting it up now as we speak." (Christopher Monckton in Ballarat: defund the ABC, beware the secret one world government, it's cheaper to do nothing about climate change).

Meanwhile, on another planet, menzies house (don't ask me, that's how they cap their name, as if Ming the Merciless would approve of grammatical hooligans) heroically defends their emissary, in Will ABC's Wendy Carlisle apologise for getting Lord Monckton's science embarrassingly wrong?

We look forward to their next blog entry, Will Menzies House apologise for relentlessly trading off on Lord (not the House of Lords) Monckton's title, and making it all the more embarrassing for all ...

Eek, I looked out the window, and there are some black helicopters hovering nearby.

UPDATE on the UPDATE: Tony Abbott now denies having said this:

“The other crazy thing about this is that, at the same time that our country is proposing to reduce its emissions by 5 per cent - just five per cent - the Chinese are proposing to increase their emissions by 500 per cent.

“So any emissions reduction that we put in place will be wiped out in just a few days by the emissions increase that the Chinese do.” (Tony Abbott undermines Coalition's carbon emissions policy).

What a relief. And here I was thinking Murdoch's minions had hacked my mind and changed black into white.

Meanwhile, thanks to ABC News, we learn that Lord Monckton continues to insist he's a member of the House of Lords because his passport says he is. Hmm, is he travelling on a false passport, or did the Murdoch minions hack into the House of Lords and plant a bogus letter?

Or is the telling of porkies just a national sport downunder when on your grand tour, you feed the colonials their diet of bread and pudding, because they're ever so grateful, guv'nor ...

Cue light music, and so to a little light entertainment before the chopper people take us away.

Oh it's a bit of old rope, but as things get stickier and stickier, what fun to relive a sketch based around It's a Wonderful Life (or Scrooge, or whatever):