Cardinal Pell, Michael Jensen, a frock contest, and how rock and roll has failed to change the world ...

(Above: what 'popular culture' war?)

The problem, of course, is the rich. The rich are ruining the planet. They are ruining western civilisation. They are diluting our precious bodily fluids. They are polluting the world.

They are creating a central weakness, which will see al-Qa'ida triumphant by the end of the year, and everyone in Australia celebrating Eid-ul-Fitr and Eid-ul Adha instead of Xmas.

We owe this insight to the week-old thoughts of Cardinal George Pell, channeling Rabbi Jonathan Sacks in his Sunday Terror column September 11:

More fundamentally, honour, loyalty and integrity are downgraded or rejected. "Me" takes precedence over "we" and pleasure over tomorrow's sustainability. According to Sacks, the most important enemy is not radical Islam but "unsustainable self-indulgence".

Naturally rich people - who have by definition been most successful at mastering the art of unsustainable self-indulgence - are the core group of society-destroying conspirators who place "me" above "we".

Next time you meet a rich person, abuse them for the scoundrels they are. Perhaps a stoning, or at least an hour-long droning sermon about the way they're ruining themselves, society and the planet. Before it's too late:

Our enemies recognize this central weakness. Therefore the challenge for the Western world is to renew the moral disciplines of freedom.

Can it be done?

On the other hand, it could be all righteous, mealy-mouthed twaddle from a church which isn't short of wealth, nor short of priests willing to indulge in the sins of the flesh with passing altar boys.

It's hard to pin down the actual worth of the Catholic church - though one brave soul at Google Answers gave it a go here - but truth to tell, the pond's eyes glaze over at all the listings of the billions here, the squillions there, and the millions extorted from hapless victims convinced that the only certain path to paradise involves a weekly envelope full of cash.

By golly, if the cops in Kings Cross (yes, we once saw a brown paper bag change hands) or the Mafia worked that kind of shakedown routine, there'd be a lot of indignation. You have to admire Scientology for working out the central principle behind any kind of cult. Show me the money, and all will be well ...

In the Google accounting, fancy footwork allows Vatican City to be valued at a lira, meaning either (a) we have a lira waiting, ready to complete the transaction or (b) the pond's residence can now be considered, for the purposes of rates and taxes, to be about zillionth of a lira. Marrickville Council, you useless mob of reprobates, please take note ...

In any case, what exactly are the moral disciplines of freedom? And why is one of the Vatican's chief climate science deniers in the antipodes rabbiting on about tomorrow's sustainability?

The pond's conclusion? If you see some rich ponce, some fancy git dressed to the gills in a bright red or purple dress, blame it all on him. Anyone who can afford that kind of lavish frock is surely responsible for the decline and fall of western civilisation. And a bonus reason?

The family is disintegrating, and some actively encourage this.

Yep, that'd be right. Build a church where the priests and the nuns are denied a family life of the conventional kind - hitched to Christ instead - and blather on about insidious forces, as if somehow cross-dressing isn't some kind of commentary on family, communities, standards in public life, ethical codes, morality and institutions (oh okay, we're only making a satirical point, we love cross-dressing, we really do, who doesn't love a mannish woman, and a womanish man in the great continuum of gender?)

Okay, cross dressers, here's your frock of the week:

Wow. Lady Di, take your place at the back of the queue. Come on locals, we can't take that lying down:

Not bad, but I'm sensing we need a big smackdown, say a' judges versus meddlesome priests' routine at a Sydney red mass:

Out of the way Mr. Claus. Now there's a handy display of fripperies and self-indulgent self-importance.

Some Sunday we're going to have a "frock off" contest, and may the best frock win, and the losers can contemplate their sins and consider how they too can get frocked in style ... (we're advised it helps if you have a lazy 30k to dress in the best frock fashions).

Moving right along, where would we be without thinking about the Calvinists on a Sunday?

And so it's off to the Sydney Anglicans, who have no time for frocks or fashion as an art form, and right away we discover that Michael Jensen is tortured by the dangerous notion of elitism.

It's well known that elitists are responsible for all the ills that ail the world, especially as rich people and high up frock wearers tend by their very nature to be elitist (well would you buy furniture art if you could buy a Rembrandt?)

By golly, if you look at the Patron List of the SSO, more than a few are well heeled.

As Jensen notes, this sort of rich elitist carry on can be a bit of a worry:

The instinct of true Christianity is thoroughly egalitarian, in recognition of the significance of every human individual and the universal appeal of the gospel. Elitism is abhorrent to true Christianity and especially to missionary Christianity. As Davison Hunter says, 'elitism for believers is despicable and utterly anathema to the gospel they cherish'.

Heaven forbid that churches, of all places, become the sites of exclusion and condescension.

Yes indeed. Please, only frocks from Tarjay for the missionary Christian.

But wait, there's an even bigger fly in the ointment:

The dilemma that arises from this observation is this: the evangelical movement, which has aspirations to changing the world and not just winning souls, is addicted to a populism which is at odds with what we know about 'the dynamics of world-changing’. The world is not changed by popular culture. The world (as Davison Hunter shows) is changed by the making of what we might call ‘high’ culture. This is not elitism: it is simply true. A work of superior aesthetic quality by its nature has a superior power to impact the world in which it is encountered.

Oh dear, the old Leavis-ite high and low culture argument rears its ugly head again.

Well if nothing else, Jensen proves his point about the Calvinists not having the first clue about either aesthetics or culture.

Let's start with the catch-call Jensenist notion The world is not changed by popular culture.

Personally the pond is relieved that at long last the peculiar, perverse notion that rock 'n roll/television/the movies/pop music/jazz/graphic novels/Carl Barks' comic books/computer games/the internet ... insert preferred hatred of the month here .... corrupted the world in the twenties/thirties/forties/fifties/sixties ... insert preferred decade or century here ... and so reduced civilisation to mere tatters, such that there is no decent art or culture left in the world ... has now, at long last, been laid to rest.

Bugger off, popular culture, stop wasting our time and our precious teen spirit.

Thanks to Jensen, we learn that popular culture has zilch impact, changes nothing, does diddly squat, has the impact of a foam stick. Next time a conservative starts ranting about the decline and fall of Roman being caused by (a) pop music (b) lashings of wine, or (c) popular gladiatorial contests, quote Jensen at him.

What a blessed relief to know that the Rolling Stones, the Beatles etc etc had no impact at all on our moral fibre (or even the fibre in our breakfast cereals), and as for the notion that Motown and Duke Ellington and similar brought black culture to new levels in the United State, surely this preposterous argument must stand revealed as cant and fraud.

Or perhaps sssh - whisper it quietly - perhaps the Duke showed that you could have your Cotton Club and you could have Johnny Hodges working on that Shakespeherian rag Such Sweet Thunder. And even chew gum ...

Perhaps it's possible to produce works of superior aesthetic power that had a popular impact?

But hang on, according to Jensen, if such works are popular, apparently they can no longer be high or elite, and that means trouble at mill.

The trouble is, too, that this tendency to populism means that evangelical Christianity often imbibes the worst features of popular culture - its shallowness, its brittleness and its attention deficit disorder, for example.

Yes, yes, I've always thought of popular culture as shallow and brittle.

Why the cinema has been called an art, but we all know that (a) it's way too popular and (b) the pictures flicker, making our heads hurt and (c) common brittle sordid people munch on popcorn, thereby ruining the 7.1 Dolby soundtrack (why did they ever bother, surely mono was good enough for the plebs in the stalls) and (d) eek, thanks to dvds they lurk in the lounge room waiting to explode and (e) thanks to the intertubes you might have an avi file at this very moment on your actual computer, waiting to corrupt you with its shallow brittleness.

Like you know Citizen Kane or something just as evil giving newspaper barons like Chairman Rupert a hard time ...

Davison Hunter is not calling on Christians to produce more operas so that we can extend our influence in the upper echelons of power in society.

Which is just as well, when you come to think of it, because after all we know that some of the best practitioners of opera tended to be atheist.

While Wagner bunged on a conversion for his wife, Nietzsche knew him to be a cynical atheist at heart, and Verdi was very little of a believer, while Mozart joined the Freemasons, refused a priest on his death bed, and was buried in a lime pit for his troubles.

It turns out there's any number in high culture who might get into trouble with the Calvinists, not limited to but including Paganini, Schubert, Robert Schumann, Richard Strauss, Tchaikovsky, Berlioz, Bizet, Brahams, Debussy ...

You could whip up a good first eleven out of that mob, and you could probably get Beethoven into the team without too much hard work, as the Catholic Encyclopaedia sniffily explains here:

In Beethoven, instrumental music, the vehicle of subjectivism par excellence, finds its culmination after a gradual development extending over almost three centuries. In his hands it become the most powerful voice of the prevailing Zeitgeist. Living in an age and atmosphere of religious liberalism, when Hegelian pantheism pervaded the literature of the day, especially Goethe's fiction and poetry, he could not escape their befogging influence.

Sniff. Hegelian pantheism! Ah yes, the befogging influence that produced the Ode to Joy.

Never mind, back to Jensen:

Rather, he wants Christians to remember that they are not actually called to change the world, but to be faithful witnesses in the world. The absence of Christians from these cultural forms is a failure of the call faithfully to witness to Christ in all the world. As he says: ‘The failure to encourage excellence in vocation in our time has fostered a culture of mediocrity in so many areas of vocation’ (p. 95).

Actually there's a fair argument that simple minded faith is its own worst enemy, and if you want good poetry, it might be better if you end up a tortured celibate homosexual, like Gerard Manley Hopkins. Or perhaps living a life of debauchery in the style of Henry Miller might help the creative juices flow.

Or perhaps you might take pop music seriously and aim for excellence in that or any other art form you fancy. Rather than treat it as a vehicle for simple-minded theology of the Hillsong kind, which isn't pop so much as Jesus plastic in a way even Andy Warhol or Jeff Koons would have trouble recycling ...

Oh okay, that's as simple-minded and as simplistic as anything Jensen has to say. But perhaps that's because anyone who believes art can't be popular - or things that are popular can't be art - really has got the wrong end of the foam stick, and possibly has no interest in cultural activities, whether "high" or "low" ...

This comes to the crunch point (yes popular culture allows for cliches in dire emergencies) when you consider that Shakespeare was a very successful playwright in his day, and was later dismissed and damned by many critics for his willingness to please the pit with puns and jokes and broad flourishes. If he were around today, most likely he'd have made the trip across the Atlantic, like Chaplin, to work in Hollywood ...

It's the reason Leavis foundered in the modern age, though it's fun to see Leavis-ite sentiments echoing through the Calvinist corridors, as they once did through film criticism. Take it away F.R.-friendly film theorist:

The wholesale rejection of popular culture. Leavis held, quite correctly, that popular culture was thoroughly contaminated by capitalism, its productions primarily concerned with making money, and then more money. However, film criticism and theory have been firmly rooted in classical Hollywood, which today one can perceive as a period of extraordinary richness but which to Leavis was a total blank. He was able to appreciate the popular culture of the past, in periods when major artists worked in complete harmony with their public (the Elizabethan drama centered on Shakespeare, the Victorian novel on Dickens) but was quite unable to see that the pre-1960s Hollywood cinema represented, however compromised, a communal art, comparable in many ways to Renaissance Italy, the Elizabethan drama, the Vienna of Mozart and Haydn. It was a period in which artists worked together, influencing each other, borrowing from each other, evolving a whole rich complex of conventions and genres, with no sense whatever of alienation from the general public: the kind of art (the richest kind) that today barely exists. Vestiges of it can perhaps be found in rock music, compromised by its relatively limited range of expression and human emotion, the restriction of its pleasures to the "youth" audience, and its tendency to expendability. (more here).

Today that kind of art barely exists? Excuse me, high minded sniff coming on ...

This too of course is nonsense, suffused with yearning for previous ages where art was both good and popular, now lost in a haze of limitations (nee basic emotional prejudices).

As George Orwell noted in his response to T. S. Eliot's Notes Toward the Definition of Culture, way back in 1948, the 'golden age' routine is an old saw, repeated by each generation:

"We can assert with some confidence," he (Eliot) says, "that our own period is one of decline; that the standards of culture are lower than they were fifty years ago; and that the evidence of this decline is visible in every department of human activity."

This seems true when one thinks of Hollywood films or the atomic bomb, but less true if one thinks of the clothes and architecture of 1898, or what life was like at that date for an unemployed laborer in the East End of London. (more reviews here).

Actually it's even less true if you think of the Hollywood films that were then made in the fifties, sixties, seventies, eighties or nineties. If we were left only with the films of Hitchcock from the forties and thirties, what a dud deal it would be ...

Truly the whole notion of 'high' and 'low' is from a distant age, much like the notion of 'progress' in the arts ...

If you can explain how there's progress from Beethoven, as opposed to difference and diversity and new areas of musical expression being explored, then you're probably incapable of enjoying his works for what they have to offer within and of themselves ...

The good news for Jensen? Well he shouldn't torture himself about art. It's possible to enjoy 'high' and 'low' (and chew gum) as the mood and the moment requires ...

Watching Fred Astaire dance is in no way a sin or a crime, nor a defect in popular culture, and quite possibly being moved to dance is more useful than being moved to join the military and kill people.

But then singing and dancing and painting and carving graven images and clapping hands in time and savouring the art of wine making and contemplating icons and fucking and other fun things have always been a problem for the Calvinists ...

If only some of these Xian fuddy duddies could get down and enjoy art and culture in all its lip-smacking joyous diversity, and pluck the rich fruits from whatever branch they find, whether high or low ...

Right now artists are beavering away in their garrets. Some will provide insights, some will go on the dole, some will be popular, some will be so niche only their family will care, but if they score their fifteen minutes of fame and popularity, credit where credit is due, and if they only get discovered fifty years after they've shuffled off the mortal coil, that's the way it sometimes goes ... (oh we loves ya now biggie Van G).

And now a reading, and note the way that Macduff answers the porter's feed line with a feed line of his own that's worthy of the best 'low' twentieth century vaudeville routines:

Macduff: Was it so late, friend, ere you went to bed,
That you do lie so late?
Porter: 'Faith sir, we were carousing till the
second cock: and drink, sir, is a great
provoker of three things.
Macduff: What three things does drink especially provoke?
Porter: Marry, sir, nose-painting, sleep, and
urine. Lechery, sir, it provokes, and unprovokes;
it provokes the desire, but it takes
away the performance: therefore, much drink
may be said to be an equivocator with lechery:
it makes him, and it mars him; it sets
him on, and it takes him off; it persuades him,
and disheartens him; makes him stand to, and
not stand to; in conclusion, equivocates him
in a sleep, and, giving him the lie, leaves him.
Macduff: I believe drink gave thee the lie last night.
Porter: That it did, sir, i' the very throat on
me: but I requited him for his lie; and, I
think, being too strong for him, though he took
up my legs sometime, yet I made a shift to cast
him.

By golly, the Marx brothers or Mo McCackie would steal that routine in an instant, and likely as not score a laugh with it, and as with frocks as a form of art, nothing wrong with that ...

(Below: and now for some low Sunday humour).

Christopher Pearson, and off in la la land with the wise wizard of Oz ...

(Above: first part of First Dog's diagnosis of is your News Limited's re-branding strategy. More First Dog here).

Dear diary: yesterday it was terribly hot in Sydney, reaching thirty degrees or more, ten above average, then getting quite cold and windy, dropping ten degrees or more, all of a sudden, and with the spring equinox shining across Australia, this feels in my bones like strong evidence of sinister climate change at work.

Perhaps it's time to send my personal anecdote to Anthony Sharwood at The Punch, as an aide-mémoire to his The cold hard proof Australia is getting warmer. Yes, it's always much better to forget about the actual climate science so a flurry of froth and foam can be whipped up by telling a yarn or two about the weather, and a gaggle of loons can argue all day without pausing to wonder if their yabber amounts to three fifths of fuck all ...

Dear diary: must stop brooding about gherkins. I know, will read Christopher Pearson, that always produces hearty good cheer and a bundle of laughs.

And blow me down - like an equinox gale and a sweaty day followed by a deep chill - Pearson delivers in It wouldn't be easy but Kevin Rudd could pull this off.

Yes, Pearson and the insufferable Phillip Adams, alleged leftie, are at one, and Kevin Rudd should return to the lodge, forthwith and at once. Quickly Kevin, act now, do what Christopher, channeling Tony, tells you:

He'd have to act quickly, perhaps within the next few weeks before parliament resumes, while the mood in caucus grows ever more desperate and before support gathers behind another candidate.

I know, I know, big Kev, you've advised the likes of Pearson to have a cup of tea and a Bex and a good lie down (Have a Bex and lie down, Kevin Rudd tells those who think he's going to challenge Julia Gillard), but that's pretty heartless advice, former chairperson Kev, especially when you consider that Bex was taken off the shelves because Dr. Kincaid-Smith of Melbourne noticed the phenacetin it delivered to the system was associated with an increase in renal disease and failure (Australian experience of analgesia in the mid 2oth century).

We know deep down you don't really want Pearson and Adams to have renal failure, do you big Kev? That would be heartless and needlessly cruel, though perhaps it would help end the endless speculation ...

Meanwhile, let's just count the laughs that Pearson delivers. Starting off by quoting Graham Richardson, Labor's most astute numbers man, is a goodie, but really was it kind to remind us that the best and most astute numbers always involve Swiss bank accounts?

Then there's the quote from that well known Labor insider Dennis "the tie" Shanahan for a capper ...

Then there's Pearson's deeply felt feminist side, as he considers the case of Julia Gillard:

Gillard's performance in question time this week, channelling the Wicked Witch of the West, suggested she thinks people in Labor's suburban heartland want unauthorised arrivals to be treated cruelly. Some may, of course, but surely most just want the problem sorted out reasonably and quickly.

Yes of course and any decent human being and proto-typical feminist wants a female politician referred to as a wicked witch, straight out of The Wizard of Oz. As any Dorothy would know, there's something deeply appealing about being called the Wicked Witch of the West, or perhaps the bitch from hell, as it so elevates the political discourse ...

Cowardly Pearson: I do believe in Kevin, I do believe in Kevin. I do, I do, I do, I do believe in Kevin I do believe in Kevin, I do, I do, I do, I do!
Wicked Witch of the West: Ah! You'll believe in more than that before I'm finished with you.

Not that Pearson is afraid of the Wicked Witch:

Dorothy: Weren't you frightened?
Wizard of Oz: Frightened? Child, you're talking to a man who's laughed in the face of death, sneered at doom, and chuckled at catastrophe... I was petrified.

And of course there's a happy ending for all:

Captain of the Winkie Guard: [after the Wicked Witch has melted] She's... She's dead. You killed her.
Dorothy: I didn't mean to kill her. Really, I didn't. It's just that he was on fire.
Captain of the Winkie Guard: Hail to Dorothy! The Wicked Witch is dead!
The Winkies: [all kneel before Dorothy] Hail! Hail to Dorothy! The Wicked Witch is dead!
Dorothy: The broom! May we have it?
Captain of the Winkie Guard: [hands Dorothy the broomstick] Please. And take it with you.
Dorothy: Oh, thank you so much! Now we can go back to the Wizard, and tell him the Wicked Witch is dead!
The Winkies: The Wicked Witch is dead!

Dearie me, all that hailing, perhaps it's a sign of climate change. Should it be reported to Anthony Sharwood?

Oops, I see that reading Pearson's astute political analysis has led to a little digression, as a way of relieving tedium and boredom, a bit like a big cat pacing up and down in a cage at the zoo.

Back to the salt mines, wherein we discover Pearson's policy recommendations for a reinvigorated Rudd, who will perhaps save some of the furniture at the next election.

First up is to replace the Malaysian solution with the Indonesian solution!

This is so infinitely clever and whimsical, it's been placed top of the list of topics at the Mad Hatter's tea party.

Next there's the matter of climate change. Abandon everything, and put everything on hold:

It's a minimalist position - not much more than a fig leaf - and some in Labor's Left wouldn't find it appealing. Still, there are plenty in the faction who question whether a lemming-like rush to introduce an unpopular policy without a mandate is the best way of advancing their abiding ideological interests. Who can blame them?

Climate science is an abiding ideological interest? Diary reminder: must send note to Anthony Sharwood, is your News Limited has spoken once again ...

Climate science, it turns out, is mere lemming-like ideology ...

Yes, it was John Howard's government that went to an election with an ETS and he got defeated, and then Malcolm Turnbull held a bipartisan position, and he got defeated, so taking any stance on climate change at all clearly involves unpopular policies without any mandate ...

And then there's the matter of gambling and poker machines:

On the issue of gambling in clubs, there is an alternative strategy to relying on Tasmanian independent Andrew Wilkie's vote and antagonising a good many electors in marginal seats. Rudd could argue he doesn't much care for gambling personally but that he understands the role clubs play in outback Queensland and NSW communities.

Yes, yes, and there wouldn't be the faintest whiff of flip flopping, or the sordid sight of waving a white flag in a desperate bid to retain power. No, it would all come up rosy:

He could propose some concessions on gambling reform and persuade Bob Katter, a longstanding friend, to support a new Rudd government on the floor of the house. The two independents from conservative rural seats, Tony Windsor and Rob Oakeshott, would want to enjoy their place in the sun for as long as possible. But he'd make no promises on that score and keep his options open for a fresh election if he wins a second honeymoon in the opinion polls.

And there you have it. Mad Bob Katter as the saviour of the Labor party, former chairman Rudd riding the dead cat bounce, the souffle rising yet again, and heading off to the polls by 5 pm in a fortnight.

What a wonderful vision. Amazingly even that wicked wizard Andrew Wilkie would go along for the ride:

All he'd have to concede the independents would be that, other things being equal, existing spending commitments would be honoured. Even Wilkie, when he saw the government didn't need his vote to survive, might be persuaded to keep his reproaches to a minimum and trade off his continued support in exchange for various sweeteners.

Yes, it's even possible to imagine former Chairman Rudd and Wilkie playing the pokies together in some far flung Queensland club, as a gesture of healing and togetherness, and a sign that no one really gives a stuff about hard core gamblers and gambling, not when it comes to toeing a moral Catholic line about the necessity of staying in power ... so that dramatic new policy initiatives can be taken to help problem gamblers with their problem gambling ...

Or some such thing. Because after all, we've been off in the lah lah land of Christopher Pearson, the man who brought you only recently Simon Crean as the sure fire fix to the Labor party leadership question ...

What's amazing is that The Australian, with a straight face, keeps publishing this kind of tripe, when really they could just take the most fetid and ironic speculations straight from the intern's desk at Tony Abbott's office, and they'd get better political insights and less fanciful weavings of gossamer and pearls from pigs' ears ...

But it does remind the pond that Crikey is having a field day with the leaked News Ltd re-branding proposal, Project Darwin, and you too can help Project Humble: help Crikey help News Ltd rebrand. Or perhaps you'll settle for reading this note straight from the desk of John Hartigan, @BigHarto: unless you have any better ideas, this is the future.

Just one thought @bigHarto. You label Piers 'Akker Dakker' Akerman as a weakness, but can anyone explain exactly why News Ltd still runs the thoughts of Christopher Pearson? It can't be the hits or the insights? Is it to keep John Howard, Tony Abbott or perhaps Cardinal Pell happy?

And that brings us to note briefly another, more tortured, set of explanations by Pearson in Accusations of sexual abuse bound to have wide ramifications, wherein Nick Xenophon is said to have had second thoughts about his Senate shennanigans, and Pearson presents this extraordinary convoluted concept of justice:

... if there had been no conviction or no trial, Dempsey could have sued for damages. Bear in mind Hepworth's urgent need to regularise his relationship with the Adelaide archdiocese, for which he'd originally been ordained a Catholic priest. As the current global primate of the Traditional Anglicans, his negotiations for reunion with Rome and his standing vis-a-vis the Catholic archdiocese of Adelaide were inextricably entwined. The last thing he wanted was to be involved in an expensive criminal trial or defamation proceedings, either of which could well have dragged on for years, and delayed the process of reunion.

Uh huh. So if we defame Pearson, he can always sue for damages, and never mind the cheery defamation?

And somehow a life-long quest for justice is mingled with a quest for Rome?

Could it also be that after Xenophon and Pearson's intervention, others have taken note of the case, and all sorts of rabbits are now running amok in the field, from Xenophon Shame: Rape accuser says Senator's meddling makes justice impossible to Accuser denies rorting church funds.

What a sordid field of accusations and counter-accusations, wherein Xenophon and Pearson have romped, and never mind the broken crockery, to mix a metaphor or two.

Who knows the truth of the matter, but you won't get anywhere near it if you read the partisan Pearson alone ...

And that's a reminder to former Chairman Rudd that, if he's thinking about taking the advice of Pearson, he really should also be thinking about trying out for a role in The Castle, so that he can tell Pearson that so far as policy initiatives go, he really must be dreaming ...

(Below: oh heck the second grab of First Dog, so you can work out where the weekly Pearson exegesis fits in the "is your News Limited" re-branding landscape).

The pond's guide to personal anecdotes as a way to practise science and politics ...

(Above: Sophie Mirabella's the one in the middle, more anon).

Given the state of the world markets, it's about time the pond stepped up to the plate, poured oil on troubled waters, covered the tank water with kerosene to kill off the troublesome mosquito larvae ...

We're all gonna die. That's right, sooner or later, we're all gonna die, we're all doomed, rust never sleeps, entropy always wins, and at some point the plasma screen will become landfill, or recycled junk ...

There that should settle things down a bit, induce a sense of perspective ...

What's that, the dollar is down and the world economy doomed? Oh no. But at least the weekend looms.

The weekend? You mean time with loved ones, grass and chores? Well my mother always mowed the lawns, so get on with it ...

There's no pleasing some folks, and there's certainly no pleasing the commentariat, doomsayers, naysayers and gloom mongers the lot of them.

Why there's the outrageous Anthony Sharwood announcing The cold hard proof Australia is getting warmer.

Yes, the gin-soaked The Punch is determined to prove it's not kissing kin to the denialists embedded in their close cousin The Australian, and who better to lead the way and troll the readership than a dedicated skier like Sharwood?

Australia has always been a marginal ski country. But the rate at which it is becoming ever more marginal leads me to the irresistible conclusion that external forces are at play beyond the regular fluctuations implicit in the very concept of “climate”.

In short, and to paraphrase the movie The Castle, “it’s the vibe”.

Yep, never mind the science, feel the boom box in the boot, the speakers under the seat, and the vibe. Remember:

One last time, I admit that this is hardly science. And again, that’s the point.

Yes, indeed, when discussing matters of science, never think about the science. That's entirely the point. Lead with anecdotes about ski-ing, and the level of snow in the great drop of '81, and lordy, lordy, we've never seen the likes of that drop since, and ...

This debate has for so long been run by people behind computers, and in laboratories, and by suits in rooms full of journalists, it’s high time we had it another way.

The world is warming. Surely there are those of you out there who deal with this reality every day. You see it. You feel it. You know there have always been droughts and floods and temperature extremes, but you know this feels different.

Oh yes, lordy lordy, I can feel dem climate change vibes in dem tired old bones o'mine, right to my core, like a dog sensing a thunderstorm, and a cat skedaddling away from an earthquake. Yes, yes, it must be true. Why only yesterday the tea leaves formed strange shapes ...

Or maybe it doesn’t. Either way, we’re keen to hear from you.

Or maybe it doesn't?

Oh right, it's just another even-handed Murdoch rag notion whereby printing the controversy - which worked so terribly well with creationism - is the scientific way forward.

It is, or it isn't, it might or might not, it does or it doesn't, feel the vibe, or think you've been whacked on the funny bone by a mallet, and all that early stuff about a graph showing the peak annual snow depth at Snowy Hydro's official snow measuring stations is just for show because The Punch is trolling for anecdotes and hits?

Send your stories, with your contact details, to getfucked@thepunch.com.au*. Put MY VOICE ON CLIMATE CHANGE as the email subject heading.

I swear to the absent lord, each time I visit The Punch, I can feel more brain cells drifting away into the gin, more deadly than kero on the mozzies ... (* address thoughtfully altered to avoid assisting spammers).

What next? My voice on the theory of evolution, my voice on Newton's three laws, and my voice on Einstein's theory of relativity?

Yes, yes, we too can have a view on Particles found to break speed of light, challenging laws of physics. Let me go out into the back yard, and crank up the barbeque and the neutrino machine, and I dare say within sixty nanoseconds, we'll have a round of hearty anecdotes that will show Einstein couldn't do up his shoelaces without help ...

Meanwhile, speaking of oral traditions, we were shocked to see scientists try yet again to discredit the written evidence to hand in the bible, by suggesting the first Australians arrived in Asia some seventy thousand years ago, before the ancestors of present-day Europeans and Asians ... (Aborigines: The First Out of Africa, the First in Asia and Australia).

Hang on, the sturm and drang will just get the snags off the barbie, and we'll warm up the DNA machine and the genome sequencer, and settle around the camp fire for a hearty set of anecdotes about taking the great south route (oral traditions involving indigenous people claiming they've lived in and about these parts some 50,000 years or so specifically not welcome, especially as we know the world began a mere 6,000 years ago, when the god wiped out the dinosaurs by getting Noah to turf them off the ark).

Yes, there's nothing like the whiff of burned chops, napalm and personal anecdotes to get a scientific gab fest going ...

Alternatively, I guess if you put dunderheads in charge of a keyboard, you're certain to get a lot of dunder.

Speaking of dunder, which is closely aligned to chunder, this morning brings the spectacle of Graham Richardson getting all caring and sharing in PM delivers more failure. The tag for the piece? Labor is now out-rednecking the Coalition on refugees.

That's right, as well as the bizarre sight of Tony Abbott and the coalition celebrating the notion that they give a flying fuck about asylum seekers and their health, as opposed to turning back the boats, let them sink and see if we care, we now have the likes of Graham Richardson pretending that they're on the left of the Labor party, doing a Malcolm Fraser so to speak ...

Still the pond was most impressed by the suggestion that every asylum seeker be given a Swiss bank account. That should make life easier for the wretches and get them aligned with the Richo lifestyle ...

Meanwhile, for a long time, Sophie Mirabella was a regular featured highlight on the pond as a result of her contributions to The Punch.

Her last effort for that punch-drunk blog, full of the usual snidery and malice, was only a few days ago, under the header The oddity of Beattie's ruddy "Dear Kev" letter. In the usual Mirabella way, there was talk of squabbling distracting from the national interest, Peter Beattie as hostage negotiator, Kevin 747, and so on and so forth, all inspired by Beattie's Kevin, it's time to put your pain in the past and build the future with Julia, which was a re-hash of his June piece pleading for god to give Julia a go, Leadership doubt is killing Labor's election chances.

Scribbled Mirabella:

It’s a fascinating read. As cringe-worthy as an episode of “At Home with Julia”, though infinitely funnier. The paragraph where Beattie swoons “Kevin, you are very clever when it comes to manipulating the media….you are an awesome media operator. I am an amateur compared to you.” is drop-dead hilarious.

Indeed. Cringe-worthy.

So it's now only fair dibs to note that the cringe-worthy anecdotes have taken a different turn today.

If you read Crikey yesterday (and if you could get behind the paywall), you knew it was coming, thanks to Sophie Mirabella set for Supreme Court stoush.

And today it landed in the Fairfax rags, with a featured splash in the rotating hall of fame at the head of the digital edition, under the header Mirabella in hot seat over QC lover's dying days, and given the same treatment in The Australian, with Sophie Mirabella faces Colin Howard family's wrath over will.

Mirabella for the moment seems to have ducked the tabloid treatment from the likes of the Daily Terror and the HUN - it's football season after all, and the Terror had to make room for Minister linked to gay sex in public allegations ...

Well if you want the news behind the news, you'll be pleased to read Hospitable: NSW minister George Souris not accused of "public sex act", which will be a tremendous relief to all those who knew the Souris boys way back when they attended the University of New England so many years ago ... (yes, the all-seeing, all-knowing pond was there).

But hang on you say, this is all sordid common gossip and personal anecdotes, and surely politics should be conducted on the more ethereal level of policy, above any petty questions of personality and private behaviour.

Well tell that to poor old David Campbell (Minister caught at gay club David Campbell resigns), and the media's ongoing obsession with the notion that performing a homosexual act is a matter of public interest ...

For that matter, tell it to Sophie Mirabella, who when she sees a head, must surely think drop dead hilarious baseball bat ...

Still, the news about Mirabella is particularly juicy and saucy and couldn't have happened to a nicer person, and as we now know that science can be conducted by personal anecdote, why not politics?

Let the boofhead head kickers get their heads kicked, as a rough kind of justice ... and let he or she who is within the glass castle think twice about flinging the river-skipping stone.

Or some such Ancient Mariner thing.

Meanwhile, take comfort and solace. We're all doomed, and we're all gunna die ...

(Below: adding to the pond's collection of Mirabella memorabilia).

Crikey unveils a vision for News Australia, and Paul 'Field Marshall Grumpy' Sheehan doesn't have the first clue about bogan abuse ...

(Above: how about replacing 'Australia' with 'Murdoch land'? Sheesh, doesn't anyone understand proper branding?)

These days Crikey is turning into the 'go to' site for sordid insights into the paranoid castle sometimes known as 'is your News Limited' down under.

The latest leak is a hum dinger, under the header Leaked: News Ltd bites the dust, and since we respect the paywall, all we'll say is it just goes to show the "connectivity of niche", while reading about dimensionalising the News brand (settle, spell checker, settle) is almost as wildly exciting as the "visual language for employee engagement initiatives" that's mentioned in the gabble speak ...

And they say the hard hats in News don't know how to wash down a fine meal of oysters on the rocks with lashings of marketing spiel kool aid.

Along with the story, you get the whole eighty six page re-branding proposal, and naturally the Fairfax team have joined in the glee about "Project Darwin" with 'News Ltd' axed in major Murdoch rebranding.

To show how delusional the re-branding exercise is, goggle at this:

A list of “hot topics” for implementation include accountability, standing up for consumers, accuracy, owning up to mistakes, and environmental, sustainability issues.

Spare my sainted aunt. Andrew Bolt owning up to mistakes and embracing environmental and sustainability issues? Pass me that kool aid, I want what it's got ...

“Research revealed some misalignment with espoused and enacted values. It also suggested that any existing value statements were often disconnected from the company or brands and were not well communicated,” the document states.

Not well communicated? Hundreds of journos and subbies beavering away and they couldn't communicate outside a wet brown paper bag?

The howling at the moon at the pond reverberated long into the night, and this morning there's still the lingering sense of an ode to joy (settle, Beethoven, settle).

Dear sweet absent lord, according to the brief, News Ltd reflects and fights for the values of middle Australia ...

Who'd have thunk Rupert Murdoch was a middle Australian of middling stature, wealth, and attitudes?

Well we can't wait for News Ltd to evolve to its next level of consciousness, and we particularly love the idea that it's supposed to launch a paywall for various rags in the next month or so, while the Dr. Who-like evolution and transformation will happen next February.

You know, because it makes so much sense to sell everyone a subscription to a Datsun, and then explain they've actually purchased a Neeesan. (oh yes, we love the way they talk of veeerhikullls in the land of the free).

Of course there's another way to describe it, and for that we turn to the urban dictionary and the nerdish world of computers:

... you attack your firewall / software / website / whatever from the outside, identify a flaw in it, fix the flaw, and then go back to looking. One of my programmer buddies refers to this process as 'turd polishing' because, as he says, it doesn't make your code any less smelly in the long run but management might enjoy its improved, shiny, appearance in the short term.

Well let's hope the management finds the shiny new appearance distracts from the smell of the commentariat columns and mind set on view on a daily basis, stinking up the place like a skunk with no anal scent gland control.

There's one further delicious prospect to contemplate. Much as we believe in the stork, this leak didn't land in Crikey as the result of the stork dropping it down the chimney. Clearly there is a disgruntled liberal with a sensa huma lurking somewhere in News Ltd land. Perhaps even - gasp - a greenie ...

What is needed now is a ferocious campaign to ferret out the dissident and crucify him or her. We recommend the self-criticism techniques deployed by Chairman Mao, to ensure proper group think is sustained:

Thoroughgoing Murdochians are fearless; we hope that all our fellow fighters will courageously shoulder their responsibilities and overcome all difficulties, fearing no setbacks or gibes, nor hesitating to criticize us Murdochians and give us their suggestions. “He who is not afraid of death by a thousand cuts dares to unhorse the emperor”—this is the indomitable spirit needed in our struggle to build Murdochianism throughout the antipodes (or some such, consult the thoughts of Chairman Mao on Criticism and Self-Criticism for the original).

And I guess if that fails there's always the old-fashioned Stalinist secret police routine, as perfected by the East Germans ... or perhaps they could call in the Metropolitan Police to discover the leaker, as they did in the UK with The Guardian. (What's that? The cops backed down? Oh no, when clearly The Guardian is as guilty as hell, and News Corp just a hard done by corporation).

Moving right along, there's barely room to note that hard working, twice a week these days Fairfax columnist Paul "Field Marshall Grumpy" Sheehan's contribution to the News Ltd world view, in Abbott not listening to the Labor deserters ...

Today the talk is of bogans, and what do you know, but the generally grumpy Sheehan today has come not to praise Tony Abbott to bury him.

Oh sure, there's the obligatory man love on view for the first half. Abbott is a Rhodes scholar, believes he eats the actual body of Christ on a Sunday, and is a pugilist who has mastered the art of politics and puts fear and loathing into lefties.

Naturally these ill-tempered loons try to traduce the master politician by calling him a bogan, as if being a bogan was somehow a problem rather than a strength which connects to the great unwashed masses, the people at large:

So when an inner-city Green voter like my friend scorns Abbott as a bogan, he is not merely indulging in cheap snobbery but referring to the cut-through quality that makes Abbott appear an island of humanity in a sea of spin.

What's most amazing about this sentence? Surely it's the claim that Sheehan has an inner-city Green voter friend.

This is roughly equivalent to admitting that Sheehan dines out with the devil ... or at least sups with one of Satan's closest friends.

And surely a close second would be the straw man notion that Abbott is a bogan which makes him come across as an island of humanity in a sea of spin.

Abbott might, as Sheehan contends, be the man with the big mortgage, swaggering gait and a history of making authentic gaffes, which appeals with those who have a bias towards authentic gaffes, but he's not really a bogan.

And not many people call him one. A boofhead thug maybe, a pugilistic bar room brawler perhaps, but in reality the north shore jock shines in him like a cleansing beacon.

But why does Sheehan have need of the 'bogan' straw man term of abuse? Well you see 'Bogan' Abbott has got into bed with the Greens on the matter of the Migration Act. It's a serious mis-step, according to Sheehan, the first of the dear opposition leader's leadership:

His decision may prove successfully pragmatic but as a matter of principle it has an aura of cant and hypocrisy.

Yes, Sheehan speaks for the common folk who want strong border protection, a large boganish constituency which loathes the human rights industry, and wants punitive policies in place because it hates the idea that people can self-select to come to Australia.

What was that about entrepreneurial spirit and the idea that people might show initiative by climbing into a leaky boat and risking all for a better life?

And the various polls that show a majority of Australians accept the burden of on shore processing, as in Voters say no to offshore process. And the majority that realise that the off-shore processing at Nauru was a fudge that saw most asylum seekers end up in Australia anyway. And those who accept Malcolm Fraser might have a point, and understand that, in Afghanistan and in Iraq, as in the old days in Vietnam, the old shop rule - if you break it, you buy it - should still apply ...

If you get to the end of Sheehan's piece, you'll find him approvingly quoting the words of Julia Gillard against Abbott.

And there's the ultimate irony, and the cheap Sheehan rhetorical trick exposed.

It is after all Julia Gillard who routinely gets called a bogan, what with her funny bogan accent, and her bogan hair and clothes, and her bogan boyfriend. Why she even won a FIX award as Australia's biggest bogan as recorded in Julia Gillard is 'Australia's biggest bogan', and now she has her very own bogan sitcom, way more tacky, down market and down beat than the worst excesses of Kath and Kim.

Who can forget Julie Bishop and her snide reference to the Lodge as Bogan-ville, as noted in Kevin Rudd turns tables on Bogan-ville talks? Why in that article the word 'bogan' is fully explained to the gentle readership of The Australian, who know that when you reach Penrith you must beware dragons ...

A "bogan", of course, is a derogatory term sometimes used interchangeably with "yobbo".

Keep on with the polishing, Oz management.

And who can forget Janet Albrecthsen (and Christopher Pearson and others in the commentariat) anguishing over Gillard's accent in Mea culpa time? Not so fast:

Start with something so basic it barely gets a mention. That voice. Gillard's accent is curious. Especially if, like her, you grew up in Adelaide, had a working-class background and went to public schools. I'm often asked why I don't sound like Gillard. Easy. No one in Adelaide sounds like Gillard. Certainly no one who went to Unley High School, hardly a school of hard knocks. Could she have manufactured those broad nasal vowels, so different even from her Adelaide-accented sister, to fit her political emergence within Labor's left-wing factions? You feel so cynical even suggesting it.

Yes indeed. Of course in Pearson's thesis (borrowed from Bob Carr) it was so Gillard could fit in with the lawyers and the culture at Slater and Gordon.

Never mind the naked personal prejudices, just romp in the bogan fields of commentariat abuse ...

Well here's the thing. The idea that Sheehan leads with - that lefties think of Tony Abbott as a bogan - is so bizarre that you have to think is inner city greenie friend is either completely delusional or completely out of touch when it comes to matters of bogan status.

It's not that he's indulging in cheap snobbery, so much as he hangs out with Paul Sheehan and clearly couldn't spot a bogan from a mile away, even one wearing zinc cream, a floppy hat, thongs and a T-shirt, and sporting an ice chest full of tinnies ...

Let's reverse engineer that Sheehan remark, and see how if we can do a retro-fit:

So when an inner-city Fairfax hack and ratbag like Sheehan celebrates boganism, he is not merely indulging in cheap reverse snobbery but referring to the cut-through quality that makes bogan Gillard appear an island of humanity in a sea of spin.

Gibberish? Yes, but no more gibbering than the gibbering and gyring in the wabe routinely to be found in Sheehan's columns.

(Below: go dinkum bogans).

Janet Albrechtsen, and the commentariat bears off on another freedom fries picnic ...

(Above: we liked the header so well, we wanted to preserve it, like a mosquito carrying dinosaur DNA might be preserved in amber).

It's one of the funnier, post modern, post ironic headers of the past week, and you can find it atop Janet Albrechtsen's The friction of freedom comes with open debate.

Readers of Margaret Simons' The Oz bows out of Manne debate will wonder where the open debate retired to. Perhaps to contemplate its navel? Perhaps to add more fortifications to the castle on the right wing? Perhaps to demolish the left wing of the castle entirely?

Who knows, but the openly debating Oz seems to have gone to water on the matter of Manne, with Paul Kelly putting in a no show for a booked out forum happening tonight at the Wheeler centre:

Kelly emailed Wheeler Centre director Michael Williams yesterday morning informing him that, after reflection, he had decided not to front at the event and The Oz would not be participating. Williams’ attempts to find someone else from the national broadsheet to debate Manne were unsuccessful. Kelly has not responded to requests for comment from Crikey this morning, and his personal assistant said he was unlikely to do so.

Yep, there's the friction of freedom at work, though it's unlikely to produce a fire in the way rubbing two sticks (or cojoined flesh) together might ...

So okay, Kelly might not have felt like it, but no one else was up to the job? It's a closed shop, union style, the shutters have gone up, the fortifications in place?

Is the Wheeler centre such a terrifying place, especially as the editor of Crikey Sophie Black, has now been dragooned in to challenge Manne, instead of moderating? The alternates can just have a love-in, without contention or disagreement from the bee hive, group mind thinkers? Just what is this dastardly place?

A Victorian Government initiative and the centrepiece of Melbourne’s designation as a UNESCO City of Literature.

UNESCO? Say no more. Can't be too careful of the black helicopters, the lefties and the greenies, and their international scientific conspiracy in the matter of climate science ...

Of course it gets funnier as you get down towards the end of Albrechtsen's rant, as she defends The Australian's all out 'nuke the bastard' weekend assault on the hapless Manne, who dared to publish an essay criticising the rag:

Alas, freedom doesn't count for much in certain left-wing salons. And that's why The Australian's weekend analysis of Robert Manne's Quarterly Essay is so important. Some have asked why this newspaper devoted so much space and so many words to challenge one Melbourne intellectual mostly unknown outside inner-city circles. In fact, contesting Manne's claims of bias against The Australian is an efficient way of contesting a broader leftist mindset long opposed to free debate.

Uh huh. So contesting a broader leftist mindset opposed to free debate is not to show up to the debate? And using a hammer to crack one dissenting voice is not showing an 'everything is nails and we're on an anti-nail crusade' mindset?

(Above: apply twice daily and the freedom friction will go away).

But wait, there's more and you can get a free set of debating steak knives as a bonus:

That's why contesting Manne's criticism matters.

Perhaps what Albrechtsen meant to say here was that's why a salvo of shells from the twelve inch guns of a dreadnought should be considered a contest?

Second thoughts, the nuke option remains the best metaphor, or perhaps the Animal Farm one, with all the sheep lined up in a row defending their turf, and showing all the mindset required of Winston by big brother ...

Oh wait, that's borrowing a 1984 debating trick from the Oz's anonymous editorialist.

Truly, there's nothing and no one so delusional as the righteous, especially when someone has done a little coppertone wedgie on them:

And Manne and his illiberal comrades are not short on hypocrisy. Those calling for a purge of conservatives were not long ago complaining that Howard had stifled dissent within the media. Howard stifling dissent? No, what the stifling dissent crowd object to is the friction of freedom. Whereas previously people such as Manne had largely dominated the intellectual conversation in this country, the emergence of new voices means they have to share the stage with irritating opinions and analysis that challenge their views.

Indeed, and Albrechtsen and her illiberal comrades are not short on hypocrisy if they fear to beard the elephant Manne in a building in Little Lonsdale street in Melbourne. Are the denizens of Melbourne, routinely dressed in black, so fearsome? Can writers for The Australian only feel comfortable in Penrith? Or perhaps Dandenong?

Naturally Albrechtsen employs what we like to call the Brendan O'Neill strategy of silly argumentation:

There are some long faces lamenting Conroy's inquiry will not go far enough. Take Laura Tingle in The Australian Financial Review: "The government has neutered any chance of a decent policy review." In fact, anyone genuinely concerned with open debate ought to be lamenting the Gillard government's eagerness to regulate newspapers. After all, if you don't like a newspaper, you don't have to buy it. And if you want to start up your own, feel free to do so.

The irony here of course, is that Rupert Murdoch didn't start off his career with the pesky business of setting up his own newspaper. Like most proprietors of that era, he inherited a rag from his dad Sir Keith Murdoch, the sadly unlamented The News, the last metropolitan afternoon tabloid in the nation when son Murdoch shuttered it in March 1992.

Whenever someone delivers that kind of saw - if you don't like it, go start your own - you know you're in the land of strict parents delivering really stupid censorious remarks. You know, like if you don't like the way this household is run, you can go to your room.

But Albrechtsen is right on one point, if you don't like a rag, you certainly don't have to buy it, and on that point the pond is assiduous. Role on the paywall in October, so we don't have to buy into that too.

One thing's certain. Albrechtsen keeps on rabbiting on about the virtues of business and capitalist acumen, but she clearly doesn't have the first clue about branding, mastheads, or the way established brands provide a focus that cuts through the vast amount of white noise to be found on the intertubes.

You can tweet, blog, start up your own online newspaper with little cost.

And of course with little impact, reach, readership, effectiveness or a monetary model. But that's Albrechtsen for you, ever ready with suggestions on how to go bankrupt, while raking in the moola from kind uncle Rupert.

And then of course she delivers the darkest of dire warnings:

Unless the Gillard government decides that regulation is needed to protect readers from activities at the heart of a modern liberal society. And how terribly illiberal that would be.

Oh noes, not the bloggers, not the heart of a modern liberal society.

Hang on, hang on, I thought The Australian was the heart of the nation, and what a dried up desiccated prune of a heart it is too ...

Could it be that the truly megalomaniac Albrechtsen believes that the activities of the conservative commentariat are somehow at the heart of a modern liberal society, as if the current ratbags in the antipodean Murdoch empire are the chosen ones, destined to lead us into a land of blissful information freedom, without bias, skew, spin, or the eight ball in the back pocket?

A bit like the wretched vision we saw at the end of that godawful Proyas' movie Knowing?

Well there's plenty of other rich pickings in the Albrechtsen piece, all full of magnificent delusion, grandiloquent paranoia, and startling hypocritical condescension. Take this one:

Expecting the media to echo your political agendas, and getting angry when they don't, is rather fascist.

Let's just rephrase that shall we?

Expecting Robert Manne to echo your political agendas, and getting angry when he doesn't, is rather fascist.

Alas freedom doesn't count for much in certain right-wing beehive think tanks, or amongst the commentariat, because if you think differently you must be beaten down, or shunned in a good Amish-style shunning, or somehow deprived of oxygen, which is why for all the blather by Albrechtsen about starting a blog, we hark back to the response bloggers got from John Hartigan when he thought that bloggers might pose a threat to the empire (Journalism, not the limited intellectual value of blogs, is the future of the web). That was before the empire realised that tabloid blogging could deliver hits online, and help secure the brand against intruders ...

Still not satisfied at the level of humbuggery?

Well there's even more because the point of the Albrechtsen piece is to invoke the Gipper's name and skills as a politician (hallowed be his name) and offer a refresher course on Freedom 101, which is of course a course on how to make sure kindly uncle Rupert keeps on making money. Well let's hope his television, cable and film interests keep making a motza, because the future sure ain't in fish and chip wrappings ...

And of course it's also to issue a dire warning about the federal government's inquiry into the media, because it's just sordid attempt at revenge on News Limited.

This is, as much as anything, a grossly defamatory approach to the two bods appointed to conduct the inquiry, former federal court justice Ray Finkelstein QC and Dr Matthew Ricketson, professor of journalism at Canberra university (Government announces Independent Media Inquiry).

Who knows where their inquiry will lead them, and who knows what the terms of reference will produce? Albrechtsen, in the spirit of freedom, doesn't want to know. She just wants to launch a pre-emptive strike, and knee cap the inquirers ...

Yep, the one sure way to foster the friction of freedom, and open debate is to shut down any inquiry into the media, before we have even the first clue of what it might canvas, who it might consult, or what conclusions it might reach.

Want some freedom fries with that?

Yes, it's a funny old concept of freedom, the stifling of dissent, and alternative opinions, but perhaps the funniest is the suggestion that the Greens should just lie back, take the odd kick in the guts and king hit in good spirits, and do nothing, preferably with one hand tied behind the back.

Now where on earth would the Greens have got the idea that the Murdoch press is 'hate media'?

We wear Senator Brown's criticism with pride. We believe he and his Green colleagues are hypocrites; that they are bad for the nation; and that they should be destroyed at the ballot box. (here at the lizard Oz)

Oh dear, that sound a little old testament:

Go up, my warriors, against the land of the Greenies and against the people of Brown. Yes, march against Babylon (and pockets of Tasmania, wherein they prevent the proper consumption of old growth forests), the land of rebels (yea verily including Luke Skywalker), a land that I will judge! Pursue, kill, and completely destroy them, as I have commanded you," says the Lord. "Let the battle cry be heard in the land, a shout of great destruction". (Jeremiah 50:21-22)

Or some such thing.

It's a proud boast of the pond to have been labelled a scab and been blackballed by a union as a line crosser and a strike breaker, and to have been called at various times in a sordid career a representative of 'the man', dedicated to the pursuit and destruction of the little person seeking a living ...

But however you cut it, the amount of sheer twaddle, hypocrisy, umbrage, and nonsense spouted by the commentariat - at the sight of a dissenting voice whom Albrechtsen disparages as a virtually unknown Melbourne academic - which makes these activities seem like venial sins.

The problem for the likes of Albrechtsen is that if everyone in the world thought, acted, wrote and believed like she - and collectively they - did, what a dull, hideous, frozen, conformist, bleak, black ugly beehive of a world it would be ...

Come to think of it, I get that feeling most days I look at the opinion pages and the editorials in The Australian, and the other rags in the empire. Has there ever been such a unanimous voice, such a single shrieking, such an abject conformity, such a bunch of commentariat sheeple all singing from the same sheet?

The Australian as a forum for diversity and freedom of opinion? Would you like a Krispy Kreme doughtnut with your kool aid?

Free exchange of views? Debate? The friction of freedom in the room?

Bah humbug, they can't even turn up for a chat with the elephant Manne, while there he is as bold as brass, standing right there in the room ...

(Below: yes, it's Albrechtsen land, where never a discouraging different alternative word was heard.

Beneath the trees where nobody sees

they'll agree to agree as long as they please
'cause that's the way the commentariat bears have their picnic).

Gerard Henderson, master of comedy, tackles the funny greenies in a tag team match brimming with hilarity ...

(Above: Gerard Henderson, comedy master, showing the power of the sideways comedy beat. Pure Jackie Gleason).

The pond rarely drops in on the ABC's Q&A - it's too much like discussing politics at a dinner party organised by an anarchist - but last night, it had a piquant flavour, thanks to the presence of conservative member of the commentariat Gerard Henderson.

Never has there been such an awesome display of overtly negative body language, full of hostility, and churlish surly resentment, especially when hapless, quiet, gentle, philosophical Raimond Gaita had a turn at the mike. Even the studio audience got a going over for daring to laugh, as Henderson launched into his strict head teacher routine when confronted by disrespectful chavvies ...

(Above: oh yes, his finest Dr. Smith sneer. Warning, danger, Raimond, danger).

It was a fine curmudeonly display, as Henderson lined up with Jim Wallace, who was blathering about the homosexual 'agenda' in his usual way. Also in his usual way, Henderson kept on wondering why atheists didn't persecute Muslims in the same way they persecuted Christians and Jews.

He wanted Muslims taken down a peg or two, so it was an exceptionally refined irony to see Henderson late in the programme defending conservative Muslims, their attitudes to gay marriage, and the Islamic capacity for homophobia.

No doubt it will dawn on Henderson in some distant era that the Muslim religion is just a canny regional variation on the Abrahamic religions, and supposedly worships the same god, with Christ as a prophet, and if you scratch a conservative Catholic, you'll find many of the same attitudes to those who are different as can be found in conservative Islam.

(Above: don't you talk to me like that you uppity young atheist thing, you).

As for the notion that Islam is a more violent religion, we wait the day that Henderson explains how Islam plunged the world into the first great war (or perhaps communism), somehow absolving a bunch of allegedly Christian nations from managing that imperial nee colonial jiggery hokey pokey ...

Well no doubt the transcript will turn up later today on the Q&A site, but the show's already available, and just for the brooding resentment, and hearing Henderson defend Islamic homophobia, it's worth a little bit of your bandwidth, though maybe in form that allows for fast forwarding:

Henderson: Well that's all pretty easy to say but there may just have a particular view of marriage in many religions, including the Islam religion. There are traditional views of marriage and it's very easy to dismiss them as some kind of phobia, but they may just believe in a marriage between a man and a woman, like Julia Gillard. What is wrong with that?

Easy to dismiss them? Easy to dismiss Islam? No way Jose, not if you're Gerard ...

Actually it's very easy to give Muslims a hard time about this, along with conservative Christians and Jews, but you won't find it coming from unofficial spokespersons for conservative Islamic social attitudes like Gerard Henderson ...

No wonder the audience littered with insolent ruff youffs was cackling away ...

But wait, there's more, because a few lines that bob up in Q&A were clearly re-runs from Henderson's column in today's Fairfax rag, Comedy or not, the producers are green.

A favourite tactic of the commentariat is to turn arguments topsy turvy to score a point. So in the matter of climate science, scientists become crazed fundamentalists, true believers, irrational zealots, the font of a new religion, doomsday mongers, computer model rapturists, while sceptics are rational, thoughtful and incisive (except when eating the flesh of Christ in the form of a wafer).

Similarly people who wonder what the world might look in a few hundred years time if we keep devouring the world's resources at the current rate, without introducing a few more sustainable policies, can be shown to be religious cranks, secular end of worlders:

It was not so long ago that anyone who proclaimed that "the end of the world is nigh" was regarded as a suitable target for laughter, even ridicule. Not any more. Today members of the extreme green movement, who predict the cooking of the planet, are invariably treated very seriously indeed.

(Above: ya talking to me, greenie punk? Well are ya? Do you feel lucky punk? Seeing as how I've got the most powerful institute in the world in my hand ... did you count the briefing papers and the seminars and the lectures? Well did ya punk?)

Of course if you happen to think this is the only tour you get, and the grave is the end of the line, you tend to take an interest in the planet, especially if you fondly imagine that humanity might go on and on forever, and even get itself into a position to flee the planet when the sun does its amazing expand and shrink routine, and better still, perhaps take over the universe, or at least cruise around it like Captain Kirk, introducing good human values ... like inter-galactic warfare, defeating the greedy Trade Federation and saving the small planet of Naboo .

But back to Henderson, who, after loading up greenies with Christian end of world raptures, turns his bizarre attention to the wretched ABC sitcom At Home With Julia.

Naturally Henderson is incapable of telling the difference between Max Gillies style sketch comedy (sending up John Howard) or musicals, as in the Keating romp, but leaving that aside, he manages to get amazingly indignant, take umbrage, flee the room because At Home With Julia isn't an equal opportunity political offender, because, gasp, oh the shock, the horror, it turns out that the Greens aren't in the show:

The problem with At Home with Julia is that it is not an equal opportunity political offender - because no Greens politicians make an appearance in any of the four episodes. In other words, Senator Bob Brown does not turn up. Nor do Adam Bandt (the Greens MP for Melbourne) or Christine Milne or Sarah Hanson-Young or Lee Rhiannon. Yet without Bandt's support for Labor in the House of Representatives, Gillard and Mathieson would not be residing in The Lodge.

(Above: Dr. Smith did twenty sneers an ep? Well cop this one).

Yes, yes, the bitterness and envy is naked - where are the conservative commentariat in the show as well, where's the Andrew Bolts and the Tim Blairs and dare we mention Gerard? -but it turns out that according to the show's creators, as quoted by Henderson, this is all by happenstance, because the Greens were due to turn up in the final two eps of what was to be a six part series, before the ABC realised it had a clunker, an absolute dog, and cut the show to four parts.

That's what you do when you have a dog, but it speaks enormous volumes of the paranoid mind of the commentariat that out of this sow's ear can be woven into a finely honed silk purse rant about the ABC:

It speaks volumes for both comedy and political comment in Australia that no one at the ABC or Quail TV realised the implications of leaving the Greens out of what is supposed to be an equal opportunity bagging of all sides of Australian politics. At Home with Julia has become yet another taxpayer-funded program on the ABC which either criticises or laughs at Labor and the Coalition - but only from the left. It is as if the Greens are in a ridicule-free zone.

Actually it speaks volumes about Henderson, and his lack of empathy for the doltish commissioning editor who got into bed with the clunker in the first place.

This humour-free approach to commentariat scribbling is pure, rich comedy gold, of a kind guaranteed to produce a braying fit of laughter.

Naturally Henderson is keen to show he's at one with the comedy gods:

Yet, to some of us, the Greens and their supporters are a suitable target for humour. There is something inherently amusing about the likes of Al Gore in the United States and Bob Brown in Australia, flying from conference to conference on carbon-emitting jet aircraft, urging the rest of us to reduce our carbon emissions. Gore even travels in a private jet.

Yes, it's a laugh a minute, and best of all, even better than turning science into rapturous religious thinking of a 'last drinks gentlemen please' kind ...

But the end of the world routine is an oldie but a goodie, always ready to roll out and get those jaffas pouring down the aisles (or should it be an M and M worrying about the villain eating the hostage?):

Then there is the ''end of the world is nigh" phenomenon. Such a millenarian outlook used to provide much food for comedy. But it seems that predictions of the end of the world are only funny these days when they are the product of a religious, rather than a secular climate-focused, mindset.

Well it might have provided some food for sketch comedy, but truth to tell, in the United States - the major exporter of film and televisual product to Australia - there's bugger all in the way of comedies about fundamentalism, or the end of the world or the rapture in the mainstream media (hands up if you've seen Kevin Smith's Dogma). With a bit of luck, The Book of Mormon musical will be the start of something big ...

Of course if you watch movies - clearly Henderson doesn't - you'd realise that disaster porn of the 2012 The Day After Tomorrow kind is a favourite with the punters, with aliens providing a handy secular variation to the secular climate shows (Battle: Los Angeles anyone).

And truth to tell, hippies, and their new sub-set greenies, have been copping it for years ...

Yes, you've guessed it. The reality is, Henderson just wants to slip the knife into Lee Rhiannon one more time ...

There is no conspiracy here. No one at the ABC or Quail TV consciously decided that At Home with Julia should not laugh at Brown's doomsday world view or Rhiannon's insistence that her Communist Party member parents never, ever supported the Soviet dictator Josef Stalin.

It's just that no one made a conscious decision, in Kalowski's words, to have Bandt, Brown or Rhiannon turn up in At Home with Julia.

Actually to use co-creator Kalowski's own words, as related by Henderson, there was a conscious decision to have the Greens turn up, but they turned up in the episodes that got the chop.

It's truly awesomely funny to read a writer seemingly incapable of understanding what he's written ... and in the very same piece, no less.

And from all this storm in a teacup, Henderson produces an apocalyptic vision of despair:

This provides yet another example of the relative weakness of the conservative intellectual tradition in Australia. The British-based Barry Humphries or the American P. J. O'Rourke would see humour in the Greens. But there are few such comedians the world over and virtually none working in Australia.

(Above: where are the comedians, there ought to be comedians, please send in the clowns, oh don't bother, they're here).

Which isn't in any way true.

Henderson is a fine comedian, and his performance defending Islamic homophobia is a comedy gem, and his beats and asides, and little looks to the sky in the current Q&A would make Constantin Stanislavski himself green with envy ...

If he works a little harder, I can see a prime time spot opening up for Henderson. We might call it Married with Islamic Greenies.

In the pilot, which takes place in the living room, Henderson dominates by sitting on a couch watching a giant plasma screen, clicking and clucking his tongue and making jokes about the parade of hopeless ABC shows flickering before him.

In saunters his defiant homosexual Islamic son, who announces he wants to get married, followed by his insolent sniggering Greenie daughter, who announces the world is going to end unless they get a composting and recycling system right now ...

Henderson cracks a six pack and begins dispensing comedy wisdom ...

What's that you say ABC? Henderson should be held back until the fifth episode, and you intend to cancel after four? Oh noes, the world has lost a comedy master and the ABC has utterly lost its sense of inclusive fairness, and equal opportunity balance ...

He's comedy gold I tells ya, pure comedy gold ...

(Below: how could anyone other than Henderson handle the 'oh the poor puddy tat' scene which marks the end of the first act in the B strand in the second show?)